determination might do to the other lives she touched.
Not the woman WolfStar had thought to love. True, the re-born Niah been pleasing
enough, and eager enough, and WolfStar had adored her quickness in conceiving of an heir,
but…
…but the fact was she‘d failed. Failed WolfStar and failed Tencendor at the critical
moment. WolfStar had thought of little else in the long hours he‘d wandered the dank and dark
halls of the waterways. Niah had distracted him when his full concentration should have been
elsewhere ( could he have stopped Drago if he hadn‘t been so determined to bed Niah?), and her
inability to keep her hold on the body she‘d gained meant that WolfStar had again been
distracted—with grief! damn it!—just when his full power and attention was needed to help ward the Star Gate.
Niah had failed because Zenith had proved too strong. Who would have thought it? True,
Zenith had the aid of Faraday, and an earthworm could accomplish miracles if it had Faraday to
help it, but even so…Zenith had been the stronger, and WolfStar had always been the one to be
impressed by strength.
Ah! He had far more vital matters to think of than pondering Zenith‘s sudden
determination. Besides, with what he planned, he could get back the woman he‘d always meant
to have. Alive. Vibrant. And very, very powerful.
His fingers unconsciously tightened about the sack.
This time Niah would not fail.
WolfStar grinned, feral and confident in the darkness.
―Here,‖ he muttered, and ducked into a dark opening no more than head height.
It was an ancient drain, and it lead to the bowels of the Keep on the shores of Cauldron
Lake.
WolfStar knew exactly what he had to do.
The horses ran, and their crippled limbs ate up the leagues with astonishing ease. Directly
above them flew the Hawkchilds, so completely in unison that as one lifted his wings, so all
lifted, and as another swept hers down, so all swept theirs down.
Each stroke of their wings corresponded exactly with a stride of the horses.
And with each stroke of the Hawkchilds‘ wings, the horses felt as if they were lifted
slightly into the air, and their strides lengthened so that they floated a score of paces with each
stride. When their hooves beat earthward again, they barely grazed the ground before they
powered effortlessly forward into their next stride.
And with each stride, the horses felt life surge through their veins and tired muscles.
Necks thickened and arched, nostrils flared crimson, sway-backs straightened and flowed strong
into newly muscled haunches. Hair and skin darkened and fined, until they glowed a silky ebony.
Strange things twisted inside their bodies, but of those changes there was, as yet, no
outward sign.
Once fit only for the slaughterhouse, great black war horses raced across the plains,
heading for the Ancient Barrows.
2
The Dreamer
The bones had lain there for almost twenty years, picked clean by scavengers and the
passing winds of time. They had been a neat pile when the tired old soul had lain down for the
final time; now they were scattered over a half-dozen paces, some resting in the glare of the sun,
others piled under the gloom of a thorn bush.
Footsteps disturbed the peace of the grave site. A tall and willowy woman, dressed in a
clinging pale grey robe. Irongrey hair, streaked with silver, cascaded down her back. On the ring
finger of her left hand she wore a circle of stars. She had very deep blue eyes and a red mouth,
with blood trailing from one corner and down her chin.
As she neared the largest pile of bones the woman crouched, and snarled, her hands
tensed into tight claws.
―Fool way to die!‖ she hissed. ―Alone and forgotten! Did you think I forgot? Did you
think to escape me so easily?‖
She snarled again, and grabbed a portion of the rib cage, flinging it behind her. She
snatched at another bone, and threw that with the ribs. She scurried a little further away, reached
under the thorn bush and hauled out its desiccated treasury of bones, also throwing them on the
pile.
She continued to snap and snarl, as if she had the rabid fever of wild dogs, scurrying from
spot to spot, picking up a knuckle here, a vertebrae there, a cracked femur bone from somewhere
else.
The pile of bones grew.
―I want to hunt,‖ she whispered, ―and yet what must I do? Find your useless framework,
and knit something out of it! Why must I be left to do it all?‖
She finally stood, surveying the skeletal pile before her. ―Something is missing,‖ she
mumbled, and swept her hands back through her hair, combing it out of her eyes.
Her tongue had long since licked clean the tasty morsel draining down her chin.
―Missing,‖ she continued to mumble, wandering in circles about the desolate site.
―Missing…where…where…ah!‖
She snatched at a long white hair that clung to the outer reaches of the thorn bush and
hurried back to the pile of bones with it. She carefully laid it across the top.
Then she stood back, standing very still, her dark blue eyes staring at the bones.
Very slowly she raised her left hand, and the circle of light about its ring finger flared.
―Of what use is bone to me?‖ she whispered. ―I need flesh!‖
She dropped her hand, and the light flared from ring to bones.
The pile burst into flame.
Without fear the woman stepped close and reached into the conflagration with both
hands. She grabbed hold of something, grunted with effort, then finally, gradually, hauled it free.
Her own shape changed slightly during her efforts, as if her muscles had to rearrange
themselves to manage to drag the large object free of the fire, and in the flickering light she
seemed something far larger and bulkier than human, and more dangerous. Yet when she finally
stood straight again, she had regained her womanly features.
She looked happily at the result of her endeavour. Her magic had not dimmed in these
past hours! But she shook her head slightly. Look what had become of him!
He stood, limbs akimbo, pot belly drooping, and he returned her scrutiny blankly, no
gratitude in his face at all.
―You are of this land,‖ she said, ―and there is still service it demands of you. Go south,
and wait.‖
He stared, unblinking, uncaring, and then he gave a mighty yawn. The languor of death
had not yet left him, and all he wanted to do was to sleep.
―Oh!‖ she said, irritated. ―Go!‖
She waved her hand again, the light flared, and when it had died, she stood alone in the
stony gully of the Urqhart Hills.
Grinning again at the pleasantness of solitude, she turned and ran for the north, and as she
did so her shape changed, and her limbs loped, and her tongue hung red from her mouth, and she
felt the need to sink her teeth into the back of prey, very, very soon.
Scrawny limbs trembling, pot belly hanging from gaunt ribs, he stood on the plain just
north of the Rhaetian Hills.
Beside him the Nordra roared.
He was desperate for sleep, and so he hung his head, and he dreamed.
He dreamed. He dreamed of days so far distant he did not know if they were memory or
myth. He dreamed of great battles, defeats and victories both, and he dreamed of the one who
had loved him, and who he’d loved beyond expression. Then he’d been crippled, and the one
who loved him had shown him the door, and so he’d wandered disconsolate—save for the odd
loving the boy showed him—until his life had trickled to a conclusion in blessed, blessed death.
Then why was he back?
3
The Feathered Lizard
Faraday kept her arm tight about the man as they walked towards where she‘d left Zenith
and the donkeys. He‘d grown tired in the past hour, as if the effort of surviving the Star Gate and
then watching the effects of the Demons flow over the land, had finally exhausted him both
physically and mentally.
Faraday did not feel much better. This past day had drained her: fighting to repel the
horror of the Demons‘ passage through the Star Gate and fighting to save Drago from the
collapsing chamber, then emerging from the tunnel to find Tencendor wrapped in such horrific
despair, had left its mark on her soul. For hours she‘d had to fight off the bleak certainty that
there was nothing anyone could do against the TimeKeepers.
―Drago,‖ she murmured. ―Just a little further. See? There is Zenith!‖
Zenith, who had been waiting with growing anxiety, ran forward from where she‘d been
pacing by the cart. A corner of her cloak caught in the exposed root of a tree, and she ripped it
free in her haste.
―Faraday! Drago! Drago? ‖ Zenith wrapped her arms about her brother, taking the load