holding the blanket tight about his body. His eyes were bright with fever…and rage.
―Will you let me revenge?‖ he asked.
―Of course,‖ Drago said, and put a hand on DareWing‘s shoulder.
― Three more! ‖ Mot hissed. ―What is happening?‖
Sheol did not answer immediately, her eyes scanning the western horizon, but when she
did, her voice was very, very cold.
―Something is not right,‖ she said.
Drago rose, his eyes flickering to the east. ―What I do now,‖ he said, ―will never go
unnoticed by the TimeKeepers, even though they still be distant, and this is not their hour.
Katie?‖
She nodded, and from somewhere, none watching could tell from where, she produced a
crimson lily. For an instant she held it before her, then she tossed it high into the air.
It floated for one breathtaking moment, and then it fell.
It struck the gossamer-encrusted mass of crawlers before her, and from the point where it
first hit, crimson light radiated out along the strands of the holding enchantment.
Faraday‘s eyes widened, and she heard Leagh gasp beside her. The grassy flat, as the
ravines and gullies, was turning into a sea of red.
A sea of blood.
―They are passing through death,‖ Drago said.
―Where are my sons?‖ Theod shouted. ―At least give me the chance to hug them
goodbye!‖
Drago did not look at him. ―There is no need for goodbyes. There never will be again.‖
Behind him DareWing struggled to his feet and stood by Drago‘s side. Drago glanced at
him.
―Be patient,‖ he murmured. ―Not today, but one day…‖
Suddenly Theod screamed in utter grief and fury. ― They’re gone! ‖
As he‘d watched, the entire mass of people had…vanished. The crimson tide had spread
to the further reaches of the huge crowd, and the entire twenty thousand had simply vanished.
All that was left was the crimson lily lying in the centre of the grassy flat, its petals
ruffling slightly in the wind.
Sheol screamed, doubled over, and fell from her mount.
As one, the other three Demons also cried out, and convulsed, all dropping from their
mounts and crawling and capering through the dust of the eastern Rhaetian Plains. Both
WolfStar and StarLaughter stared in amazement, although each was consumed by very different
emotions.
WolfStar slowly smiled, but StarLaughter blanched, her eyes wide with concern.
―They do not seem well, my beloved wife,‖ WolfStar said, looking at StarLaughter slyly.
―Why is that, do you think?‖
She shrieked, and tugged hard on his chain, but even the pain of the choking collar could
not wipe the smile from WolfStar‘s face.
―Do you think this is what the StarSon shall do to them when he inevitably meets your
sweet companions?‖ he gasped, and StarLaughter‘s mouth hardened and she stabbed into him
with her power as well until WolfStar‘s smile finally faded and he shrieked as loud as the
Demons.
But her satisfaction at WolfStar‘s agony could not dampen her concern at the plight of
the Demons, and she almost immediately turned her attention back to them.
―What‘s wrong,‖ she cried. ―What‘s wrong?‖
Sheol was the first to regain some semblance of control, and StarLaughter finally
perceived that they were convulsing with rage more than anything else.
―We have lost the souls of a crowd, StarLaughter,‖ Sheol hissed. ―A crowd! Something,
some one has snatched them from us! Who? Who? Who?‖
―StarSon Caelum,‖ WolfStar managed to say from the dirt. ―StarSon Caelum.‖
Sheol stared at him so viciously WolfStar cringed helplessly, certain she would set one of
the other Demons to his rape, but she finally turned aside and howled into the wind.
― Attack! Attack! Attack! ‖
―They‘ve gone, you misbegotten bastard! They‘ve gone! Where are my sons? ‖
It was Katie rather than Drago who answered. She walked over to the lily, picked it up,
then returned to stand before Theod. Very slowly she held it out to him.
Leagh smiled, as did Gwendylyr. Faraday‘s eyes filled with tears.
Theod stared at the lily, then at Katie.
She regarded him solemnly.
Theod‘s eyes dropped back to the lily, then he reached out to take it with a trembling
hand.
Something unusual, but unutterably sweet, swept through him, and when he raised his
eyes he found that he—and all the others still in the same positions about him—stood in an
infinite field of flowers. Even the feathered lizard was there, snuffling through the flowers for
insects. All the women, Gwendylyr included, wore the low-draped heavy white linen robes,
while Goldman and DareWing both wore short tunics of the same material over leather sandals.
DareWing FullHeart very slowly stretched out a wing behind him—now fully-healed and
glossy black under the bright sun—then the other, and smiled gently.
―Welcome,‖ he said, ―to the Fields of Resurrection.‖
At mid-morning, in the hour of Barzula, on a frigid spring day in the beautiful pink and
cream city of Carlon, the patchy-bald rat launched his attack.
All his life, and all the lives of his ancestors, he had planned and lusted for this moment.
Now the two-legs who hunted and poisoned and trapped his kind would die, and they would die
more horribly than any of his kind had in choking out their poisoned bellies through bile-stained
teeth.
The patchy-bald rat was particularly crippled with loathing for the small male two-legs.
He‘d seen every one of his litter brothers and sisters tortured and finally murdered by the
loathsome beasts. His litter siblings been staked out on their backs on the early morning cobbles
of Carlon‘s streets, their legs stretched so that tendons popped and tore. The small male two-legs watched from the safety of the pavements what happened when a heavy cart rumbled around the
corner and ran over his vulnerable, squealing brothers and sisters.
The male two-legs had clapped and hooted with enjoyment, especially when one of the
rats survived for an extra moment or two of agonised screeching. The patchy-bald rat had never,
never forgotten the memory of that screeching filling the early morning.
Now, still mourning, he had his chance for revenge.
Aided with the knowledge of a life spent burrowing amid Carlon‘s sewers, as with the
power given him by the Demons, the patchy-bald rat launched a simultaneous attack into every
one of Carlon‘s streets by almost a billion rodents and sundry crawlers.
Nothing, nothing, could ever have prepared the Carlonese for what happened next.
―Papa?‖
Theod spun about. Two small black-haired boys were advancing hand-in-hand through
the flowers towards him.
They were dressed in short white linen tunics identical to those Goldman and DareWing
wore.
―Tomas! Cedrian!‖ Theod swept them up in his arms, laughing and crying at the same
time, and the boys peppered his face with kisses.
―It only takes a small effort, coupled with faith,‖ Drago said, ―to walk down the passage
never dared, and open the door never opened into—‖
He stopped, staring unseeing into the distance, and even Theod and the two boys fell
silent and looked at him.
―Dear gods,‖ Drago whispered. ―We have lingered here far too long.‖
This was the hour of Tempest, and the haze of storm swept the land. The streets and the
open spaces of Carlon were empty…save for the Alaunt.
As a grey tide of fur and claws and over-bright beady eyes erupted from every
conceivable drain and crack, the hounds went berserk.
They wanted to hunt, but they had no-one to hunt with.
They wanted to track and kill, for the city was alive with prey, but there was no-one to
tell them which were more important.
They snapped and savaged, and they killed many, but within heartbeats Carlon‘s streets
had been overrun with millions upon millions of rodents, and even as magical as they were,
fifteen Alaunt could do little.
The cats had as little success. They had leapt immediately to the fray, but they were only
a dozen, and smaller than the Alaunt, and while they feasted well, they cleared no more than one
street corner.
Meanwhile the rats and voles, earthworms grown fat on the rotting land, mice and black
millipedes, even the rabbits, hares and foxes that followed in a second wave of destruction, all
listened to one voice, and all had one target.
The small male two-legs.
And after they‘d all been chewed and nibbled, the small female two-legs would become
the next target, and after them the breeders of the small two-legs, the big two-legs, and then
maybe, just maybe, the world would be a safer place.
And so, in an attack that left every soldier and guard stunned and confused, the invading
rodents targeted every child within the city. Not only did children tend to be in places relatively
unprotected by the army and militia—attics, cupboards, pantries, anywhere their parents thought
they‘d be out of the way—if a soldier or guard was there to protect them, then they found that scrambling, tiny-bodied rodents, tens of thousands of scrambling, tiny rodents, were virtually impossible to smite and kill with cumbersome pikes, swords or arrows. A man might kill several,