and with utter love, and kissed her hand. “Rest well, my sweet.”
Herme rose as well, his face drawn and tired, and offered to escort Leagh to her chamber.
She smiled, and took his arm.
After they’d left the room, Zared turned to the other two and finally let the worry shine unhindered
from his eyes. “How will she manage in the wasteland against a Demon,” he said, his voice desperate.
“How?”
Leagh slept, and dreamed.
She wandered through the Field of Flowers, so content and relaxed she was half dreaming even
amid her dream.
Her hand was on her belly, and she and her unborn child talked — not with words, but with thoughts
and emotions and laughter. She loved her child, and her child her, and while neither could wait for the
time when the child would be born, they were not impatient for it.
The child curled up, protected and loved, deep within Leagh’s body, and that contented both of
them.
Leagh walked, and let the scent of the lilies seep into her innermost being.
The unborn child screamed.
Leagh jerked out of her reverie, although not out of the dream; wild-eyed she stared about, almost
tripping in her hasty attempts to circle and spot the danger.
Her hands clutched protectively over her belly, no protection at all against knife or spear or
iron-studded and hard- wielded club.
The child screamed again, and Leagh panicked.
What was wrong?
She twisted about still more … and saw it.
Perhaps thirty paces distant stood a great black bull. Its eyes were red flames, its breath
sulphurous smoke, its face a mask of hate.
Give it to me, it bellowed in her mind, or I will gore that child out of your belly.
One foreleg pawed the ground, and his haunches bunched.
Leagh screamed, and, turning, ran.
She felt the thunder of the bull’s hooves through her own feet, and she could hear the horrendous
wet panting of his breath.
Something hard and vicious dug into the small of her back and sent her sprawling.
Leagh hands scrabbled in the bare earth — the flowers had fled! — and tried to get up, tried to get
away —
A horn caught under her ribcage and flipped her over, and the bull thrust his sweaty, ghastly face into
hers.
Saliva dribbled from his mouth, and drenched the neckline of her robe.
Give it to me, give it to me!
“What?” Leagh screamed. “What?”
The bull lifted one of its massive, splayed fore-hooves — it was the size of a plate! — and thudded
it down on her belly.
Give it to me!
“What? What? Take it, anything, oh gods no don’t do that don’t don’t don’t stop it stop it stop it
…”
The bull leant its entire weight on its hoof, and Leagh could feel her child screaming, trying to get
away … its flesh tearing, its skull bursting, she could feel her belly bursting apart, she could feel the bull
squirming his hoof right down through her ruined belly to her spine, oh gods the pain the pain the pain
…
Leagh jerked out of her sleep, still screaming —
— and found she could not move. A man — she could smell him — had one heavy hand on her
throat, and the other one dug into her belly, its fingers probing, probing, oh god, don’t don’t
don’t…
“Give it to me,” a voice rasped, and Leagh finally opened her eyes and stared into the face of Isfrael.
So panicked she could hardly breathe, let alone think, Leagh tried to fight him off, but he was so
strong, so strong, and the instant she started to squirm his fingers dug agonisingly into her belly, and
she could feel her child squirm, and Leagh slid completely into panic. She screamed, then
screamed again, then —
He lifted his hand from her belly and struck her face so hard she blacked out for a heartbeat or two.
“Give it to me,” he roared. “Give it to me!”
“What?” she finally managed. The hand was back on her belly again, and he was leaning
virtually his entire weight on it.
“The door!”
“The door?” And then she screamed again as his fingers dug even deeper (how was that possible?)
into her flesh.
“The door of light! Where is it?”
The door of light? For a moment Leagh could not comprehend what he meant, and then she
remembered.
The doorway of light that DragonStar had given each of his witches, save for DareWing who was
too sick. She’d compressed it down into a cube, and put it where? Where? All Leagh wanted to do was
give it to him, get him away from her, get him away from her baby.
“In the pocket of my robe, you vile bastard,” she hissed, and instantly the pressure was gone from
her throat and belly, and she rolled away from him and slid onto the floor.
She could hear Isfrael scrabbling about on the other side of the bed … then nothing.
“Is this it?” Leagh heard him say, and she hauled herself onto her knees.
He held the cube of light in his hand.
“Yes. It unfolds.”
Isfrael fiddled with it, then found one of the lines of light and unfolded the door to the size of a small
box.
He grinned, feral, malevolent. Then, in an abrupt movement, unfolded the doorway to its full size and
stepped through.
Using every bit of strength left in her, Leagh struggled to her feet, threw herself across the bed, and
grabbed hold of the door. Her breath wheezing in panic, desperate to do this before Isfrael did. Gods!
Leagh could see him on the other side of the door, turning back and roaring as he saw her, moving back
towards her, reaching, reaching! — she pulled the doorway down, and refolded it back into its cube with
hands trembling so badly they were barely useable.
Then, rather than placing the folded door back in a pocket, or even in a drawer of the nearby chest,
Leagh thrust it under the mattress, and then sat down hard, both hands clutching the edge of the bed with
white-knuckled fear.
She opened her mouth, heaved in as much air as her lungs could take, and screamed: “Zared!
Zared! Zared!”
The bitch had closed the door!
Isfrael fought to contain his fury. The doorway could have been an inestimable object of barter.
Then, finally containing his rage, he turned around to survey the interior of Spiredore.
And a wondrous thought occurred to him. Spiredore would take him to the Sacred Groves! He
wouldn’t have to deal with the Demons at all!
Isfrael stood thinking. If Spiredore took him there, then that would mean that he couldn’t return to
get the Avar. They’d die in Sanctuary when the Demons finally managed to break through its defences
(as they surely would once they realised the treasure they had in Niah).
But maybe, once he was in the Sacred Groves, either the Horned Ones, or the Mother, could help
him evacuate the Avar.
And maybe the Avar deserved to burn amid the Demons’ fury for the fact that they’d deserted him
for Faraday.
“I will do what I can,” Isfrael announced to Spiredore, “but I will not do enough to endanger
either myself or the Sacred Groves.”
Having settled the matter in his own mind, Isfrael prepared to enter the Sacred Groves. He had been
brought up with the rest of the SunSoar brood, and well knew Spiredore’s secret.
“Take me to the Sacred Groves,” he said, and set off up the nearest stairwell.
What Spiredore led Isfrael to was not quite what he’d expected. A blue-misted tunnel, surely, but it
ended only in a drift of cold stars, not in the Sacred Groves.
“The Bitch!” he spat, and sent a string of cold, vile curses into an uncaring universe.
The Mother had closed off the approaches to the Sacred Groves — nothing else could
have stopped Spiredore!
“The stupid, thoughtless Bitch!”
And Isfrael stormed back down the blue mist tunnel until he was back in Spiredore. He would have
to trade with the Demons, after all.
No matter. He could best them any day.
“Take me to Qeteb,” he said, and stepped upwards.
Chapter 18
The Joy of the Hunt
“Dare Wing,” DragonStar said when he returned to the foot of the Icescarp Alps, “I must get back to
Sanctuary …” He told Dare Wing about Spiredore’s eventual death.
“When that happens then I do not know of an effective way to move so quickly between Sanctuary
and this wasteland.”
“And what will you do once you get to Sanctuary?”
DragonStar looked about the landscape for a few moments, avoiding the question. What would he
do?
“I am torn, DareWing,” he eventually said, “between simply bringing you and the Strike Force back
into Sanctuary with me, or leaving you here.”
DareWing shook his head. “The Strike Force cannot easily go into Sanctuary. They … they …”