Crusader. Novel by Sara Douglass

time.

The Demons must not be allowed to catch them before they’d escaped, or be allowed to follow

them through whatever doorway Urbeth had created.

The Star Gods’ decision had been silent, and unanimous. They could surely delay the

Demons those critical minutes Axis and Urbeth needed to get the column to safety.

That they would die in the attempt, none of the Star Gods had any doubt.

But they would help.

They would make a contribution.

And they would save many, many lives.

Xanon leaned on her husband, and the seven stumbled further down the road towards

Sanctuary’s entrance.

A blackness swelled to meet them.

Sheol saw them first, and she laughed. “The first of our feeding makes a willing offering of itself,” she said,

and the other Demons howled with her.

Adamon lifted his head, gasping so badly for air he could barely see.

Something loathsome oozed its way down the road towards him. It appeared one complete mass,

although once he’d peered closer, Adamon could see that there were distinct shapes within the single

entity.

As he rubbed his eyes, bending over to haul in as much of the thinning air as he could, the Demons

separated yet further.

Qeteb led them, striding down the road in the form of a man made completely of blackness. Behind

him came the other five Demons, scampering and skipping, wearing the forms of plump, bright-eyed

children.

“Why,” said Qeteb as he came to a halt a few paces before the huddled, panting group, “if it isn’t the

Star Gods! What do you here, Gods? A welcoming committee, perhaps? Come to present us with the

freedom of Sanctuary? Here to offer your services as —”

“We come with greetings,” Adamon began.

“How kind!” said Qeteb.

“And a message,” Adamon finished.

The five chubby children capered and clapped their hands, and Qeteb raised the eyebrows of his

ebony face. “Do say! And what might that be?”

Now Xanon raised her face. She smiled, and her smile was full of love.

Qeteb, as the other Demons, took a step back.

“Our power has gone,” Xanon said, her voice utterly sweet, “and our skills in warfare are negligible.

Thus we do not come to fight you, only to deliver you our final will and testament.”

Qeteb’s eyes narrowed. He did not like the joy he felt emanating from the group. What was

wrong with them?

“For tens of thousands of years,” said Flulia, her arm about Silton’s waist, “we had imbibed the

music and the magic of the Star Dance.”

“Much good that it does you now,” Mot sneered.

“Its power has gone from us,” Silton said, as Flulia choked on a desperate gasp for air, “but its love

and message has not gone.”

Xanon continued: “The Star Dance spoke to us of many things, and there was one thing it

told us above all other things.”

“And this,” said Pors, “is what we must now tell you.”

“What?” Qeteb snapped.

Adamon spoke for all of them, and as he spoke, all seven of the Star Gods raised themselves

straight and tall, and they smiled, their eyes gleaming with emotion.

“Never underestimate the power of Love,” Adamon said, “and the choices it drives you to.”

There was silence. The Demons stared at the Star Gods, loathing their calmness, their assurance,

and, above all, their serenity.

Barzula growled, deep and low and utterly incongruously in his child’s throat.

And then, in less than the space of a breath, the Demons surged forwards, once again

assuming the form of a single entity of blackness that rolled over the Star Gods with the inevitability of a

tidal wave.

The Star Gods stepped forward and embraced both Demons and Death.

Xanon blinked and opened her eyes to stars and to music.

She slowly turned and behind her she saw Adamon, and then Pors and Zest and Silton, Narcis

and Flulia close behind.

They were drifting free among the stars.

And all about them, the Star Dance embraced them and loved them.

Urbeth and her daughters huddled, unseen, under the trees of an orchard.

“Why did they do that?” one of the daughters hissed, low and angrily. “They could have

been saved if they stayed with the column!”

“I think they have just saved themselves,” Urbeth commented, as the Demons snapped and

snarled and twisted themselves into knots trying to find where the corpses of the Star Gods had got to.

“And given Axis a precious few more minutes. As we must do! Come!”

The Demons lifted into the sky, or what was left of it, furious that the Star Gods had somehow

evaporated before they could be torn satisfactorily to pieces.

Never mind. There was doubtless far better and far more extensive eating ahead. The Star Gods

would have made thin fare, anyway.

Almost all the air had gone, but its lack did not bother the Demons at all. Evil existed as easily within

an airless vacuum as it did dancing among the leaves of the most agreeable of apple trees.

They soared, and basked in their power.

Beneath and before them spread beauteous orchards, delightful palaces and shaded groves.

All empty.

At first this did not concern the Demons overmuch — surely the doomed peoples would have

sought a hidey-hole somewhere — but as they soared and dipped and tore apart palace after palace and

toppled orchard after orchard, the Demons began to get impatient.

And frustrated.

Where were the people?

“Deeper and deeper,” growled Qeteb, and so they flew deeper and deeper, their destruction

growing more wanton as they went.

And yet no people.

“It is one of the Enemy’s tricks!” Sheol cried, but Roxiah growled a disagreement.

“The Enemy have nothing to do with this. Nothing! They built no Sanctuary within Sanctuary, and no

Sanctuary after Sanctuary. This was the last stand.”

“Then where are they?” screamed Mot and Barzula in unison.

Qeteb remained silent, soaring higher and higher until he could see, in the very distance, something

that made his blood literally boil in fury.

A small crack in the horizon.

And through this crack, a shifting mass that looked very much like people and animals

fleeing into the distance.

His entire body burst apart in the extremity of his wrath, and boiling blood scattered over all of

Sanctuary.

“Zared? Where’s Urbeth?”

Zared turned and stared at Axis and Azhure. He was wrapped close in several blankets, but

even so, what Axis could see of his face was blanched with the freezing conditions.

“Gods, man,” Zared said. “Aren’t you cold?”

Axis suddenly became aware that, firstly, he was wearing nothing but a black wool tunic and

trousers as well as boots, and, secondly, he was, indeed, frozen nigh unto death.

He shuddered, and hugged himself closer to Azhure.

Zared beckoned to a man in a cart behind him, and the man rummaged in the tray of the cart before

tossing Axis a hooded cloak.

He grabbed at it, fumbled and almost dropped it, then managed to drape it over his shoulders and

back and pull the hood close about his face.

“Urbeth?” he said again.

Zared shrugged. “She said nothing. Just growled, and vanished.”

Qeteb pulled himself together with the most extreme of efforts, but even then columns of smoke rose

over Sanctuary where his blood droplets had fallen.

He resumed the shape of the handsome man dressed in grey and cream, although now he had huge

black, clawed wings — far too large for his body — protruding from his back. Qeteb could not quite

manage the perfectly congenial form in his current state of anger … and … and frustration*.

“Why will no-one stay still on this cursed piece of soil!” he screamed, still circling high in the air.

“The Enemy were ever slippery,” Mot hissed at a point just below Qeteb, and the other four

Demons cursed and howled and spat, spinning in tight circles through the air, yet still managing to fly with

utmost speed towards the offending crack on the horizon.

The crack through which their food was escaping.

The entire populations of Tencendor that had not fallen under

the sway of the Demons had now become the Enemy, whether they were humanoid or not, and whether

they had a single drop of the Enemy’s blood in them or not.

No doubt they think we will not follow, Qeteb said in the other Demons’ minds. What fools! Did

they truly think we would simply stamp our feet sulkily about Sanctuary and just let them go?

“Qeteb!” said Roxiah, and it jabbed a finger — that every heartbeat or so metamorphosed into a

piece of intestine — to their left.

Qeteb jerked his head about, reluctant to take his eyes off the escaping columns — such feeding

that lay ahead!

But, ah! There was some feeding to the left, too. Not much, but something to vent his frustration and

fury on.

Three white rabbits, bounding terror-struck across the blackened landscape of Sanctuary.