Sheol was standing behind him, a robe in shifting shades of decomposing and putrid matter,
wrapping itself about her malformed body.
“I know I do not have to concern myself with your success,” he said.
She grinned, and when she spoke the stench of the grave issued from her mouth.
“Faraday condemns herself,” she said. “She does not even want to succeed.”
“I cannot understand her preoccupation with self-sacrifice,” Qeteb said, “but I am mightily grateful
for it.”
Then, without further ado, he, too, vanished.
Chapter 61
For the Love of a Bear Cub
They again sat their mounts — Qeteb his beast of blackness, DragonStar his stallion of drifting stars —
but now atop Cauldron Keep itself.
They were uncomfortably close, and both Qeteb’s beast and the Star Stallion constantly shifted
slightly to keep the maximum possible distance between them.
“Well,” said Qeteb from behind his visor, “at least we have a good view.”
And he pointed. “Look.”
Goldman and Dare Wing stood by an outcrop of rocks. Behind the rocks stretched the remains of the
Silent Woman Woods: tall spikes of blackened timber with occasional spars of charred branches jutting
out like the battered rigging of a storm-damaged ship. A path wound through the trees, leading back into
the unknown depths of the dead Woods.
DareWing stood straight and tall, his black wings folded tightly against his back. He wore only a
white linen tunic and sandals.
He carried no weapon, and his face was expressionless.
Goldman, on the other hand, was clearly excited, impatient for the fun to begin. He shifted from leg
to leg, as he also shifted a heavy staff from hand to hand.
Incongruously for a Master of the Guilds, he was dressed as a woodsman.
The lizard was nowhere to be seen.
DareWing and Goldman waited.
Qeteb and DragonStar waited.
Hours passed, and Goldman grew ever more restless.
“Where are they?” he asked Dare Wing.
“Soon,” DareWing said.
“How do you know?”
“I can smell them,” DareWing said.
Goldman opened his mouth to say something further, but closed it as he saw two mangy
hunting hounds emerge from behind one of the blackened trees.
They looked like deformed Alaunt. Pale ivory in colour, and with the lean but muscular long-legged
shape of the Alaunt, both hounds had running sores covering their pelts, and foulness oozing
from eyes and mouths.
The hounds grinned, and one, Barzula, said: “What temptation do you have for us, then?
What choice?”
“We have a hunt,” DareWing said softly.
“A hunt!” Mot bayed, and half laughed, half growled. “How appropriate that we took this form,
then!”
DareWing did not reply to that. The Demons had known of the nature of the challenge, and had
picked their forms to suit.
Goldman indicated the dead forest behind him with his staff. “A bear and her cub haunt these
woods, making it unsafe for —”
“For who?” Barzula asked, his canine mouth grinning slyly.
“For any who would walk beneath the trees,” Goldman said. “Will you track her down for us?”
“We like to hunt,” Mot said, and both hounds giggled. “We will do as you ask.”
And without further ado, the two corrupted hounds pushed their way past Goldman and
Barzula, and loped into the skeletal trees.
They tracked for hours. Many times the hounds bayed in excitement as they picked up the great
bear’s scent, and as many times their tails and ears drooped after a few minutes of following the trail, only
to have it fade into non-existence. Goldman and DareWing followed behind, silent, watchful, patient.
In the late afternoon the hounds became frustrated, snapping and snarling at every shadow, every
trick of the wind. They savaged tree trunks, tearing great gouges into the dead wood, and
dug furious, futile holes in the drifting dirt, defecating quickly into them before moving on to find
something else to destroy and corrupt.
They had almost forgotten the bear.
“There!” Dare Wing cried as the shadows lengthened and
crept one into each other. “There!”
Barzula and Mot picked up their heads and pricked their ears.
There!
A darker and more ominous shadow moving behind some trees only twenty paces away.
The hounds bayed in excitement, and the shadow roared.
The hunt was on.
The hounds dashed forth, DareWing and Goldman running behind them as fast as they could.
The bear — all could see her clearly now — rose on her hind legs, swiping furiously at the
attacking hounds in order to protect the six-month-old cub cowering behind her. Then, deciding it
were better for the safety of her cub to run than fight, the bear swivelled in a graceful, yet powerful,
motion, set her cub to run, and followed behind him, keeping the hounds at bay with growls and
the odd slash of her powerful and deadly talons.
The hounds chased her, and the huntsmen chased both bear and hounds.
Night closed in.
The hunt grew ever more desperate. The bear was wounded now, as were both of the
hounds, although neither the hunted nor the hunters were hurt seriously.
But blood scattered the trail, and sent the hounds into an ecstasy of savagery.
As the moon rose, the bear blundered into a blind gully. Sheer rock walls rose on either side,
hounds and huntsmen trapped her from behind.
Desperate, for her cub was exhausted and would surely need rest soon, the bear pushed him
towards a steep wall of rock and loose stones at the end of the gully.
They would have to climb it to escape the hounds.
The bear nosed her cub forward, encouraged him with hot breath and deep love, and his small
paws rattled and slipped on the loose rock.
Mot and Barzula attacked from behind, tearing pieces of pelt and flesh from the bear’s
hindquarters.
She turned on them, growling and roaring with all the savagery she could muster.
Behind her, the young cub clawed desperately up the scree.
A stone slipped.
He scrambled further, hearing the desperation in his mother’s voice, and knowing he would be torn
to pieces if the hounds managed to get past her and reach —
Another stone slipped, and suddenly, frightfully, the bear cub was fighting for purchase on the
slipping, sliding scree.
The entire wall of rock began to move. Slowly, but inexorably.
Both hounds backed off, watching the sliding rock wall carefully … and speculatively.
The mother bear turned about, crying frantically to her child.
He had been almost halfway up the slope, but now he was sliding down amid the avalanche of rocks
and stones.
His cries were piteous to hear.
The bear was desperate, making reckless leaps upwards to try to reach her son, only to tumble
downwards again.
The rocks slid ever further ever faster.
Suddenly there was a massive roar, and the entire rock slope collapsed.
DareWing and Goldman dashed out of the way, the two demonic hounds behind them, as a huge
cloud of dust and small stone fragments rose up about them. Goldman and DareWing dove under the
cover of a rock overhang, flinging their arms about their heads and curling their bodies
into tight balls in order to protect themselves from the shrapnel flying through the air. They felt the
hounds’ paws scrabbling furiously over their bodies, as the hounds used the two men to protect
themselves from the onslaught.
And then, silence.
Slowly, both men and hounds unwound themselves and stood up, brushing and shaking themselves
free of rock dust.
Shafts of moonlight fell over a massive pile of rubble at the foot of the pile of loose rock.
The mother bear was dead, almost completely buried under the fallen scree. Only part of one of her
forelegs and its paw protruded. That, and a spreading pool of blood that seeped its way free from under
the rock.
Goldman and DareWing stared as Mot and Barzula came to stand by their side.
“Well,” Mot remarked, “there’s not much choice going on here, is —”
A pitiful cry from about a third of the way up the rock jumble stopped the Demon, and
all four jerked their eyes up to look.
It was the bear cub, lying horribly injured under several rocks. A pace above it was an
immense boulder, precariously balanced on the landslip.
Even as they watched, the boulder wobbled, threatening to roll its ponderous way down over the
bear cub.
The cub mewed again, crying for its mother.
Tears came to Goldman’s eyes. Even though he and Dare Wing had created this scene with their
magic, the distress of the bear cub moved Goldman more than he thought possible.
“The choice is this,” DareWing said quietly. “There lies the bear cub, only minutes from death — for
that boulder will fall shortly. What should you do, Mot? Barzula? Sit here and wait for its fall, knowing
that in the meantime the bear cub will suffer mightily and that when the boulder rolls slowly over it, as the
boulder inevitably will, the cub will suffer even worse in death? Or will you try to save the cub, knowing