Crusader. Novel by Sara Douglass

All six Demons swung as one towards the rabbits.

“Night is only a few hours away,” Axis said, and wrapped his cloak even tighter about himself. Azhure

now sat in the cart, huddled under some blankets, and Zared and Axis had turned their horses so they

stood with their tails to the freezing wind.

The men looked back over the column.

It stretched as far as they could see, which, truth to tell, was not that far, because a snowstorm was

rapidly moving in from the extreme north, and Axis and Zared could only see some ten paces before

them.

And within minutes even that ten paces would be denied them.

“Is everyone out of Sanctuary?” Azhure said.

Axis shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. I don’t know if Urbeth moved us all out at once, or if we

had to traverse some doorway that half the column is still moving through.”

“We’re all out,” a voice put in from behind the cart Azhure rested in. Ur, still dressed in her scarlet

cloak and clutching her terracotta pot, emerged from out of the drifting snow.

Azhure attempted to smile, although it was hard in this extreme cold. She had met Ur many years

previously, when Faraday had been planting out Minstrelsea forest. In fact, Azhure had spent one long

night helping Faraday transfer her daily batch of seedlings from Ur’s nursery, nestled around her cottage,

back to Tencendor.

Did Ur still have any power left? If Urbeth did … what of Ur?

And why did she carry that pot? Nostalgia, or did she have something in it?

Ur glanced at Azhure from beneath the folds of her hood, and spared her a brief toothless grin.

What I have in here, girl, is no-one’s business but my own.

And then Azhure gave a horrified gasp as she saw Katie, awkwardly wrapped in an overly-large

blanket, standing behind Ur and gripping the old woman’s cloak.

Stars! She’d forgotten all about Katie in the debacle of Sanctuary’s collapse. What would Faraday

think if she knew!

Her face flaming with guilt — is this how she had treated her children as well? Forgetting them at

every second heartbeat? — Azhure half-jumped, half-fell from the cart into the snow and gathered Katie

into her arms.

Katie accepted Azhure’s embrace happily, and let the woman envelop her underneath her cloak.

Azhure looked up at Axis, hunched miserably on his equally miserable Sal. “We can’t stay like this.

It’s not just us, or Katie, or even all the varieties of people we have. But the animals! Axis, some of these

creatures are fragile! We must —”

“Survive this coming night,” Ur broke in, “a long and horrible night, and then we will rest

comfortably enough without fear of cold or Skraelings.”

“Damn! The Skraelings!” Axis said, and pulled Sal about in a tight circle as he tried, unsuccessfully,

to peer through the dense curtain of snow. “I forgot about them!”

And then, on cue, almost as if they’d been waiting in (creeping gleefully through) the

thickening snow, a whisper flickered in the spaces between them.

The rabbits bounded, their tiny bodies heaving painfully with the strength of their terrified breathing,

blood-flecked saliva flying from their open, panting mouths, thin, horrible wails emerging from their

throats.

The Demons felt very good. They chased the rabbits, delaying the kill, wanting to drive them insane

with fear, wanting them to die from their fear; swooping and whooping a few paces above the terrified

rabbits, catching at their tender bodies with their claws and then letting them go, driving them on and on

and on, delighting in their fright, wanting to hear them scream, beg, plead for mercy, needing to see them

—

The rabbits, as one, dived down a hole in the ground.

The Demons were too overcome with anger to even shriek. As smoothly as the rabbits had made

their escape, all six Demons transformed themselves into wriggling, writhing razor-toothed ferrets, and

scrambled down the same hole, biting at each other in their need to be the first one down and at the furry

prizes below.

Once the Demons had managed to get below, they found themselves in a rabbit warren as twisting

and as confusing as a Maze.

Apart from their lingering (terrified) scent, there was no trace of the rabbits.

“Where the fuck have the bunnies gone?” said Qeteb.

Chapter 39

Night: I

As night fell, DragonStar once again climbed to the top of the pile of rubble that had once been

the mighty Star Finger complex. It was cold — Stars! It was freezing! — but DragonStar had

cloaked himself well, and had donned scarves and gloves against the night air.

Something was happening, and he needed to know what. And so he climbed to the very topmost rock,

and there he sat, huddled against the night, sending his far-senses scrying out into the night, and

wondering: What?

Behind DragonStar, Sicarius huddled underneath the overhang of his cloak. He, too, could

smell the night air. There would be a hunt tonight.

Leagh had not moved from the tree stump. She’d lain there, physically sickened by the horror of being

almost caught by Qeteb in Spiredore and then by seeing him descend with his companion Demons into

Sanctuary.

What was happening down there? Crouched close to the earth all afternoon and evening, Leagh

imagined at times that she could feel the destruction roiling up through the earth to her hand.

Was Zared safe? And Axis? What about Katie?

Leagh closed her eyes, forcing her mind away from the fate of her husband and friends, and

wondered if she should find somewhere safer and warmer for the night.

And then something grabbed her from behind.

Leagh was too frightened and shocked to scream. She rolled away, but whatever had grabbed at

her had too firm a grip for her to escape.

Leagh turned her head and managed to see what had seized her. An old and completely demented

woman, naked and covered in sores. Leagh took a deep breath, then drove her free foot into the

woman’s face.

There was a horrible crackling sound, and the woman’s grip loosened enough for Leagh to drag

herself free.

She scrambled to her feet, catching at the blackened stump of a tree for support, and looked

frantically about.

At the top of the ridge, outlined by the last of the light, another three or four

maddened people appeared, crawling forward on their hands and knees, gnashing their teeth,

drooling horrible liquids — perhaps their partly digested last meal — down their chins and chests.

And, behind them, more: maniacal livestock as well as people.

Leagh twisted about, looking for an escape. There was no shelter to be seen, apart from the

fire-ravaged stumps of what had been the daughters of the Minstrelsea forests, who had grown down the

slopes of the crater towards Fernbrake.

A few paces in front of the gathering crowd, the old woman crept closer to Leagh.

More and more of the creatures poured over the edges of the crater, and now black shapes

spiralled down from the sky to hunch speculatively on a dozen or so of the tree stumps.

Hawkchilds.

“Help me, damn you!” Leagh whispered, but the Hawkchilds merely cocked their heads, and

whispered to themselves.

They might not harm her, but neither would they help her. Among them was StarGrace, and the

Hawkchild looked at Leagh curiously, wondering at both her obvious pregnancy and the power that

emanated from her.

StarGrace felt no urge to destroy, but neither did she feel any urge to help.

Leagh backed up against a tree stump, thinking as fast as she could. The only thing that would keep

her safe, and keep her child safe, was to use her Acharite power. But she’d had so little practise!

Opening and closing glowing doorways was all very well, but…

The maniacal creatures, drooling, spitting, howling and whimpering, covered with self-inflicted

wounds and the crusty remains of their excreta, crept closer.

The old woman was almost upon her.

Leagh stilled, and she remembered all she had learned over the past few weeks, and she

smiled, and rested a hand on her belly.

She was at one with the earth, a part of the landscape itself, and the child she carried within her …

Leagh raised her head and looked at the approaching crowd.

“Do you not see the beauty surrounding us?” she said, and waved a slow hand around.

The once-humans and animals hesitated, eyes darting about uncertainly, and then resumed their

creep towards their prey as nothing leaped out to bite them.

Wave after wave of their blackness rose over the lip of the crater.

“You may think the landscape wasted and barren,” Leagh said, and now held out a hand in appeal,

or perhaps invitation, “but see its true beauty!”

And she flung her hand out in a wide arc, and suddenly flowers and herbs washed over the

devastated walls of the crater in a torrent of beauty and fragrance.