Crusader. Novel by Sara Douglass

pulsed and muttered as one, now fled before him, desperately seeking escape themselves.

Beyond the walls of the Maze the trees stepped forward, and buried roots and branch tips into the

tiny cracks of the Maze’s walls.

Ur, standing slightly back, screeched with laughter.

Cracks spread screaming, and masonry fell. Within heartbeats of the trees’ attack the walls of the

Maze had been broached in a hundred places.

Creatures poured through, intent on escaping the Hunter. They were all devoured by the trees.

Qeteb knew nothing of the destruction being wreaked on the outer skin of the Maze. He fled as Caelum

had once fled in nightmares, through infinitely barren corridors and passageways, all ending in such

hopelessness that they forced the Demons and his companions to turn back and desperately seek

another way before the Hunter found them.

Behind them rose a clamour of such frightfulness that their hearts quailed, and sometimes the hot

breath of the hounds grew so close it scorched their skin.

From some unknown where, a bell tolled.

Qeteb ran, and his remaining three Demons raced desperately to keep up with him, their outstretched

hands clutching at the protuberances of his armour, their voices screeching at him to not leave them

behind … don’t leave them behind, think of everything they had done for him, remember how loyal they

had been, the sacrifices they had made for him, the adoration they had given, so don’t leave them behind,

please, please, don’t leave them behind …

Qeteb left them behind.

Mot, Barzula and Sheol cried out, lost. Where had Qeteb gone? One instant he had been but a pace

in front of them, now he was nowhere to be seen or sensed.

Instead they were faced only with the twisting, blank walls of the Maze, its stone floor slowly rising

through twist after twist and bend after bend.

Slowly rising?

The Demons slackened their pace, terror being replaced by puzzlement and anger. The walls of the

Maze were altering, the narrowness of the passage which trapped them abating, the entire face of the

Maze changing.

“What is happening?” Sheol hissed, clutching at Barzula.

“We are being toyed with!” said Mot, pressing as close as he could to the other two.

The Maze had funnelled them into the twisting, narrow streets of a grey and dead city. Ash drifted

down from the broken skyline of the city’s tenement buildings: some of their walls rose burned and

blackened into the sky, while others lay in tumbled, pathetic heaps of masonry.

Shattered window glass crunched under the Demons’ feet.

This was the ruins of a city twisted and murdered within the flames of a massive conflagration.

“Carlon!” whispered a shadowy voice.

The Demons hissed, and turned to stare down a gloomy alleyway.

A small red-headed boy walked forth, one bloody hand clutched over the ruins of his belly.

A small male two-legs.

Tears ran down his face. “This was Carlon,” he said. “This was my home.”

Sheol growled, and made to snatch at the boy.

No, said a voice in her mind — in all of the Demons’ minds — you may not touch this boy. You

may only move forward.

The sound of a horse’s hooves rattled on the cobblestones behind them.

Sheol whipped about her head.

DragonStar!

Move forwards.

And so they moved forwards, with unwillingness. But they had no choice, for Sheol and her two

companions found their feet controlled by another, and their traitor feet moved them further into the city,

and deeper into its mangled ruins.

As the Demons passed, gibbering and cursing, grey and saddened people stepped from every

doorway, and from every side street and alley. All were disfigured in some manner or the other.

They were the hopeless hundreds of thousands who had either died amid the chaos of the

Demons’ physical attacks on Tencendor, or who’d had their minds snatched by the Demons and who

had died at their own hands, or at the hands, teeth and claws of their demented companions of the

wasteland.

As the Demons passed, the dead stared silently, tears trickling down their faces. Sometimes they

turned away, unable to look.

The Demons snarled, defiant yet terrified, determined to somehow escape, yet unable to turn

their feet from the road which twisted before them. Their forms blurred and changed, trying different

guises and frames to see if they could fly out as a gryphon, or muscle their way out as an ox, or wriggle

their way out as a worm of the earth.

Nothing worked, and the Hunter’s magic drew them inexorably on, further and deeper into

the ruined city.

Fifteen paces behind them the Star Stallion pranced, keeping pace with the Demons. He held his

head high, snorting his indignation that he was not allowed to run to the clamour of the Hunt. Behind him

stalked the Alaunt, their limbs stiff with impatience.

“Soon,” whispered DragonStar, a calming hand on the stallion’s neck, his voice also

reaching and embracing his hounds. “Soon.”

“And us?” cried the people as DragonStar passed by them. “And us?”

And to them DragonStar smiled, and said. “Soon.”

As he passed, the weeping people silently fell into step behind the hounds, so that DragonStar

eventually found himself at the head of a long column of the desolate and dispossessed dead.

“Soon,” he whispered.

Elsewhere, Qeteb still ran through the Maze. He could hear the thunderous hooves of the Hunter’s

stallion behind him, hear the tightening of the string of the bow, and hear the clamour of the hounds.

He howled and screeched and babbled in fury and fear, his mind embracing possible escapes with

one breath, and then discarding them as useless with the next.

He would not allow himself to be destroyed. Not after all this time. Not after all this effort.

He had been tested before, and he had always won.

Evil always ultimately won. It was one of the given truths of the universe.

Besides, his Demons had won three to two against DragonStar’s witches.

Hadn’t they?

Just as Qeteb thought that, he ran directly into a blank wall.

A blank wall with a doorway in it.

Qeteb’s eyes bulged with triumph. He could smell the enchantment that bound that doorway, and

knew that once he passed through, it would disappear forever.

DragonStar could not come after him.

Roaring his victory, Qeteb flung open the door, and stepped through.

As the door closed behind him, a butler stepped out from nowhere, placed an ornate brass key in

the lock, and turned it.

As the locks clunked into place, the Butler withdrew the key and the door faded into the stonework

of the wall.

The Butler smiled in satisfaction, pencilled an annotation in the account book he held, and

disappeared again.

Suddenly the Demons halted. Their feet had carried them into a narrower street, and a wooden cart

blocked their way forward.

Get in.

“No!” the Demons cried.

Get in.

They got in, bellowing with rage and frustration that they could not control the movement of their

own limbs.

An old man appeared, bent and grey and dressed in an enveloping shabby coat with a large book in

one pocket. He positioned himself between the shafts of the cart, grasping them in his gnarled hands. He

grunted, strained, and the cart jolted forward.

The Demons howled, their hands clutching at the sides of the cart, but they could not gain enough

purchase to pull themselves out, and their bodies felt as if they had lead boulders grating to and fro within

them. They could not heave themselves off the tray of the cart.

The splinters of the tray dug and worked themselves deep into their flesh.

DragonStar smiled slightly, then composed himself, and continued to ride some fifteen paces behind

the cart.

Behind him were strung the many hundreds of thousands, perhaps the many millions, of those who

had died amid demonic destruction. They walked silently, some wringing their hands, others trying in vain

to wipe away the tears that stained their cheeks, still others clinging to children or babes in arms.

The cart, and the column it led, wound deeper and deeper into the twisted city.

Eventually the cart lumbered into a huge market square. In the centre of the square stood a shoulder-high

wooden platform, and on that platform had been built a scaffold.

Three rope nooses hung down, patiently swinging in a non-existent breeze.

The Demons wriggled and writhed, moaned and wept, turning their voices from defiance to

piteousness.

Why them? Hadn’t they been acting under orders from His Ghastliness himself? What else could they

have done? They’d been terrified, certain in fact, that if they’d gone against his wishes, Qeteb

would have done them a messy murder. No, no, they’d only been acting to save their own lives, and had

always meant to somehow undergo some form of penance for the deeds they’d been forced

to do. Not that they were admitting guilt, of course, but they were pitiful creatures, and