Crusader. Novel by Sara Douglass

She fell atop him, puzzlement replaced with anger, and drove her fist into his belly.

WolfStar cried out and let her go, curling up into a ball and sobbing with agony.

“You are a fool!” StarLaughter said, finally understanding what WolfStar was on about. She

scrabbled back to her feet, making sure that this time she retreated to a non-grabbable

distance. “You backed Caelum, didn’t you? You thought he was the one to defeat Qeteb, didn’t

you? Ha! He was not the StarSon.”

“What?” WolfStar said, rolling over and staring at her. “Who is?”

She smirked, revelling in the knowledge that WolfStar needed her. “Think I am going to tell you? I

—”

“Who?”

Something howled far to the north, and StarLaughter looked toward Spiredore anxiously. “The

Demons will be back soon,” she said. “We must be gone by then.”

WolfStar gave a harsh bark of laughter. “Have you fallen out with them, my beloved? Have

they not given you what you wanted? Have —”

Exasperated, StarLaughter threw caution to the wind and stepped close, leaning down to grab

WolfStar by the hair. She gave his head a wrench.

“Shut up! Do you want to live? Do you want to stop the Demons?”

“Are you trying to tell me” WolfStar whispered, “that their destruction is what you want?”

She stared flatly at him. “They betrayed me,” she said.

“Goodness,” he said. “How utterly surprising.”

StarLaughter pursed her lips, but let his sarcasm pass. “If you come with me,” she said, “I will tell

you who the true StarSon is, who controls the enchantment left in this land, and I will tell you where he

is.”

And for all this, she thought, you will love me and aid me. StarLaughter’s face softened at the

thought, and she half-smiled.

WolfStar’s only response was a raised eyebrow. The bitch was mad!

“You bastard,” StarLaughter said. “Would you lie there until the Demons ride their beasts over

you? Would you lie here until the north winds finally rob your desiccated flesh of its last drop of

moisture? Would you lie here until —”

“It seems,” he said, “that at the very least I must lie here until you purge yourself of every last stored

curse of the last four thousand years.”

She threw his head back until his skull cracked on the cold-baked earth. “You are worse than a

fool, WolfStar.” She took a deep breath, then leaned down and grabbed his hair again. “Praise every star

that exists that the Demons have not yet thought to rob me of the scrap of power they condescended to

give me.”

And she began to haul WolfStar effortlessly towards Spiredore, WolfStar howling with rage

and frustration and agony the entire way.

StarLaughter paused in the atrium of Spiredore and looked carefully about. Then she cocked her

head and listened.

Nothing.

WolfStar still hung from her hand, very slowly unwinding himself from the defensive huddle he’d been

forced to assume when she’d dragged him inside the tower.

What in curses’ name was she doing?

StarLaughter ignored WolfStar’s almost inaudible mutterings and groans, concentrating instead

on the silence of the tower rising above her. Should she risk it?

Ah, but what choice did she have! None! And WolfStar even less.

“Spiredore,” she said. “We would go to the northern Icescarp Alps.” And StarLaughter placed her

foot on the first of the steps, and walked upwards.

WolfStar screamed as she dragged him effortlessly after her and the edge of the first step dug into

his ribs and then his hip.

Within a few steps StarLaughter increased her gait to a trot, giving WolfStar’s head an impatient

twist to shut him up.

Qeteb raged when he emerged from Spiredore to find StarLaughter gone. Not because he was

in any manner frightened of her, or even because he needed her, but because she had disobeyed him.

She had flaunted him, and no-one did that and lived to enjoy their small rebellion.

“Sense her!” he hissed to the other Demons, and they sent their senses scrying over the entire land.

Nothing.

Then Qeteb sent his far sight and his power raging over the land. Where? Where? Where?

But wherever it was, StarLaughter had managed to evade him.

How? She had no magic that could withstand his!

Where?

Furious, Qeteb sent firestorms tumbling about Tencendor. They ravaged from the Murkle

Mountains to the Nordra, and from the Minaret Peaks to the cliffs of Widewall Bay. Sheets of ice

fell from the sky, and impaled creatures as they scrambled to avoid the fireballs. Molten earth spurted in

great gouts from the chasms that wound over Tencendor.

And even this did not flush forth StarLaughter, nor reveal her presence.

Qeteb slid down from his beast, strode over to Barzula, and hauled him from his mount to the

ground.

He sent a furious armoured foot booting into the Demon’s abdomen. ” Where is she?”

“I do not know, Great Father!” Barzula screamed.

“Where is she?” Qeteb roared as he punched Sheol in her throat, sending her to the ground as well.

“I do not know, Great Father!”

” Why did you not kill her?” Qeteb bellowed.

All four Demons now huddled on the ground, their faces pressed into the dirt.

“We thought you might like to play with her,” Sheol eventually whispered.

Qeteb fell silent, regarding his Demons.

“Get up,” he said, and turned away, staring into the northern distance. Star Laughter had escaped

very far away, and that probably meant north. But not only had she escaped, she had somehow

managed to cloak herself from his power, and that Qeteb did not like at all.

She should not know how to do that … and if she had found the means to do so, it meant that there

was still some secrets left in this land that Qeteb did not understand.

Secrets probably powered with the knowledge of the Enemy.

“It should not be so,” the Midday Demon whispered to himself. “Haven’t I ravaged this land

completely?”

But even as he said it, Qeteb knew that his power was not yet absolute. The power of the Enemy

continued to linger within the land — the Sanctuary was the perfect example of such power — and until

the StarSon was dead, Qeteb could not destroy it completely.

He looked skywards, and beckoned. “My lovely,” he said. “I would speak with you.”

StarGrace spiralled down from the sky.

“I need you to hunt,” said Qeteb.

Spiredore deposited StarLaughter and WolfStar in a world that was different to the one

immediately about the Maze and Spiredore, but that was, nevertheless, substantially the same.

StarLaughter stood and stared, smiling and seemingly uncaring for the moment that

WolfStar lay crumpled and semi-conscious at her feet.

The trip through Spiredore (or, rather, the journey up its sharp-edged stairs) had not been kind to

him.

StarLaughter let him be for the moment, allowing her eyes and senses to absorb the scenery. The

Icescarp mountains had always been frigid and barren, picked clean by the icy winds that

whistled over the northern Iskruel Ocean and through every blackened crevice of the ranges.

But before Qeteb had wasted the land, the mountains had always seemed alive … almost as if

warmth smouldered under their cold, hard skin, and all one had to do was find the way

down through the crevices to reach it.

Then, of course, the Icarii had made their home in the mountains. Talon Spike had been the

greatest mountain of all, and the Icarii had gradually tunnelled and chiselled away its interior to create

living spaces in which to enjoy their exile from the southern lands.

When she and WolfStar had plotted and hungered their way through murder and into

destruction, Talon Spike had been a place of refuge and haunting beauty. Most of it had

been excavated even then … and StarLaughter had actually grown up inside the mountain rather than in

the southern Minaret Peaks. Her mother, CoalStar, had preferred the views and the scent of the ocean

winds amongst the Peaks.

StarLaughter knew many of Talon Spike’s secrets, and although she’d known the mountain had

crumpled when Qeteb sent his destruction rippling over the land, she hoped that the one secret she

needed to hide from the Demon had remained safe and intact.

And so it had.

The cellars and basements of Talon Spike — StarLaughter was unaware that Axis and Azhure had

renamed the mountain Star Finger — were places of great enchantment. StarLaughter did not know

the details, but she did know that the basements of Talon Spike were protected by wards to

deflect the power of enemies who sought those Icarii who sheltered within.

If the enchantments still existed, they would protect her — StarLaughter hoped — from the

Demons’ power. Oh, the Demons would surely hunt for her, but they would not do it themselves. The

Demons were obsessed with the hunt for the StarSon, and so Qeteb would set the Hawkchilds to

StarLaughter’s discovery.