“They are too far beyond death to be able to tolerate its —” DragonStar hesitated, “— to tolerate its
confines.”
“You must bring the other witches out,” DareWing said. “Out into the wasteland.”
“Yes,” DragonStar sighed. “I know that. We will do no good huddled in Sanctuary, but the
thought of exposing them prematurely to the Demons … DareWing, I must go back and get them,
but there is something you should know.”
“Yes?”
“The Enchanted Song Book was not a book of solutions, my friend, but a sad list of errors. The
Song Book told us what not to do.”
“And so what is left?”
“Everything the Demons cannot stand,” DragonStar said softly.
DareWing made to say something, shifting impatiently, but DragonStar laid a hand on his shoulder
and quieted him.
“Listen to me. I am going back to Sanctuary, and I will come back with the girls and Goldman.
DareWing, will you start to clear Tencendor while I am gone? The north must be crawling with
corruption, and all of Tencendor must be cleansed before it can be reborn.”
“And if I meet up with one of the Demons?”
DragonStar took his time in replying, his ringers gently tapping the book, his eyes
unfocused.
He remembered what WolfStar had told him about Caelum’s death, and he remembered what
Fischer had said. Reflecting the Demons’ malevolence back at them had not truly defeated them: it had
only driven the evil underground for it to fester.
Evil cannot be destroyed — and certainly not by using evil against evil.
A word of love had driven Qeteb to distraction.
DragonStar’s face softened, and he smiled.
“DareWing,” he said, and put a hand on the other’s shoulder, “let me tell you what I have learned this
day …”
DareWing wheeled the Strike Force over the Alps. DragonStar had returned to Sanctuary with his
assorted animals. Having heard what the StarSon had theorised, DareWing almost wished he did
meet up with one of the Demons. Either DragonStar’s theory was correct, in which case DareWing could
deliver to the Demons an almighty shock, or he was incorrect, in which case it was better for DareWing
to fail than DragonStar. DareWing could feel the probing of Sheol in his mind — it was mid-afternoon
now, and Despair reigned over the wasteland — and he smiled …
He understood very well that although Sheol could not touch him, she could nevertheless feel him, as
she could feel every one of the almost two thousand members of the Strike Force.
DareWing’s smile widened, and he soared in the air, and he spoke to his command.
She hissed and crouched down on all fours about the fire she shared with the other Demons.
Qeteb stared curiously at her, one hand paused in the act of raising a half-burned, half-raw joint of
flesh and bone (it was possibly cow, but it had transformed so much during its demented
life that it was now impossible to determine its original species). “What is it?”
“They are back!”
“Who?” Qeteb threw away the half-eaten joint and stood up.
Sheol’s form flowed into that of a misshapen cat, then a pig, then finally back into a vaguely
humanoid form again. She got to her feet, brushing down her gown with something resembling disdain.
“Those who can resist us.”
Qeteb grunted. “How many?”
“Many.”
“Where?”
“To the north.”
Qeteb thought, and then smiled behind his iron mask. “Go,” he said to her, and Sheol gurgled with
happiness, and her form shifted yet again into that of a winged serpent, and she lifted (wriggled) into
the air and disappeared into the raging winds of dust.
DareWing soared his command into the sky above the eastern Icescarp Alps. His sharp eyes scoured
the landscape below him, but there was nothing but the plunge of icy black cliff and the drift of frost.
Nothing lived here, apparently.
South? No, best to check the eastern regions before he sallied south, thus DareWing led his
command — deadly jewel-bright silence — over the flat plains between the Icescarp Alps and the coast
of the Widowmaker Sea, an area that had once been, before the wasteland encroached, the
approaches to the unmapped northern tundra of the Avarinheim.
“The Demonic hordes have not travelled this far north,” DareWing eventually said to the Icarii-wraith
flying beside him. “We may have to —”
And he stopped, stunned. Behind him a low buzz of unworded comment rose from the
Strike Force. There was a pack of something moving south towards the wasteland, but it was not what
DareWing and his Strike Force had thought to encounter.
“Stars in heaven,” DareWing whispered. “Skraelings!”
“Skraelings!” DareWing said again, hardly able to believe what his eyes told him were there.
Skraelings?
Hadn’t Azhure destroyed all Skraelings?
But no, she hadn’t. Only the ones in Tencendor itself. The unmapped tundras in the extreme
north had always had a breeding population of the creatures, and DareWing supposed that now the
forests had gone, they would almost naturally drift south.
Evilly curious and perpetually hungry creatures that they were …
The grey wraiths were moving slowly through the snow, perhaps about a dozen of them, and
concentrating so hard on their journey they had not yet noticed the Strike Force.
DareWing motioned one Wing after him, then very gradually began a downward spiral that would
eventually bring him to the Skraelings’ backs.
As he drifted lower, DareWing stifled another exclamation. A small rabbit was bounding
through the snow before the Skraelings; one of its ears was missing, and its fur looked as though it
was streaked with pus.
One of Qeteb’s creatures, then.
The Skraelings are in league with Qeteb! And that thought did not surprise DareWing overmuch,
either, for the Skraelings had ever sought someone to lead them in their perpetual quest for misery.
Well, this was one group that would never make it as far as the Maze.
Again DareWing motioned with his hand, and the Wing behind him lifted silvery bows from
their back, and filled them with arrows fletched in feathers the same colour as their individual
wings.
Dare Wing’s hand dropped, and the arrows flew.
Most found their mark, although they did the wraiths little damage. The arrows flew straight
through their grey insubstantiality, and the only wraith that dropped was one who’d turned at the
sound of arrow flight and had been skewered through the eye.
“Aim for their eyes!” DareWing shouted, cursing himself that he’d not remembered this fundamental
rule of the Skraeling hunt. “Aim for their eyes!”
But the hunt was harder now, for the Skraelings had dispersed, scattering over the
snow and ice, blending in so
perfectly with their surroundings that the Icarii found it difficult to distinguish them.
The rabbit, however, had turned to snarl and snap at the Strike Force members now
wheeling overhead, and one of the Icarii sent an arrow thudding into its side.
It toppled over, screaming thinly.
The Wing had now dispersed to deal with the Skraelings individually, and DareWing hovered above
the action, shouting advice and encouragement, but mostly staying out of the way. The Icarii needed no
aid to do what they’d come back to do: exact revenge and clean the wasteland of the corruption that
tainted it.
Much higher, so high they were but specks in the sky, the remainder of the Strike Force hovered,
waiting, and hungering for the time when they, too, could loose their arrows.
Another Skraeling fell, then another, then three more in quick succession.
DareWing permitted himself a smile of quiet satisfaction. These might only be Skraelings rather than
the Demonic hordes, but they were a start, they were a start…
Something frightful suddenly, stunningly, appeared in the sky to DareWing’s south.
He did not see it at first, but rather, became aware of a change in the rabbit, still noisily
involved in its dying on the bloodstained snow.
It was still screaming — but in triumph, not pain.
DareWing stared, and then the looming figure to the south caught his attention.
He looked up, and his breath caught in his throat.
A gigantic serpent wriggled its way through the sky towards them. It had wings, two pitiful feathered
contraptions just behind its head, but was flying more through the sinuous undulations of its body than the
motion of its wings.
It was grinning.
DareWing recognised Sheol instantly. Despair radiated out from her in waves, but underlying the
despair was a far more sinister power. DareWing knew she would be difficult to deal with.
He breathed deeply, calming himself, then motioned the Wing back to join the rest of the Strike
Force.
He stared an instant longer, then flew after them.
Sheol grinned even harder. The pretty flying things, no doubt toys of the StarSon, were afraid.
She redoubled her efforts to reach them.
The translucent, jewel-bright creatures massed above the first of the peaks of the Icescarp Alps, an
undulating cloud of colour and silvery nothingness, but Sheol ignored them, concentrating instead on their