sky.
As the emerald cracks widened, a sickly silver gleamed through.
“Gods!” Axis cried, and without further ado, grabbed Sal’s halter, sprang onto her back, and pushed
her forward at a gallop through the shouting, pointing, terrified groups about him.
Six shapes crouched across the chasm that the silvery bridge had once spanned.
They were no longer recognisable as humanoid, or animal, or even as Demons. They were just great,
dark, slimy masses of shifting black and pink and orange that oozed pure evil.
There was an outer ring of five crouched about one in their centre. The central mass was Roxiah,
drawing on all the power of the Enemy within Niah’s body, and using Rox’s soul to magnify it and then
distribute it to the other five Demons.
And from there, all six hurled it at the enchantments that protected Sanctuary.
It felt good, the destruction of this beauty, and that good itself
increased the power of the Demons to the point where they had power to spare, and sent crazy spurts of
it out into the universe to dance about the stars and disrupt the harmony of the Star Dance. It knew,
that beautiful, melodious power that sang through the stars, that the final confrontation was nigh.
“Urbeth!” Axis screamed as he dashed through his palace and up to the balcony where Urbeth spent
much of her time. “Urbeth!”
“She’s not here.” Azhure: beautiful, calm, terrified. Dressed in a midnight blue robe and a thick,
scarlet cloak.
She took Axis’ arm. “She’s downstairs. On the lawns behind the palace. Most others are down there
with her. I’ve been waiting for you. Where have you been? Urbeth has been —”
But Axis was already moving, and Azhure ran after him.
A gigantic fissure appeared in the sky above Sanctuary.
Whatever lay outside that crack, on the outer side of the Dome that protected Sanctuary,
was of a much lower pressure than the atmosphere inside.
Sanctuary’s air streamed towards the crack. Clouds screamed as the low pressure outside
pulled them towards the ever- widening crack.
The dark mass of the Demons grew larger as they tasted the inevitability of Sanctuary’s death, and
that further increased their power twofold.
Axis, as everyone else, stopped and stared for a heartbeat or two, unable to come to terms with
what they saw.
Then something huge and powerful thudded into his back.
A white paw. One of Urbeth’s daughters stood behind him. “Move!” she growled. “Mother is
anxious to go!”
“As am I!” muttered Axis, but he ran forward onto the lawns anyway, Azhure a half pace behind
him.
And again, Axis stopped, stunned by what he saw on the ground rather than what was happening
leagues above him.
Somehow, in the intervening minutes since Axis had seen the first tiny cracks appear in the sky,
Urbeth had managed to get all life within Sanctuary into line.
Literally.
Before him stretched a column the breadth of five carts wide. It snaked back across lawns and
through orchards and groves and fields as far as Axis’ eye could see.
To his left Urbeth, several times her normal size, paced anxiously back and forth at the head of the
column.
“Hurry!” she roared, and Axis jumped. He turned slightly, and whistled.
Pretty Brown Sal trotted out from behind the palace and over to Axis, her halter rope trailing.
“Have you a mount?” Axis asked Azhure.
She shook her head. “I hadn’t even thought of it. But I can travel in one of the carts —”
Before she could finish, Axis seized her waist and lifted her up onto Sal’s back. An instant later and
he was behind her, pulling her back against him and turning Sal’s head towards the column.
“Just like old times, isn’t it?” he whispered in Azhure’s ear, and she laughed deep in her throat,
and shook out her raven black hair, and for a moment both of them rejoiced in the thrill of once
more being together against danger that appeared insurmountable.
Axis’ arm tightened, and then they were cantering down the side of the column towards its head.
Before them, Urbeth roared, and then swelled into gigantic proportions.
Further back in the column, seven figures slipped furtively away, ducking into the cover of trees, and
then into buildings.
In the terror and haste of the moment, no-one noticed their departure.
The enchantments protecting Sanctuary collapsed completely. The chasm, which had moated Sanctuary
in, heaved and fell to pieces, destroying itself in a massive earthquake.
When it had subsided, there was a huge pile of rubble where the chasm had once been, burying the
blue-fletched arrow that DragonStar had left there.
The six black masses finally moved, flowing obscenely across rock and crevice like thick, corrupted
smoke.
Axis ducked his head, and Azhure twisted about and buried her face in his shoulder. Above them there
was a massive roaring, and Axis dimly realised it was Sanctuary’s atmosphere escaping through
the great rent in the sky.
The pressure in Axis’ ears was agony, and his breath screamed through his chest and throat.
Sal bucked slightly and then stumbled, and Axis had to exert every skill he had as a horseman to
keep her steady on her feet.
He choked, and felt both Azhure and Sal do the same.
There was no air!
All about him the once-orderly column erupted into chaos as beasts and people alike clawed for
breath.
There were no screams, for no-one had any air left with which to scream.
Something white flowed and billowed before him, and in the dim recesses of his mind Axis knew that
Urbeth was doing something ahead.
He hoped it would mean they actually managed to breathe before —
Ice-cold air slapped him in the face and shot down into his lungs. Axis jerked in pain and surprise,
and he had to tighten his grip about Azhure as she similarly jerked.
Snow obliterated the men and carts closest to him, and cold such as Axis could not remember
having previously encountered gripped his entire being in a merciless fist.
“Goodness,” he heard Urbeth say somewhere in front of him.
Once across the chasm the Demons shape-shifted into half-humanoid, half-raven forms. Their heads and
bodies were mostly humanoid, but their shoulders and arms flowed into great black wings, and tattered
fans of feathers sprouted from the bases of their spines.
Qeteb’s body was cast entirely in metal rather than flesh.
He lifted into the rapidly thinning air and soared upwards. “Sanctuary!” he screamed, and then all the
Demons were in the air and winging their way towards the mouth of the valley leading to Sanctuary.
Below them, the flowers and shrubs wilted and died as the Demons’ shadow enveloped them.
The frozen air abated somewhat, and Axis finally managed to raise his eyes and look about him.
Sal was struggling through knee-deep snow, as was every other beast and person.
Azhure shuddered in Axis’ arms, and she tightened her cloak about her.
“Urbeth has done it,” she said. “She got us out of Sanctuary.”
Axis glanced at the sky above him. It was dull and leaden with snow clouds, but it was intact.
He grinned, and kissed the top of Azhure’s head. “We’ve jumped from the frying pan into the frozen
wastes,” he said, and Azhurelaughed.
“Where’s Urbeth?” she said as her laughter died away.
Axis looked ahead. Sal was within three or four carts’ length of the front of the column, but all that
currently headed it was Zared riding a white draughthorse which was making surprisingly good speed
through the snow.
He may not have chosen for the parade ground, Axis thought, but he has chosen well.
He twisted about on Sal’s back, looking behind him.
There was nothing but league after league of frozen tundra, and league after league of the refugee line
from Sanctuary.
No Urbeth, and neither of her daughters.
Axis turned back, frowning slightly, then urged Sal forward to join up with Zared.
They ran through one of the palace complexes, and then finally stumbled into an orchard that lay on the
road to Sanctuary’s entrance.
“No air!” Xanon gasped, almost falling as she lurched onto the road.
Adamon, the other five close behind him, took his wife’s elbow. “No matter,” he said. “We’ll be
dead soon enough, anyway.”
Xanon lifted her beautiful eyes and looked at Adamon with more love than she’d ever felt for him
before. Ever since the Demons had broken through the Star Gate, sapping and destroying all
their power, the Star Gods had felt worse than useless. They had alleviated and they had advised, but
they had managed to do nothing to help.
And they were supposed to be Gods, curse it!
Now, they were doing something to help.
It was evident as the Demons broke through into Sanctuary that Axis, and the column containing all
the life that was left of Tencendor, were going to need all the assistance they could garner to escape in