Crusader. Sara Douglass
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was not yet absolute. The power of the Enemy continued to linger within the land — the Sanctuary was the perfect example of such power — and until the StarSon was dead, Qeteb could not destroy it completely.
He looked skywards, and beckoned. “My lovely,” he said. “I would speak with you.”
StarGrace spiralled down from the sky.
“I need you to hunt,” said Qeteb.
Spiredore deposited StarLaughter and WolfStar in a world that was different to the one immediately about the Maze and Spiredore, but that was, nevertheless, substantially the same.
StarLaughter stood and stared, smiling and seemingly uncaring for the moment that WolfStar lay crumpled and semi-conscious at her feet.
The trip through Spiredore (or, rather, the journey up its sharp-edged stairs) had not been kind to him.
StarLaughter let him be for the moment, allowing her eyes and senses to absorb the scenery. The Icescarp mountains had always been frigid and barren, picked clean by the icy winds that whistled over the northern Iskruel Ocean and through every blackened crevice of the ranges. But before Qeteb had wasted the land, the mountains had always seemed alive … almost as if warmth smouldered under their cold, hard skin, and all one had to do was find the way down through the crevices to reach it.
Then, of course, the Icarii had made their home in the mountains. Talon Spike had been the greatest mountain of all, and the Icarii had gradually tunnelled and chiselled away its interior to create living spaces in which to enjoy their exile from the southern lands.
When she and WolfStar had plotted and hungered their way through murder and into destruction, Talon Spike had been a place of refuge and haunting beauty. Most of it had been excavated even then … and StarLaughter had actually grown up inside the mountain rather than in the southern Minaret Peaks. Her mother, CoalStar, had preferred the views and the scent of the ocean winds amongst the Peaks.
StarLaughter knew many of Talon Spike’s secrets, and although she’d known the mountain had crumpled when Qeteb sent his destruction rippling over the land, she hoped that the one secret she needed to hide from the Demon had remained safe and intact.
And so it had.
The cellars and basements of Talon Spike — StarLaughter was unaware that Axis and Azhure had renamed the mountain Star Finger — were places of great enchantment. StarLaughter did not know the details, but she did know that the basements of Talon Spike were protected by wards to deflect the power of enemies who sought those Icarii who sheltered within.
If the enchantments still existed, they would protect her — StarLaughter hoped — from the Demons’ power. Oh, the Demons would surely hunt for her, but they would not do it themselves. The Demons were obsessed with the hunt for the StarSon, and so Qeteb would set the Hawkchilds to StarLaughter’s discovery.
And that suited StarLaughter’s logically-maddened plan perfectly.
They’d emerged from Spiredore’s blue tunnel at the northern foot of Talon Spike. Of the mountain, only the lower third remained: the top portions lay over nearby peaks and in valleys in great, black, jagged boulders. StarLaughter looked about the area where she stood; it was pebbly, slick with ice and crisscrossed with cracks and chasms, but it was navigable nevertheless. Here had once wound a great glacier, but that had exploded into billions of deadly ice shards during Qeteb’s rape of the land, and the shards had dispersed over the entire Alps.
Now, the hidden tunnels into the mountain’s basements were revealed.
StarLaughter grinned, and dragged WolfStar towards the entrance to a tunnel slightly to the east.
After three steps, WolfStar finally managed to wrench himself free with a mighty effort.
“You cold-souled bitch!” he cried, his breath frosting in the air. “What are you doing now?”
“Trying to save your life,” she said, leaning down to grab him once again. “You’ll thank me for it soon enough.”
WolfStar laughed, hard and bitter. “And doubtless you also work to save Tencendor from the Demons.”
“There are better things for us to save than the damned land.” Don’t you hear our son screaming for us to save him? Don’t you hear him, WolfStar?
“You were ever the traitor, StarLaughter. That is the one thing you cannot betray.”
She straightened, and stared at him. Her face was inscrutable. “We loved each other once.”
“It was a lie. We never loved each other. We only used each other.”
She refused to hear his words. “We can love each other again.”
“Have you gone mad?” WolfStar rolled over a little, laughing at his unintentional joke, and managed to get to his feet.
“Good,” StarLaughter said. “You can walk. Now I won’t have to drag you.”
“I can walk away from you, you treacherous whore,” WolfStar whispered, and he gave a sudden, great lurch to the edge of a chasm.
“No!” StarLaughter screamed, and lunged for him, but it was too late.
“You’ll never get your claws into my soul again,” WolfStar said, and stepped off the edge.
StarLaughter dropped to her knees, her wings rising behind her. Surely she could haul him out!
But the gap was too narrow. WolfStar had fallen into a chasm less than two arm-spans wide, and while it was wide enough to gobble him up, it was not wide enough to give StarLaughter room to manoeuvre her wings in order to effect a rescue.
The chasm dropped to unknowable depths, black rock slicked with ice, and there was no sign of WolfStar save for a smear of blood on a rock some two paces down.
StarLaughter stared, and then laughed, sending it ringing down the chasm. “You might think to escape me, or think to fool me into believing you dead, WolfStar,” she shouted, “but your efforts are wasted. Our love is destined!”
And then she lifted her head, and glanced at the sky. The laughter died from her face, and she got to her feet, slipping very slightly on the ice, and turned towards the tunnel entrance. WolfStar had escaped for the moment, but StarLaughter knew that Fate would ensure their paths crossed again.
After all, weren’t they meant to enjoy a destiny together?
An instant’s hesitation, then StarLaughter ran inside the tunnel, wondering if, at the least, she might find a cloak left over from the Icarii’s residency.
The Hawkchilds soared in a great black cloud in the thermals that rose from the central plain of the wasteland. They had been set to the hunt, and they revelled in it.
Save … save for the object of the hunt. Like StarLaughter had once done, the Hawkchilds had given their allegiance to the Questors in return for power and an entry back into the world they’d been tipped from.
Like StarLaughter had once been driven, the Hawkchilds were driven by one necessity: revenge on WolfStar. If the Questors — the Demons — gave them power, well and good. The Hawkchilds were grateful and they would do the Demons’ bidding.
So long as their bidding did not interfere with the great quest for revenge, and so long as they were not required to hunt one of their own.
And the Hawkchilds still regarded StarLaughter as one of their own: they had not learnt of the shift in her priorities, or of the deeper madnesses that had claimed her mind.
Nevertheless, they did as Qeteb ordered and rose on the thermals before separating in a dozen different directions. They would find StarLaughter, but for their own purposes, not Qeteb’s.
StarLaughter walked through the corridors of the deep underground interior of Talon Spike. Some sections of the corridors had crumbled when the top of the mountain had exploded, and the rubble forced StarLaughter to sometimes