Behind him DareWing struggled to his feet and stood by Drago"s side. Drago glanced at him.
"Be patient," he murmured. "Not today, but one day ..."
Suddenly Theod screamed in utter grief and fury. "They"re gone!"
As he"d watched, the entire ma.s.s of people had . . . vanished. The crimson tide had spread to the further reaches of the huge crowd, and the entire twenty thousand had simply vanished.
All that was left was the crimson lily lying in the centre of the gra.s.sy flat, its petals ruffling slightly in the wind.
Sheol screamed, doubled over, and fell from her mount.
As one, the other three Demons also cried out, and convulsed, all dropping from their mounts and crawling and capering through the dust of the eastern Rhaetian Plains. Both WolfStar and StarLaughter stared in amazement, although each was consumed by very different emotions.
WolfStar slowly smiled, but StarLaughter blanched, her eyes wide with concern.
"They do not seem well, my beloved wife," WolfStar said, looking at StarLaughter slyly. "Why is that, do you think?"
She shrieked, and tugged hard on his chain, but even the pain of the choking collar could not wipe the smile from WolfStar"s face.
"Do you think this is what the StarSon shall do to them when he inevitably meets your sweet companions?"
he gasped, and StarLaughter"s mouth hardened and she stabbed into him with her power as well until WolfStar"s smile finally faded and he shrieked as loud as the Demons.
But her satisfaction at WolfStar"s agony could not dampen her concern at the plight of the Demons, and she almost immediately turned her attention back to them.
"What"s wrong," she cried. "What"s wrong?"
Sheol was the first to regain some semblance of control, 630.
and StarLaughter finally perceived that they were convulsing with rage more than anything else. "We have lost the souls of a crowd, StarLaughter," Sheol hissed. "A croivdl Something, someone has s.n.a.t.c.hed them from us! Who? Who? Who?"
"StarSon Caelum," WolfStar managed to say from the dirt. "StarSon Caelum."
Sheol stared at him so viciously WolfStar cringed helplessly, certain she would set one of the other Demons to his rape, but she finally turned aside and howled into the wind.
"Attack! Attack! Attack!"
"They"ve gone, you misbegotten b.a.s.t.a.r.d! They"ve gone! Where are my sons?"
It was Katie rather than Drago who answered. She walked over to the lily, picked it up, then returned to stand before Theod. Very slowly she held it out to him.
Leagh smiled, as did Gwendylyr. Faraday"s eyes filled with tears.
Theod stared at the lily, then at Katie.
She regarded him solemnly.
Theod"s eyes dropped back to the lily, then he reached out to take it with a trembling hand.
Something unusual, but unutterably sweet, swept through him, and when he raised his eyes he found that he - and all the others still in the same positions about him - stood in an infinite field of flowers. Even the feathered lizard was there, snuffling through the flowers for insects. All the women, Gwendylyr included, wore the low-draped heavy white linen robes, while Goldman and DareWing both wore short tunics of the same material over leather sandals.
DareWing FullHeart very slowly stretched out a wing behind him - now fully-healed and glossy black under the bright sun - then the other, and smiled gently.
"Welcome," he said, "to the Fields of Resurrection."
*631.
At mid-morning, in the hour of Barzula, on a frigid spring day in the beautiful pink and cream city of Carlon, the patchy-bald rat launched his attack.
All his life, and all the lives of his ancestors, he had planned and l.u.s.ted for this moment. Now the two-legs who hunted and poisoned and trapped his kind would die, and they would die more horribly than any of his kind had in choking out their poisoned bellies through bile-stained teeth.
The patchy-bald rat was particularly crippled with loathing for the small male two-legs. He"d seen every one of his litter brothers and sisters tortured and finally murdered by the loathsome beasts. His litter siblings been staked out on their backs on the early morning cobbles of Carlon"s streets, their legs stretched so that tendons popped and tore. The small male two-legs watched from the safety of the pavements what happened when a heavy cart rumbled around the corner and ran over his vulnerable, squealing brothers and sisters.
The male two-legs had clapped and hooted with enjoyment, especially when one of the rats survived for an extra moment or two of agonised screeching. The patchy-bald rat had never, never forgotten the memory of that screeching filling the early morning.
Now, still mourning, he had his chance for revenge.
Aided with the knowledge of a life spent burrowing amid Carlon"s sewers, as with the power given him by the Demons, the patchy-bald rat launched a simultaneous attack into every one of Carlon"s streets by almost a billion rodents and sundry crawlers.
Nothing, nothing, could ever have prepared the Carlonese for what happened next.
"Papa?"
Theod spun about. Two small black-haired boys were advancing hand-in-hand through the flowers towards him.
632.
They were dressed in short white linen tunics identical to those Goldman and Dare Wing wore.
"Tomas! Cedrian!" Theod swept them up in his arms, laughing and crying at the same time, and the boys peppered his face with kisses.
"It only takes a small effort, coupled with faith," Drago said, "to walk down the pa.s.sage never dared, and open the door never opened into -"
He stopped, staring unseeing into the distance, and even Theod and the two boys fell silent and looked at him.
"Dear G.o.ds," Drago whispered. "We have lingered here far too long."
This was the hour of Tempest, and the haze of storm swept the land. The streets and the open s.p.a.ces of Carlon were empty . .. save for the Alaunt.
As a grey tide of fur and claws and over-bright beady eyes erupted from every conceivable drain and crack, the hounds went berserk.
They wanted to hunt, but they had no-one to hunt with.
They wanted to track and kill, for the city was alive with prey, but there was no-one to tell them which were more important.
They snapped and savaged, and they killed many, but within heartbeats Carlon"s streets had been overrun with millions upon millions of rodents, and even as magical as they were, fifteen Alaunt could do little.
The cats had as little success. They had leapt immediately to the fray, but they were only a dozen, and smaller than the Alaunt, and while they feasted well, they cleared no more than one street corner.
Meanwhile the rats and voles, earthworms grown fat on the rotting land, mice and black millipedes, even the rabbits, hares and foxes that followed in a second wave of destruction, all listened to one voice, and all had one target.
The small male two-legs.
* 633 .
And after they"d all been chewed and nibbled, the small female two-legs would become the next target, and after them the breeders of the small two-legs, the big two-legs, and then maybe, just maybe, the world would be a safer place.
And so, in an attack that left every soldier and guard stunned and confused, the invading rodents targeted every child within the city. Not only did children tend to be in places relatively unprotected by the army and militia - attics, cupboards, pantries, anywhere their parents thought they"d be out of the way - if a soldier or guard was there to protect them, then they found that scrambling, tiny-bodied rodents, tens of thousands of scrambling, tiny rodents, were virtually impossible to smite and kill with c.u.mbersome pikes, swords or arrows. A man might kill several, maybe a dozen, but then he"d be dead himself, covered in rats or mice, his throat choking with a thousand millipedes.
It made the older among them yearn for the relative certainty of a large-bodied Skraeling.
The youngster who"d impressed Herme with his plan to empty barrels of oil down city streets was among the first to die. The children - and adults, for that matter - had planned as best they could for an invasion of the animals, but nothing had prepared them for this tiny-bodied flood.
The boys, the small male two-legs, died horribly. None of them was granted a quick death. While a score of rats would attack a face, keeping hands occupied, thirty or forty mice would chew into a belly, diving through entrails and tunnelling up through diaphragms and lung cavities until the boy began to cough mice and whatever millipedes and centipedes that had scrambled in after the initial invasion.
Then, if circ.u.mstances permitted it, the rats and sundry rodents would leap off the dying two-leg"s body and sit in a fascinated circle about him, listening to his frenzied screeches and wails, watching his agonised convulsions, their whiskers twitching in antic.i.p.ation as the blood ran in bright rivulets towards them.
634.
There was little that Herme, or any other captain, lieutenant or even general horse waterer could do, save shout orders for people to climb as high as they could and block exits to floors below.
The streets are awash! To the attic, to the attic!
And when families and army units ran for the attics, and thought of some means whereby to block the grey writhing ma.s.s on the stairs behind them, not a few instinctively grabbed at lamps and candles, and threw them down to erect a moat of flame between themselves and the rodents.
But it was not only the rodents that went up in flames.
Within a quarter hour of the initial attack, Carlon was on fire.
Beyond the walls the b.e.s.t.i.a.l army howled and shrieked, scrabbling at the gates in the hope that soon guards would be dead and bolts chewed through.
Beyond both walls and demonic force, and totally unnoticed by any, the waters of Grail Lake began to quiver ... almost as if something within their depths was moving.
Upwards.
635.
64.The Doorways "e have lingered here far too long," Drago said again, and the others looked at each other, wondering at the fear in his voice.
"What is wrong?" Zared said.
"Carlon is under attack," Drago said. "Desperate attack."
"Then what are we doing here?" Zared said, waving an arm at the gently waving flowers. "Get us back to the Ranges, and then to -"
"No," Drago said. "We cannot go back to the gra.s.sy flat. It is the mid-morning hour of Tempest, and you and Theod would lose your minds the instant we transferred back there."
He opened and closed his hand about the staff, and the next instant sketched a symbol in the air. Again, without being asked, the feathered lizard poked his head out of the flowers, then raised a claw and retraced the symbol in light.
This was pure white light, and the symbol was the least complex Faraday had yet seen Drago draw.
It was a simple rectangle of light, slightly taller than the height of a man, and half as wide.
Through the rectangle she could see the dizzying balconies and stairwells of Spiredore.
"A fortunately uncomplicated enchantment," Drago said, and Faraday looked at him sharply, hearing for the first time the weariness in his voice. She remembered how Axis, as all 636.
Enchanters, had sometimes pushed themselves close to death by wielding enchantments that required them to manipulate a frightening amount of the Star Dance.
"Are you all right?" Leagh asked, moving close to Drago and taking his arm.
Faraday watched Leagh and wished she"d thought to ask first.
Drago nodded. "Quick. Through the door. Theod, say goodbye to your sons. They cannot follow for the moment."
For the moment? Faraday locked eyes with Leagh, but she shrugged slightly, and no-one else seemed to take any note of Drago"s words. Theod bent close to his sons, kissed each one on the cheek, then stood back as they drifted off through the flowers.
"Thank you," he said to Drago.
"Time enough for thanks later," Drago said. "Through the doorway. Now!"
They walked through, a not unpleasant buzz pa.s.sing through their bodies as they did so, and on the other side grouped on a balcony within Spiredore. Once the lizard had ambled through after them, Drago turned to the rectangle of light, the field of flowers clearly visible, and literally folded the rectangle up into a tiny box of light which he slipped into a pocket.
Curious, Faraday was about to ask what he was doing when he turned to her.
"Faraday, take Katie and Dare Wing back to Sanctuary -"
"I come with you!" Dare Wing said, then bent double coughing.
"- and hand DareWing to one of the Icarii Healers," Drago said. "Tell StarDrifter to expect the people of Carlon to start arriving - and tell him to expect that many of them may be injured. Burned. Then get WingRidge, as many of the Lake Guard as are present, and bring them back to me. Fast!"
"How will I find you?" Faraday asked, her eyes and voice steady.
*637.
"The bridge leading to Sanctuary can reconnect you with Spiredore, and ask Spiredore to bring you to me."
Faraday nodded. "Katie, Dare Wing . . . come." She held out her hands, and Katie took one.
Dare Wing looked at the other, then looked silently back to Drago.
"I need you well," Drago said softly. "Now . . . go!"
DareWing continued to stare at Drago for an instant longer, then he jerked his head in a.s.sent, and turned to Faraday.
"I can walk," he said, ignoring her hand.
"Spiredore, I ask that you take myself, Katie and DareWing FullHeart to Sanctuary," Faraday said softly, and walked down the stairs before her, DareWing following, leaning heavily on the bal.u.s.trade.