The Hawkchilds rose into the air, squawking in surprise.
“See!” Leagh cried again, and half stepped forward, one hand still swept out, one resting on her
belly. “See!”
Summer fragrance exploded about them, and the initial ranks of the creatures screamed and
capered. More than the beauty of the flowers was the hope that had infused the entire landscape.
“See …” Leagh whispered, and the hand on her belly tightened.
Flowers reached skyward, and those that grew close to the mass of demonic creatures waved
forward, as if they wanted to embrace them.
The creatures panicked.
StarGrace, circling far overhead, frowned in thought.
Far away DragonStar smiled, his eyes unfocused. “Good girl,” he whispered. “Lovely Leagh. You
deserve your place among the lilies of the field.”
She had not created the Field of Flowers, nor taken the creatures through to the field, but had
instead shown the creatures the beauty and hope that still (after all the Demons had done to the land)
rested within the blasted landscape.
Even amid death, hope still survived.
“Now,” he whispered, and behind him Sicarius whimpered with eagerness.
The old woman and the front ranks of creatures, perhaps some three score of humans, cows, pigs and
assorted wildlife, tried to turn back and flee from the reaching, grasping flowers.
Get back! Get back!
They tried to flee, but could not, trapped between the horrid flowers and the hundreds of creatures
that continued to rise up over the ridge and press down towards their prey.
The mad had their orders, and their thoughts were not ordered enough to rethink them.
Death dropped out of the sky. At first Leagh thought it was the Hawkchilds, either forgetting the fragile
alliance they had with DragonStar and his witches, or actually deciding to aid her.
But these were not the black, fearsome Hawkchilds.
They were ethereal, beautiful, seemingly fragile creatures of silver and vivid colour.
Beautiful, and deadly. Arrows rained down, each one finding its mark in the throat or eye of a human
or animal.
The Strike Force, or, at the least, a few hundred of them.
For a moment Leagh raised her head and watched the Icarii, then she lowered her eyes … and
could not restrain a sob of sorrow.
Before her hundreds upon hundreds of humans and animals lay dead and dying, some still clawing
frantically at arrows that protruded from their eyes or the base of their throats.
They might have been in the employ of the Demons, but they had once laughed and sang and cried
as Leagh could still do. They had once served their masters with good will and willing backs.
They had once been a part of Leagh’s world, a loved and respected part, and she now found it hard
to watch their dying before her.
She lowered her head and wept, and as she did so the flowers faded and disappeared.
It made no difference to the dying before her. As successive waves of creatures crested the ridge,
so they fell.
The Icarii wraiths had, it appeared, limitless amounts of arrows.
Eventually it was done, and an Icarii birdwoman settled to the ground before Leagh.
She was exquisitely beautiful, with her ethereal form and sapphire wings and eyes. “My name is
FireCloud,” she said, and rested one hand comfortingly on Leagh’s arm. “And I, as my fellows, are here
to help protect you at DragonStar’s command.”
Leagh nodded, her sorrow still not enabling her to speak, and she patted FireCloud’s arm.
“DragonStar? DragonStar?”
DragonStar closed his eyes momentarily in impatience, and then turned slightly to the figure which
had climbed to join him.
“What are you doing here, StarLaughter?”
She sat down beside him, encased in a thick wrap, but with her head bare and her hair flying in the
wind. Gods, DragonStar thought, isn’t she cold?
StarLaughter truly did not appear to notice the extreme of the temperature.
“Something has happened!” she said, and grabbed at DragonStar’s arm. “I can feel it!”
“Yes?”
“WolfStar has escaped Sanctuary! He is safe! ”
“Careful,” DragonStar said, “for this wind might carry your gladness to the Hawkchilds.”
But he nodded to himself anyway. DragonStar had felt the rift in the matter of existence when Urbeth
had torn a hole from Sanctuary into the northern wastes. He had no idea how they were
managing to survive, or if the Demons had followed them through … but he had felt the escape.
“WolfStar must still manage his survival,” he said. “He is not so much ‘safe’, as currently beyond the
Demons’ reach.”
“Safe enough,” StarLaughter said, determined not to let DragonStar’s pessimism ruin her joy. She
sighed happily, her fingers kneading uncomfortably into DragonStar’s arm. “And soon we will
be reunited. DragonStar, where is he? Where?”
DragonStar jerked his arm away, annoyed not only at her inane and persistent belief that WolfStar
could not wait to see her again, but also at her irritating presence. This would be a long night, and he
would prefer not to spend it with StarLaughter at his side.
“North,” he said, not wanting to give StarLaughter the happiness of a more specific answer.
“North? North? What? In the depths of the Iskruel Ocean? DragonStar, I must go to him! I can’t
leave him to the fishes and the —”
“Oh, for the gods’ sakes, woman! Leave it alone! He is in the northern tundra, and —”
“The tundra? But there are Skraelings out there and —”
Despite the trouble a harsh word might bring him, DragonStar’s temper snapped. He twisted
around and grabbed StarLaughter’s shoulders. “Leave him be, you demented woman!”
“I cannot!” she responded, her eyes flashing in the clouded night light and pushing his hands away.
“He is mine, and I will not let him go!”
Dear stars in heaven, DragonStar thought wearily, but he moderated his tone when he replied to her.
“StarLaughter, he is with those who can protect him, and besides, I doubt they will stay in the northern
tundra. They will come south soon enough, and you can wait for them at the foot of the eastern Icescarp
Alps — where they met what was once the Avarinheim. You can’t miss them from there.”
And gods help them, he thought, when the meddling and completely crazed StarLaughter turns up.
But whatever their difficulties (or, more specifically, WolfStar’s) at least StarLaughter would be out of his
hair.
StarLaughter narrowed her eyes as she thought it out. “But they might swing west along the Icebear
Coast,” she said. “And if I were waiting at the foot of the eastern Icescarp Alps then I would
miss them completely. How do you know they will come directly south?”
“Because I believe that my father Axis is leading them, and Axis is a sensible man, and he’d
damn well take the shortest bloody route to come south! Does that answer your question?”
“My, my,” StarLaughter murmured, “you are testy, aren’t you?”
“It is cold and I am tired of your company,” he said. “Go find your Wolf Star if you will, but leave
me alone this night.”
She leaned back very slightly, her face angry. “Tonight will be a night of terror,” she said. “I hope
you enjoy it. Nay! I hope you survive it!”
And then she was gone.
DragonStar looked after her retreating form with relief … and some regret that he’d not thought to
ask her to leave her cloak. Terror-ridden or not, this night was going to be a cold one.
When the column of creatures that had wormed their way north from the Maze to the Lake of Life
appeared, Gwendylyr initially contented herself with throwing rocks at them from her well-protected
fortress within her cave. She’d arrived here just as dusk was falling, and it had taken her only a cursory
glance about to know she’d found herself an easily defensible and fortifiable shelter.
The cave itself was roomy and dry since the spring had dried up in the aftermath of Qeteb’s
resurrection, but the opening to the cave had been built up with masonry to allow only a relatively
narrow opening for the water to gush through. Gwendylyr supposed Sigholt’s engineers, in
doing so, had thought to protect the spring from contamination by loose vegetation and wild animals.
Whatever, it took only the work of a half an hour for Gwendylyr to further fortify the entrance with the
branches of trees blown down in Qeteb’s fit of ressurective destruction.
Then she had sunk to the floor of the cave and dozed for some hours.
When she’d awoken, it was to find that night had fully enveloped the landscape, and there
were horrid whisperings and scratchings at her dry-branched doorway.
And so Gwendylyr had sighed, risen, brushed herself off, tucked away a few tendrils of stray hair,
and prepared to defend herself.
There were loose rocks lying everywhere, and once she’d managed to drive the first ranks back a
cautious twenty or thirty paces with her well-aimed missiles, Gwendylyr set to piling up an armoury.