The only trouble was, the rocks were not replenishable. She could probably keep the gathering
hordes at bay for a few hours (but what if they all rushed her at once?), but come morning, she would
undoubtedly be out of ammunition.
Gwendylyr stood thinking, hands on hips, her eyes drifting from her neat piles of rocks to the
entrance and back again.
“The trouble with me,” she said, “is that I am far too neat and way too organised.”
She moved closer to the entrance and peered over her barrier of tree branches.
There were several hundred, possibly several thousand, creatures out there now, huddled in the
darkness, and slowly, slowly creeping their way forward.
Gwendylyr threw a rock.
It struck a creeping dog squarely in the forehead. He yelped and cowered, then recovered and
crept forward again, even though his forehead had caved in and thick sludgy matter — Gwendylyr
presumed it was the dog’s brains but couldn’t see clearly at this distance and in this dark — was sliding
down the right-hand side of the dog’s face.
Gwendylyr shrugged. The rocks were losing their potency. Neatness and organisation would not win
the day for her.
She smiled, and stood very still.
She closed her eyes and lowered her head, concentrating.
Gwendylyr was thinking very unneat thoughts. She was, in fact, reliving her recently-found friendship
with the forces of disorder.
And then, just as the first of the creatures had reached her barrier and had seized the branches in
order to tear them away, Gwendylyr let all the forces of disordered nature fly forth.
The creatures did not know what had gone wrong. They had been creeping through a world that
they knew and loved: a world of bleakness and madness, a world of devastation, a world that belonged
truly to their masters and no-one else.
And then, everything had fallen apart. The ground had shifted, split, reformed — but
reformed into geological features that had not been there previously. Stone pillars thrust upwards where
once had been flat ground, caverns yawned where once had been solid rock.
And over all crept entwining ivy, tangling paws and claws and limbs, pulling creatures into pits and
under toppling rocks.
None of the creatures could find a toehold, for in this disordered world toeholds did
not exist. They tumbled and shrieked, tearing each other apart in the effort to find a foothold
anywhere, and all the time ripping and snapping at the ivy that rioted everywhere.
This was not a world they understood.
Gwendylyr smiled.
When the three Wing of the Strike Force DragonStar had sent arrived, they found nothing but
Gwendylyr sitting in front of her cave, lighting a small fire with the remains of what appeared to have once
been a stack of firewood.
Everything seemed calm and perfectly normal.
“Have you been troubled by any of Qeteb’s creatures?” asked the Flight Leader who settled before
her.
“Hardly at all,” Gwendylyr replied.
DragonStar smiled, and turned his attention south towards Cauldron Lake.
Here, surprisingly, for they’d had the furthest to fly, the three Wing of the Strike Force had arrived
before the dark column from the Maze …
The more surprising, for the creatures sent to Cauldron Lake had less distance to travel than those
who troubled Leagh and Gwendylyr.
But then again, the crystal forest was still standing, and mayhap it still exerted some degree of fear in
the minds of the creatures, enough to make them drag their malformed feet more than they would have
done.
Perhaps it was the memories floating about the Keep, perhaps something else, but Dare Wing and
Goldman had, in the few short hours they’d been there, formed a partnership very much like that of
Ogden and Veremund.
The Wing of the Strike Force arrived to find the two fighting over who exactly had washed the
dishes resulting from their meal.
“You must have done it,” DareWing was saying, “for I did not!”
“You undoubtedly did,” Goldman said crossly, “for I know that I did not, and who else is there?”
“Ahem,” said KirtleBreeze, leader of the three Wing, but nevertheless shifting from foot to foot in
embarrassment.
DareWing and Goldman looked up at the birdman standing in the doorway of the Keep, annoyance
etched into each of their faces.
“What are you doing here?” DareWing said. “I thought that—”
“DragonStar sent us to aid you,” KirtleBreeze said.
“Aid us?” Goldman said. “We need no aid!”
KirtleBreeze shot a look behind him. “If I might suggest —” he began, then got no further, for the
sounds of battle interrupted him.
KirtleBreeze stepped back into the night and disappeared, and Goldman and DareWing rushed
forward, colliding in the doorway and scrabbling at each other before finally managing to get through.
The Keep was surrounded by thousands of demonic creatures, humanoid and animal.
Most of them were writhing on the ground with arrows to their eyes and throats.
“Not bad,” Dare Wing said, and nodded as he folded his arms and stood back to survey the
slaughter.
“They could have let us do something,'” Goldman said, and Dare Wing turned his face to his
companion and grinned.
“The next battle will be ours, my friend.”
“Aye, so it will be. So it will be,” and Goldman’s hand drifted down to stroke the crest of the lizard
at his side.
Faraday barely coped with the creatures sent to harry her.
Their instructions were not to attack and destroy, but to whisper.
And Qeteb had instructed them well.
As Faraday had backed into her pile of rubble, hundreds of blackened, grinning creatures had
completely surrounded the pile of stones.
They settled down on bellies and haunches, some with heads resting on paws, and they grinned and
gleamed their reddened eyes at her.
“Qeteb won’t be long,” they said, a horrible chorus of voices rising and whispering into the night. “He
won’t be long at all.”
“And he can’t wait to get his hands on you,” a cat said to one side, and the entire mass of creatures
tittered.
“He’ll make a real woman of you,” an old crone murmured, and ran her hands lovingly over and
under her own sagging dugs. She raised crazed eyes to Faraday. “He’s done wonders withNiah.”
“He’ll take you within the Maze,” said a bull. “He’ll make you a queen. Remember Gorgrael?
Remember what he did to you?”
The bull leered, foam dripping from his slavering mouth. “Qeteb will be a real bull for you, m’dear. In
every way.”
“You speak lies and illusions,” Faraday said, keeping her voice calm although she was appalled by
what they said. How much did they know? How much did Qeteb know?
“Everything,” an adolescent boy said. “Isfrael told him, y’see. Isfrael told him how best to use his
mother, for the only reason his mother exists is to make a useful sacrifice.”
“Will DragonStar save you, do you think?” asked the old crone. Her fingers were now dug so deep
into her flaccid breasts that flesh oozed up between them. “Or will he offer your throat for Tencendor?”
“He will save me,” Faraday said.
The mass of creatures howled with laughter.
“We can hear the fear in your voice,” a small reptile finally managed to say through its chortles, “and
we know the reason for your fear. You are not sure, are you!”
“I am sure of one thing,” Faraday said, finally, utterly, unbearably angry, “and that is of —”
The bull did not allow her to answer. “You have a choice,” he said. “You can succumb and the pain
will end … reasonably fast. Or you can fight and tear yourself apart in the effort to free yourself. Which
will it be?”
Faraday’s mind jerked back to the test she’d undergone when she and DragonStar’s other witches
had sat under the crystal-columned dome in Sanctuary. Then she had answered … then she had
answered …
Gods, then she had answered that the thorns should choose for her!
But she could not give that answer here, for it would warn Qeteb of the methods that she and her
companions meant to use against the Demons.
“I will succumb,” Faraday said softly, her soul screaming with every word, “for that is what I have
always done.”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” screamed the horde, and they surged forward.
Faraday could do nothing to stop them, for she was overcome with despair and sorrow. Yes, she
would succumb, for isn’t that what she always did? Isn’t that what fate demanded of her again? Isn’t that
what —
She lost consciousness.
Atop the rubble of Star Finger, DragonStar lowered his head and wept for her courage and for her
despair.
“Now,” he whispered, “please gods in heaven, now!”
When Faraday opened her eyes again, it was to the concerned gaze of a Wing Leader.
“My Lady Faraday,” he said. “The beasts are either dead or driven back. You are safe.”
“I am never safe,” she said, and turned her head aside.