Crusader. Novel by Sara Douglass

thundered them earthwards.

When it was all finished the trees retreated, and Axis was left to stare at the now deserted, bloody

field of death.

It was only then that he again saw the white wing, splotched with blood and, finally, new horror hit

him.

“StarDrifter!” he screamed, and fell to the earth. He scrabbled over to the wing, and

grabbed at it, burying his fingers amid the feathers as if by that action alone he could bring his father

back. “No! No! No ! ”

Far away Qeteb leaned over the snowy tablecloth and squeezed DragonStar’s arm. “You mustn’t let your

sister’s and grandfather’s deaths distract you. Life must go on after all.”

He received no reply, save for a look of implacable hatred.

Qeteb laughed. “Fernbrake next. Fancy a wager on the outcome?”

Again, no reply.

Qeteb was not discouraged. “I must tell you, DragonStar my Enemy, that I have been thinking about

this little girl you seem so determined to protect. What was her name? Ah, yes, Katie.”

He dragged out Katie’s name so wetly it slobbered on the table between them.

“I was thinking, my dear boy, that should one of my companions triumph over of one yours,

I might send them after her. To fetch her for me.”

Qeteb sat back and rested a forefinger against a cheek, rolling his eyes in a parody of indecision.

“Ah, dear me. Which one to go for? Katie … or Faraday? You do understand that we are caught in the

same fight your father engaged in against Gorgrael, don’t you? I am caught in Gorgrael’s dilemma. Of two

females, I know that one of them will destroy you. But which? Which?”

And Qeteb grinned, for he knew which one it was.

Chapter 57

South, Ever South

Axis buried his grief in action. He was unable to go near Zenith’s torn body, and so Urbeth and Ur took

what remained of Zenith and StarDrifter (they could only find a few remnants of his wings), and interred

them in a gully to the east of Sigholt’s ruins.

In death, perhaps, the lovers could be together.

Then both women, backed by the trees, sang a dirge of such beauty that Axis finally bowed his head

and sobbed as he leaned against Zared.

“South,” Axis said, when it was finally over. “South, for I cannot bear to stand here an instant longer

and look at the destruction of my life.”

“You still have Azhure,” Zared said. “You still have DragonStar.”

Axis nodded. “But I have also lost, and that loss will never be regained.”

“Until the Field —” Zared began, but Axis had already turned and walked away.

South. South to Fernbrake Lake.

There lay Leagh, about to give birth, and about to do her own battle with the Demon Roxiah. Zared was

desperate to get to her, to be there for her, but he was not the only one. Ur also niggled at Axis

whenever she got the chance, slipping up behind him when he dismounted after a day ranging ahead with

his war band, whispering into his ear as he lay down to sleep at night.

Eventually, she annoyed Axis so much he sent her to the very rear of the column, and set a

guard of some twenty-seven Lake Guardsmen over her with strict instructions not to let her near him.

It was not so much Ur’s persistence that annoyed Axis, although desperate to be left alone

in his grief, but the fact was, he was moving south as fast as he could anyway, and didn’t need Ur

muttering uselessly every moment she got the chance.

Every day Sal slid faster and faster, and the landscape strode impossibly past, an unnoticed blur.

Axis spent his waking hours fighting — swiping the heads from demented cows, slicing the hearts out of

sly boars — and his nights tossing in half-sleep, dreaming of Zenith as a child, and dreaming of that day

long, long ago, when he had first met StarDrifter in the snow at the foot of the Icescarp Alps.

His daughter and his father, both, impossibly, gone, and he, uselessly, still remaining.

They drew close to the Minaret Peaks.

Leagh had prepared her circular lying-in chamber with the greatest care. It was pristine and white: the

gently drifting curtains, the bed, the tables covered with linens, the porcelain bowls and buckets.

The knives and hooks, of course, were of gleaming steel.

Leagh turned slowly about, inspecting her trap.

But who would it trap? Roxiah …or her?

Her hand tightened momentarily over her belly. She was huge now, the child squirming, desperate to

make its own way in the world.

Not long. Not long.

Beyond the door of the round chamber stood the ranks of the Lake Guard in double file, forming an

avenue of ivory and determination.

Beyond them squealed and roared ten thousand crazed creatures from millipedes to humped bulls.

They made no attempt to storm either the Lake Guard or the round chamber hung with diaphanous

curtains.

Another would storm the chamber for them.

It lingered on the ridge of the crater, staring down, its hand on its own horribly distended belly.

Roxiah: body of Niah, soul of Rox, and receptacle for … for whatever waited to squirm its way out.

Soon. Soon. The birth was imminent.

Roxiah turned its head and looked to where Qeteb and DragonStar sat at the luncheon table.

Qeteb nodded, and Roxiah grinned. It turned, and took a step downwards.

In her chamber, Leagh suddenly screamed and doubled over in agony as the first of her birth pangs

stabbed home.

Chapter 58

Sweetly, Innocently, Happily..

All Qeteb’s genteel bonhomie was gone. He leaned forward over the table, a glass gripped tight in his

hand, his eyes intent on the billowing curtains of the circular chamber in the hollow beneath him. On

the other side of the table, DragonStar was no less tense. Although he sat back, apparently

comfortable on his chair, the muscles of his face were tight, and his eyes narrowed.

A very slight movement in the far distance caught DragonStar’s attention, and he shifted his eyes

slightly so he could see.

Startlement — almost gladness — momentarily transformed his face. The massive column of trees,

peoples and animals had reached the lower Minaret Peaks and was slowly wending its way into the

passes that would bring them to Fernbrake.

Axis rode ahead on his sweet brown mare, and not far behind him came Zared on his draughthorse

— even at this distance DragonStar’s eyes could pick out the desperation in Zared’s face. Behind Zared,

Gwendylyr riding close at his side, and behind them … behind them loped the great ice bear, Urbeth.

DragonStar’s face went slack in amazement. For once the proud Urbeth had allowed someone to

ride her back. Ur, still clutching her precious terracotta pot.

Well, at that DragonStar was not surprised. If Leagh won out against Roxiah, then Ur would be

desperate to get to Leagh before she gave birth.

DragonStar almost smiled. No doubt Ur had been niggling and irritating Axis for days upon days to

get here as fast as he could.

And then DragonStar’s face emptied of all emotion, for he remembered what it was that Axis

had ridden from. Zenith. Dead. Lost, finally, for WolfStar’s sins.

DragonStar turned his eyes back to the birthing chamber far below.

Roxiah had gained the flat of the crater, and was now waddling its bulky figure through the

ranks of the impassive Lake Guard towards the birthing chamber.

Leagh walked slowly, painfully, about the chamber, pausing every time a new pain gripped her.

Her face appeared impassive, but Leagh’s mind was running wild with what might, or might not,

occur in this chamber.

She was comforted by the sweet voice of her child, reaching up through blood and bone and

sinew to her heart to reassure her mother.

Do you not realise how close we are to the Infinite Field of Flowers? the child asked, using her

words more as a consolation than as a question that needed to be answered.

Close enough to lose it forever, Leagh said.

The child shifted, unperturbed at the thought of the travail ahead. Have more faith, mother, she

said, and think only of the lilies ahead.

Leagh smiled, a hand on her belly, and then she stilled and looked up.

There was a shadow behind one of the fluttering curtains: dark, oppressive, horribly gleeful.

“Roxiah is here,” she whispered.

And one more besides it, said the child, but Leagh did not know what she meant, and so she

ignored it.

Roxiah proceeded into the birthing chamber in grand style, its belly breaking through the curtains first,

long before Roxiah’s grinning face was revealed.

Leagh winced, for the woman’s face — Niah’s — was nevertheless so much like Zenith’s

that Leagh found it difficult to concentrate.

Poor Zenith. Dead in the dust of some desolate gorge in the Urqhart Hills. Leagh had been well