Its words tumbled fast over its tongue, warped i speaking.

"Dogs!" cried another.

"Hounds!" cried yet another.

"They run for that man and woman and their son."

"StarSon?"

"StarSon?"

StarSon?

"What name is he called by?"

"Caelum!"

As one they hissed and fluttered. "That is the name!"

And then, in a single, smooth and totally co-ordinated movement, they all flipped onto their backs and floated in the thermals, their eyes staring blankly upwards towards the sun, their minds communing.

The TimeKeepers travelled the central Skarabost Plains. Their black horses strode forth on untiring legs, their paws eating into the gra.s.s and killing the distance that still needed to be travelled to the Lake of Life.

Sigholt lay before them.

Sigholt!

StarLaughter sat her horse with ease. She had never been happier in her . . . well, in any of her lives or existences. She had power again, and she revelled in its soothing caress. In her arms she rocked the toddler boy, rejoicing in his warmth. Next - breath. StarLaughter could hardly wait to hear him draw breath for the first time, and she longed to be woken in the midnight hours by his squalling.

And then to feel him squirming in her arms.

183.

But he would be too large then, wouldn't he? By the time they got to Fernbrake Lake and he gained movement, DragonStar would be a youth.

"My baby!" she whispered, and smiled. By that time she would no longer be able to hold him to her breast, but by then, the loss would be no loss at all.

She kicked her horse into greater efforts, and fixed her eyes on the Demons ahead.

About StarLaughter fluttered her torn, blue robe, rusted into great stiff patches by dried blood, and behind her streamed her dark hair and white wings.

The Queen of Heaven she might be, yet StarLaughter looked more demonic than any of her companions.

"Sssss." Raspu held up his hand, bringing the group to a halt. "Listen."

The Demons crooked their heads slightly to the east, and StarLaughter looked that way, too. She knew what was happening - the flock of twenty-seven Hawkchilds that was scavenging the forests looking for the StarSon were communing with the TimeKeepers - but she could not hear them herself.

"What is it?" she asked. "What do they say? Have they found him?"

"Shush!" Barzula said, his eyes intense, but his voice was not unkind, and StarLaughter tried to stifle her impatience.

Slowly Sheol smiled, and then the other Demons followed suit. Smiled, and then howled with laughter.

"What is it?" StarLaughter cried.

Sheol turned her head to the birdwoman. "They have located the StarSon," she said, "and he walks into a dark trap.

She lifted her face into the sun. "Trap!" she screamed.

184.

21.Faraday was terribly wounded by the donkeys' rejection. Never previously had they snapped so at her, or kicked. Why, if they had wanted some different path from hers, had they let her know it in such a mean- spirited manner?

She travelled silently, and Drago let her be, walking by her side, only speaking in low tones when they needed to camp and erect their tent, or to warn her of a particularly deep chasm in the desiccated earth that intersected their path.

They'd been appalled by the sight that had greeted them on the northern border of the Silent Woman Woods.

The Demons' influence had laid waste to the land. Vegetation had either disappeared completely, or had bleached out to grey stalks running with red rust. Cracks angled crazily across the dried plains, and b.a.l.l.s of vegetation and dust rolled with a horrible languidness towards distant horizons. Sometimes they dropped out of sight into the unknown depths of dark chasms that split the earth.

Small creatures - lizards, gra.s.shoppers, beetles - scurried in and out of the cracks in the earth. Most had terrible suppurating wounds, most behaved . . . oddly.

It had only taken Faraday and Drago a few minutes to understand why the creatures were so wounded: they attacked each other without provocation, mindless, soulless * 185.

attacks that gained them only a brief mouthful of flesh that they sometimes swallowed, sometimes spat out.

They tried to attack Faraday and Drago as well, but the blue-feathered lizard hissed at them violently, and the creatures eventually kept their distance.

The journey through the Plains of Arcness was hardly enjoyable. This was a cold, bleak desert, scorched of life and laughter, and running with madness.

"And this is only what the Demons can accomplish in two weeks," Faraday murmured, heartbroken by the sight. "What can they do in six months, or with Qeteb at their side?"

She glanced at Drago, but his face was as bleak as the landscape, his thoughts obviously no better, and she was glad he did not answer her.

The feathered lizard ranged ahead of them as they walked north. It scared away what life there was, sniffed out cracks - and poked its talons down particularly interesting ones - and curled up as if to sleep when it got so far ahead it had to wait for its companions to catch up.

Sometimes they could see his blue clump of feathers far ahead, a bright, incongruous splotch of colour in a drained landscape.

They walked northwards in as direct a line as they could go, heading for the hills of Rhaetia and then the Nordra. Drago hoped they could find a boat to carry them further northward faster than their current rate of travel.

At odd moments of the day Drago felt a sickness sweep through him, a knowledge of where the Demons were and, to some extent, of what they did. The link that had been forged between them was both help and hindrance. Drago knew it was invaluable to know where the Demons were. On the other hand the link was so sickening (and reminiscent of the horrific pain he'd endured during the leaps, a memory of hooks dragged from his heels up through his body), and the knowledge of the speed and 186.

joyousness of the Demons' travel so disconcerting, that Drago often wished he could remain unaware of their presence, and their progress.

He was glad they did not yet know of his survival, and wondered what they would make of it when they did find out. . . and what they might do.

Sometimes he looked skyward, expecting any moment to see the great dark sweep of the cloud of Hawkchilds. But the Demons obviously had them occupied elsewhere, and Drago felt some measure of sympathy for whichever poor soul they'd decided to torment.

He pushed Faraday northward as fast as he could, although their progress was slowed by the necessity to shelter within their tent during the Demonic Hours. They became adept at travelling until the last possible moment when they would whip the tent from Drago's pack and erect it almost in the blink of an eye, dropping their packs outside and s.n.a.t.c.hing the lizard to safety as they scrambled inside.

There they would sit, often talking, but just as often s.n.a.t.c.hing some sleep as the grey miasma settled its heavy infection over the land.

Some few days after they had left the Silent Woman Woods, Faraday began to dream.

At first the dreams were formless, just a feeling of dread and helplessness, but after the third one Faraday began to distinguish the lost voice of a child.

A small girl, helpless, vulnerable, lost, desperate.

Mama? Mama? Where are you? Why won't you come? Mama?

The child's lost voice tore into Faraday's sense of frustrated motherhood. She struggled to reach out to the girl, but she was too far away to reach.

Too far away.

North.

Drago became aware of the dreams one night when he woke to feel Faraday tossing beside him. He lay a moment, * 187 *

staring at her face, then laid a hand on her shoulder and shook her gently.

Faraday jerked away, her eyes wide and desperate.

She stared about the tent, as if trying to remember where she was, then the turned to Drago and grabbed his hands. "Did you hear her?"

"Who?"

"The girl, the little girl." Faraday sat up. "I can still hear her! Drago, can't you hear her?"

He shook his head slowly, his eyes concerned. At his back the feathered lizard raised his own head and stared at Faraday.

"Lost," Faraday whispered. "Somewhere north ..."

Drago stroked her thick hair back from her forehead, worried for her, and wondering if her dream was Demon-inspired. Had they scried him out?

As he smoothed her hair back, Faraday's eyes gradually lost some of their wildness, and she calmed down a little.

"It was dream," Drago said softly. "Nothing else. A dream."

Faraday was not ready to be soothed completely. "Must we go to Gorkenfort first?"

"Where else?"

Faraday suddenly realised she was more aware of Drago's hand stroking her hair than she was concerned about the lost girl, and she jerked her head back, angry that he should have distracted her away from her purpose and frightened by her reaction to him. No. No! No more love. Drago let his hand drop without comment.

"We need to reach her," Faraday said. "She's lost."

"Who?"

"I don't know ..."

"Perhaps after Gorkenfort -"

"No! We should go now. I don't want to go to Gorkenfort."

"Faraday ..."

But she turned her face away, and after a moment Drago sighed and settled back into his blanket. "We can go nowhere 188.

now, Faraday, and Gorkenfort is north anyway. It was a dream. A dream, nothing more."

But the dreams continued, and they drove their own angling cracks into Drago and Faraday's relationship.

As they turned westwards towards the Nordra, Drago noticed that Faraday kept glancing true north, and she became quieter and quieter the more they moved north-west.

"Star Finger," she said one morning as they broke camp. "She's in Star Finger."

Drago stood and watched her. She was bustling about the tent, folding it as quickly as she could, lifting an impatient hand to jerk stray tendrils of hair out of her eyes and face.

"Faraday," he said, but she did not look at him, and Drago was forced to walk over and take her by the arm.

"Faraday."

She straightened and stared at him. "Do you not hear her?" she whispered. "She tears into my mind every time I close my eyes. Drago, she's so lost... so lost!"

Drago looked into her eyes, then drew her against him, trying to give her what comfort he could with his presence. She was stiff and unyielding, and Drago was not sure whether it was because she was impatient to reach the girl, or because she disliked him holding her.

Drago suddenly found himself hoping very much that it was because Faraday wanted to reach the girl.

"We will go to Star Finger after Gorkenfort," he said quietly. "To see Caelum, and to find this girl of yours."

She pulled away from him.

"It may be too late then," she said tonelessly, and stuffed the tent into Drago's pack.

Two nights later, sleeping in their tent pitched in the western foothills of the Rhaetian hills, the girl also reached out to Drago.

She was tiny, frail, helpless. Winds of demonic intent buffeted her, pushing her closer and closer to the razor edge 189'.

of an infinite cliff, and she wailed and cried, Help me! Help me! Mama? Mama?

Even caught as he was in his dream, Drago felt tears slide down his cheek, and he understood Faraday's desperation to reach the girl. Indeed, he could feel Faraday within the dream. She was somewhere in the darkness that surrounded the girl, and Drago could feel her reaching out, reaching out, but never quite reaching the child.

He opened his mouth to call out to the girl that they would reach her soon, very soon, be calm, hold on, we're almost there . . . when suddenly he felt another presence within the dream.

Something dark and loathsome, something heavy and cruel, and something much, much closer to the girl than either he or Faraday.

He turned his attention back to the girl. She was silent now, terrified, her eyes jerking about the darkness, trying to see what it was that approached. She was crouched protectively about something, but Drago could not quite make it out. The child's eyes jerked to her left, focusing on something moving towards her.

Drago looked, and cried out. A gigantic figure loomed out of the blackness, a man several handspans taller than any man Drago had ever seen before, and encased entirely in black armour.