The Hawkchilds whispered in the rat's mind, and it turned its head back to the walls rising above it and bared its yellowed teeth in what pa.s.sed for a grin.

Now was its time.

114.

13.Drago hesitated at the edge of the crystal forest, and then stepped onto its slippery floor. He paused and, as StarLaughter had done, rested a hand on the trunk of the nearest tree.

It was warm, and solid, and somehow comforting. Drago dropped his hand and straightened, his eyes surveying the forest before him. He took a deep breath, then stepped forward, following the flash of blue feathers between the trees below him.

Like the Demons, he walked for hours, marvelling that the forest extended so far. Always the feathered lizard scrabbled, and sometimes slid, two or three trees in front of him, leading him downwards. In time the creature stood before a blackened crust that lay on the forest floor in a small glade. Drago stopped, and looked about him. He could feel the faint resonance of Demons in this place. What had they done here? He looked down at the crust. The feathered lizard was snuffling about its edges, reaching out one claw to sc.r.a.pe hesitantly at the stuff. His talons came away encrusted in flaky red filth, and the lizard backed off, hissing.

"What is it, my friend?" Drago said, squatting by the lizard and stroking its feathers. "What is this ..."

115 .

He dropped his hand to the crusty stuff, and made a sound of disgust as his fingers touched it. Dried blood!

Drago screwed up his face and stood, rubbing his fingers free of the crumbling flakes.

His fingers stilled, and he bent down again, sc.r.a.ped up a handful of the blood and dropped it into his sack.

His other hand momentarily tightened about the rosewood staff, and without thinking, Drago lifted the staff forward and sc.r.a.ped away a part of the blood.

He fell motionless, and looked awhile, and the lizard raised its eyes and studied Drago curiously.

"I think," Drago said tonelessly, "that we have reached our destination."

Underneath the dried blood was a trapdoor.

Grimacing, Drago bent down and swept away as much of the blood as he could. Then he lifted the door, revealing a well of steps circling down into darkness.

Much as, had Drago but known it, steps had once led from each of the Ancient Barrows into the Chamber of the Star Gate.

"Well," Drago began, speaking to the lizard, but he got no further, for the lizard had leapt into the stairwell and was already slithering and sliding his way down.

Drago smiled, and stepped after him.

He did not walk very far down the narrow, twisting staircase before it opened into a corridor that stretched some fifty paces, ending in a circular door. The lizard was snuffling about its hinges.

Drago stepped onto the smooth, grey metallic floor of the corridor, and paused to study it. The floor was slightly levelled out, but only about the width of an arm, otherwise the pa.s.sageway was completely circular, rising to a point about half an arm's length above his head. The roof of the corridor was lit by gently-glowing circles, each a pace apart down its entire length. The walls were cool to the touch, but vibrated very gently.

116*

As if they were alive.

A line of inscriptions ran at shoulder height down the walls. Drago stared at them, then lifted his staff and compared the inscriptions set there with those on the wall. They were the same, the strange black circles with feathered handles rising from their backs, running in a dancing, weaving line.

"These ancients," Drago said to the lizard, "had a strange script indeed."

Then he walked down to the door and inspected it.

There was no handle, although one side had hinges. Obviously it opened. But how?

Drago pushed, but with no success. He frowned, his fingers tapping gently against the door. On the wall by the door was a recessed rectangular section, filled with nine slightly raised k.n.o.bs of the same cool, grey material as door and corridor.

Drago stared at them, then slowly raised his hand and rested his fingers on the raised k.n.o.bs.

Instantly his mind flooded with an extraordinary vision.

Two old men, one short and squat, the other tall and thin, had marched down this very corridor once.

Drago's frown deepened. Who? One of the men turned and spoke to his companion, and Drago recognised the voice instantly. They were the Sentinels, Ogden and Veremund, and this was the doorway by which they had accessed the Repository.

He watched as the vision unwound itself.

The Sentinels walked to the spot he now stood, and the tall one, Veremund, lifted his hand and placed it as Drago now had his placed.

Then he had hummed a fragment of melody, and his fingers had danced accordingly.

The memory faded, although the short melody lingered; it was a part of the same tune the Sentinels had taught him before he'd been dragged back through the Star Gate.

117.

Drago stood, almost as if in a trance, replaying the vision over and over. Then, in a flash of inspiration, Drago realised that Veremund had transferred the melody into a pattern, and had then transferred the pattern onto the raised k.n.o.bs. Drago ran the tune through his head, translating it from melody to pattern almost without thought. He transferred the pattern onto the rows of k.n.o.bs with his fingers.

Instantly the door swung inwards with a soft hiss.

The lizard gave a soft cry and scampered through.

But Drago stood still, his head bowed, thinking. Something very, very important had just happened, and he struggled to understand it. He ... he ...

"d.a.m.n it!" Drago whispered. "What did I just do?"

He had used the pattern of melody to accomplish a purpose.

Is that not what Icarii Enchanters did?

And yet there was no Star Dance, no power, no magic. No enchantment left.

Drago shuddered, and the grip of his left hand tightened about his staff. He had not only opened a door, he had also just been taught something.

Ah! Frustrated, feeling that the answer danced just beyond the reaches of his mind, Drago put the problem to one side and stepped through the door.

It swung shut behind him.

Drago paid it no heed. Before him stretched yet another corridor, similar to the last with the pattern of feathered circles on the walls, but curving into a left-hand bend some twenty paces ahead.

Beyond the bend the corridor branched into two. Drago took the left-hand fork without hesitation and then, when it again branched, took the right-hand fork. It led into a flight of steep steps leading to a higher level, and Drago grinned as he imagined how the two Sentinels would have grumbled about climbing them.

Somehow, their presence was still very much here.

118.

There was a large rectangular room at the top of the steps. The walls were literally smothered with the feather-backed circles. Metallic racks stood in three ranks, almost empty, save for half a dozen gla.s.s jars.

They were empty.

Drago looked about. There were three doors, rectangular now, in the far wall, each of them open. Which one?

From the door on the far right came the faint hum of vast power, but Drago understood he should not take that one.

He walked through the middle doorway instead. Before him stretched yet another corridor, but very short, and ending in yet another doorway through which .. . through which Drago thought he could see stars.

Stars?

Hesitant now, Drago walked down the corridor to the door, took a deep breath, and stepped through.

He stood in a strange room. The walls, ceiling, benches and even parts of the floor were covered with metal plates, and these plates were studded with k.n.o.bs and bright jewel-like lights. Before him were the high backs of several chairs, facing enormous windows that looked out upon the universe.

One of the chairs before him swivelled, revealing a silver-haired man in its depths. He wore a uniform made of a leathery black material; gold braid hung at his shoulders and encircled the cuffs of his sleeves, and in his first glance Drago saw a black, peaked cap, gold braid about its brim, sitting on the bench behind him.

But it was the man's face underneath his silvery hair which riveted Drago's attention.

It was lined with care ... and more. Agonising pain had scored a network of deep lines into the man's skin.

His right hand clenched spasmodically in the tunic over his chest, and he breathed erratically, great deep breaths that tore through his throat.

A slight movement distracted Drago's attention momentarily. The blue-feathered lizard sat to one side under 119.

an empty chair, his black eyes unblinking on the man in the chair.

"Drago," said the man, and Drago looked back to him.

"You are Faraday's Noah," he said, and then stepped forward to touch Noah's shoulder. "What is wrong?"

Noah's mouth twisted. "I am suffering the ill-effects of redundancy," he said. "No, no, that is wrong. I am simply being recycled."

"I don't understand," Drago said. He touched Noah's shoulder again, leaving his hand resting there this time. "What can I do to help?"

Noah lifted his own hand to pat Drago's. "First of all, you can sit down. Then you can listen and accept."

"I meant," Drago said softly, "what can I do to aid you')" "Me?" Noah raised tortured brown eyes and looked into Drago's violet gaze. "You can do nothing to help me. I am dying. After all this time, I am finally, finally dying."

Then he grunted with pain, doubling over in the chair.

Drago dropped his staff and grabbed him, wanting to help, but not knowing what to do. In the end he just knelt by the chair and held Noah, trying to give some measure of comfort.

Noah managed to straighten. His face was slick with sweat.

"We have all been waiting too long," he whispered harshly, "for me to die before I tell you what you must know."

"All?" Drago said.

Noah lifted a trembling hand and pointed to the window filled with the tens of thousands of stars beyond.

"All of us," he repeated. "The Stars."

120.

111 the Chamber of the Enemy Noah looked at one of the empty chairs, as if considering asking Drago to sit in it, then gave a tired sigh and took Drago's hand in his. He glanced at the newly-healed scar on Drago's neck, but said nothing.

Drago settled on the floor, moving the staff to one side as the lizard crept over and curled up against his legs.

"Tell me," Drago said, and Noah nodded, raised his head, and searched the panels under the window.

"Will you press the copper k.n.o.b on the panel?" Noah asked, and Drago leaned over, hesitated, then firmly pressed a glowing k.n.o.b.

Instantly the view from the forward window changed. The stars disappeared, and Drago found himself looking out on a world filled with mountains and valleys, plains and oceans.

He frowned. "I have not seen this place before."

"Nay. This is not Tencendor, although it is much like it. It is my world. My home."

Drago looked at Noah. Beneath 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."

. 121 .

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 h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d! Midday!" Noah shuddered violently, struggled to control himself, then continued, his voice hoa.r.s.e with the remembered horror.

"Midday is too terrible to even speak about - thank every G.o.d you pray to, Drago, that Tencendor has not yet been subjected to Qeteb's malice!"