Crusader (59 page)

No!

“DragonStar,” she cried. “Forgive me!”

Sheol’s hand snatched at her ankle.

“Gotcha!” she crowed.

Faraday closed her eyes to fight her panic, took a deep breath, then looked at Sheol.

“This is your choice,” she said. “You can take me to Qeteb, or you can let me go. You
do
have a choice. You do not merely have to mouth the words from some drama that was played out forty or more years ago. Sheol, listen to me, listen to your choice. Take me to Qeteb, or join the light, free your soul. Let me go.”

Let me go.

Sheol, still crouched in the snow, one claw-like hand about Faraday’s ankle, cocked her head as if deep in thought.

Her features flowed into her female form, back again into Timozel’s lost face, and then finally settled back into that of the Sheol-face she normally wore.

“A choice?” she whispered. “A choice? I can truly leave Qeteb and join the forces of light and goodness?”

Before Faraday could answer, Sheol burst into sarcastic laughter, and her hand tightened painfully about Faraday’s flesh.

“Stupid woman! I choose Qeteb! I choose never-ending demony! I choose vileness and evil and despair! But wait! There’s
more
! In choosing, I offer you a choice of my own. Look!”

And Sheol’s free hand gestured into the snow to Faraday’s right.

Faraday looked, and cried out, both hands to her face in horror.
“No!”

“Yes,” Sheol whispered. “Yes, indeed. Your power tells you the truth of this vision, doesn’t it?”

And the very worst thing was that Faraday’s power
did
tell her the truth of this vision.

The Dark Tower.

And inside the mausoleum, the black marbled and columned interior of the Dark Tower.

Worse, there was yet more.

Katie, sobbing and terrified, dangling between the grasp of Mot and Barzula.

Katie! Katie! Katie!

“This is the choice, Faraday,” Sheol whispered. “Qeteb will destroy one of you in his battle against DragonStar. He already has Katie, but he is willing to swap Katie for you. Give yourself to Qeteb, Faraday. Fulfil Prophecy—again—and Katie will go free.”

Faraday was overcome with horror. What had happened? How had Qeteb managed to seize Katie.
Why hadn’t Azhure looked after her properly?

She began to weep, great, soul-tearing sobs that came from the very core of her bearing. “Oh, Katie!” she whispered. “Katie! I cannot let this happen to you!”

There was no choice, and Faraday knew it. “Take me,” she said. “Take me.”

Sheol broke into triumphant laughter, and rose from Faraday’s feet, seizing Faraday’s shoulders in a grip so painful that Faraday cried out and almost lost consciousness.

“You stupidest of bitches!” Sheol said. “I’ve
won
, and that means DragonStar has
lost
!”

“I’m sorry,” Faraday whispered into the swirling snowstorm, knowing no apology could ever be enough. “I’m sorry.”

Three to two. The balance was in Qeteb’s camp. DragonStar had failed.

Qeteb turned to DragonStar. He spoke, but with the mind voice only.

The preliminaries are over, Enemy. Now it is just you and me.
DragonStar, impassive even in utter defeat, nodded.
Just you and me.

Qeteb smiled.
The choices are made, the outcome assured.

DragonStar bowed his head.
Aye. I accept it.

Then let the Hunt begin!

And Qeteb vanished, and as he vanished, the billions of creatures in and about the Maze let loose an almighty roar as if with one voice.

Let the Hunt begin!

Leagh clutched her Child to her breast, her eyes round and fearful. “We’ve lost!”

Ur stared into the distance, seeing something that no-one else could. “Perhaps.”

S
heol threw Faraday down on the mausoleum floor before Mot and Barzula.

Mot laughed, the sound violent and horrifying, and Faraday only barely managed to find the courage to raise her head.

Katie still struggled in their grip, her eyes round and terrified, her face so white Faraday wondered that she had not already fainted.

“Let Katie go,” she said. “Let her go. I have offered myself to take her place.”

“Let her go? Let her
go
?” Sheol giggled from behind Faraday. “Why?”

“You promised! You said that Qeteb would swap Katie for me!
You said that Katie would go free!
”

“She lied to you, bitch.”

The voice, harsh with hatred and something else that, when Faraday comprehended it, filled her with nauseous dread. No! No!
Not this again!

Qeteb walked around Sheol and stood with Mot and Barzula. His metal armour clanked and shrieked with every movement.

Faraday, still cowering on the floor, wrenched her gaze from Katie to look at him.

Slowly Qeteb raised a hand and lifted the visor of his helmet.

Something horrible writhed inside, and Faraday screamed. A forked tongue flickered over the lip of the helmet’s chin-piece, as if in anticipation.

“You promised to let her go!”
Faraday screamed. “Take me, but let her go!”

“Didn’t you hear me, cow?” Qeteb took one step towards Faraday, and she screamed, and would have wriggled away had not Sheol stamped a foot into the small of her back, pinning her to the floor.

“Oh,” Qeteb said, “how I adore to see a woman writhing before me.”

“Take me—” Faraday began.

“Oh, and now she
begs
for me!” Qeteb crowed.

“—but let Katie go!”

“I do not subscribe to the principle of honour,” Qeteb said, now squatting down by Faraday. “I don’t mind ensuring DragonStar’s death any foul way I can.”

She buried her face in her hands, unable any longer to look at the unspeakable flesh wriggling inside the helmet. Something grabbed her hair, and she knew it was Qeteb.

He wrenched her head back, forcing her to look at him.

Faraday gagged, the Midday Demon’s power not even allowing her to screw her eyes shut.

“Katie stays,” Qeteb said, “as do you. You are both far too useful to me to let go.”

He turned his head slightly, speaking to the other three Demons. “Take Katie aside, and keep her fresh for me. Wait.”

“And you?” Sheol asked, knowing what he intended to do, but also knowing that Qeteb wanted her to ask the question.

“Me?” Qeteb turned back to stare at Faraday again. His forked tongue slithered forth to hang dripping over his metal chin-piece. “Aren’t we repeating Prophecy here for the amusement of poor Faraday? There is only one thing for me to do to while away the time. Enjoy myself, and ease my lusts.”

His free hand reached forward, sliding under Faraday’s gown and gripping one breast so painfully Faraday whimpered.

She twisted, her body straining against Qeteb’s hold, and she despaired. What had Noah told her? That she would either win, and achieve complete and lasting happiness, or she would fail and achieve total annihilation.

She had failed, and thus annihilation was hers for the asking.

Please, God, grant me death
, she pleaded, and far away, nestled against the warmth and comfort of Leagh’s breast, the Girl turned Her head and answered,
No
.

Then grant me insanity! Please! I beg you!

No. This is your destiny.

Qeteb’s hand tightened remorselessly, and Faraday screamed, abandoned to her fate.

D
ragonStar sat his Star Stallion before the Maze Gate. He had been here before, but that time seemed now to be a hundred light years ago.

He sat, completely still, his head bowed, his almost naked body exuding the faintest of glimmers in the evening air. His stallion, mane and tail ablaze, waited patiently, although he shifted occasionally: stamping a hoof, lowering and shaking his magnificent head, or raising it again to stare through the open Gate.

The pack of Alaunt waited to one side, the blue-feathered lizard once more in their midst—albeit hiccupping slightly.

DragonStar sat, his face lowered, eyes almost closed, lost in his thoughts.

Rather, lost in the thoughts and memories of the Enemy.

Images and sounds of the Enemy’s battle with the Demons on their long ago world flickered through DragonStar’s mind. But deeper memories also surfaced, of yet older worlds, and even more ancient battles against the Demons.

The fight against the Demons—whether that of the Enemy’s, or of yet other enemies—had been fought since the beginning of time. And always, the Demons had won.

Now? Now was the last battle, the final confrontation. Whoever won here would carry the victory into eternity.

Here, this night, awaited the final choice.

Belaguez snorted again, and DragonStar raised his head and opened his eyes.

The StarSon looked through the Maze Gate.

Hell waited within. Millions, perhaps billions, of deformed bodies and minds tumbled and scratched and pummelled as one entity, caught in the infinite bleakness of the beating heart of the Maze.

It writhed and pulsed and throbbed.

It screeched and caterwauled and mewed.

It sang seductively, it beckoned enticingly, it begged for his presence.

In the Dark Tower.

The Dark Tower.

The Dark Tower was where Qeteb waited…with his choice. Qeteb’s lieutenants had won the battle of the Demons and witches, now it lay with Qeteb to offer the final choice.

DragonStar blinked, and refocused on the Gate itself.

The millions of seething characters had all gone, and the Gate surrounds were now blank stone.

Save for the single carving that topped the archway.

It depicted The Sacrifice. The Sacrifice that DragonStar would have to choose. Katie? Faraday? Or himself?

DragonStar stared at the carving, and nodded, for it told him nothing he had not known for a very long time.

The carving blurred, and then rippled away, leaving nothing but bare stone in its passing.

DragonStar turned his head slightly to look at Sicarius sitting at the head of his pack.

“Wait here,” the StarSon said, “until I whistle my need for you.”

Sicarius inclined his head. The Hunt was surely close now.

Then DragonStar looked at the blue-feathered lizard, sitting slightly to one side of Sicarius.

“Wait here,” said DragonStar, “until I have need of your light.”

And the lizard inclined his head.

DragonStar looked back to the Gate, and drew his lily sword. Belaguez tensed.

“For this,” DragonStar cried, “you and I were both born, Demon!”

And the Star Stallion leapt through the Gate.

As soon as he had disappeared, the forty-two thousand trees drifted as close to the Maze as they dared, forming a single line around its entire perimeter.

There, Ur standing and shifting impatiently from foot to foot among them, they waited.

DragonStar rode, but he did not find the journey to the Dark Tower as easy as the first time he’d ridden through the Maze.

Then, the way had been free and clear, and the Maze had sung and screamed its encouragement propelling him towards the Dark Tower.

Now foulness sought to block his way. All the creatures packed into the veins of the Maze seemed as one. Legs and arms and limbs and teeth lunged at him indiscriminately, as if attached to the one body, the one mind. DragonStar sliced to this side and to that with his sword, and it wrought great damage, but it was Belaguez who worked best to clear a path for him.

The Star Stallion screamed and shook head and tail. Millions of tiny stars exploded into the dense blackness that surrounded them, and as they struck home, the creatures drew back, snapping and snarling, or screaming and writhing if one of the stars burned its way through flesh.

A way opened before horse and rider, and the Star Stallion needed no encouragement. He plunged forward, breasting his way through the dark creatures as a swimmer through the surf, lunging with teeth, the thousands of stars sizzling about his head and haunches catching and reflecting the mirror blade of the lily sword as it arced through the air again and again.

They rode through a nightmare.

The stars and sword created a path, but that did nothing to alleviate the fetid savagery about them. Hands and claws and gaping jaws reached incessantly for them, teeth snapped a finger’s breadth away from flesh, foulness filled the air. Horse and rider both found it difficult to breathe.

But though DragonStar responded to the threat, and though he swung the lily sword this way and that, he barely saw the horror about him.

His mind had let go the images of past battles and the memories of countless, extinct races. Now all DragonStar thought about was Faraday.

Faraday, caught in the arms of Qeteb.

Faraday, undergoing again the same horror she had at Gorgrael’s touch.

Beautiful, courageous Faraday, no doubt intent on sacrificing herself
again
, if only it might save one person beyond herself.

DragonStar reviled himself for making her go through all this again, but it was necessary. Necessary for him to be able to make the
right
decision when Qeteb presented him with the choice.

Belaguez continued his lunge forward, and DragonStar arced down again and again with his sword.

Poor Faraday. He deserved her hate.

Faraday writhed in Qeteb’s grip, overcome with the hopelessness of her situation, and railing at herself because she could do nothing to aid Katie.

The Midday Demon stood before the black marble tomb, facing the door of the mausoleum. He was attired in his black armour, black plate wings held out behind him.

He was invulnerable, impenetrable, unconquerable.

Qeteb had won, and he knew it.

He stood completely still, at odds with the two writhing figures he held out to either side of him.