Sara Douglass - Redemption 3 - Crusader

BOOK THREE OF THE WAYFARER REDEMPTION

SARA DOUGLASS

Books by Sara Douglass

The Axis Trilogy

Book One: BATTLEAXE

Book Two: ENCHANTER

Book Three: STARMAN

threshold

The Wayfarer Redemption Trilogy

Book One: SINNER

Book Two: PILGRIM

Book Three: CRUSADER

Prologue

An Evil Released

"What can we do?" Fischer said uselessly, but needing the comfort of an endlessly repeated

question. "What can we do? Bloody what, you ask?"

"Easy, mate." Henry Fielding laid a hand on Fischer's tense forearm.

Fischer shifted his arm away then turned his head towards the far, windowless wall. He was in his

seventies, a white-haired, emaciated old man, his face deeply lined with the forty-year struggle against the

evil that had savaged — pervaded, consumed, destroyed — his world.

When it had begun he'd been a man in his prime: copper-haired, bright-eyed, lithe and energetic,

determined to fight and destroy the invading beings.

"Demons" was a strange, horrid word that Fischer had only now learned to use, but which he still

found completely distasteful.

"Demons" did not fit a world that was based almost entirely on scientific theory. On logical

explanation. On provable fact. On the complete belief in technology that was far more acceptable and

comfortable than religious beliefs. "Evil" did not exist. Only scientific fact existed. Only the vagaries of

nature and as-yet-to-be-controlled-and-predicted geographical events existed. Only the selfish and

arrogant nature of human society existed. Only petty crime by social misfits and corporate crime by the

socially successful existed.

Evil had no place in this most rational and explainable of worlds.

Until it dropped out of the sky over New York one blithe and fair Sunday morning.

That was what took us three decades to come to terms with, Fischer thought. The idea that we'd

been invaded, not by pastel-coloured and elegantly-elongated extraterrestrials with great dark eyes in

shiny Spielberg-like metal-pocked spaceships, but by pure, and utterly hungrily angry, Evil.

And thus for three decades pure Evil in the shape of the TimeKeeper Demons ran amok. Countries

were laid waste, save for the moaning, shuffling crazed populations that roamed their dusty surfaces.

Cities were abandoned, jungles stripped of foliage, oceans dried and ravaged. Within a year the human

population of earth had gone from billions to a few pitiful ten thousand huddled in bunkers, waiting out the

demonic hours, and wondering how they could strike back.

The ten thousand were those left sane, of course. There were still countless millions left roaming

above ground, their minds completely unhinged, utterly demonised, noisily breeding — and entirely

successfully — countless millions- of genetically insane babies. Those infants that survived their first five

years uneaten (or only partially eaten), grew into even worse monsters than their parents.

Fischer shuddered. The insane (and by now there were billions of them) were still out there, haunting

the as yet unreclaimed surface of the planet.

He and his companions might have managed to trap and dismember Qeteb, but the other five

Demons continued to howl their destructive way about the planet.

They had trapped and dismembered Qeteb, but not destroyed him.

This was the problem Fischer and his companions now faced. What to do? What to do?

"The other Demons will break through the barriers within the month," said Katrina Fielding, Henry's

wife. She'd been the one to suggest the idea that the Demons could be trapped by reflecting their own

malevolence back at them.

Fischer glanced at her. She was young, in her early forties, a mere child when the Demons had first

dropped in.

She'd lived virtually her entire life underground, and it showed. Katrina's shoulders and spine were

stunted, her eyes dull, her skin pallid and flaky. She'd never been able to have children.

And after the initial years underground only a scattering of babies, mostly physically or mentally

disabled, had been born to the few women who came to term.

We're dying, Fischer thought. Our entire race. The Demons will get us in the end, even if it may

take them a generation or two longer than those they cornered above ground. If the Demons

don't leave soon then no-one will be left who can breed!

No-one sane, that is. The insane hordes above ground multiplied themselves with no effort,

and certainly no thought, at all.

The idea terrified Fischer. "Whatever we do," he said, "we've got to get rid both of Qeteb's damned

death-defying life parts, and the other five Demons as well."

"There is only the one solution," Henry said. "Devereaux's proposal."

Devereaux's proposal frightened Fischer almost as much as the idea that the sane component of the

human race would soon die out, leaving earth populated by the maniacal human hybrids (God knows

with what they had interbred upstairs!). But a decision had to be made, and soon.

Why, why, why, Fischer thought, is there no government left to make this decision for us? Why

couldn't we leave it to a bunch of anonymously corrupted politicians to foul up so we can be left with the

comfort of blaming someone else?

But there were no nations, no governments, no presidents, no prime ministers, no goddamn

potentates left to shoulder the responsibility. There was only Fischer and his committee.

And Devereaux. Polite, charming, helpful Devereaux, who had advised that they just load Qeteb's

life parts on separate spaceships (how convenient that the people inhabiting the bunkers when

the Demons had initially arrived tended to be the military and space types) and flee into space.

"Drop them off somewhere else," Devereaux had said only the day before yesterday. "Or at the

least, just keep going. The other Demons are bound to follow."

"What if Devereaux finds a place to leave them?" said Jane Havers, the only other woman present.

"Or just crashes into some distant planet or moon. What then?"

"We pray that whoever inhabits that moon or planet can deal with the Demons better than we

have," Katrina said. "At least it won't be in our solar system, or galaxy."

Fischer dropped his face in a hand and rubbed his forehead. Cancer was eating away in his belly,

and he knew he would be dead within weeks. Best to take the decision now, before he was dead, and

while there were still women within their community with viable wombs.

Somehow the human race had to continue.

"Send for Devereaux," he said.

Eight days later the spaceships blasted out of the earth's atmosphere, their crews hopeful that at

least they were giving their fellows back home a chance.

What they didn't realise was that when they'd blasted out of their underground bunkers, they'd left a

corridor of dust and rock down which the maniacally hungry were already swarming.

Fischer didn't have time to die of cancer, after all.

Chapter 1

The Wasteland

No longer did the ancient speckled blue eagle soar through the bright skies of Tencendor. Now

Hawkchilds had inhabited the seething, scalding thermals that rose above a devastated wasteland. They

rode high into the broiling, sterile skies seeking that which would help their master.

The Enemy Reborn has hidden himself. Find his hiding place, find his bolthole.

Find him for me!

Qeteb had been tricked. The StarSon had not died in the Maze at all. The Hunt had been a

farce. Somewhere the true StarSon was hiding, laughing at him.

Find him! Find him!

And when the Hawkchilds found him, Qeteb did not want to go through the bother of another hunt

through the Maze. All he wanted to do was to reach out with his mailed fists and choke the living breath

out of the damned, damned Enemy Reborn's body!

The fact that he had been tricked was almost as bad as the realisation that Qeteb's plans for total

domination of this world could not be realised until the Enemy had been defeated once and for all.

All Qeteb wanted to do was ravage, but what he had to do was stamp the Enemy into oblivion,

obliteration and whatever other non-existent future Qeteb could think of as fast and as completely as he

possibly could.

Find him! Find him!

And so the Hawkchilds soared, and while they did not find the Enemy Reborn's bolthole on their

first pass over the wasteland, they did find many interesting things.

It helped immeasurably that all external inessentials, like forests and foliage and homes and lives, had

been blasted from the surface of the wasteland, for that meant secret things lay open to curious eyes.

Secret things that had been forgotten for many years, things that should have been remembered and

seen to before the Enemy Reborn had hidden himself in his bolthole.

"Silly boy. Silly boy," whispered the Hawkchilds as they soared and drifted. "We remember you

wandering listless and hopeless in the worlds before the final leap into Tencendor. Now your

forgetfulness will crucify you ..."

And so they whispered and giggled and drifted and made good note of all they saw.

Far to the south a lone Hawkchild spied something sitting in the dust that had once been a rippling ocean

of forest.

It was but a speck that the circling Hawkchild spotted from the corner of his eye, but the speck was

somehow ... interesting.

The hands at the tips of his leathery wings flexed, then grasped into tight claws, and the

Hawkchild slid through the air towards the ash-covered ground.

He stood there a long while, his head cocked curiously to one side, his bright eyes slowly blinking

and regarding the object.

It was plain, arid obviously completely useless, but there was something of power about it and the

Hawkchild knew it should be further investigated.

The bird-like creature stalked the few paces between himself and the object, paused, then carefully

turned it over with one of his taloned feet.

The object flipped over and hit the ground with a dull thud, sending a fine cloud of wood ash drifting

away in the bitter, northerly breeze.

The Hawkchild jumped back, hissing. For an instant, just for an instant, he thought he'd heard the

whispering of a many-branched forest.

A whispering? No, an angry crackling, more like.

The Hawkchild backed away two more paces, spreading his wings for flight.

But he stopped in that heartbeat before he should have lifted into the air. The whispering had gone

now — had it ever existed save, in the dark spaces of his mind? — and the object looked

innocuous, safe ... save ... save for that irritating sense of power emanating from it.

This object was a thing of magic. A fairly sorry object, granted, but mayhap his master

might find it amusing.

The Hawkchild hopped forward, flapped his wings so he rose in the air a short distance, and

grasped the object between his talons.

A heartbeat later he was gone, rising into a thermal that would carry him south-west into

the throbbing, blackened heart of the wasteland.

Qeteb laughed, and the wasteland cringed.

"He thinks himself safe in whatever hideaway he has built for himself," he whispered (and yet that

whisper sounded as a roar in the mind of all who could hear him). "And when I find it ... when I find its

secret..."

The Midday Demon strode stiff-legged about the interior of the Dark Tower, his arms flung back, his

metalled wings rasping across the flagged flooring of the mausoleum.

He screamed, then bellowed, then roared with laughter again.

It felt so good to be whole once more! Nevermore would he allow himself to be trapped.

Qeteb jerked to a halt, and his eyes, hidden beneath his black-visored helmet, fell on the woman

standing in the gloom under one of the columned arches.

She was rather more beautiful than not, with luminous dark hair, a sinuous body beneath her stained

and rust-splotched robe, and wings that had been combed into a feathered neatness trailing invitingly

from her back.

Qeteb wondered how loudly she would scream if he steadied her with one fist on her shoulder, and

tore a wing out with the other fist.

She said she was his mother, but Qeteb found he did not like to hear what she said. He was

complete within himself, a oneness that needed no other, and he had certainly never been entrapped in

her vile womb. She had never provided him with life!

But she had provided him his flesh, and for that Qeteb spared her the agony of sudden

de-wingment.

For the moment.

There was a movement from another side and Qeteb almost smiled. There, the soulless body

of a woman, waiting for him. He lusted, for he found her very soullessness inviting and reached for

her, but was distracted by the voice of Sheol from beyond the doorway.

"Great Father. One of the Hawkchilds has returned with —"

"With the gateway to the StarSon's den?" Qeteb demanded.

"No," Sheol said, and stepped inside. Behind her walked a Hawkchild, carrying something in its

hands.

"Great Father!" the Hawkchild said, and dropped to one knee before Qeteb. "See what I

have discovered for you!"

He placed the object on the ground before Qeteb, and the Midday Demon looked down.

It was a wooden bowl, carved from a single block of warm, red wood.

Qeteb instinctively loathed it, and just as instinctively knew that it would bring him great fortune.

Beyond the mausoleum the Maze swarmed with creatures dark of visage and of mind; the vast

majority of demented creatures within the wasteland had found their way to the land's

black heart. They climbed and capered and whispered through every corridor and conundrum of

the Maze, a writhing army of maddened animals and peoples, waiting only for Qeteb, waiting for the

word for them to act.

Out there waited a hunting, for the hunt in the Maze had proven disappointing in the extreme. The

man, the false StarSon, had offered his breast to the point of the sword without a whimper

(indeed, with a smile and with words of love), and now the hopes and dreams of the maddened horde

lay in drifts and shards along the hardened corridors of the Maze.

There was a hunt, somewhere. There was a victim, somewhere. There was a sacrifice, waiting,

somewhere, and the whispering, maniacal horde knew it.

They lived for the Hunt, and for the Hunt alone.

There was one creature crawling through the Maze who was not at all insane, although some may have

doubted the lucidness of the twisting formulations of his mind.

WolfStar, still covered in Caelum's blood, still with the horror of that plunging sword imprinted on

his mind, crawling towards what he hoped might be a salvation, but which he thought would probably be

a death.

Creatures swarmed around and over him, and although a few gave him a cursory glance, or a peck,

or a grinding with dulled teeth, none paid him any sustained attention.

After all, he looked like just one more of their company.

Chapter 2

The Detritus of an Epic

A rather tumbledown, grey-walled hovel sat in the centre of the clearing. Flowerbeds surrounded the hut,

but they were overgrown with mouldy-stemmed weeds and thistles. A picket fence surrounded the hovel

and its gardens; most of the pickets were snapped off. The once-white paint had faded and peeled from

the pickets that remained whole, so that the fence resembled nothing so much as the sad mouth of a

senile gape-brained man.

Ur's enchanted nursery had fallen into unhappy days.

Two women sat on a garden seat set in a small paved area.

Several of the paving stones had crumbled, and dust crept across the uneven court.

The Mother wrapped Her fingers around a cup of tea and tried not to sigh again. She was tired —

the effort of closing off the trails to the Sacred Groves against any incursions by the Demons had been

exhausting — but more worrying was Her overwhelming feeling of malaise. The Mother did not feel well.

In truth, She felt profoundly ill.

Tencendor had been wasted by Qeteb, the Earth Tree was gone (surviving only in embryonic form

in the seedling She had given Faraday), and the Mother could feel the life force ebbing from Her.

But not before — oh gods, not before! — that life could be restored elsewhere!

"Is it gone?" a cracked voice beside Her asked, and the Mother jumped.

"What? Oh, no, thank you, I still have a half cup left." And yet almost everything else had gone,

hadn't it? Everything ...

Ur grumbled incoherently into her cup, and the Mother looked at her. The hood of Ur's red

cloak was lying over her angular shoulders, revealing the woman's bald skull. The skin over Ur's face

was deeply wrinkled, but it stretched tight and angry over the bones of her skull.

Ur had lost her forest. For over fifteen thousand years Ur had tended her nursery hidden deep within

the trees of the Sacred Groves. As each female Avar Bane had died, so her soul had come here to be

transplanted out as a seedling in a tiny terracotta pot. Forty-two thousand Banes had transformed in this

manner, and Ur had known them all — their names, their histories, their likes and loves and

disappointments. And, having cradled them, Ur had then handed them over to Faraday to be replanted

as the great Minstrelsea Forest.

Which, after only forty-two years of life, Qeteb had then turned to matchsticks.

Matchsticks! Ur rolled the word over and over in her mind, using it as both curse and promise of

revenge.

Matchsticks.

Ur's beloved had been reviled, murdered, and utterly destroyed by the excrement of the universe.

Her lips tightened away from her teeth — incongruously white and square — and Ur silently snarled

at her ravaged garden. Revenge ...

"It is not good to think such thoughts," the Mother said, and laid Her hand on Ur's gaunt thigh.

Ur closed her lips into a thin hard line, and she did not speak.

The Mother fought again to repress a sigh and looked instead out to the forest beyond Ur's decaying

garden.

Everything was fading. The forests of the Sacred Groves, even the Horned Ones themselves. The

Mother had not realised how closely tied to Tencendor the Groves were — as was the health of all who

resided in them. Tencendor had been wasted, and if DragonStar could not right the wrong of

Qeteb and his companion Demons, and finish what the Enemy had begun so many aeons before, then

eventually the Groves would die.

As would Herself, and all the Horned Ones, and even perhaps Ur.

The Mother shot another glance at the ancient nursery-keeper. And perhaps not. Ur appeared to be

keeping lively enough on her diet of unremitting need for revenge.

"But We are safe enough for the while," the Mother whispered. "Safe enough for the while."

Chapter 3

A Son Lost, A Friend Gained

Sanctuary should have been crowded. Over the past weeks hundreds of thousands of people, as well

millions of sundry insects, animals and birds, had swarmed across the silver tracery bridge, along the

roadway meandering through the fields of wildflowers and grasses and into the valley mouth. Yet despite

the influx of such numbers, Sanctuary continued to remain a place of delightful spaces and

untrodden paths, of thermals that seemingly rose into infinite heights, and Mazes of corridors in its

palaces that appeared perpetually unexplored.

Sanctuary had absorbed the populations of Tencendor without a murmur, and without a

single bulge. It had absorbed and embraced them, offering them peace and comfort and endless

pleasantness.

And yet for many, Sanctuary felt more like a prison. The endless peace and comfort and

pleasantness had begun to slide into endless irritation and odious boredom which found

temporary release in occasional physical conflict (an ill-tempered slap to a face, a harder than needed

smack to a child's legs) and more frequent spiteful words.

For others, it was more personal aggravations that made them feel like prisoners in a vast,

amiable gaol.

StarDrifter, wandering the corridors and wondering what more he could do to ease Zenith into the

love she tried to deny.

Zenith herself, wondering when it was that she would be able to think of StarDrifter's embrace with

longing instead of revulsion.

DareWing, dying, yet still driven by such a need for revenge that he hauled himself from tree to tree

and from glade to glade, seeking that which might ease his frustration.

Azhure, weeping for the children she had lost.

Isfrael, seething with resentment at the loss of his inheritance.

Faraday, her eyes dry but her heart burning, wondering if she would have the courage to accept a

love she feared might once more end in her destruction.

Katie, clinging to Faraday's skirts, grinning silently and secretly, and wondering if Faraday would

ever be able to accept the sacrifice.

Again.

Sanctuary was a brooding, sad place for something so apparently beauteous and peaceful.

Sanctuary was proving unbearable for yet one more man.

Axis had spent his life controlling the world that battered at his doorstep. As BattleAxe he had

theoretically been subordinate to the Brother-Leader of the Seneschal, but in reality had largely

controlled his own destiny as he had the destinies of his command. As a newly-discovered

Enchanter he had found he had much to learn, but had gloried in that learning and the added power it

gave him (as in the woman it brought him). As StarMan, Axis had held the fate of an entire land and all its

peoples in his hand, and he had held it well, plunging the Rainbow Sceptre into Gorgrael's chest and

reclaiming the land for the Icarii and Avar.

Yet in the past year Axis had learned that he'd only been a pawn in some Grand Plan of this

ancient race known as the Enemy, and an even tinier pawn of the Star Dance itself which had

manipulated not only the Enemy, but every creature on Tencendor.

And for what? To breed the battleground and the champion to best the most ancient of enemies;

festering evil in the shape of the TimeKeeper Demons.

"We have all been for nothing," Axis whispered to himself, "save to provide the Star Dance with the

implements for whatever final act it has planned."

And what part would he play in that plan?

"And damn you to every pit of every damned AfterLife," Axis murmured, "for making of me a mere

pawn where once I had been a god!"

Then he laughed, for it was impossible not to so laugh at his own frustrated sense of importance.

Axis consciously relaxed his shoulders, and looked about him.

It was a fine, warm day in Sanctuary — as were all days — and he was walking down the road

from Sanctuary towards the bridge (at last! to have escaped the confinement of unlimited safety!). To

either side of him waved pastel flowers, wafting gentle scent in the soft breeze. The plain between the

mountains that cradled Sanctuary and the bridge that led from the sunken Keep apparently stretched into

infinity on either side of the road, and Axis wondered what would happen if he set off to his left

or right. Would the magic of Sanctuary eventually return him to the spot from which he had commenced,

even though he walked in a deliberately straight line? Would he be allowed to escape the glorious

inaction of Sanctuary?

"I wonder if I might ever manage to —" Axis began in a musing tone, then halted, stunned.

A moment previously he had been a hundred paces from the bridge, he could have sworn it! Yet

now here he was, one booted foot resting on the silvery surface of the bridge's roadway.

"Welcome, Axis SunSoar, StarMan," the bridge said. "May I assist you?"

Axis grinned. The bridge sounded as enthusiastic as an exhausted whore on her way home after a

laborious night's work entertaining her clientele. His grin broadened at the thought. The bridge had borne

a heavy load of bodies recently, after all.

And every one of them to be questioned as to the trueness of their intentions.

"Well," he said, and leaned his crossed arms on the handrail so he could peer into the clouded

depths of the chasm below the bridge. "I admit I grow lonesome for some witty conversation, bridge,

and I remembered the pleasant nights I spent whiling away the sleepless hours with your sister."

And was she still alive, Axis suddenly wondered, in the maelstrom that had consumed Tencendor?

"She has ever had a more companionable time than I," grumbled the bridge. "Here I sat,

spanning the depths between your world and Sanctuary, desperate for company yet hoping I would

never find it."

Axis nodded in understanding. Company would have meant — did mean — that

complete disaster threatened the world above.

"And, yes," the bridge added softly, "my sister still lives. The disaster is not yet complete, Axis

SunSoar."

Axis shifted uncomfortably. This bridge was far more adept at reading unspoken thoughts than her

sister. "And when the disaster is complete? What then?"

"What then? Victory, my friend. Utter victory."

Axis straightened, biting down his anger. "Disaster is utter victory? How can that be?"

An aura of absolute disinterest emanated from the bridge. "I am not the one who can show you that

answer, Axis."

"Then who? Who?"

There was no answer, save for a flash of blinding light and a sudden rattle of hooves.

Axis swore softly and raised a hand to shield his eyes against the rectangle of burning light that had

appeared at the other end of the bridge. A large shape shifted within the light, blurred, then shifted again,

resolving itself into a horse and rider.

The light flared, then faded.

The bridge screamed ...

... and then convulsed.

Axis fell to his feet, sliding towards the centre of the bridge as he did so. He lay for an instant, badly

winded by the impact.

He was given no time for recovery. The bridge lurched and then buckled, heaving under him, and

Axis repeatedly fell over in his scrambling attempts to get to his feet.

The bridge screamed again, and Axis was raked with the emotions of death.

The bridge was dying.

Axis grabbed at one of the handrail supports, but it melted under his fingers leaving them coated with

a sticky residue.

One of his legs fell through a large hole that abruptly appeared in the bridge ... she was

dissolving!

With a desperate heave Axis lunged towards the safety of the roadway, but the bridge was literally

falling apart, still screaming, and her death throes tilted Axis further towards her centre, further

away from the safety of the ground.

Another section of bridge fell away, and Axis stared down into the chasm, and certain death.

The bridge whimpered, and vanished.

Axis fell...

... and was jerked to a halt by a hand in the collar of his tunic.

The odour of a horse hot with sweat enveloped him, and Axis felt himself bump against the shoulder

of the plunging animal.

He grabbed automatically, finding the Sanctuary of a horse's mane with his left hand, and the wiry

strength of a man's forearm with his right.

"Keep still!" a man's voice barked. Axis turned his eyes up, and looked into the face of his hated

son, Drago.

Except this man was not Drago. Axis instinctively felt it the instant he lay eyes on his face, and

he knew it for sure once the man had deposited him on the road to Sanctuary.

Sara Douglass - Redemption 3 - Crusader

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