odds and expectations, your purpose in life is to love WolfStar again —”
“And he me!” she said. “We were born for each other, and we have spent the past several thousand
years moving back towards each other!”
Gods, DragonStar thought. The woman is completely insane!
“Let me finish,” he said. “You have decided you want to find WolfStar to throw yourself into
his arms, while you have managed to convince the Hawkchilds that you remain committed to his
death.”
“They would accept no other arguments,” StarLaughter said.
“True,” DragonStar said, “but what will happen if the Hawkchilds realise that you are
double-crossing them? Or if you get away with that, what will you do when you all happen on WolfStar?
You want to love him, the Hawkchilds want to kill him. It’s bound to be a mess, StarLaughter.”
“Leave that to me,” she said. “All that need concern you is that I and the Hawkchilds work on your
behalf —”
“Until the Hawkchilds realise you’re tricking them,” DragonStar said a little dryly.
“And who will tell them, DragonStar? Who?” She sighed. “You do not need to concern
yourself about me, or the Hawkchilds, or even WolfStar. Help us to find him, and then turn your
back. You get what you want, and I will get what I want.”
And the Hawkchilds, thought DragonStar? What do you plan to do when everyone finally meets up
with WolfStar?
She pressed herself against him, burying her fists in the folds of his shirt, her face upturned to his, her
eyes blazing. “WolfStar and I — what a team! We can best the Hawkchilds, and then … then …”
StarLaughter lapsed into silence, her mouth open, her eyes moist with emotion.
DragonStar stared into her face, and with a sudden shock realised that she was either completely
mad, or absolutely, frighteningly sane.
And DragonStar did not know which he feared more.
“StarLaughter,” he finally said. “I need something solid to convince me that I can trust you. For all I
know, you are still in league with the Demons.”
“What would convince you of my genuineness? The secret to the Demons’ destruction?”
“That would help.”
She sighed. “I thought you already knew that.”
“You thought wrong.”
She thought a moment before she spoke. “If there is one thing I have learned about the Demons
during my sojourn with them — and Qeteb behaves as do the others — it is that they are
one-dimensional only.”
” One-dimensional ?”
StarLaughter gave a small smile. “They are boring. Predictable. They are pure evil, true, but
that is all they are. Completely one-dimensional. DragonStar, if you want to defeat them, then make them
two-dimensional.”
“I have no idea what you mean —”
She turned her face fully to his. “Give them a choice, DragonStar, and they will fall apart.
Perhaps.”
He was silent, thinking. Was this the weapon his witches could use against the Demons?
“Give them a fork in their straight and narrow roads, DragonStar, and you may be able to
confuse them enough to choose the path leading to their doom rather than yours.”
Chapter 32
Revival
The Demons were angry beyond any anger that had ever filled them in previous millennia. And
of all five, Qeteb was angry beyond compare.
Fury consumed him.
Rage ate his entire soul.
Revenge, destruction, the blight and devastation of all that still somehow survived: these were his
only thoughts.
Now!
“They escaped me!” he bellowed across the land.
Well, so what if they had? They could escape nowhere he would not eventually find them.
If they were in Sanctuary? Then he would consume Sanctuary! He would shred it! Ravage
it! Vomit forth its remains into the interstellar wastes to float lonely for eternity!
If they hid somewhere in a secret cave or dungeon?
Then it would not survive his might and power. What devastation he had wreaked on
Tencendor to this point was but a foretaste of what he would eventually do.
Qeteb smiled. What he would eventually do with the power of the Enemy. He would turn the
Enemy’s own power back on them and laugh as they screamed.
Qeteb had never been this powerful in his entire existence, nor ever this potentially powerful. He
could feel the power he’d eaten in the Sacred Groves ripple through him, making him stronger, more
magical… more dangerous.
And soon he would revel in the power of the Enemy.
And after that, after that lay Sanctuary.
Qeteb’s stomach gurgled with anticipation. So many souls, all
waiting for him. Fattening themselves on the false hope of Sanctuary. He laughed.
And after Sanctuary, the entire planet.
And then Qeteb knew he could ravage at will through the universe. The Star Dance would quail and
then fail.
“There is nothing that can stop me now,” he whispered, and the whisper fled through the clouds and
the thin air of the upper atmosphere and fled screaming through the universe.
There is nothing that can stop me now!
They had returned to the scene of Rox’s death. Sigholt. Sheol, Raspu, Mot and Barzula stood in a
semicircle before the moat where the bridge had once stood. As one they were silent, concentrating,
pooling all their power and directing it where Qeteb wanted it.
Before them, supine and willing, lay the Niah-woman. Her arms were by her side, her eyes staring
sightlessly into the low and heavy sky.
Her belly, still flat, nevertheless quivered and throbbed with the burgeoning life within.
Qeteb was leaping and screaming atop Sigholt’s Keep, a black, maniacal figure, all spindly
arms and legs and grinning face full of teeth.
Qeteb was calling Rox’s spirit home.
Evil never died, and was never destroyed. It only festered, and Rox’s spirit had been festering ever
since the bridge’s trap had killed him.
Lost, lonely, angry, revengeful, it had drifted among the stars where the bridge had flung it.
Now its master was calling it, singing to it (screaming through a bloody, foaming mouth to it),
and Rox’s spirit responded.
It crashed through the universe, wailing past galaxies, tearing apart planetary systems, destroying
moons and asteroids alike.
Qeteb became a blur of mania atop Sigholt. He flung his arms and legs about with such violence his
joints creaked and popped; his voice screeched and wailed through his throat; his teeth waxed and
waned in his jaws — now long, razored fangs, now rickety, decayed grinders; his body parts grew to
tremendous size and then exploded, reforming in the same instant into grotesque parodies of anatomy
that wriggled and reached as if they had a life of their own.
The surface of Tencendor heaved and shuddered. Boils opened and exploded dirt and filth
into the air. Chasms writhed across the plains, meeting and breeding and reproducing until the sound of
their passing became a nightmarish roar.
Mountains jiggled and jumped, oceans wailed, caverns sobbed.
Qeteb laughed.
Deep in the bowels of Star Finger DragonStar put his hands to his ears and screamed. Every horror that
Qeteb visited on the land was visited on his soul.
“DragonStar!” Leagh yelled, and threw herself against him. “DragonStar!” And she grabbed at one
of his hands, and held it tightly against her belly. “Believe!”
DragonStar’s eyes widened, and he fell silent.
Rox exploded through the sky as the craft of the Enemy had once done.
Fire rained down, and ice sheets shattered the air.
Qeteb screamed in triumph, every part of him wriggling and writhing.
He was a master!
Blood showered down from the sky, and the four other Demons tipped back their heads
and let it wash over their faces.
They were very, very happy.
Something black and horrible slowly spiralled down from the heavens.
It was a worm, wriggling and writhing in complete harmony with Qeteb, slick and moist, covered in
the oils and juices of its reincarnation.
Rox’s homecoming soul.
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” Qeteb screamed, stabbing one finger down towards Niah’s still supine body.
“There! In her womb! There!”
And the worm saw, and rejoiced.
It spiralled closer, slowly, slowly, slowly, and then suddenly it became a blur of movement, dropping
(squelching) down to the ground before Niah, humping and wriggling, making frantic mewling
sounds, desperate … . “Yes! Yes! There! There!”
And the worm saw, and went. It wriggled up to Niah’s feet, and forced them apart.
It began the final journey up the valley of her legs, moving to its sweet haven between her thighs …
Qeteb roared with laughter. “This is what I will do to you, DragonStar!”
And the worm wriggled home, and disappeared.
Niah’s belly roiled.
And DragonStar screamed, and retched, and Leagh pressed his hand even harder against her
belly, and said, “Use me, DragonStar, use the flowers.”
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, stared at her, and then felt what throbbed forth from
her belly.
Life. Wonder reborn.
And DragonStar used it.
Niah’s body convulsed, once, twice, a third time, and then it lay still. One of its hands twitched.