Crusader. Novel by Sara Douglass

groaned and cracked. Her two daughters, as impatient but not as restless as their mother, sat to

one side, their claws red from the dead (and sour, for it had been crazed) seal they’d eaten earlier.

All that was left was the abandoned rib cage lying at the very edge of the sea, red shards of flesh

flapping in the wind.

Urbeth ignored both her daughters and her surroundings. Everything was wrong, wrong, wrong! It

was not her task to save the Mother! Her role was only to wait in the snow, dispensing advice and tart

wisdom, and keeping her eye on her children and their descendants.

Hadn’t she done enough for this cursed land already?

All Urbeth wanted was to spend the rest of whatever and whichever eternity her residual powers

allowed in jumping from icefloe to icefloe in the southern Iskruel Ocean, sinking her teeth into the spines

of shrieking seals, and enjoying the odd, amusing discussion with whatever sentient being came within

conversational range.

Instead, she’d been forced to hide the Ravensbundmen during Gorgrael’s stupid grab for power,

and ever since then she’d been obliged to step in and guide the footsteps of her irritatingly dense

children.

And now DragonStar wanted her to save the Mother. What? Couldn’t the Mother save herself?

“We’d better go,” one of her daughters remarked. “The sky is falling apart.”

Urbeth glanced upwards, but her daughter’s comment was metaphorical only. If the Mother died, if

the Demons consumed Her power, then the sky would indeed fall apart.

“And the icepack will melt,” observed the other daughter, and at that Urbeth’s temper

cracked completely.

“Why can’t the Mother mind Her own back?” she roared. “Why am I supposed to do

everything?”

Her daughters slowly got to their feet, stretching backs and paws as they did so.

i I

The Mother sat and watched the forest to the west. There were’ only a few score trees left, and even as

She watched, many among them trembled and fell.

There was a darkness moving through them.

Worse was the darkness winging overhead. The Midday Demon, in the shape of a raven, its

feathered and shadowed wingspan seemingly reaching from horizon to horizon.

There was no sun left, no beauty, no hope. Nothing but approaching despair, bleakness and

destruction.

“I am the only thing left alive in the Groves,” the Mother whispered.

And shortly even She would be gone.

The Mother fought an overwhelming urge to run. Run where? At Her back were nothing but

shifting shadows and pools of darkness. The Sacred Groves had all but been consumed, and the only

patch left was this island of cottage and garden, and the tumbling patch of forest before her.

The winged nightmare in the sky flapped slowly closer.

The Mother stood up, and smoothed out her gown.

“I’m sorry,” She whispered, thinking of Faraday and the now-hopeless sapling secreted within

her rainbow belt. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re the last person I thought to see submit to despondency,” an aged but sharp voice

said behind Her, and the Mother jumped.

Ur had emerged from the doorway of the cottage, holding a large terracotta pot and saucer in her

arms. The saucer sat over the opening of the pot, hiding its contents.

“I… I thought you’d …” the Mother said.

“Been eaten?” Ur said. “Everyone always forgets me,” she added, grumbling, and plonked herself

down on the bench the Mother had just risen from.

The Mother looked between her and the approaching storm of Demons.

“I don’t think we have much longer,” She said.

Ur’s mouth twisted in a ghastly parody of a smile, and she clutched the pot even tighter.

Her hands had tightened like claws.

The Demons screamed closer.

Urbeth, her two daughters a few paces behind her, leapt from icefloe to icefloe. Even in this stark portion

of the world, far, far north from the Demons’ central influence, disease and blight had left their mark.

Many of the icefloes had turned a sad grey from their previously sharp blue-white, and

were rent with cracks and soggy, sad saucer-shaped depressions that threatened to give way

whenever one of the icebears put an inadvertent paw on one.

Urbeth’s head swung from left to right as she leaped and ran. How much longer would the Icebear

Coast be safe? Not long, not long at all if the Mother was consumed.

Urbeth abruptly stopped, sinking back onto her haunches and swiping a furious paw at the sky and

at all of creation.

“I’ve had enough!” she bellowed. “Enough!”

Her daughters grinned, and their jaws dripped in anticipation of the hunt.

Urbeth recommenced her run north across the ice. But even as she moved into her stride, a

shadowy movement in the distance, over to the east caught her far-seeing eye.

A pack of Skraelings, shimmering south to join in the general slaughter and mayhem.

And for a second time Urbeth halted and sank back to her haunches. But this time she remained

silent, her eyes fixed on the Skraelings, and then her eyes drifted north-east, and yet further north-east,

until she had concentrated her entire being on the unmapped tundra that stretched into the infinite

unknown.

The sorry breeding grounds of the Skraelings, to be sure, but what else did it harbour?

An escape?

DragonStar shivered, and wished he’d thought to cloak himself in something other than a simple linen shirt

and breeches of only slightly heavier weave. He’d brought his witches, his Star Stallion, the lizard and his

pack of nosing, roaming Alaunt to the one place he thought they could use as a base. Far enough north to

escape the worst of the Demons’ influence, and yet close enough to slowly begin to win

back some of the wasteland, and rid it of its corruption.

Star Finger.

Here also waited Dare Wing and the ethereal Strike Force.

Somewhere.

“Where is he?” Faraday said.

/

She, as did Gwendylyr and Leagh, looked warm enough wrapped in scarlet cloaks, while Goldman

was suffering as badly as DragonStar. Why do women always remember to be sensible, wondered

DragonStar, and us men always forget?

“DareWing?” DragonStar said. “He must be hereabouts somewhere. I told him to stay …”

“Is it possible to get out of this wind?” Goldman asked,

pleasantly enough, even though his face was turning blue and his arms were shaking as he attempted to

wrap them about his chest.

DragonStar nodded. “Yes, of course.”

They were standing on the remains of the glacier, just to the north of the shattered mountain, and

DragonStar pointed to a shadowed opening amid a tumble of boulders about the skirts of the mountain.

“That must be the entrance to the underground chambers of the mountain. DareWing must be there.”

And that is where we found Katie, Faraday thought, unable to keep the girl out of her mind,

but she said nothing, and contented herself with aiding Leagh as they stumbled over the rocks

towards the entrance.

A figure waited for them just inside.

Qeteb circled down from the sky above the ruins of the Sacred Groves, his feathers and eyes positively

glowing with anticipation.

Nothing would ever stop him now.

Below, two women sat on a wooden bench before a simple cottage. Around them spread a smoking

wasteland. Every tree had been destroyed, every flower crushed, every hope decimated. The women

were the only things left alive in the Groves — such as they were — and Qeteb had every expectation

that they would not long stand between him and a total devastation and death for the Groves.

He lifted his wings back, slowing his descent, and stretched his raven claws out, preparing for a

landing. Just behind him on the ground his four companion Demons were likewise slowing down, digging

talons into the drifting dust and ashes, sliding haunches beneath them.

All four had taken the forms of dog-people: canine lower bodies, human torsos and heads … save

for the wriggling pig snouts on two of the Demons.

In their excitement they had misjudged their appearance.

One of the women rose from the bench, wiping nervous hands down Her gown. She was

patently ill, Her skin as grey and as ashen as the landscape about her, Her eyes dull, Her muscles

trembling with fatigue as much as fear.

The other woman, ancient and gap-gummed, continued to sit, hunching her brittle-boned form over a

terracotta pot.

What was she going to do with that} Qeteb wondered. Throw it at him?

He broke into derisive laughter, and Ur raised her head and regarded him with the bright eyes of

hate.

One of her wrinkled, age-spotted hands patted the side of the pot, as if in reassurance.

Urbeth and her daughters had resumed their run. They continued to leap from icefloe to icefloe, but the

grey of the ice (just occasionally blue-white, this far north) sometimes appeared to have streaks of ash in

it, as if the bears strode over burned and ravaged ground. Above them swirled wisps of emerald light.