Crusader. Novel by Sara Douglass

felt that it might do someone some good if perhaps they said they were sorry.

“Oh, shut up,” said DragonStar, and pulled the Star Stallion up as the cart rumbled to a halt before

the scaffold.

Behind DragonStar streamed the uncountable dead, moving out to encircle the scaffold until the

crowd was a thousand deep.

They filled the square, and only when their masses had come to a full halt did DragonStar nod at the

old man still standing between the shafts of the cart.

Grunting slightly with the effort, the old man bent down and rested the shafts on the cobbles. Then

he shuffled around to the back of the cart.

DragonStar rode closer, and, leaning one hand behind him, took an arrow from the quiver strung

against his back.

“Here,” he said, and handed it to the old man.

The man nodded, and, tucking the arrow under one arm for the moment, took hold of Barzula’s left

ankle and dragged him over the lip of the cart.

Barzula gave a formless scream as he thudded painfully to the cobbles, and raised his arms as if to

protect his face.

“Ta muchly,” said the old man, and, taking the now curiously pliable arrow, wound it about the

Demon’s wrists, binding them tight.

Then the man grabbed hold of the loose skin of Barzula’s neck, and dragged him effortlessly around

the cart over the cobbles to the stand, up the scratchy, splintery steps of the wooden platform,

and across to the first noose. There he deposited him in a heap, gave him a painful kick in his ribs, and

turned about and shuffled down the steps and towards the cart again.

DragonStar drew another arrow, and handed it to the old man as he came back around the

cart.

In turn, the old man hauled Mot and the Sheol out of the cart, bound their wrists with an

arrow, and then dragged them over the cobbles, up onto the platform, and deposited them before each

of the remaining two nooses.

And each time he delivered a parting kick to their ribs.

Finally the old man came back down, hobbled over to the cart, and clambered up into the driver’s

seat. There he sat, staring at the platform and the three Demons, each kneeling before a noose, and

grinned toothlessly.

The crowd shuffled closer.

As the door slammed shut behind him, Qeteb stopped …

What had he done?

Before him stretched an endless ploughed field, barren of life.

He turned around.

The wall and the doorway had vanished. Behind him the ploughed field stretched into infinity.

Cursing, Qeteb took a step forward.

He sank into the soft earth to the top of his ankle.

He took another step, and he sank yet further, weighed down by the amount of metal he carried.

From somewhere very, very far away came the baying of hounds.

Qeteb growled, and began to tear off his armour. It fell away, sinking into the earth.

He stood naked and exposed. He was DragonStar warped and warted. His flesh, humped

into the strange lumps needed to fill his armour, was pale and bluish, pockmarked with corruption. His

belly was soft and flabby, his legs thin and knobbly, his arms disproportionately muscled and weighty.

He had no neck or chin, and his lumpish face seemed to grow directly from his white, hairless chest.

Beautiful coppery curls fell from his head over his shoulders and down his back, merging finally with

the feathers of his black and mouldy wings.

Qeteb was a sad mockery of life, and the saddest thing of all was that he did not realise it.

He grinned, and started forward across the field.

“We have here before us,” announced DragonStar to the crowd, “the Demons of Hunger, Tempest, and

Despair.”

His voice was quiet, but beautifully modulated, and it reached every ear in the square.

“Their times,” DragonStar continued, “are dawn, mid-morning and mid-afternoon.”

He paused, and looked out over the crowd. “You represent the end result of their crimes, which

stretch backwards through an eternity to the time of original Creation. They have ransacked the universe,

and ravaged the souls of the very stars themselves.”

The crowd murmured, its sound a rising swell, and DragonStar gave them a few moments in

which to voice their despair.

When he resumed speaking, his voice had the tone and authority of a tolling bell.

“Here they kneel, and now is their time. What are we to do with them?”

Again there was a swell of formless sound from the thronging masses. It surged and billowed forth,

engulfing both DragonStar and the Demons.

The Demons cringed. DragonStar grinned.

And the murmuring died. A decision had been reached.

From the crowd stepped three people. An emaciated man, with a distended, lumpish belly. A

woman, her eyes roiling with some unknown turbulence. Another woman, dragging behind her a washing

line. At the end of the washing line bounced the still form of a toddling girl-child, the line wrapped tight

about her plump throat.

The Demons suddenly screamed. Not from the sight of the three people, but because each of the

arrows about their wrists had suddenly flamed into life, burning into their flesh.

“Retribution,” whispered DragonStar.

The man and the two women slowly climbed the steps onto the platform.

The emaciated man stood before Mot, the woman with the maddened eyes before Barzula, and

before Sheol stood the woman who had the body of her daughter dangling strangled on the washing line.

“Your time has come,” said DragonStar, and with one motion every person in the crowd raised their

right arm and held it high, the palms of their hands turned towards the platform.

There was no sound.

The emaciated man stepped up to Mot, who was still writhing and moaning from the pain of

the burning arrow.

The man stared, then reached up, took hold of the noose, and pulled it down until he could drape it

about Mot’s neck.

“I ate of stones,” the man said in a curiously toneless voice, “until my stomach burst, and the

stones ravaged through my belly until I shat stones. Now you shall know your own time.”

He stepped back.

For an instant, nothing happened, then the burning arrow twisted about Mot’s wrists moved. It

slithered up Mot’s right arm, twisted about his neck, then coiled about the rope that rose behind him.

In a movement so fast few could follow it, the arrow climbed the rope to the top of the

scaffold, and, before any could draw breath in amazement, the rope contracted to an arm’s length.

Mot shot into the air, suspended in the noose.

The rope tightened, and Mot’s mouth opened in a silent scream, his feet kicking desperately below

him.

The crowd smiled, their faces grim, their hands still held in the air.

Mot twisted frantically about on the end of the rope, the arrow still burning above him where the

rope was tied to the scaffold, but the Demon did not die of strangulation.

Instead, he hungered.

He opened his mouth, and formed words, although no sound came forth.

Feed me! Feed me!

“If you wish,” said DragonStar, and again the burning arrow moved.

It slithered back down the rope, around the noose, and into Mot’s mouth.

It disappeared.

For a moment, nothing.

Then Mot’s face contorted in an agony so great his eyes almost started from his head. His arms

jerked in a mad dance at his side.

A small red, glowing spot formed in the centre of his belly, and, before any could draw breath, the

arrow burst forth.

Mot’s belly exploded, blood spraying through the air.

His body jerked to a halt … and changed. It blurred from a humanoid form into that of a rat, and

then into a worm.

Finally, it turned into a loose lump of flesh that dropped out of the noose to the wooden platform

where it sizzled momentarily before vanishing completely.

The emaciated man, still standing before the spot where Mot had been, looked skyward, then raised

his right hand.

The arrow tumbled down from the sky, and the man caught it deftly. He turned, descended the

steps, walked over to DragonStar and held out the arrow.

“Thank you,” he said, and DragonStar took the arrow, nodding slightly but saying nothing.

The man took his place within the crowd.

Now the woman with the ravaged eyes stepped forth to Barzula. “I walked in madness for

many weeks,” she said, “a tempest raging through my mind. Eventually I died when I walked into a

fireball tumbling across the wasteland.”

She paused. “Now you shall know your own time.”

And she stepped back.

As with Mot, the arrow about Barzula’s wrists moved up his arm, about his neck, and yet further up

the rope to the top of the scaffold where it writhed.

The rope contracted, and Barzula was sprung into the air, kicking as frantically as Mot had done.

And as with Mot, Barzula did not strangle. Instead, he was consumed with tempest.