Pilgrim. Sara Douglass
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his pain, the man’s face was lined with memory and regret.
“And its name?” he said.
Noah’s hand clenched a little more deeply into the black leather of his tunic. “Not important. For all I know it no longer exists. It has been hundreds of thousands of years since I have seen it.”
The view altered. There were the same mountains and valleys, plains and oceans, but all had changed.
Now they were a wasteland of pain and despair, of tempest, pestilence and starvation. Maddened people and animals roamed, tearing at their own bodies and at the bodies of any who ventured near them. Their eyes were blank save for their madness, and ropes of saliva hung from their mouths. All the people were naked, their bodies emaciated and covered with boils and streaks of rot. They lived, but in a hell that Drago could barely comprehend.
“The same world,” Noah rasped into the silence, “after the TimeKeeper Demons had come to ravage. Drago, listen to this my story.”
The view in the window shifted again, back to the stars.
“We do not know from where they came. We simply woke one morning to find half our world gone mad with hunger, and the pain continued through the day, and then into the night.”
Drago remembered how the TimeKeepers had leapt from world to world. No doubt they’d found some other poor soul to drain in order to enter Noah’s world.
“Hunger, then such tempest as we’d never before endured, and then midday — oh God! Midday!” Noah shuddered violently, struggled to control himself, then continued, his voice hoarse with the remembered horror.
“Midday is too terrible to even speak about — thank every god you pray to, Drago, that Tencendor has not yet been subjected to Qeteb’s malice!”
Yet. The word echoed about the spaces between them.
Drago studied Noah’s face. The man seemed in more pain than when Drago had first entered. “But you found a way to trap him.”
“It took us forty years, Drago.”
“Forty years?”
“Can you imagine,” he whispered, “what those forty years were like?”
“How did your people survive?”
“In caves and tunnels and basements, mostly. Drago, your first lesson, and one Faraday already understands, is that the Demons, even Qeteb, cannot touch any who rest under shade. They cannot work their evil in shade. For some reason, the mere fact of shade protects the mind and soul from their touch.”
There was more, but Noah was in too much pain to be bothered explaining it to Drago. The man would discover it soon enough, in any case.
“Ah, thus the forest keeps myself, Zared and his army,” Drago slid a glance towards the feathered lizard, “and all the fey creatures safe.”
“Until the Demons gain enough power to strip the leaves, yes.”
“And Qeteb? How did you manage to capture him?”
“With mirrors. We trapped him inside a chamber that was completely mirrored. He could not escape, and any power he used was turned back against him.”
“Mirrors? How could they —”
Noah grunted, and his face paled even more than it was already. He took several deep breaths, and then spoke rapidly, as if he knew he had not much longer.
“Mirrors … we mirrored him back to himself, we mirrored his hate back to himself. But …” Noah suppressed a groan, and momentarily closed his eyes, “unfortunately you will not have the same success now. The TimeKeepers are somewhat wary of mirrors and reflections.”
“And so you —”
“And so we — or those who had the skill among us, for not all among us commanded the strength — dismembered him. They took his breath and warmth and movement and soul and separated them.”
“His body?”
Noah shrugged. “It was useless. I think we burned it, although I am not sure.”
And thus the need for a new body to house Qeteb, thought Drago.
“No-one initially knew what to do with these life components,” Noah continued. His voice and breath were easier now, as if his pain had levelled out. “In themselves they were still horrendously dangerous. We tried to destroy them, but found we could not. The other TimeKeepers were doing their best to steal them back from us — and they were powerful. Too powerful for us to hold out against for very long.”
“So you decided to flee through the universe with them.”
“Yes. It was the best we could do. I volunteered to lead the fleet of craft —”
“Craft?”
Noah looked up at the chamber. “We sit in the command chamber of the command craft. The craft are, ah, like ships that sail the seas, but these sail the universe.”
Drago nodded hesitantly, struggling to come to grips with the concept.
“We set sail with four craft, one for each of Qeteb’s life components, for we dared not store them in the same place. It was a mission that all of us —”
“Us?”
Noah’s mouth thinned at the constant interruption — could the man not see he was in pain? “We had twelve crew members in each of the craft. Well, anyway, it was a mission that we all doubted we could return from.”
“You knew you would never go home again. Noah … who did you leave behind?”
Tears slid down Noah’s cheeks. “A daughter — my wife was dead. Her name is … was … Katie. It was … it was hard, but I went knowing she would live in a better world for my flight.”
Drago placed a hand on Noah’s knee. “I am sorry, Noah.”
“I know you are. Thank you. Well, we fled through the universe. For many thousands of years.”
Drago frowned, noting Noah’s deteriorating state. “You are immortal? How else could you survive a journey of so long?”
Noah gave a harsh bark of laughter. “Immortal? Nay, obviously not! Our craft were equipped with … sleeping chambers, I guess you can call them, and in these we spent most of our time. The craft were set with self-guidance systems, and we generally slept, trusting in them to do their best.”
Noah paused. “As a race, we had travelled parts of the universe before, but never so far or for so long as our fleet did. We did not realise what such lengthy travel through the stars would do to our craft.”
Noah paused, remembering, and this time Drago did not bother him with a question.
“Our craft were woken by the music of the stars,” Noah eventually continued. “And from that music they learned.”
“Learned?”
Noah did not speak for some minutes, and when he finally did, his voice was soft with wonder. “Drago, your Icarii race speak of the Star Dance, the music that the stars make as they dance through the universe. While we slept, the music of the Star Dance infiltrated the craft, changing them, creating an awareness that was not there previously.
“They changed, and were filled with a purpose of their own. They changed,” he repeated, as if still trying to understand it himself.
“Periodically we woke from our sleep to make sure the craft were operating normally. On one memorable occasion,” Noah actually managed a smile, as he remembered the shock of his crew, “we woke to find that the craft would no longer obey our instructions. We found ourselves passengers, as much cargo as Qeteb’s life parts.
“The craft altered course, heading for a different part of the universe than that which