— DragonStar picked up a glass of wine and sipped.
It was, as Qeteb had said, rather good.
“What do you want?” DragonStar asked.
“Ah,” Qeteb said, and began to pile food on his plate, “I thought it might be a good idea for
you and I to have a bit of a chat. You see …” Qeteb paused as his hand hesitated between a
plate full of roast pigeon haunches and one laden with grilled
swan tongues. His hand eventually dipped towards the swan tongues. “… I was thinking that you and I
might actually be at cross purposes, you see.”
“Cross purposes?” DragonStar contented himself with sliding some cheese and slices of fruit onto his
plate.
“Yes. Oh, these tongues are delicious! Try some, do!”
DragonStar ignored the invitation, wondering where in the world Qeteb had dragged this particular
persona from, and why he thought it useful in the first place.
“You don’t think it charming?” Qeteb said, assuming an expression of the most utter surprise. “It
doesn’t relax you?”
For the first time DragonStar laughed, genuinely amused. “Stop toying with me.”
Qeteb grinned, also apparently a gesture of genuine cheerfulness rather than malevolent
sarcasm.
“You and I,” he said, waving a piece of roast pig, “come from much the same place. Disinherited,
betrayed, thrown to the stars in the most despicable of ways —”
“I’ve heard all this before,” DragonStar said.
“Ah, but from my dear travelling companions, who —”
“Your companion Demons.”
“— often have the most unfortunate turn of phrase. And their manners! Frightful at times, I’m sure
you’ll agree!”
By the range, the four cats hunched into sorry bundles of the most abject misery.
It was a pity, DragonStar thought, that the entire thing was such an obvious farce.
Qeteb grinned around a mouthful of meat, and DragonStar pulled himself up. The Demon could
obviously read his mind at will … and he? DragonStar sent his power scrying out, probing Qeteb’s mind.
All he saw was a grassy riverbank under the midday sun, willow trees gently swaying and dipping,
young men and women lying languidly about in hammocks, adjusting their cream linens, and sipping cups
of sweet tea.
“It didn’t help you much, did it?” Qeteb whispered, and just for that instant DragonStar saw the
malevolence and hatred seething beneath the urbane surface.
Then the instant was gone, and Qeteb was again the epitome of graciousness and solicitousness.
“As I was saying,” Qeteb said, sipping his wine, “you and I
may have found ourselves at some cross purposes here. Let me just summarise our situation. No, please,
let me speak without interruption for a moment or two longer.
“Now, let me see. You have found yourself the final product of several hundred millennia of
manipulation by a power that we can call the Star Dance. Now, myself and the Star Dance, or the
intelligence it represents, have been … um, shall I say … at loggerheads for some time. Since the time of
Creation, actually. And here you find yourself caught up in a struggle that is none of your doing, none of
your concern. You find yourself bred for a purpose … but what if the purpose doesn’t suit? What if it
were better for you simply to shrug your shoulders and say, ‘It doesn’t concern me?’ and walk away.”
“You have destroyed the land that I love —”
“And yet which rejected you beyond anything you deserved. After all, you were merely trying to
execute your duty in claiming the title of StarSon and in divesting Caelum of it.”
A vision of his parents and sundry inhabitants of Sigholt standing around the boy-Drago in Sigholt’s
courtyard filled DragonStar’s mind. They were simultaneously laughing derision and screaming hatred at
him, pointing fingers, their bodies stiff with rejection, their faces implacable.
“That was a long time ago,” DragonStar said quietly.
“Was it?” Qeteb whispered, and another vision filled DragonStar’s mind.
Faraday, turning to Axis with love. “I only used DragonStar to make you jealous,” she
whispered. “You are the only man I have ever wanted.”
“With you at my side I can reclaim my position as StarMan,” Axis replied. “Tencendor will be
mine again.”
“We can dispose of DragonStar,” Faraday whispered, and pulled Axis’ face down to hers.
“That was a pathetic effort,” DragonStar said, and the vision faded as Qeteb shrugged.
“I am offering you a choice, delightful boy,” Qeteb said. “Leave me alone, leave Tencendor to me
and mine. Enjoy your life elsewhere. There is no point in continuing a battle which is not only not your
fight —”
“Your destruction and murder across Tencendor make it my fight,” DragonStar said, but
Qeteb continued on without acknowledging the interruption.
“— and which you cannot possibly win.”
DragonStar smiled, and Qeteb paused before resuming. “Take you and yours —”
“What is left of them.”
Qeteb took a deep breath, his eyes hardening and the veins on his neck standing out, “— and flee
with them south. Coroleas, I believe the land is called. There you will be safe.”
DragonStar shook his head. “No-one will be safe, Qeteb. You will suck Tencendor dry of every
piece of love and beauty and spirit it possesses, and then you will absorb the other lands on this world,
one by one, bit by bit. Nowhere will ever be safe from you.”
“I am making you an offer, my dear chap. Do try not to refuse without giving it some
thought.”
“Why the offer at all, Qeteb? Surely you could just eat me as I sit here?”
An expression of pure delighted malevolence crossed the Demon’s face. “But, my dear DragonStar!
Don’t I have enough to eat right now?”
His hand swept over the table, but DragonStar knew he meant something else.
“I will eat everything within this land,” Qeteb hissed, leaning forward. “Everything!”
“It appears to me that you have already had your glut of all the land, Qeteb. What else do you have
your hungry eye on?”
“The Sacred Groves.” Qeteb sat back in satisfaction at the expression on DragonStar’s face. “Won’t
the Mother make a good meal, don’t you think, DragonStar? And after I’ve finished Her, well… there’s
the small matter of dessert.”
He paused, and DragonStar waited, knowing what he would say.
“Sanctuary, and all that it hides.”
“You can’t get in.”
– “On the contrary, my delightful fellow,” Qeteb said, “I can indeed. What do you think Isfrael traded
for his freedom?”
Short freedom, DragonStar thought, if soon the Sacred Groves are spread over the
Demons’ dinner table. “The bowl,” he said. “Isfrael gave you the bowl.”
“No. Isfrael only showed us what the bowl was for, and even that was unintentional. He
traded us something else … something that will enable me to eat Sanctuary as well, and then to destroy
you.”
Niah! DragonStar thought, desperately trying to work out what it was about her that was so
dangerous, so frightening …
“No,” DragonStar said. “You are afraid of me. That’s why you bargain with me, and why you offer
me and mine an escape route through to Coroleas.”
Qeteb laughed. “I … afraid of you? No! I was merely toying with you for my own amusement! I will
kill you, DragonStar. Have no doubt about it.”
He sipped some more of his wine, and let his amusement suffuse his entire being. “Sheol has told me
of what DareWing did to her. Poor girl, she was slightly put out. Being somewhat tuneless
herself, she resents all aspects of harmony.”
DragonStar said nothing.
Qeteb drained his wine, and poured himself another glass. “Do drink up! Please! No? Well then, let
me continue. As I see it, DragonStar, you think you have the key to my destruction. No, wait!
Redemption would be a better word than destruction, wouldn’t it?”
DragonStar fought to keep both his face and mind blank, but his thoughts were working far too
furiously to be successful at either.
“You think,” Qeteb said, “that you will use love to confound me, joy to confuse me, and forgiveness
to emasculate me. Well,” he leaned forward, his face red with fury, “none of those things will touch me! I
am incapable of being touched by love or joy or forgiveness. They ceased many aeons ago to have any
meaning forme!”
“And yet Caelum managed to —”
“Caelum infuriated me because he would not struggle against me. I found that… irritating. His love
left me cold.”
Ice spread over the table, covering wood and platter and glassware alike, and DragonStar had to
jerk his hand away from his glass to save it from being similarly encased.
“Sheol may have been frightened by it,” Qeteb continued, his voice now a vicious whip, “but your
redemption will never, never, never touch me!”
“So why bring me here?” DragonStar said. “Why?”
“To explain the rules of this confrontation. The Star Dance and I have been jousting since the
beginning of time. Now it has made you its final weapon. Your problem, DragonStar, is that you’ve only