Crusader. Novel by Sara Douglass

closest to where it landed.

Axis rode Sal desperately hard, sliding her forward through rocky chasms and down

screes so dangerous that any mount save Sal would have foundered and killed them both at the first

challenge.

Axis needed to reach Zenith.

He had failed her previously, but he would not do so now.

All he could think of was the image of Azhure coming to him atop Sigholt’s roof one summer’s

afternoon, and taking his hands, and saying gently, “We are to have another child.”

They’d both thought that DragonStar and RiverStar had caused Azhure so much internal damage in

their horrendous birth that another child was out of the question.

Thus, that afternoon, and the months that had followed as Azhure’s belly swelled, had been so

special…

The girl born to them had been so treasured …

Then why had he let her go? Why had he abandoned her?

Couldn’t he have made more of an effort to protect her?

Axis screamed, and urged Sal to yet further extremes.

Behind him raged Urbeth, and behind her dipped and swayed a thousand ethereal trees.

They would save the girl. They would … they would …

StarGrace reached down, and as StarDrifter screamed and twisted beneath her hand, she took a

firm grip on his other wing, and with all the power she had, she tore that out too.

StarDrifter stilled, a strange, surprised look on his face. His eyes went blank, his body limp.

StarGrace dropped him, and stepped carefully about the massive pool of blood that pumped from

his back.

“Is that the woman who tempted Wolf Star into betrayal?” she asked StarLaughter, who had

managed to regain her feet.

She indicated Zenith, still held tightly by the Hawkchild behind her.

StarLaughter’s face was covered in blood and small bits of gravel. “Yes! She is a trollop!”

StarGrace nodded at the Hawkchild, and his beaked head dipped.

When it rose again, it held something disgusting in its beak.

Held by his claws, Zenith made a single gurgle, trembled, and was still.

The Hawkchild’s beak dipped again, and this time it savaged ferociously before it lifted its head once

more.

What it held was even more frightful than previously.

WolfStar took one look, and cried out in horror.

“Now you,” StarGrace said.

Sal crested the ridge, and stopped. Neither she, nor the man on her back could, for long moments,

comprehend the shocking scene before them.

In the valley a bloodied and dishevelled Icarii woman stood laughing hysterically to one side of a

mass of black feathers and flashing beaks.

It took Axis what seemed an eternity before he could comprehend the sight before him.

A head, attached only by a shred of flesh to a shoulder and one arm, lay to one side.

Zenith’s head. Zenith’s shoulder. Zenith’s arm.

A white wing — and why did it look so much like StarDrifter’s? — lying to yet another side.

And a mound of Hawkchilds fighting and feeding over scraps of reddened flesh and golden feathers.

That, some distant part of Axis’ mind concluded, must be what was left of WolfStar.

StarLaughter raised her head and saw Axis sitting his mare atop the ridge.

She whispered something, and that whisper reached deep into Axis’ psyche.

“I had never imagined revenge to be so tasty.”

Chapter 56

StarLaughter’s Awful Mistake

Deep within the cradling safety of the waterways, Azhure lifted her head. And knew.

Her hands lifted to her mouth, and she stared at the two ice women and SpikeFeather across from

her.

Without knowing, but understanding, SpikeFeather stood up, lifted Katie into one of the ice

women’s arms, and locked Azhure in his own, rocking her back and forth as she grieved for her youngest

child.

Axis sat his mare, and stared.

All that was left of Zenith was the head, a portion of neck and one shoulder, and an arm, flung wide

as if in puzzlement.

Axis stared, his eyes hooked by the strange, wild tatters of flesh lining the great wound where the

rest of her body had been chewed from her head and shoulder.

The flesh of her shoulder and arm was so white.

Her eyes, opened, continued to reflect in death the agony and horror she’d endured during her last

breathing moments.

Axis sat his mare and stared.

Urbeth crested the ridge and came to a halt beside Axis and Sal.

She looked down at the mass of feeding Hawkchilds, twittering and whispering wetly as

their beaks dipped and tore, at StarLaughter standing laughing and giggling to one side, and at the

horrible remains of Zenith.

Then she lifted her head and looked at Axis, and for once in her life, Urbeth did not know what to

say.

“I am going to put an end to this,” Axis said in an emotionless voice.

“The Hawkchilds and StarLaughter cannot be dealt with save by power,” Urbeth replied. “And your

power is all gone.”

“No,” Axis said, once more looking at the carnage below him. “You are wrong, Urbeth. I

have left the power of a father’s love, and of a father’s grief.”

And without urging, Sal started down the slope.

StarLaughter looked away from the feeding pack of Hawkchilds, and laughed all the harder.

A man was riding down the slope of the gully towards her. An ordinary man with a pitiful sword in

his hand and riding a more than ordinary brown mare who would look happier pulling a milk cart than

riding into the midst of a dangerous revenging.

StarLaughter tipped back her head and let her laughter wash over the rising sun, extending her arms

and hands in rapturous joy.

WolfStar was dead. WolfStar was dead!

He could harm her no more, he could humiliate her no more, and StarLaughter hoped he was

currently screaming in agony within the deepest firepits of the AfterLife.

“You are dead, WolfStar,” she whispered, “and I am alive, I have won!”

She turned her head and sighed irritably as the man pulled his mare to a halt some two or three

paces away. Some part of her mind recognised him as the Axis StarMan she’d taunted in the tunnel under

the Fortress Ranges, but in this, her moment of triumph, she cared little for who or what he was.

He was, after all, pointless.

“WolfStar made many errors in his life,” Axis remarked in a wooden tone, “but the greatest of all

was that he didn’t tear your head from your neck before he threw you into the Star Gate.”

“Get out of here,” StarLaughter said. “This is none of your business.”

None of my business? You murdered my daughter!

Axis stared at StarLaughter, his gaze horribly intense.

“Get out of here!” StarLaughter yelled, waving an arm. “Don’t think to sit on that pathetic

nag and share my triumph!”

“Triumph?” Axis said softly. “StarLaughter, you have made an awful mistake.”

StarLaughter narrowed her eyes, thinking. “Ah! The Zenith-harlot was your daughter, was she?

Well, don’t think to revenge yourself on me for her death. She deserved to die.”

Controlling himself at that moment was one of the hardest things Axis had been forced to do in a

long, long while. “For my daughter’s death,” he said, “you deserve an eternal hell. She did not deserve to

die —”

“WolfStar threw me aside for her! She deserved every last agony she suffered!”

“You demented witch!” Axis screamed, half-rising from the saddle. “There was no reason at all

for her death!”

“I just told you why she had to —” StarLaughter stopped abruptly. What had he meant, “an awful

mistake”?

Axis took a hard, deep breath, forcing each word out through clenched teeth. “My daughter’s death

was pointless, as was WolfStar’s — although I for one am glad he is finally dead — because WolfStar

did not love Zenith at all. He loved you.”

“What? ”

“WolfStar was only using Zenith to cause dissension within my family. He wanted power back, and

thought Zenith the best way to get it.” Axis had no idea how true his words were, he only thought they

provided a plausible reason for WolfStar’s actions.

StarLaughter did not know whether to laugh at the man, or to succumb to utter despair. She did not

want to believe him!

But his words contained a dreadful, frightful ring of truth.

She stepped close to the horse and put a shaking hand on Axis’ thigh. “Tell me!”

“WolfStar wanted to control DragonStar, and he wanted to use Zenith to manipulate him.” Axis gave

a harsh bark of laughter. “He chose poorly. He should have picked Faraday. Stars above! Hasn’t every

other ambitious bastard in this land tried to use her at one time or the other?”

StarLaughter frowned, trying to work it out. “But —”

“He loved you. He would have used Zenith, then thrown her aside. You were always foremost in his

thoughts.”

And always with a curse attached to your name, Axis thought, but this he did not say.