Crusader. Novel by Sara Douglass

through layers of ice so sharp and cold they felt their bodies torn apart, they caught one last remark from

the chitter, chatters.

We thank you for this amusement, Urbeth!

If ever I find out who this Urbeth is, Qeteb thought in some pain-ravaged corner of his mind, I will

tear her soul to pieces before I consume it.

They waited for what felt like hours, but which Axis was ready enough to acknowledge was

probably only half an hour at most. They huddled in carts, as deep beneath blankets and

tarpaulins and cloaks as they could, and hoped they would survive both the deepening storm

and the raucous whisperings of the Skraelings.

They were making a frightful sound. In this snow, no-one could actually see them, but their

whispering and whimperings and creepings could be heard above and beneath the shriek of the wind.

They were, Axis realised, getting very drunk very quickly on the offerings left them in the snow.

Gods, he thought miserably, hunching as close to Zared, Azhure and Katie under their shared

blanket as he could. We should have saved some of that wine. It would have warmed us against

this wind.

There was a high-pitched squeal, and a bubbling of laughter. Axis felt Azhure, Katie and Zared

shudder, and realised that he had, too.

“Pray gods Urbeth and Ur know what they are doing,” Axis mumbled, “for I do not think we can

survive either this storm or the terror of the Skraelings for too much longer.”

He was about to continue, when Zared grabbed at his arm to silence him. “They’re at the cart!” he

whispered.

Axis fumbled quietly for his sword. He could feel curious fingers patting at the top of the blanket,

sharp, cruel fingers. In his mind’s eye he could see the insubstantial creatures, as tall as a man, huge silver

orbs glowing in their skull-like faces, and long, pointed fangs hanging down from their over-sized,

slavering jaws, their clawed hands picking and plucking at the blankets and tarpaulins that lay between

them and the huddled masses of Tencendor.

His hand had tightened on his sword — he could stand this no longer! — when the Skraeling that

was investigating his cart gave a sickening belch — Axis could smell the wine fumes through the

blankets — let go the blanket, and said, “Oooooh!” in a tone of utter surprise.

And then Axis heard another voice. Ur. She must be wandering about in the snow with the

Skraelings!

“Hello,” Axis heard her say conversationally, “would you like to see what I have in my pot, wraith?”

Beside him, Katie giggled.

And the Skraeling giggled, too.

Then there came a sound that Axis numbly remembered he’d heard at the battle of Gorken Pass —

the Song of the Forest! The Skraeling gibbered in fear, and then shrieked with such terror that Axis

moaned and stopped his ears.

The Song intensified — Axis screamed, hearing Zared and Azhure cry out beside him —

becoming a tidal wave of, not death, which the trees had used at the battle of Gorken Pass, but of

retribution such as Axis could hardly bear.

Above all the screaming and wailing — as much of which came from the peoples huddled in the

carts as it did from the Skraelings — Axis heard a woman laughing, and he realised it was Ur.

The Demons found themselves hurtling through ice and then rock, and pain filled them and

became such a part of their lives that none could possibly imagine an existence without it.

And vengeance and anger also filled them.

No-one should be able to treat them like this!

What was most disturbing was the knowledge that this land still harboured magic that their

destructiveness had not touched.

Even the rocks and the ice, it appeared, sheltered secrets.

Qeteb was the first to regain some form of control over both his physical and his magical self. With

an effort he’d not had to make since he’d fought (unsuccessfully) against the Enemy’s original

dismemberment, he managed to slow their passage through space until he could feel the other

Demons regain some control as well.

I will put a stop to this, Qeteb began to say to them, when suddenly, horribly, they did stop. The

rock and earth and ice walls disintegrated about them, and they felt themselves falling through cold, dark

air.

“Ugh!” Qeteb said as he hit very, very solid rock.

Beside him he heard another five impacts, and low curses and moans of pain filled the dark air about

them.

Qeteb struggled into a sitting position — he’d assumed his metalled, armoured visage — and felt

about him with his power, ignoring the mutters and moans of the other Demons.

Where were they?

Dark, deep, cold, barren.

It felt like the most distant of interstellar wastes, but Qeteb understood they’d not travelled

beyond the boundaries of Tencendor itself.

Where were they?

Underground, with the weight of millions upon millions of tons of rock above them.

“We’re in a mine,” Sheol said beside him, and Qeteb felt her body crowd his, almost as if she

needed the comfort of what physical warmth she could draw from his armour.

He shoved her away roughly.

“And we have a mountain atop us,” Mot added, and Qeteb snarled, finally orientating himself within

the geography of Tencendor.

They were deep underground in what the Tencendorians had called the Murkle Mountains.

Deep in the former home, if Qeteb had but known it, of the Chitter Chatters.

Qeteb cursed foully, and struck the rock he sat on with his mailed fist.

The sound of the impact echoed about them until its growing melody drove the Demons to a

shrieking, capering dance of frustration and fury.

How dare anyone do this to them!

Silence, and Axis tensed, wondering what had happened.

“Forty-two thousand!” Azhure whispered beside him, “Ur said there were forty-two thousand

Skraelings!”

“Yes, but —” Axis began.

“Don’t you see?” Azhure whispered furiously, and Katie laughed again, a sweet, happy sound.

“What?” Axis said.

Azhure sighed impatiently. “There were forty-two thousand souls that Faraday transplanted out as

the Minstrelsea forest.”

“Yes …”

“And Ur was their guardian during their years as seedlings.”

“Yes …”

“Don’t you understand yet’}” Azhure cried, and Zared jumped in, his voice excited.

“When Qeteb destroyed the forests, the souls went back to Ur!” he cried, and Axis felt Azhure nod

her head enthusiastically.

“Yes! That’s what she has been carrying about in that pot — the forty-two thousand souls who fled

back to her when their physical forms, the trees, were destroyed.”

“And now Ur has used the Song of the Trees to destroy the Skraelings,” Axis said.

“Oh!” Azhure exclaimed, and wriggled about in further impatience. “Don’t you see? Forty-two

thousand Skraelings … and forty-two thousand souls?”

Axis huddled in stunned silence as the import of what Azhure had said sank in.

“Ur has given her souls a new home,” Azhure said into the silence. “The Skraelings.”

“That’s why she needed them drunk,” Katie put in. “Drunken Skraelings put up no resistance to the

souls of the trees.”

“But where have the souls of the Skraelings gone,” Zared said, “if their bodies are now occupied by

the souls of the trees?”

“Fled to wander weeping and wailing across the ice drifts of the extreme north,” said a voice above

them. “Only the most foolhardy of wanderers will ever be bothered by them.”

The blanket lifted, and there was Ur. “Would you like to meet your army, Axis StarMan?”

Chapter 41

The Avenue

Axis helped Azhure and Katie out of the cart as Zared leapt down into the snow. The wind still blew

frighteningly hard and cold, and Axis wrapped his cloak, and a blanket over that, as tight about him as he

could.

He did not say anything.

As far as he could see in the snowstorm, the entire column was flanked on either side by lines of

Skraelings. They stood some four paces apart, several deep, each Skraeling staggered so that it stood in

the space between the two in front of it, rather than in direct line with them.

Without exception the Skraelings stood with their feet buried deep into the drifting snow, their

bodies and arms and loathsome heads drifting as they were tugged by the wind.

Their silver-orbed eyes were lively with intelligence rather than malice, and their toothsome grins

were cheerful, rather than malicious.

For the first time in his life, Axis felt only curiosity as he stared at a Skraeling, not fear or the desire

to kill.

But…

He looked at Ur, standing to one side with her pot, the saucer lid carefully back in place. Why, Axis

knew not, for surely it was empty.

“For this army I thank you,” Axis said to Ur, “but for what I will use it I do not know, for

we will all surely be frozen solid by dawn time.”

“Then tell them what you need,” Ur said.