his brow, murmuring to him, holding him close.
Azhure thought she could have done with some of their comfort, but the ice sisters had no thought of
comforting anyone but SpikeFeather, and Azhure thought she would get little compassion from the
GateKeeper.
The woman sat at her table before the pulsating glow of the doorway into the Afterlife. Before her
were two bowls, but the GateKeeper’s thin, pale hands sat in idleness before them.
She transferred no balls from one bowl to the other.
The GateKeeper raised her eyes and saw Azhure’s stare.
“No souls pass this way now,” the GateKeeper said softly. “All bypass the Gate and step directly
into the Field of Flowers.”
“Is that what lies beyond the Gate?” Azhure said.
The GateKeeper smiled, a secretive expression on her face. “I have never told what lies beyond the
Gate,” she said, “and will not do so —”
She broke off, and stared at a distant point over Azhure’s shoulder. “Another customer?” she said.
“Why? How?”
Azhure twisted about.
Far away a glowing outline glided along the black River of Death towards the island of the Gate.
The GateKeeper took a harsh intake of breath, and, as the figure glided closer and mounted the
loose grey gravel of the island, Azhure gave a soft cry herself.
It was Katie.
Katie was dead?
“As ever she will be,” murmured the GateKeeper, and then the shade of Katie was standing before
the woman’s table, her eyes great and sorrowful, her hands folded neatly before her.
The GateKeeper lifted a metal ball from one bowl and held the hand over the other bowl. “Are you
going through, Katie?”
“Aye,” Katie said, then her expression cleared and she smiled. “Rejoice, GateKeeper, for your task
is done. Time is ended, and the Gate must close.”
The GateKeeper smiled also, an expression of such sweetness that Azhure, watching, felt her eyes
fil with tears.
“Then go through, my child, and rejoice yourself that your task is done.”
“Katie?” Azhure said. “Katie —”
Katie turned her head very slightly so she could see Azhure. “When you see Faraday,” she said, “will
you tell her that I love her? That I love her enough to die for her this time?”
And then she was gone.
The instant she glided through the doorway the GateKeeper seized her two bowls and flung them
into the air.
“Done!” she screeched. “Done!”
Metal balls rained down, and Azhure, as SpikeFeather and the two ice women covered their heads
with their arms.
“Take my hands!” the GateKeeper cried, and literally lunged over her table towards the foursome.
“Take my hands!”
And she grabbed Azhure with one hand, and SpikeFeather with the other as the sisters gripped the
GateKeeper’s forearms.
The Gate exploded.
Azhure screwed her eyes shut and screamed, but even as she did so she heard the GateKeeper cry out
herself. “The Gate is dead! Time is extinct!” And then there was nothing but a black void.
Chapter 67
Bring Me My Bow of Burning Gold…
Something had gone horribly, horribly wrong, and Qeteb knew it the instant the blood splattered out
from Katie’s throat.
He had gutted the wrong girl. DragonStar had chosen correctly.
But how could this be so when his captains had won, three to two?
They had won, hadn’t they?
Or was there something he’d misinterpreted?
Tencendor took one last, dying breath, and the devastation of death consumed the land as the last of
Katie’s blood flowed from her tiny, frail body.
The sky cracked.
The earth shattered.
The air exploded.
Qeteb threw Katie’s drained corpse to one side. “Then it’s just you and me,” he said, calm now in the
face of disaster, “as it ever was.”
“As it ever was,” DragonStar agreed.
Qeteb, blank-faced, stepped away, vanishing into the shadowy land beyond the encircling columns
of the mausoleum. The silent, dark forms of Mot, Barzula and Sheol vanished directly after him.
DragonStar took Faraday — now deep in shock — and led
her unresisting to one side, sitting her down against one of the columns. “Wait,” he said. “All will be well.”
Axis, as everyone in the column, panicked as Creation withered about them.
Firestorms raced across the plains, and mountains trembled and collapsed in upon themselves.
The darkness and coldness of a complete vacuum descended upon the land.
Wait, a voice echoed through the minds of all within the convoy, and they knew it for the voice of
Leagh’s Child, all will be well.
And even though darkness consumed them, and the feel of the land beneath their feet vanished, all
continued to survive.
All that remained of the land that had once been Tencendor was the black pulsing thing that was the
Maze: an island of madness in a sea of destruction.
DragonStar straightened, and whistled.
The baying of the Alaunt filled the air, and their creamy, eager bodies wound about his legs.
A shadow darkened the doorway of the mausoleum.
“At your service, sir,” said Raspu, dressed for the destruction of Creation in his stiffly starched
butler’s uniform, “as always.”
DragonStar nodded. “Good.” He held out his hand. “Deliver me my bow.”
And Raspu inclined his head, and stepped forward. In his hands he held the Wolven, and its quiver
of blue-fletched arrows.
DragonStar took the bow, and slung the quiver over his shoulder and back.
He held out the bow, and looked at the lizard.
The lizard grinned and, lifting a claw, sent a shaft of light glimmering along the entire bow.
It burst into fire, although the flames did not consume the wood, nor harm DragonStar.
DragonStar nodded at the lizard, then slung the burning bow over his shoulder.
Then he lifted his voice, and sent it singing through the Maze.
“Run, Qeteb,” he said, “for the clouds are about to unfold, and the Hunt about to begin.”
Chapter 68
Twisted City
Qeteb fled through the Maze, Sheol, Mot and Barzula at his heels. DragonStar did not instantly
follow. He straightened the quiver of arrows, and adjusted the Wolven so it lay, comfortable, across his
back. He lifted and resettled his jewelled belt and purse.
He walked over to Katie’s corpse — the floor of the mausoleum was slick with her blood
— and he squatted down beside it.
“We thank you and honour you, Katie,” he said, and, wiping the fingers of his right hand
through her blood, marked his forehead and breast with it as Raum had once marked Faraday.
“Who was she?” Faraday whispered.
DragonStar looked over at her, still sitting by the column. “She was Tencendor’s lifeblood,” he said.
“The land’s soul.”
“Why did she need to die?”
“So the land can move through death, and live again,” DragonStar said, “and so the land could repay
you for all you have done and sacrificed for it.”
He rose and walked over to Faraday, bending down to give her a brief but passionate kiss. “You
and I,” he whispered, “are given the task of re-creating the land free of the discord and evil which once
stalked it… which once stalked all of Creation.
“But for the moment —” he straightened “— I have a small task to accomplish, the Hunt to
complete.”
And, smiling gently, he left her.
Raspu walked over, balancing very carefully on one hand a tray with a silver pot, and a cream
porcelain milk jug, sugar bowl, and cup and saucer. “Would ma’am like some tea?” he asked.
Faraday blinked, and then decided not to try to make sense of any of it. “That would be very nice,”
she said. “Thank you.”
The Butler poured her cup of tea, painstakingly added sugar and milk in their proper proportions,
and held the cup out to Faraday.
“Ma’am.”
She accepted it without a word, but her eyes widened in surprise as she tasted the tea. “It is very
good.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Raspu shifted slightly, as if embarrassed. “Ma’am, I regret that I shall have to
leave you for a moment or two. Sir has asked me to take care of one or two small tasks for him.”
“Of course,” Faraday said, and Raspu gave her a small bow, and tucked under his arm a large
account book he’d apparently obtained from thin air. Then, without further ado, he disappeared.
Strangely, Faraday did not feel lonely or vulnerable at all. The tea was very good indeed.
DragonStar strode through the door into the Maze, and the Star Stallion lifted his head and screamed as
the Alaunt milled about and bayed.
DragonStar leapt on Belaguez’s back, and drew the lily sword.
The Alaunt broke into clamour.
“Hunt!” DragonStar said.
And so it began.
DragonStar was his mother’s son. As Azhure had once hunted Artor, so now DragonStar hunted Qeteb
and his remaining companions. But this was the real hunt, the Hunt that the Star Dance had been
engineering for hundreds of thousands of years.
This was the moment, and this was the StarSon.
The Hunter.
Qeteb fled through the Maze. The millions of demented creatures that had once throbbed and