StarDrifter walked slowly forward. He pa.s.sed through the doors, and then set foot on the bridge.
He did not take his eyes off the distant valley.
"Are you true?" the bridge asked with the cadence of a songstress.
"Yes," StarDrifter said. "I am true," and took another step forward until his full weight rested on the bridge.
"You are not he who is true," the bridge cried, and without further ado, vanished.
StarDrifter plummeted into the chasm in a flash of white and gold.
.410.
"Ah," said WingRidge, his voice heavy with the sagacious wisdom of hindsight.
The TimeKeeper Demons sat their black horses through the midnight hour and stared at the bridge stretching into Sigholt.
They were powerful, more powerful than they had been in many, many tens of thousands of years. They had fed well of the souls of Tencendor, and they had increased their power further with each Lake they visited. They still had some distance to go before they attained their full powers - two lakes" distance - but now they were more dangerous, and hungrier, than Tencendor had yet seen them. Or felt them.
They hated the Keep rising silvery grey before them. They hated it because of its inherent beauty and gracefulness, but mostly they hated it because it did not fear them.
In fact, the Keep of Sigholt chose to ignore them.
Slightly to one side, StarLaughter watched the Demons rather than the bridge. She did not totally understand their antipathy towards the Keep. It was irritating, yes, and the bridge was more than annoying, but why worry about one stone Keep when further power and glory awaited them to the south?
Her son was more important.
She turned her lovely head slightly to run her eyes over her boy. Surely no fairer youth than he had ever existed. It was all she could do not to lean across the distance that separated them - for now the boy"s size required him to ride his own black mount - and run her hand over his soft, warm skin. Feel his chest rise and fall with every breath.
He was only movement and soul away from wholeness, and when that happened StarLaughter thought she would not be able to bear the strength of her happiness, nor her love for her boy.
So why did the Demons waste time here, staring at the Keep, when they should be hasting south towards Fernbrake?
411.
"Something waits within that stone," Sheol said.
"But the Keep is deserted," StarLaughter said. "All have run for the hills."
She swivelled a little in her saddle so she could see the first of the Urqhart Hills guarding the entrance to the HoldHard Pa.s.s.
"Fools!" she cried. "Do you not know your masters when you see them? Will you not come and do them honour?"
The TimeKeepers ignored her, and, for the moment, her boy. Their mission was to give him life, but they must also guard against the Enemy"s traps that might yet defeat their hopes.
And they sensed something in this Keep.
Something powerful, something dangerous, something wrapped in deep, deep enchantment.
Something that might make a mockery of the Hunt.
"I do not know what it is," Mot whispered in a voice papery-harsh with frustration.
"StarLaughter," Sheol said, finally wrenching her eyes from the Keep to the birdwoman. "You said that the bridge guards the Keep."
"Yes. The blue mists we pa.s.sed through are in part her creation."
Sheol glanced at her companions, and shared thoughts they did not allow StarLaughter to hear.
"I will go," Rox said. "It is my time, and perhaps terror will disconcert the bridge."
The other Demons finally, grudgingly, nodded.
"Take care," Raspu said. "And seek out that which the silvery stone hides."
Rox nudged his horse-beast forwards, and it placed a firm black paw on the bridge.
"Are you true?" the bridge asked. "Yes," Rox answered. "I am true."
"Then cross, Demon," the bridge said, "and I shall test the strength of your words."
Rox was halfway across when the bridge spoke again.
,412.
"Rox, Demon of Terror," she said, "I have a message for you."
"Yes?" Rox looked over his shoulder and smiled at the other Demons. He could feel the bridge"s magic all about him, and it was as they"d originally thought - an inconsequential thing. Rox knew he could best it himself, and with the combined power of his companions, they would easily tear this bridge apart stone by stone.
"A message," the bridge repeated. "And yet it will not be my voice that imparts it."
And the air before Rox shimmered, and a red-haired young man dressed in very ordinary breeches and a white linen shirt stood there. His entire body was relaxed, almost lazy. Both hands rested on his hips, his weight on one leg.
"h.e.l.lo, Rox," he said. "Remember me?"
Rox took one huge breath, held it ... and then screamed, as did every one of the Demons behind him.
The man laughed. "Will you step into my parlour, Rox?"
StarLaughter, acting on the pure fear generated by the Demons - for she could not possibly see what was so fearful about this man - leaned over from her mount, grabbed the reins of her son"s horse, and then urged both horses into a flat run towards the HoldHard Pa.s.s.
The red-haired man vanished as quickly as he had appeared, but the moment he disappeared from view, the bridge began to alter.
Sinewy black legs, eight of them, branched out from her sides. The portion of the bridge that rested at Sigholt"s foot reared into the air, and became a black rounded head with a hundred eyes and a gaping mouth.
The end of the bridge closest to the Demons - although they had quickly retreated to follow StarLaughter - swelled into the black abdomen of ... of a ma.s.sive, frightful black arachnid.
Eight legs closed about Rox and his horse with an audible snap. The rounded head darted in and out of its legs, and 413.
each time it reappeared, it was covered with the sweet wetness of torn flesh. Then, with a huge splash, the spider and her catch dropped into the moat surrounding Sigholt.
The waters foamed and roiled for several heartbeats, and then gentled into stillness.
The bridge glimmered into substance over the moat again.
There was no-one else about, but the bridge spoke anyway. "Are you true?" she asked the night air, and then broke into pealing laughter. "Are you true?"
And Sigholt smiled, and wrapped itself ever closer about the treasure it harboured.
All around Tencendor men and women, beasts of the air and plain alike, shivered and wondered at the sudden beauty of the night.
Terror had vanished.
414.
W:.
* hat do you mean, you thought Drago would have to be the first to cross?" StarDrifter demanded.
With barely a ruffled feather, but with considerable angst, he"d risen from the chasm and alighted before WingRidge.
Zenith breathed a gentle sigh of relief. For a moment...
WingRidge had the grace to look discomforted. "Undoubtedly, approach to Sanctuary is intimately linked to the presence of the ... of Drago."
StarDrifter blinked, biting down another angry outburst.
"StarDrifter," WingRidge continued. "I am sorry. I just didn"t connect the script around the door with the enchantments needed to cross the bridge."
Deciding to accept the apology with the merest of nods, StarDrifter turned slightly to stare across the chasm into Sanctuary. The valley was utterly extraordinary, and looked as if it stretched, in all its loveliness, into eternity. We could fit the populations of fifteen worlds into that enchanted place, he thought, and there would still be room for all to dance the Hey-de-Gie with ease.
"Couldn"t we just fly across?" Zenith asked.
StarDrifter shook his head. "The other side of the chasm is warded tightly with enchantment. I tried to fly across to the other side when -" his eyes flitted momentarily to ,415 *
WingRidge, "- the bridge vanished, but could not penetrate the thick veil of sorcery that hangs to protect the other side."
"Thus must we fetch Drago," WingRidge said. "We can do no more here, and no more for those above who need to cross that bridge."
"Where is he?" one of the other Icarii asked.
"North," WingRidge said. "Come," he laid a hand on SpikeFeather"s shoulder. "I need your knowledge of the waterways, my friend, to reach Drago."
SpikeFeather looked helplessly between StarDrifter and WingRidge. "I know the way, WingRidge, but you know how long it took us to get from Sigholt to the Minaret Peaks using the waterways. Days, at least, for I have not the enchantment to use the waterways as once did the Ferryman. Meanwhile, no doubt the Demons progress from Lake to Lake, breath quickens Qeteb"s body . . . and Sanctuary remains denied to the peoples of Tencendor."
"We must do the best we can -" WingRidge began, but was interrupted by StarDrifter.
"Wait. Zenith, will you return to the Minaret Peaks with JestWing and his companions?"
"Yes, but -"
"Get them organised for an evacuation as quickly as you can. Within days," StarDrifter took a deep breath, "I hope we will have Drago here to open Sanctuary."
"And you?" Zenith asked.
"I will go with WingRidge and SpikeFeather."
She nodded, both relieved and disappointed that they would be parted for a while.
"What happened?" StarLaughter shouted. She had pulled her and her son"s horses to a halt half a league into the shelter of the HoldHard Pa.s.s, waiting for the Demons to catch up.
Now four of them had, their horses still rolling reddened eyes in fear, their sides still heaving with panic.
416".
The Demons were not in a much calmer state. "Where"s Rox?" StarLaughter screamed, both terrified and furious.
Sheol turned on StarLaughter and snarled, a vicious animalistic sound that sent StarLaughter reeling back in her saddle.
"Think to question us, girl?"
"Then tell me why Rox no longer rides with you, and why terror no longer patrols the night!" "Rox," Mot ground out, "is gone." StarLaughter shot a look at her son, as if somehow she thought he might have been destroyed by that revelation, but the boy sat his horse, motionless and devoid of expression.
StarLaughter turned back to the Demons. All four wore expressions of rage mixed with pure, unadulterated fright.
"I do not know who that red-haired man was ..." she said with a certain caution.
"He was the Enemy -" Raspu began, his pock-marked skin even more ashen than normal.
"I thought all the Enemy were dead," StarLaughter said. "As so they are!" Sheol snapped. "The bridge was, and has always been, a trap. The man was a vision only, a remembrance, meant to ..."
She drifted off, but StarLaughter heard the unspoken phrase lingering in the air. Meant to terrify us.
And more, StarLaughter thought, for has not that vision, that trap, killed Rox?
"He was one of the Enemy who had succeeded in trapping Qeteb," Mot said. "His name is unimportant, but it was his skill and knowledge that was the force behind s.n.a.t.c.hing life from Qeteb. He died may aeons ago, but his memory was encased in the trap."
"Rox?" StarLaughter said. "Gone," Sheol said shortly.
417 .
StarLaughter glanced again at her son. "What does that mean for -"
"In the end, nothing," Sheol said. She had managed to calm herself now, although a thin drool of saliva still ran slowly down her chin. "Qeteb"s resurrection may be accomplished without Rox."
"And your power?" StarLaughter continued, unable to conceal her concern. "What about that?"
Again she glanced at her son. "What about his?"