Sara Douglass - Pilgrim

“A Mage-King,” she murmured to herself. “How utterly, indescribably useless.”

And then something swept past her.

She spun about, gasping. It was so fast that she did not get a good look at the creature — all she had was an impression of white. Of white, and of horns.

Something horned.

An owl fluttered down from the forest canopy and nipped at StarLaughter’s hair.

She screamed, crouching over her baby.

Something else slithered out from between the trees — a snake, but a snake with small wings just behind its head. It sank its teeth into her horse’s back paw, and the creature panicked and bolted, careening into the bloody melee before it.

StarLaughter, clinging desperately to the horse’s mane, and trying to protect her baby, only had momentary impressions of the nightmare her horse had plunged her into.

The Demons were now silent, fighting an enemy that she could not immediately see.

Horses’ heads, rearing back, eyes rolling white with terror.

A bloodied mess on the ground, and the horses’ paws and lower legs thick with ropy blood and flesh.

The Mage-King — still alive — slowly rising, his face terrible with vengeance.

All StarLaughter wanted to do now was escape, any way she could. She fought to free her hand from her horse’s mane, but it was tangled tight. Her wings beat futilely, trying to lift her from the horse’s back, but she couldn’t free herself, she couldn’t free herself, she couldn’t —

Suddenly a white form rose, almost as if from the very earth beneath her horse.

StarLaughter screamed in utter terror. A huge white stag reared before her, and then it plunged down, sinking its teeth into her horse’s neck.

Both beasts writhed, both trying to gain the advantage. The stag’s horns razored through the air, inches from StarLaughter’s face, inches from her precious child — and still her hand was trapped in her horse’s forever-damned mane!

She screamed again, thinking herself finally dead, when Sheol, Barzula and Rox simultaneously drove their horses onto the stag. It let her horse go, and suddenly StarLaughter was free, her horse bolting down the forest paths, the Demons’ horses pounding behind her.

In the forest to the west, Drago’s eyes flew open, and he fought for control as panic and terror flooded through him. In some part of him he could feel the Demons, feel their fingers reaching into him, feel them draining him. He could barely control the impulse to rise and flee through the forest, flee from something horrid that nibbled at him, that sunk sharp teeth into his heels, that lunged for his soft belly with razored horns —

He rose on his elbows, his eyes jerking from side to side.

Faraday slept serenely by his side, and the ranks of soldiers that rippled out from Zared’s campfire likewise lay calmly, lost in sleep.

Finally Drago managed to control his sense of panic. He looked to the east, troubled, and after a long, long time drifted back to sleep.

They rode for an hour, and then, as their mounts finally slaked their terror, pulled to a halt in a glade.

“When Qeteb walks again we will raze this forest to the bedrock!” Sheol screamed, turning her horse so she could see back the way they’d come, as if she might still see Isfrael standing there.

“Every one of the creatures that hide here shall become our fodder,” Rox said, with more calm but equal venom.

StarLaughter looked between them, shaken to the very core of her being. She’d thought the Demons completely invulnerable, she couldn’t believe that …

Sheol turned to stare flatly at her. “It is this forest. It is too shady” she said. “But we will grow stronger the more we feed. And one day, one day …”

StarLaughter nodded. “How far are we from Cauldron Lake?”

The Demons relaxed, and smiled. “Not far,” Mot said. “We will be there in a day or so. And after Cauldron Lake, we will be stronger.”

He looked at the flaccid child in StarLaughter’s arms. “More whole.”

There was a movement overhead, and all jerked their heads skywards, expecting further attack.

All relaxed almost instantly.

Black shapes drifted down through the forest canopy. The Hawkchilds.

“Sweet children,” Sheol whispered as they landed, and dismounted from her horse so that she could scratch the nearest under the chin.

As a whole they tilted their heads the more easily to feel her fingers, whispering softly.

“I think,” Raspu said, “that it is time we put our friends to good use.”

The other Demons nodded.

“I admit to a dislike at being so ambushed,” Sheol said. She dropped her hand, and when she spoke again her tone had the ring of command about it, even though she spoke softly.

“Scout, my sweet children. Find for us those who think to stop us. Where are the magicians of this world? Where is this StarSon who thinks to rule from the Throne of Stars? And where the armies who think to trample us underfoot?”

Behind her the other Demons laughed, but Sheol continued without paying them any heed.

“Find for us and, finding, set those who run to our song against them. Do you understand?”

“Yes, yes, yes, yes,” came back the whispered answer. “Yes, yes, yes, yes.”

“Then fly.”

And they flew.

Isfrael stood staring down the forest path for almost two hours. About him Minstrelsea’s fey creatures milled, touching him briefly, gently, grieving with him.

Eventually, Isfrael sank to one knee beside what was left of Shra. He stared a long moment, then he dropped his face into one hand and sobbed. He had loved Shra as he’d never loved another. She’d been the warmth of his youth, and the strength of his manhood. She had shown him the paths to the Sacred Groves, and she had inducted him into the laughter of love.

She had been his lover, his only companion, his only friend.

Isfrael bent down and wiped the fingers of his right hand through her torn flesh. Then he raised it and ran three fingers down his face, leaving trails of glistening blood running down each cheek and down the centre of his nose.

“By the very Mother Earth herself,” he said, looking again down the path where the Demons had disappeared, “this land will rise up against you.”

And then he rose, and walked down the path.

Towards Cauldron Lake.

Towards the man WingRidge had told him would aid Tencendor.

But Isfrael had changed. The debacle of the Demons’ passage through the Star Gate into Tencendor had suddenly become very, very personal. Now Isfrael had his own agenda, and the StarSon could be damned to a bloody mess if he thought to get in its way.

“There was a disturbance last night,” Drago said I quietly to Faraday as he watched Zared rummaging through some gear for a sack. “In the forest.”

She looked sharply at him. “Yes,” she said. “To the southeast.” She twisted her thick chestnut hair into a plait. “How did you know?”

Drago hesitated, trying to put emotion into words. “I could feel it, somewhere within me. Terror and savage pleasure both. It was the Demons … but what happened I do not know.”

The feeling had disturbed Drago more than he revealed. It was almost as if … almost as if he had a bond with the Demons.

“Death,” Faraday said. “Death happened. But who or how I do not know. Only that the Demons were involved.”

She grimaced. The Demons were involved in every terror that struck Tencendor now. She watched Drago carefully as he walked a few steps away, pretending an interest in a saddle thrown carelessly against a tree trunk. He’d lapsed into his introspectiveness again, but Faraday was not surprised or perturbed by it. He needed to accept, and to explore, and for that he needed time and quiet.