Crusader

by Sara Douglass

  He let DragonStar’s arm go, and sat back complacently. Raspu had lost, but Qeteb had more trust in his other companions.

  There was a long way to go, and more death yet, before the final act could be played out.

  WolfStar circled StarLaughter and Zenith once, then landed softly on the ground before Zenith.

  StarLaughter stood just behind the pole, a length of rope in her hand. Her hair had matted into thick, oily twists that wriggled like snakes, and her face was twisted into ugly lines curving about bared, yellowed teeth.

  StarLaughter looked frightful.

  As WolfStar landed, she wrapped the rope about Zenith’s neck, and tugged it tight.

  Zenith made no sound, but her entire body stiffened, and her eyes widened in anguish.

  “Let her go!” WolfStar said, and took an aggressive step forward. Damn StarLaughter. If she harmed Zenith…! “She has done nothing to you.”

  StarLaughter snarled, and jerked the rope tighter.

  Zenith’s face contorted in agony, and WolfStar stopped. A dead Zenith would not be a useful Zenith at all.

  StarLaughter loosened the rope, and Zenith relaxed in relief, although her eyes were desperate—frantic—as they stared at WolfStar.

  Help me!

  “What has she done to me?” StarLaughter whispered. “What? She seduced you, and bore you a child that should have been my right—”

  “You fool!” WolfStar cried, but made no move forward. “That was not her! It was—”

  “She is all the women you cheated me with!” StarLaughter screamed. “When she dies, I shall be avenged on you and all your whores!”

  WolfStar tried to think. How could he handle StarLaughter? She was completely demented, and yet so coldly calm within that dementia, that he didn’t know how to reason with her…or how to defeat her, if it came to violence.

  And what else, after all this time and all this hatred, could it come to?

  “Let her go,” WolfStar said, keeping his voice calm and reasonable. “This is between you and I, not Zenith.”

  “Ah! Zenith!” StarLaughter said. “So now I have a name for the harlot!”

  She bent a little closer to Zenith’s head, and laughed, low and mocking in the birdwoman’s ear. “Zenith-harlot. How that suits you!”

  “StarLaughter—” WolfStar began.

  StarLaughter whipped her eyes up, although she remained bent over Zenith. “You lied to me when you said you loved me. You plotted against me when you said that I would share your power and glory—”

  “StarLaughter—”

  “—you murdered me and our son when you’d said that we were all you cared about. Liar! You cared about nothing but your own power and glory!”

  Now StarLaughter was crying, but she still continued shouting through her sobs. “You condemned me, our son, and hundreds of the most beautiful Icarii children who had ever lived to a frightful eternity in order to sate your own lust for fame and control. You have never regretted that for one—”

  “For the Stars’ sakes woman!” WolfStar shouted. “Neither of us have ever pretended to each other to have a conscience in our ambitions. Don’t start throwing trivialities at me now!”

  “My love was no triviality,” StarLaughter whispered, “and our son was no triviality.” Once more she tightened the rope about Zenith’s neck.

  “I should have killed her,” Axis muttered, striding towards Pretty Brown Sal.

  “How?” Zared said, “when she has power and you not?”

  Axis halted and whipped around to stare at Zared, but he said nothing, and after a moment continued on his way.

  “I should have killed her,” he repeated.

  “WolfStar will stop her,” Zared said, almost running in order to keep up with Axis.

  “WolfStar has so many secret intrigues that he is more likely to kill Zenith than StarLaughter. No doubt StarLaughter will be more useful to him in the long run. What is Zenith? Merely a woman who is loved! She has no power! Nothing to offer him!”

  They had reached the horse lines, and Axis took Sal’s bridle, quickly slipping it over the mare’s head.

  “Axis—”

  Whatever Zared had been about to say was interrupted by the arrival of Urbeth.

  “I will come with you,” Urbeth said, and growled.

  For the first time Axis felt the faintest glimmer of hope.

  “And I have a thousand trees at my back,” Urbeth said further, and Axis’ hope soared.

  “Zenith will be saved if you offer yourself!” a new voice said behind WolfStar. “You are all she needs!”

  WolfStar turned about and snarled at StarDrifter. Fool! What use did he think to be?

  StarDrifter walked slowly forward until he was within a pace or two of WolfStar. His hand was held out in entreaty to the Enchanter-Talon, but his eyes were fixed on Zenith beyond WolfStar.

  “If you love her,” StarDrifter said, finally looking back at WolfStar, “then give yourself to StarLaughter, and free Zenith.”

  WolfStar hissed. “Give yourself, you useless fool! I have no use for love.”

  StarLaughter screamed, hoarse and frightful, and both men whipped about to face her.

  “No use for love, WolfStar?” she yelled. “Then you have no use for life!”

  “StarLaughter!” WolfStar cried, starting a step towards her.

  “Too late!” StarLaughter hissed, and the sky fell in about them.

  “Where are they?” Axis asked Urbeth as he mounted Sal.

  The bear lifted her nose and scented the air. “There,” she indicated, pointing north with her snout. “Somewhere in a gorge in the hills.”

  Axis grunted, and would have urged Sal forward save that Urbeth stepped in front of the horse.

  “I can smell a darkness in the air,” she said, “all warm and bloody, and I do not like it.”

  Axis dug his heels into Sal’s flanks with such a thud the mare jerked from halt to gallop in two strides.

  Darkness descended about them, and both WolfStar and StarDrifter instinctively crouched on the ground, their arms and wings protectively wrapped about themselves.

  “See,” StarLaughter whispered. “See what I have brought you!” So intent was she on WolfStar the rope had loosened about Zenith’s neck.

  Zenith glanced at StarLaughter leaning over her shoulder, then began very slowly and carefully to work at the knots binding her hands behind her. Thank the Stars StarLaughter was not sailor-taught when it came to knots!

  The Hawkchilds encircled WolfStar and StarDrifter in a fence four or five bodies thick.

  This is to what they’d been questing for thousands of years.

  This is the one who had murdered them, and stolen their heritage.

  They whispered and shifted, a mass of feathers and bright eyes and white, grasping hands at the tips of leathery wings.

  WolfStar!

  WolfStar!

  We’re coming for you WolfStar!

  We’re here, WolfStar!

  One of them stepped forward. StarGrace, half woman-child, half Hawkchild. Her form shifted from one to the other; now, the limb she extended was a graceful white hand and arm, now twisting leather and talons.

  “Uncle,” she said, and WolfStar slowly turned to face her.

  “I could have had so much,” StarGrace said sadly, “but you took it all away from—”

  “If you have been drifting four thousand years with nothing but revenge feeding your heart,” WolfStar said, “then I pity you. You have become a nothing. An inconsequential.”

  “For the heavens’ sakes,” StarDrifter cried, “take him! Kill him once and for all, and then let Zenith—”

  “We care for nothing but our revenge,” StarGrace said, her voice cold, and she shifted her eyes to StarDrifter. “Nothing, beyond WolfStar’s blood. And everything—”

  She shifted forward, and her form became all Hawkchild, leaving nothing of the beautiful girl.

  “—that stands between us and our revenge must
needs be swept away.”

  She lunged forward, and StarDrifter screamed as her beak tore into the fleshy part of the arm he’d raised in self-defence.

  WolfStar, now certain of his own death, still managed a laugh. “You pretty-feathered, useless fool,” he said. “Why are you here? You should have known you would not be able to help—”

  And StarGrace’s head flashed, and WolfStar screamed and fell to the ground, rolling into a protective huddle around his torn belly.

  Desperate, thinking only that if she could get free then she’d somehow be able to save StarDrifter, Zenith finally managed to tear her hands clear of their rope bindings.

  In a movement so fast that StarLaughter had no hope of escape, Zenith’s hands whipped up and buried themselves in StarLaughter’s matted hair.

  “Ugh!” Zenith grunted, and thudded StarLaughter’s forehead down on the small rocks that littered the ground.

  And again and again, until blood splattered over both of them.

  And then Zenith found her head seized from behind in a grip so cruel she screamed.

  “See?” a small child’s voice whispered in her ear. “See what revenge we shall exact from you for your impertinence? StarLaughter is our friend, our mother, our only friend…”

  Zenith stared at where the Hawkchild jerked her face, and then she screamed so hard she convulsed.

  StarGrace had taken hold of StarDrifter’s golden curls with one hand, and with the other tore off one of his wings, throwing it high into the air, provoking a feeding frenzy among the Hawkchilds closest to where it landed.

  Axis rode Sal desperately hard, sliding her forward through rocky chasms and down screes so dangerous that any mount save Sal would have foundered and killed them both at the first challenge.

  Axis needed to reach Zenith.

  He had failed her previously, but he would not do so now.

  All he could think of was the image of Azhure coming to him atop Sigholt’s roof one summer’s afternoon, and taking his hands, and saying gently, “We are to have another child.”

  They’d both thought that DragonStar and RiverStar had caused Azhure so much internal damage in their horrendous birth that another child was out of the question.

  Thus, that afternoon, and the months that had followed as Azhure’s belly swelled, had been so special…

  The girl born to them had been so treasured…

  Then why had he let her go? Why had he abandoned her?

  Couldn’t be have made more of an effort to protect her?

  Axis screamed, and urged Sal to yet further extremes.

  Behind him raged Urbeth, and behind her dipped and swayed a thousand ethereal trees.

  They would save the girl. They would…they would…

  StarGrace reached down, and as StarDrifter screamed and twisted beneath her hand, she took a firm grip on his other wing, and with all the power she had, she tore that out too.

  StarDrifter stilled, a strange, surprised look on his face. His eyes went blank, his body limp.

  StarGrace dropped him, and stepped carefully about the massive pool of blood that pumped from his back.

  “Is that the woman who tempted WolfStar into betrayal?” she asked StarLaughter, who had managed to regain her feet.

  She indicated Zenith, still held tightly by the Hawkchild behind her.

  StarLaughter’s face was covered in blood and small bits of gravel. “Yes! She is a trollop!”

  StarGrace nodded at the Hawkchild, and his beaked head dipped.

  When it rose again, it held something disgusting in its beak.

  Held by his claws, Zenith made a single gurgle, trembled, and was still.

  The Hawkchild’s beak dipped again, and this time it savaged ferociously before it lifted its head once more.

  What it held was even more frightful than previously.

  WolfStar took one look, and cried out in horror.

  “Now you,” StarGrace said.

  Sal crested the ridge, and stopped. Neither she, nor the man on her back could, for long moments, comprehend the shocking scene before them.

  In the valley a bloodied and dishevelled Icarii woman stood laughing hysterically to one side of a mass of black feathers and flashing beaks.

  It took Axis what seemed an eternity before he could comprehend the sight before him.

  A head, attached only by a shred of flesh to a shoulder and one arm, lay to one side.

  Zenith’s head. Zenith’s shoulder. Zenith’s arm.

  A white wing—and why did it look so much like StarDrifter’s?—lying to yet another side.

  And a mound of Hawkchilds fighting and feeding over scraps of reddened flesh and golden feathers.

  That, some distant part of Axis’ mind concluded, must be what was left of WolfStar.

  StarLaughter raised her head and saw Axis sitting his mare atop the ridge.

  She whispered something, and that whisper reached deep into Axis’ psyche.

  “I had never imagined revenge to be so tasty.”

  Chapter 56

  StarLaughter’s Awful Mistake

  Deep within the cradling safety of the waterways, Azhure lifted her head. And knew.

  Her hands lifted to her mouth, and she stared at the two ice women and SpikeFeather across from her.

  Without knowing, but understanding, SpikeFeather stood up, lifted Katie into one of the ice women’s arms, and locked Azhure in his own, rocking her back and forth as she grieved for her youngest child.

  Axis sat his mare, and stared.

  All that was left of Zenith was the head, a portion of neck and one shoulder, and an arm, flung wide as if in puzzlement.

  Axis stared, his eyes hooked by the strange, wild tatters of flesh lining the great wound where the rest of her body had been chewed from her head and shoulder.

  The flesh of her shoulder and arm was so white.

  Her eyes, opened, continued to reflect in death the agony and horror she’d endured during her last breathing moments.

  Axis sat his mare and stared.

  Urbeth crested the ridge and came to a halt beside Axis and Sal.

  She looked down at the mass of feeding Hawkchilds, twittering and whispering wetly as their beaks dipped and tore, at StarLaughter standing laughing and giggling to one side, and at the horrible remains of Zenith.

  Then she lifted her head and looked at Axis, and for once in her life, Urbeth did not know what to say.

  “I am going to put an end to this,” Axis said in an emotionless voice.

  “The Hawkchilds and StarLaughter cannot be dealt with save by power,” Urbeth replied. “And your power is all gone.”

  “No,” Axis said, once more looking at the carnage below him. “You are wrong, Urbeth. I have left the power of a father’s love, and of a father’s grief.”

  And without urging, Sal started down the slope.

  StarLaughter looked away from the feeding pack of Hawkchilds, and laughed all the harder.

  A man was riding down the slope of the gully towards her. An ordinary man with a pitiful sword in his hand and riding a more than ordinary brown mare who would look happier pulling a milk cart than riding into the midst of a dangerous revenging.

  StarLaughter tipped back her head and let her laughter wash over the rising sun, extending her arms and hands in rapturous joy.

  WolfStar was dead. WolfStar was dead!

  He could harm her no more, he could humiliate her no more, and StarLaughter hoped he was currently screaming in agony within the deepest firepits of the AfterLife.

  “You are dead, WolfStar,” she whispered, “and I am alive. I have won!”

  She turned her head and sighed irritably as the man pulled his mare to a halt some two or three paces away. Some part of her mind recognised him as the Axis StarMan she’d taunted in the tunnel under the Fortress Ranges, but in this, her moment of triumph, she cared little for who or what he was.

  He was, after all, pointless.

  “WolfStar made many errors in
his life,” Axis remarked in a wooden tone, “but the greatest of all was that he didn’t tear your head from your neck before he threw you into the Star Gate.”

  “Get out of here,” StarLaughter said. “This is none of your business.”

  None of my business? You murdered my daughter!

  Axis stared at StarLaughter, his gaze horribly intense.

  “Get out of here!” StarLaughter yelled, waving an arm. “Don’t think to sit on that pathetic nag and share my triumph!”

  “Triumph?” Axis said softly. “StarLaughter, you have made an awful mistake.”

  StarLaughter narrowed her eyes, thinking. “Ah! The Zenith-harlot was your daughter, was she? Well, don’t think to revenge yourself on me for her death. She deserved to die.”

  Controlling himself at that moment was one of the hardest things Axis had been forced to do in a long, long while. “For my daughter’s death,” he said, “you deserve an eternal hell. She did not deserve to die—”

  “WolfStar threw me aside for her! She deserved every last agony she suffered!”

  “You demented witch!” Axis screamed, half-rising from the saddle. “There was no reason at all for her death!”

  “I just told you why she had to—” StarLaughter stopped abruptly. What had he meant, “an awful mistake”?

  Axis took a hard, deep breath, forcing each word out through clenched teeth. “My daughter’s death was pointless, as was WolfStar’s—although I for one am glad he is finally dead—because WolfStar did not love Zenith at all. He loved you.”

  “What?”

  “WolfStar was only using Zenith to cause dissension within my family. He wanted power back, and thought Zenith the best way to get it.” Axis had no idea how true his words were, he only thought they provided a plausible reason for WolfStar’s actions.

  StarLaughter did not know whether to laugh at the man, or to succumb to utter despair. She did not want to believe him!

  But his words contained a dreadful, frightful ring of truth.