Drago felt his breath grow shorter still, and realised it was due to anxiety rather than effort. He stood a few minutes and deliberately calmed himself. No-one could know where he was. They would have seized him long before this. Neither Caelum nor WolfStar would have left him to wander if they’d known where to find him. No, no-one knew –
A footfall sounded in the tunnel below him and Drago leapt into the shadow of one of the walls, his heart hammering. He stared frantically about, then slithered further down the wall until he reached what shelter one of the wall’s support beams gave him.
Perhaps if he stood very still, and made no sound… but this passageway had nowhere to hide, and even the fitful light of the torches would be enough to reveal him to any but the totally blind.
The tunnel had been carved out of soil and rock, and at the foot of the walls were small piles of rubble that had been left over from its construction. Drago bent down and selected a good-sized rock, feeling sick at the thought of having to use it.
The single footfall now resolved itself into a steady tramping. Just one, Drago thought. Just one. I can handle one if I have to. But his hand was slick with sweat, and he almost dropped the rock.
Whoever approached suddenly began to whistle, startling Drago so much he finally did drop the rock. It was a merry tune – Drago recognised it as a popular ballad often sung at Sigholt.
An Icarü, then?
His question was answered immediately as an Enchanter stepped around the lower curve of the tunnel. Drago knew her by sight and reputation, PaleStar SnapWing.
Stars! he thought, panicking, what am I going to do?
She’ll see me any moment! His mind came up with several frenzied excuses to explain his presence – he was on an errand for Caelum, he was looking for Zenith, he’d got lost on an afternoon stroll about Sigholt – but they were so ridiculous that even in his current predicament he had to fight the urge to laugh.
PaleStar would well know of his trial and subsequent escape.
She was almost level with him now, and Drago wondered if he could possibly wrestle her to the ground before she had a chance to use her Enchanter powers, or if she’d pin his back against the tunnel wall like a –
She walked straight past, still whistling, and continued up the tunnel.
Drago could not believe it. He stared after her, completely stunned. How could she have failed to see him? A half-blind old man would have spotted him easily enough, let alone an Icarü Enchanter with magically enhanced vision.
Stars, but he’d been only an arm’s length from her!
Slowly he lowered his gaze to the sack under one arm, finally wondering if the Sceptre had been aiding him all along.
Drago stared at it for a long time, then he eventually resumed his walk down to the Star Gate, no longer attempting to muffle his footsteps.
Further up the tunnel the red doe also slunk against the wall as she heard PaleStar approach. She, too, watched in disbelief as the Enchanter walked straight by her.
Once Palestar SnapWing left him, Orr stood before the Star Gate and stared. He had taken the watch upon the Gate entirely upon himself. There was something very, very wrong. Something beyond WolfStar’s story of the murdered, whispering children, but Orr did not know what it was. Unlike any Icarü or even human guard, Orr did not need rest or sustenance. So here he stood, as he had for weeks now, wrapped in his ruby cloak, staring into the depths of the Star Gate, listening to the poor, dead children whispering for vengeance.
WolfStar? WolfStar? We’re coming… we’re coming to hunt you…
And yet, something else, beyond that, and Orr wished desperately that he understood what it was.
There was a movement, and then a scuffle of feet, and Orr whirled about. A dishevelled man had stepped into the chamber from beneath one of the archways. His eyes were wide, staring about the chamber.
“Where is it?” the man asked.
“Begone!” Orr said. “You have no right to be here!”
“Is this not the Star Gate chamber?”
“You have no right -”
The man ignored him, sidling around Orr and striding to the very centre of the chamber.
Then he halted, transfixed by what he at first thought was a small pool in the centre of the chamber.
Not a pool at all, but the universe. Beyond the rim of this circular wall wheeled galaxies and solar systems. Comets and asteroids chased each other through clouds of gas and vivid interstellar wastes. Colours, every imaginable colour, swirled and shaded one into the next. It was frighteningly beautiful… and absolutely irresistible. The sack grew heavy and warm in his hands.
Outraged at this invasion, Orr reached out –
– and Drago spun around. “Don’t stop me now!” he snapped.
“What are you doing?” Orr grabbed at Drago’s arm, missed, and seized the sack instead.
He let go immediately and stepped back, appalled, his ”
eyes round and staring at the sack. ” What are you doing with the Rainbow Sceptre?”
In desperation, thinking the Ferryman was going to lunge at him again, Drago drew the Sceptre out of the sack and waved it at Orr. “Stay back!”
He was torn between watching Orr, and looking back into the Star Gate. He felt that it called to him… Come to me! Come! Dance with me! Be my lover!… and he was overwhelmed by an all-consuming need to step through.
Drago looked back at the Gate.
The instant he did so, Orr darted forward and grabbed the Sceptre.
Something happened once Orr felt his hands touch the smooth wood of the rod.
Visions flooded his head.
A labyrinth. Darkness. He was trapped. No way out.
Hunting, hunters, questors.
Questors through the universe, hunting… hunting…
And something in the Maze. Something that watched for him. Something malevolent. Something that writhed and twisted through the Maze, coming for him!
Orr screamed and sank to his knees, although his hands remained tight about the rod of the Sceptre. Drago tried desperately to pull it from his grasp, but the Ferryman’s hands were unnaturally locked about the Sceptre.
Qeteb.
The word, or name, Orr did not know or care which, filled his mind. It so intensified his terror that he flung back his head and screamed, Qeteb!
But Orr screamed with his power only, not his voice, and Drago did not hear him.
Although someone else did. Far above, Orr’s apprentice, SpikeFeather, paused in his stroll about the roof of Sigholt and whispered, “Qeteb!”
Grail! the Sceptre screamed at Orr, and this Orr also screamed in his mind.
Grail King!
And SpikeFeather repeated the words.
The red doe, crouched behind one of the pillars of the chamber, shuddered as a presence seeped through her.
And yet something more reached out to her, reached out via the Sceptre although it emanated from somewhere else. Reached out and touched her. Spoke softly to her.
She shuddered again, and felt power seep through her.
Drago and Orr rocked back and forth, each struggling for control of the Sceptre, back and forth, and both the Sceptre and Orr continued to scream.
Beware the Grail King in the Maze!
“The Maze! The Maze!” Orr whispered. He let go the Sceptre in horror.
Attend the Maze!
Drago heard nothing. No words whispered through his mind. All Drago knew was that Orr had finally released his grip on the Sceptre. He spun it about and the cloth that had protected the head, which had been loosened in the struggle, flew off, and rainbow light flooded the chamber.
It pulsed about, searching, humming with intense power and, as it hit an archway on the far side of the chamber, it enveloped the small red doe.
The doe started, round-eyed but not scared, and fell to the ground. Her legs kicked, her entire body convulsed, and then she exploded. Blood, tissue, and bone fragments erupted about the chamber, but neither of the two combatants noticed, because Drago, in trying to correct his balance and stop Orr from seizing the Sceptre again, unintentionally brought the Sceptre down on Orr’s head with a sharp crack.
The Ferryman fell to the floor, his wounded head smacking against the marble so hard it cracked open yet further, smearing blood and brain tissue across the floor.
Atop Sigholt, SpikeFeather started, and wondered what had happened that his contact with Orr was so abruptly broken.
Drago managed to regain his balance without falling into the Star Gate. Terrified by the pulsing light washing about the chamber, not knowing what he had unleashed, he slipped the sack back over the Sceptre.
The light died instantly, and Drago took a deep breath. He stared, appalled, at Orr’s body. As he watched, it suddenly glowed and then, stunningly, vanished, leaving only the ruby cloak puddled on the floor as any indication that Orr had ever existed.