“Quick!” Sheol said, her voice brusque. “The interstellar winds are propitious for a giant leap. If we manage this, we may only have to do two more leaps instead of three.”
Sheol and Barzula thrust Drago onto the couch, and then all the Questors were crowding about, their hands heavy on his head and shoulders.
Mot smiled benevolently. “This won’t hurt -”
“Much,” finished Rox, and all five Questors laughed, then bit deep into Drago’s soul, deeper than they’d ever gone before.
Pain seared through him. He arched his back in a silent agony – and felt some part of him dying, burning as though caught in a great conflagration. He’d never felt this so strongly before, but he knew what it was. The Questors were destroying his power. They had lied to him.
They were destroying him.
He screamed.
They leaped.
Into a world where there was no clear definition between ground and sky, where light and rain melded as one, where there was no colour save grey, no joy, no life, no ease of mind. The children whispered in a grey shadow through the trees – now petrified stone in this greyest of worlds – and StarLaughter sat and crooned to her undead child. The Questors laughed and spoke words of praise and comfort to Drago, and he outwardly let himself be comforted and reassured that yes, they did love and need him and no, they were not engaged in bleeding him to a useless hulk.
DragonStar SunSoar, Icarü Enchanter, would live again, they cried – and then they all laughed. They howled with laughter, and Drago stumbled away from them, deep into the forest of petrified stone, where he sank down against a tree and put his head in his hands.
Eventually he sat up and idly fingered the contents of his sack. The coins felt comforting, and Drago let his mind go blank as he sat there on that alien world, watching with unseeing eyes as the strange children leapt and cried amid the fossilised wood, and as StarLaughter sat smiling with the Questors, jamming her useless nipple yet again into the child’s mouth.
And Drago slipped into waking dream.
He dreamed of the hunt, and he felt the thrill of power surge through him. The forest slid by amid the thunder of hooves, and the hunters whooped with joy, sensing their quarry near. The children – the Hawkchilds – had been loosed and were swooping through the forest. The prey was frantic. Who? Drago wondered. Who?
The hunt surged forward.
Yes, everything would be alright. The Questors did not lie to him. They would not drain him completely, and his Icarü powers would be restored when they leaped through the Star Gate.
And then the entire perspective of the dream changed. Suddenly Drago found himself running through the forest. His heart was pounding, his legs were trembling with fatigue, cold sweat bathed his face and body. His breath rasped through his chest and throat – he couldn’t breathe at all! Trees loomed to either side, closing in on him, tightening about him.
Behind him a clarion sounded. Shrieks of joy reached out to him. The hunters were closer! There was a rustling and roaring in the trees – the Hawkchilds had spotted him!
Drago fell into thorn bushes and then scrambled out, blood pouring from a dozen deep cuts to his face and arms.
On the forest path behind him galloped a great black horse with an even darker rider. His armour absorbed light, but the point of his lance reflected it – it was a beam of light, coming straight for Drago’s chest.
He stumbled, and then fell.
He twisted onto his back, trying to scrabble away, but the horseman had reined his beast to a halt before him and Drago felt the lance in the centre of his chest.
With every breath he felt the point slide in deeper.
The pain was horrific.
” Who are you?” he screamed.
“I am DragonStar, come back from death,” replied the horseman, “and I hunt the Enemy.”
And he leaned his entire weight on the lance.
Drago lurched into consciousness, his breath rasping into his chest in preparation for a scream.
But it never came. He managed to control it, but he sat there for a very long time, remembering the feel of that lance as it had sliced through his lungs and heart.
Tl!
I here is trouble in Tencendor,” Axis fretted, rubbing his hands before the fire. “I can feel it. Caelum… Caelum has encountered trouble.”
“I, too, can feel it,” Azhure said, and shook out her thick black hair, letting it stream out in the wind that ran down the Icebear Coast.
There had been disturbances recently, disturbances they had felt in the very fibre of their beings. In their power.
With nothing else to blame it on, they thought it a product of the disharmony within Tencendor.
“But,” Azhure glanced at Axis, “we can do nothing. Tencendor is Caelum’s to do with as he will. Leave it, Axis, he will manage.”
Across the fire Adamon nodded. “Leave it, Axis.”
Axis sighed. “Yes. I will leave it.” He smiled wanly and looked about the group of Star Gods. “Did you have as much trouble leaving your mortal concerns behind?”
Flulia laughed. “Oh, my! I remember Adamon had to snatch me from my old laundry. I could not bear the way the new laundress starched the sheets.”
Adamon smiled. “I told her that a god had no business amid the washing. Flulia became quite angry, as I recall. She actually stamped her foot.”
Everyone laughed, and Pors leaned forward. “I chased the brown-legged frogs of Bogle Marsh through my dreams for a thousand years after I achieved my place with Adamon and Xanon. I missed them desperately. What you and Azhure are going through, Axis, is nothing unusual.”
Axis’ smile faded a little. “Then pray I do not fret at you for the next thousand years.”
There was quiet as the gods stared into the flames of the fire, remembering their individual experiences on the journey from mortal to immortal, then Adamon spoke up.
“There is good reason why I have called us all here together this night. Xanon and I,” he took his wife’s hand, “are worried. Look!”
Adamon threw his free hand over the fire in a sudden motion. Instantly stars became visible in the flames -comets, solar systems, galaxies. Axis thought it was like looking into the Star Gate, save that the lure of the Star Dance was mute here.
“Look,” Adamon said again, but now his voice had lost its urgency, and was soothing, hypnotic. “Look.”
His hand swirled over the fire again, and then yet again, and the flames roared higher. Every galaxy was exquisite in its detail, every movement of the stars faultlessly performed.
“Beautiful,” Azhure murmured.
“Beautiful,” Xanon echoed, “save here,” her finger pointed, “and here, and here.”
As her fingers moved, the flames danced and what they revealed made the others, save Adamon who had seen this already, gasp with horror.
Spreading through the universe, like a thin trail of blight, was a black shadow. It was as yet only tiny, and hardly noticeable – the others might well have missed it if it had not been for Xanon – but…
“It is coming directly for us!” whispered Nors, appalled.
“For the Star Gate,” Adamon said. “Yes.”
“How long has this been visible?” Axis asked.
“For less than a day,” Xanon replied. “Adamon and I noticed it last night.”
“It’s moving towards us with frightening speed,” her husband said. “Look, this was where it was when first we noticed it, and then, while we watched, it leapt forward, through this galaxy, and this, then came to rest here.”
“What is it?” Azhure twisted her hair nervously into a knot. “Is it the children?”
“Partly,” Adamon said. “They come with it. We can hear their whispers louder than ever before. But they are not driving it. They are not the power behind it.”
“Well… what «s?” Axis asked. He remembered how he’d felt when Jayme had first told him about the invading ghostmen from the north. Then he’d had a premonition of disaster. But that was nothing compared to the foreboding that now swept through him.
Adamon shook his head. “I do not know. I have no knowledge of what it is. I can feel its power, but I do not understand it. What is worse, see how it has blacked out an as yet tiny portion of the stars? Axis, do you not feel what that has done to you?”
Axis stared into the flame-vision, then his entire body went rigid.
“Axis?” Azhure murmured, and laid a hand on his arm.
“By the Stars themselves,” Axis said hoarsely, “it has cut out the sound of the Star Dance from that area!”
“Yes,” Adamon said. “And if it comes closer, it will block out yet more of the Star Dance. What if, the heavens forbid, it blocks out all of the Star Dance?”