Pilgrim. Sara Douglass

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      “Sheol?” Raspu murmured and reached out a hand. “Sheol?” At the soft touch of his hand, Sheol’s sapphire eyes jerked open and she bared her teeth in a snarl.

      Raspu did not flinch. “Sheol? Did you feast well?”

      The entire group of TimeKeeper Demons regarded her curiously, as did StarLaughter sitting slightly to one side with a breast bared, its useless nipple hanging from her undead child’s mouth.

      Sheol blinked, and then her snarl widened into a smile, and the reddened tip of her tongue probed slowly at the corners of her lips.

      She gobbled down the remaining trace of mist.

      “I fed well!” she cried, and leapt to her feet, spinning about in a circle. “Well!”

      Her companions stared at her, noting the new flush of strength and power in her cheeks and eyes, and they howled with anticipation. Sheol began an ecstatic caper, and the Demons joined her in dance, holding hands and circling in tight formation through the rubble of earth and rocks that had once been the Barrow. They screamed and shrieked, intoxicated with success.

      The Minstrelsea forest, encircling the ruined spaces of the Ancient Barrows, was silent. Listening. Watching.

      StarLaughter pulled the material of her gown over her breast and smiled for her friends. It had been eons since they had fed, and she could well understand their excitement. They had sat still and silent as Sheol’s demonic influence had issued from her nostrils and mouth in a steady effluence of misty grey contagion. The haze had coalesced about her head for a moment, blurring her features, and had then rippled forth with the speed of thought over the entire land of Tencendor.

      Every soul it touched — Icarii, human, bird or animal — had been infected, and Sheol had fed generously on each one of them.

      Now how well Sheol looked! The veins of her neck throbbed with life, and her teeth were whiter and her mouth redder than StarLaughter had ever seen. Stars, but the others must be beside themselves in the wait for their turn!

      StarLaughter rose slowly to her feet, her child clasped protectively in her hands. “When?” she said.

      The Demons stopped and stared at her.

      “We need to wait a few days,” Raspu finally replied.

      “What?” StarLaughter cried. “My son —”

      “Not before then,” Sheol said, and took a step towards StarLaughter. “We all need to feed, and once we have grown the stronger for the feeding we can dare the forest paths.”

      She cast her eyes over the distant trees and her lip curled. “We will move during our time, and on our terms.”

      “You don’t like the forest?” StarLaughter said.

      “It is not dead,” Barzula responded. “And it is far, far too gloomy.”

      “But —” StarLaughter began.

      “Hush,” Rox said, and he turned flat eyes her way. “You ask too many questions.”

      StarLaughter closed her mouth, but she hugged her baby tightly to her, and stared angrily at the Demons. Sheol smiled, and patted StarLaughter on the shoulder. “We are tense, Queen of Heaven. Pardon our ill manners.”

      StarLaughter nodded, but Sheol’s apology had done little to appease her anger.

      “Why travel the forest if you do not like it,” she said. “Surely the waterways would be the safest and fastest way to reach Cauldron Lake.”

      “No,” Sheol said. “Not the waterways. We do not like the waterways.”

      “Why not?” StarLaughter asked, shooting Rox a defiant look.

      “Because the waterways are the Enemy’s construct, and they will have set traps for us,” Sheol said. “Even if they are long dead, their traps are not. The waterways are too closely allied with —”

      “Them,” Barzula said.

      “— their voyager craft,” Sheol continued through the interruption, “to be safe for us. No matter. We will dare the forests … and survive. After Cauldron Lake the way will be easier. Not only will we be stronger, we will be in the open.”

      All of the Demons relaxed at the thought of open territory.

      “Soon my babe will live and breath and cry my name,” StarLaughter whispered, her eyes unfocused and her hands digging into the babe’s cool, damp flesh.

      “Oh, assuredly,” Sheol said, and shared a secret wink with her companion Demons. She laughed. “Assuredly!”

      The other Demons howled in shared merriment, and StarLaughter smiled, thinking she understood.

      Then as one the Demons quietened, their faces falling still. Rox turned slowly to the west. “Hark,” he said. “What is that?”

      “Conveyance,” said Mot.

      If the TimeKeeper Demons did not like to use the waterways, then WolfStar had no such compunction. When he’d slipped away from the Chamber of the Star Gate, he’d not gone to the surface, as had everyone else. Instead, WolfStar had faded back into the waterways. They would protect him as nothing else could; the pack of resurrected children would not be able to find him down here. And WolfStar did not want to be found, not for a long time.

      He had something very important to do.

      Under one arm he carried a sack with as much tenderness and care as StarLaughter carried her undead infant. The sack’s linen was slightly stained, as if with effluent, and it left an unpleasant odour in WolfStar’s wake.

      Niah, or what was left of her.

      Niah … WolfStar’s face softened very slightly. She had been so desirable, so strong, when she’d been the First Priestess on the Isle of Mist and Memory. She’d carried through her task — to bear Azhure in the hateful household of Hagen, the Plough Keeper of Smyrton — with courage and sweetness, and had passed that courage and sweetness to their enchanted daughter.

      For that courage WolfStar had promised Niah rebirth and his love, and he’d meant to give her both.

      Except things hadn’t turned out quite so well as planned. Niah’s manner of death (and even WolfStar shuddered whenever he thought of it) had warped her soul so brutally that she’d been reborn a vindictive, hard woman. So determined to re-seize life that she cared not what her determination might do to the other lives she touched.

      Not the woman WolfStar had thought to love. True, the re-born Niah been pleasing enough, and eager enough, and WolfStar had adored her quickness in conceiving of an heir, but …

      … but the fact was she’d failed. Failed WolfStar and failed Tencendor at the critical moment. WolfStar had thought of little else in the long hours he’d wandered the dank and dark halls of the waterways. Niah had distracted him when his full concentration should have been elsewhere (could he have stopped Drago if he hadn’t been so determined to bed Niah?), and her inability to keep her hold on the СКАЧАТЬ