Pilgrim. Sara Douglass

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       9 Cauldron Lake

      “Curse them!” Faraday cried softly. “Gods! I’d hoped we could get here before them!”

      “Should we —”

      “No,” Faraday said. “If we try to get to Noah now they will see us.”

      Drago sank down to the ground. He felt physically ill this close to the Demons, and he wondered again at the bond that existed between them.

      “Will Noah survive them?” he asked.

      “He’ll have to,” Faraday replied.

      She sat down next to Drago and regarded him with concerned eyes. “Are you all right?”

      He nodded, briefly closing his eyes, then he managed a small smile for her. “I am sick with frustration, no more. All I want to do is to see this friend of yours, and find out what it is I must do to help this land. Yet here the Demons have arrived before us, and so we must sit, and wait, and hope there is still a Noah to speak to once they have done.”

      She touched his arm briefly, but did not reply.

      The Demons had not enjoyed a particularly pleasant ride through the Silent Woman Woods. Their encounter with Isfrael and Shra had unnerved them and, even though they grew progressively stronger each hour that they hunted, the trees had made their way difficult.

      Tangled roots had snapped at them from the soft, treacherous soil.

      Branches had dipped and swayed and snapped.

      Leaves had flowed through the air, burrowing beneath robes and into corners of eyes.

      And things had hissed and wailed at them from behind trees.

      StarLaughter had been terrified, not only by the malevolence of the Woods themselves, but by the fact that the Demons seemed unnerved by them as well. Surely they were too powerful for such as this?

      But maybe they needed the power of Qeteb before they could rise to their full potential.

      And that power was not so very far away, surely. Soon Qeteb would be reborn, and her son would rise to his full potential.

      And sometime, WolfStar, StarLaughter thought, hugging her child to her and casting her eyes about the shadowy spaces of the Woods, sometime we will catch up with you!

      StarLaughter lowered her eyes, and looked about. They sat their mounts at the very edge of the Cauldron Lake, the five Demons staring silently at the strange, golden waters.

      “Well?” StarLaughter asked.

      There was a silence, and StarLaughter wondered if she ought to speak again, louder this time, but Rox finally answered her.

      “Tens of thousands of years we have travelled,” he said in a voice not much above a whisper. “Aeons. And here … so close …”

      Sheol raised her brilliant sapphire eyes and stared at StarLaughter. “We must proceed carefully, for the Enemy will have laid traps.”

      “But surely they are so old they will have lost their potency?” StarLaughter said. Why were the Demons always rattling on about traps?

      Mot shook his head, then slid off his horse. Bones poked helter-skelter through his pallid skin, but his face had a satisfied plumpness about it. Mot had fed well at dawn.

      He squatted down by the Lake’s edge, and ran a hand through the water. It glowed, and filtered between his fingers, but it did not run as a liquid would, rather … as a mist.

      “Ssss,” the Demon said, and jerked his wrist so that the remaining globules of mist scattered over the surface of the Lake. They were absorbed instantly. “The magic lives, more potent than ever!”

      “But not too potent for us, my friend,” said Sheol, joining him. “We will go down at dusk, I think, for that will give us the power of Raspu and then Rox. An entire night to ravage through this craft and find what we need.”

      “Nevertheless,” Barzula said slowly, casting his eyes about the Lake. “I feel the Enemy powerfully here. We must be careful.”

      “We did not come this entire way to waste our chance on thoughtless rush,” Sheol said shortly.

      She sat down on the damp earth and crossed her legs. “StarLaughter, my dear, come join me, and let me cuddle your child.”

      Across the Lake, Faraday and Drago likewise sat, hidden in shadows.

      Drago’s eyes hardly blinked, so intent was he on watching the Demons.

      “Why do they wait?” Faraday asked.

      “They wait for their time,” Drago said. “It is only just noon. They will wait for the sun to set.”

      “And then?”

      “And then they will leap.”

      It grew dark earlier within the trees than elsewhere, but the Demons waited until the entire land was wrapped in dusk before they began.

      First they stood in a perfect line on the shore, about a handspan back from the water’s edge.

      Raspu, whose hour was at hand, stood in the centre of the line, his head tilted back slightly, his eyes closed, the veins in his neck taut and throbbing.

      A grey haze enveloped his head, and tendrils lazily lifted off and floated into the night air.

      “What is happening?” Faraday whispered.

      “He is feeding,” Drago said. “As that grey mist spreads, so does pestilence sweep the land, gathering to itself all those who are not within some kind of shelter.”

      “Why did they wait until now?”

      “Now they have the longest time span in which to work — from dusk to dawn. Once Raspu’s time is done, then Rox will spread his terror over the land for the entire night. See, even now Rox prepares himself.”

      Faraday grimaced. Rox was trembling — so violently she could see it even from this distance — and his mouth was working; every so often his lips would tighten into a silent snarl, showing slippery, yellowed teeth.

      Something about him, not his actual appearance, but something else, reminded Faraday vividly of the Skraelings and she shuddered.

      Now all the Demons СКАЧАТЬ