Crusader

WolfStar — lover and ultimate destroyer of Niah.

WolfStar — manipulator of the entire world and all who lived within it.

WolfStar — utter, utter Fool.

A rat ran over his right foot, scratching deeply into his flesh as it went, but WolfStar paid it no heed. Over the past hours (days? weeks? he did not know) countless creatures had scrambled over him, trampled him, urinated on him, nibbled, bit and tasted him, and yet none had done him the kindness of killing him.

All WolfStar wanted was to die … to escape the utter humiliation his existence had become. But no thing or one would grant him death in this world of death made incarnate — this damned, cursed Maze. Bleakness swarmed constantly over him, and madness probed intermittently at his mind: the hours when the Demons raged drove him to the brink of insanity, but never (oh please, stars, let the horror tip me over!), never beyond into the oblivion of total insanity.

Why? Why couldn’t he become one of these mindless creatures that swarmed incoherently and incontinently through the Maze? All WolfStar wanted was to become mindless, because then he would feel no pain.

WolfStar’s fingers scrabbled over his chest, feeling again the clotting blood of Caelum. He gagged, sickened by the feel, as also by the damned persistence of the blood.

He couldn’t wipe it off, it wouldn’t go away. It wouldn’t even dry to a scab that he could scrape off.

WolfStar was marked by Caelum’s blood, and he wondered if that was what protected him.

What had happened to the boy? Why had he walked onto the point of Qeteb’s blade?

WolfStar had turned the horrific moments of Caelum’s death over and over in his mind, and yet he still could not understand them. What had gone so wrong? Why hadn’t Caelum fought back?

Or, at the least, why hadn’t he made an effort to escape? WolfStar could crawl no more. He propped himself up against a wall, holding his belly with one hand, dragging air into his lungs.

Suddenly Caelum walked about the corner and came directly towards him.

He had a beatific smile on his face.

“Caelum StarSon!” Qeteb screamed, and stood in his stirrups and raised his sword.

Caelum, now directly before WolfStar, turned and stared at the horror approaching, stared at the rearing, plunging creature above him, and at the Demon screaming on its back.

“Oh, how I love you,” he said.

“No!” Qeteb shrieked, driven beyond the realms of anger, not only by Caelum’s words, but also by the serene expression on his face.

The Demon drove down his sword.

WolfStar could not believe it. As the sword plunged downwards, Caelum held out his hand and seized the blade. It made not a whit of difference.

The sword sliced through Caelum’s hand and plunged into his chest, driving Caelum back against WolfStar, who grunted with shock.

Qeteb leaned his entire weight down on the sword, twisting it as deep as he could go, feeling bone and muscle and cartilage tear and rip, seeing the bright blood bubble from the StarSon’s mouth.

What had the boy been doing, wandering through the Maze with a beatific smile on his face while all the Demons of Hell rode at his heels?

“There had been magic worked there,” WolfStar whispered, inching his way further down whatever dead-end of the Maze he’d chosen this time. “An enchantment … Caelum was caught in enchantment… but whose? Whose?”

Suddenly WolfStar was angry, and it chased away all his bleakness and humiliation. Someone — not the Demons — had worked an enchantment on Caelum … Who had control of enchantment in this Star Danceless world?

And if someone did have control of enchantment, how could WolfStar work that to his own will?

“Who are you?” he whispered, now dragging himself along with one hand while the other held his ruined belly in vaguely one piece. “Who are you?”

He repeated the sentence, over and over, making of it a mantra. He repeated it for hour after hour, dragging himself through the Maze, ignoring the countless creatures — once-animal and once-human or Icarii — that flowed about and over him. He continued to repeat it through the Demonic hour of dusk that probed at his mind, and he continued to repeat it through the night until it almost drove him mad.

At dawn, as the light broke over the Maze, WolfStar realised something.

He was not mad. And he was not dead. Neither madness nor Demon had touched him, or even taken any interest in him. He had survived, for whatever reason and for whatever purpose.

And he had to have a purpose, because without a purpose he was nothing but a pawn.

A glow of light filtered down through the stone walls of the Maze, lighting the flagstones before him.

A million symbols flowed over and through the stone. The Maze, taunting him.

“Damn you! Damn you!” WolfStar whispered, furious that the Star Dance and the Maze had manipulated him for so many millennia. From the heights of power, the glory days of thinking that all Tencendor danced to his manipulations, WolfStar had fallen to being nothing but a useless puppet crawling through the stone corridors of the Maze.

A Talon-Enchanter with no more power than an ant.

“No!”

No, he could not bear that. There was power out there somewhere — he could feel it! — and that meant there was power available for the taking.

And he would take it. No-one would laugh at WolfStar!

“Who are you?” he whispered over and over as he crawled hand-over-hand across the rough stone. “Who are you?”

As crazed birds tumbled through the sky above his head, so plans and intrigues tumbled through WolfStar’s mind.

There was power out there, and he would find a way to control it.

“Who are you? Who are you?”

WolfStar crawled for hours, lost in his own thoughts, his anger giving him strength when he should have collapsed, until eventually he thought he heard something whisper. He raised his head, and stared.

Then he laughed, knowing hope for the first time in many days.

Ten paces ahead rose the gateway into the wasteland.

Chapter 5 Of Sundry Enemies

“This land is not enough,” Sheol whispered. “We need the entire world and all its souls to feed from. When can we take it all?” She was lying sprawled across the floor of the mausoleum, writhing in an agony of need and desire. Her last feeding hour had been good, but not good enough.

There were other souls out there, and she wanted them. She bared her teeth, and snarled.

Qeteb leaned down and grabbed her by the hair, hauling her to her feet. Sheol screamed, and then roared, her shape flowing from humanoid to dog and back to humanoid again.

StarLaughter, sitting with her back against one of the black columns, turned her face aside in a disgust she did not even bother to disguise. Nothing had gone well for her since her son had attained his full potential.

Qeteb laughed, and dropped Sheol.

The female Demon crawled a few paces away and then rose to her feet, smoothing down the pastel-coloured gown she’d chosen to assume and rearranging her facial features in an expression that came close to obeisance.

“Great Father,” she said, and dipped her head.

Qeteb grunted. For the moment he was prepared to put up with Sheol’s impatience — had she not fought through a hundred thousand years to resurrect him? — but he wasn’t sure if his current good nature would last much longer than dusk this evening.

There was going to be an irritating delay before they could consume the souls of the entire planet, and Qeteb did not like to be made to wait for anything, let alone total domination.

“For the moment we are confined to this wasteland,” he said. “We must be, until we have finally disposed of the … StarSon.”

The Enemy Reborn.

It had rattled all of the Demons more than they were prepared to admit out loud each to the other. The damned, damned Enemy Reborn.

They thought they had been chasing the shadows cast by the fleet of the Ark, but instead the shadow had been chasing them.

“Once the StarSon is dead — once and for all — then the eating will be beyond compare,” Raspu whispered. He was standing with Mot and Barzula behind the stone tomb that sat in the centre of the mausoleum. The three Demons were leaning with their elbows on the stone’s flat surface and their chins resting in their hands, staring at Qeteb as he paced to and fro.

Behind them, almost lost in the gloom of the columned recesses of the mausoleum, lay the Niah-woman, limbs akimbo, blank-eyed head propped up at an uncomfortable yet unheeded angle against a cold marble wall. Her white skin was blemished with small lesions. Qeteb had amused himself well with her. His new body had needs to be sated, and her soulless one was useful only for the services it could provide — but his black metal armour had not provided the kindest of caresses.

No-one among them cared, least of all Qeteb. As far as he was concerned, the Niah-body needed to last only as long as it could provide a new flesh and blood form for Rox’s lost soul. Qeteb was more than irritated with Rox’s foolhardy attempt to brave the bridge at Sigholt, and had considered leaving him to float disembodied for eternity … but this was a land and a time of resurrection, and Rox would be more useful in bodily form than useless spirit.

They would need to meet the StarSon united. This time, Qeteb would let nothing stand in the way of a total victory over the Enemy.

“What do you mean?” StarLaughter said, moving forward. “I thought you rammed your sword through the StarSon in the Maze. What’s this hold-up?”

Qeteb’s impatience for power was nothing compared to StarLaughter’s.

Qeteb turned slowly to look at the woman. He would have liked to destroy her, but at the moment he was loath to kill anything that might provide information, or might prove useful. If there was anything Qeteb had learned over the past hundred thousand years of imprisonment, it was a modicum of prudence.

“He was a false StarSon only,” he said, allowing his voice to flow through his closed visor like honeyed chocolate.

It had its effect. StarLaughter visibly relaxed.

“A decoy,” Qeteb continued. “The false StarSon bought the true StarSon time … for what I am not yet sure.”

“Time,” Sheol said, “to build a hidey-hole for the majority of souls of this land. He even took the insects with him!”

A soul was a soul was a soul, and each soul fed the Demons as much as the next one. The millions of insects that Drago’s witches had squirreled away into Sanctuary had cost the Demons as dearly as the vast numbers of people who’d managed to escape the final ravagement.

Qeteb nodded slowly, letting his gaze drift away from StarLaughter and around the mausoleum. This dark place was all very well, but Qeteb had had enough of confinement. Soon would be the time to go exploring.

“We will find his hiding place,” the Midday Demon said, “and we will destroy it. We will feed on all it has to offer. And then we — I — will meet this StarSon, and teach him that which he refuses to learn.”

Underneath his visor Qeteb’s lips stretched in a humourless smile. The StarSon might be the Enemy Reborn, but he had been reborn with all the Enemy’s mistakes tucked into whatever magic he thought he commanded. But he, Qeteb, had spent his millennia of confinement learning … and learning from the Enemy’s errors. The Enemy Reborn, this uselessly tinselled StarSon, was bred to make the same mistakes as his forebears … but this time Qeteb was ready, and this time the Enemy Reborn’s mistakes would kill him.

Qeteb felt a sensual thrill course through his being. He had waited a hundred thousand years for rebirth, while the Enemy had waited a hundred thousand years for death.

This time he would triumph. Qeteb knew it for truth.

“And what of that?” Barzula said, indicating the wooden bowl that lay at the foot of the tomb. “It is magic … but what kind? And is it dangerous?”

Qeteb walked over and picked up the bowl, stroking the wood. “StarLaughter?”

She sighed, and joined him. She rested her hand on the wood. “It is of Avar craftsmanship. Pointless beauty.”

“I disagree,” Qeteb said, and brushed her hand aside. “But then, I do not blame you for it, for you are merely woman, and a mortal who has survived on the back of my brothers’ and sister’s power and their tolerance.”

StarLaughter’s entire body went rigid, and her eyes hard.

Qeteb either did not notice or did not care. “This bowl has a secret,” he said. “A very big and probably very important secret.”

His hand tightened about the bowl, and a tiny crack ran halfway along the rim.

“I do not like objects that are secretive!” Qeteb said, and his hand tightened fractionally more.

The crack widened.

“Ah!” Qeteb loosened his grip. He hefted the bowl lightly, and then in a smooth action threw the bowl spinning into the darkness of the domed ceiling.

It disappeared.

“The one thing I like about secrets,” Qeteb observed, his visored face once more looking at StarLaughter, “is that they keep indefinitely. The bowl is mine, and eventually its secret will be mine.”

StarLaughter held the Demon’s stare, difficult as that was with no observable eyes to be found behind the latticed metalwork of the visor. “Your brothers and sister,” she said evenly, “promised me power in return for all my aid.”

To one side Sheol sniggered.

“Your aid,” Qeteb said. “How amusing that you think you provided —”

“I provided you with life!” StarLaughter yelled, balling her fists at her side and taking a step closer to Qeteb.

Barzula and Mot glanced at each other, then back to StarLaughter, and then they smiled slowly.

You did not provide me with life!

The thought boomed about the mausoleum, and although no spoken word sounded, all heard Qeteb’s words.

“You are my son!” StarLaughter screamed, unthinking anger giving her voice unusual strength. “I provided you with life, I bore you through adversity, I gave birth to you while I drifted among the stars. I loved and nurtured you through three thousand —”

“You provided the scrap of flesh which I chose to inhabit!” Qeteb stepped forward, and StarLaughter finally had the sense to retreat slightly. “My existence needs no ‘mother’. You were merely the cow that delivered the meat for my needs. You are the one who should be grateful… and yet you have the stupidity to demand it of me! I do not know,” he continued, growling now, and stepping forward once more, “why you still live or why your mind is still your own.”

StarLaughter paled, although her eyes remained bright with fury. “Because no-one else in this gloomy tower knows their way around this land and its secrets like I do!” she said.“You deserve another hundred thousand years trapped in some Enemy’s gaol if now you destroy the one Tencendorian remaining at your side, and with a reasonably intact mind!”

“You would be better crawling mad at my feet!”

“You wouldn’t dare!” StarLaughter countered, squaring her shoulders in defiance.

Qeteb stared at her, then raised a fist and struck StarLaughter across her face so hard he flung her sprawling several paces away across the floor.

“Bitch-sow,” he said, his voice tight with frustration. “One day I will dare, and I will leave just enough of your mind intact to know exactly what I will do to you.”

StarLaughter raised herself on an elbow and stared at him. Her left cheek was livid, blood running freely down her chin and neck. “If there is one being in existence you should never alienate,” she whispered, “it is your mother.”

Qeteb took one heavy step towards her. He laughed, whispery and harsh. “When I inhabited this flesh, StarLaughter, I also gained its memories. Do you want to know what I can remember of your son, StarLaughter? Do you? I remember that he despised you —”

“No! My son adored —”

“— he regarded you with contempt, as he knew all the Icarii in Talon Spike felt nothing but contempt towards you —”

“No!”

“You silly, vacuous woman. You thought you were the most powerful Icarii in the land, didn’t you? You thought that all power could be yours, didn’t you? And yet you were nothing but an embarrassment to the Icarii nation, someone to be greeted with silent sneers at every entrance into a room, and with laughter at your departure. The Icarii loathed you, your husband was revolted by you, and your son could not wait to escape your body. He hated you, StarLaughter. He was sickened by you, and he escaped into death rather than spend an eternity amid the stars with you.”

StarLaughter remained silent, rigid with shock. She stared at Qeteb.

Qeteb laughed again. “Queen of Heaven?” he said. “Never!” Then he spat a glob of phlegm through his metal visor into her face.

She gasped, recoiling.

“That was from your son, bitch, not from me.” And Qeteb turned and strode away.

StarLaughter lay on the cold, cold floor of the mausoleum.

Lies! Lies! He spoke lies! Her son had adored her, loved her.

From the moment he had come to awareness in her womb, her son had been the only one who had understood her power, and who had understood that she was destined for greatness and was justified in choosing whatever path she had to in order to grasp her destiny.

Qeteb spoke lies!

Didn’t he?

StarLaughter lay on the floor of the mausoleum and hated. More, she lusted for revenge. Qeteb could not speak such lies and blacken her son’s memory —

Gods! Was her son trapped under that mountain of metal and odious flesh, screaming for her to get him out?

— and think that she would do nothing about it.

StarLaughter bared her teeth, and made a small sound deep in her throat that was half curse, half growl.

Her hands clawed on the floor, her nails scratching at its surface.

She lay there and hated, and she lay there and lusted for revenge.

StarLaughter was very, very good at nourishing both hatred and revenge. She had had many thousands of years of practice at both.

I nurtured my son, she thought, her entire body rigid with the intensity of her animosity. I nurtured him and kept him and held and loved him through such extremes of pain and despair that you — a Demon — cannot imagine. I offered him my breast, and he took it.

I loved him, and yet you stole him from me, Qeteb, and then sullied his memory with lies.

“My son hated me?” StarLaughter whispered, her hands still clawing slowly at the floor. “He didn’t hate me, he adored me … every Icarii adored me! No-one laughed at me. No-one!”

She lifted her head slightly and stared at Qeteb, now on the far side of the mausoleum whispering with his fellow nightmares.

You are the simpleton, Qeteb, if you think you can deny both my son and myself our destinies.

At StarLaughter’s thought, Qeteb turned slowly and regarded her.

StarLaughter did not move, nor drop her eyes, nor even disguise the hatred and resentment in them.

After a moment Qeteb turned his back to her again.

Now you have one more enemy, StarLaughter thought, and began to mop at the blood on her face and neck with a corner of her much-bloodied robe.

Her son hadn’t hated her… had he?

StarLaughter paused in her attempts to clean her face, and her entire face trembled as doubt overran her mind.

Had he?

Chapter 6 The Enchanted Song Book

“Tell us of Caelum,” Axis said, as they sat down.

“And tell us of yourself. We have heard only garbled snippets, and we would know the truth.”

Where to start? DragonStar thought. “You realise,” he finally said, “the depth of manipulation that has bound our family?”

Axis nodded. “I thought my task had been to defeat Gorgrael and unite Tencendor, but in reality, my task, as Azhure’s, was to create the circumstances that would create the StarSon.”

DragonStar’s mouth quirked. “Yes. Even WolfStar had been manipulated in order that Azhure be created and Axis be trained, so that you might the better perform your task in creating…”

“You,” Azhure said very softly. She did not look at either her husband or her son.

“The manipulation,” DragonStar said, “extends beyond our family. It involves this entire land and its peoples, and stretches beyond that… back to the world of the Enemy. We are but the result of tens and tens of thousands of years of manipulation. Even longer, perhaps.”

“By what?” Axis demanded. “By who?”

“By the Star Dance,” DragonStar said. “Or whatever it represents.”

“The Star Dance!” Axis said, and he spoke the words as a curse, as a hated thing. “The time was when I loved that beyond anything, save Azhure.”

“It may be,” DragonStar said, “that the Star Dance has been leading to this point, to us, for millions of years. Chasing the Demons through time and space, and being chased by them.”

“We are the ultimate of millions of years of … manipulation?” Azhure said, and then laughed merrily, shaking out her hair. “Could the Star Dance have not made us less flawed? An Axis less arrogant and cruel? A DragonStar less resentful and ambitious? And I? I less determined to know my own power, and more willing to tend to my own family.”

“Who knows,” DragonStar said. “Our flaws may yet save us.” And he smiled, as if he had made a joke to himself. “Ah, but you asked of Caelum and of myself. We both grew up amid lies — not of your doing, or even of ours, but lies bound about us by the Star Dance, via the Maze. These lies dictated our action, driving me into such overweening ambition I could contemplate the murder of Caelum, and making Caelum …”

“A weak ruler,” Azhure finished for him, “and a murderer also, perhaps?”

Ye gods, DragonStar thought weakly, what should I say to that? Yes, mother. Caelum murdered our sister and your daughter. Do you want me to say that out loud, Azhure?

“Perhaps,” he answered, and Azhure nodded and turned aside her head for a second time.

“A murderer?” Axis said. “What do you mean?”

“He means,” Azhure said, “that we all have the blood of others on our hands, beloved.”

And Axis nodded, accepting what she said without truly understanding what she spoke of.

“Caelum’s true role was as a false StarSon,” DragonStar said. “A decoy. I needed time to grow, to learn, and to allow Qeteb the confidence to destroy Tencendor … which he would not have done if he’d known the StarSon still lived.”

Briefly, DragonStar told his parents of the hidden Acharite magic that could be touched only with the passage through death.

Axis stared at Azhure, his eyes excited, then looked back at DragonStar. “But that means that I, too, can use the Acharite power!”

DragonStar shook his head. “I’m sorry, Axis, but —” “I’ve been to death’s gate, even though the haggard old crone wouldn’t let me through. Why can’t I use my Acharite blood?”

“Because of your overpowering use of the Star Dance.” DragonStar paused, feeling his father’s frustration. “And you have been a Star God. Your Icarii-bred magic has killed whatever potential Acharite magic you had. When you proclaimed yourself StarMan, you also literally killed your Acharite magic in favour of the Star Dance. I’m sorry, Axis.”