Sara Douglass - Pilgrim

Little did either horse or eagle know it, but apart from the fey creatures of Minstrelsea, they were among the very few sane creatures left alive in the plains of Tencendor.

Five times during the day and night, the Demons sent forth the grey miasma, carrying their horror throughout Tencendor. The peoples of the land came to know that if they stayed indoors during those times and tightly shuttered doors and windows, then they could not be touched.

It was a dismal existence, but it was an existence.

Tencendor’s fauna were not so fortunate.

Apart from the creatures of the forests, or those livestock who were continuously sheltered within barns or even homes, most of the creatures of Tencendor had been touched at one time or another over the past few days by the Demons.

Touched, and changed. Birds, badgers, cattle, pigs, snakes and frogs. All changed.

All now running to the song of the Demons.

The Hawkchilds hunted them down. Most of the creatures were roaming uselessly through grain land or the plains. And over the next few days all were visited by one or two of the Hawkchilds.

Whispering instructions.

An army in the northern Silent Woman Woods .

Destroy.

A myriad thousand people sheltering in Carlon .

Destroy.

Scores of hamlets and isolated farmhouses, still sheltering those who refuse to heed the sweet song of madness .

Destroy!

And when you roam, you will find the two-legs who, like you, have been touched. Absorb them into your flocks and herds. Use them .

The brown and cream badger led forth his slaughterhouse band at the behest of the Hawkchilds. He was tired of the years spent huddled in his burrow hiding from the horsed hunters after his fur.

Now was his time.

The Hawkchilds flew west and found a further friend huddled in a pool of weak sunshine outside the walls of Carlon.

A patchy-bald grey rat, sick of a lifetime of torture at the hands of the small male two-legs who ran the streets of the city.

In the city, tens of thousands of people crowded inside tenements, hiding from the Demons.

The Hawkchilds whispered in the rat’s mind, and it turned its head back to the walls rising above it and bared its yellowed teeth in what passed for a grin.

Now was its time.

Drago hesitated at the edge of the crystal forest, and then stepped onto its slippery floor. He paused and, as StarLaughter had done, rested a hand on the trunk of the nearest tree.

It was warm, and solid, and somehow comforting.

Drago dropped his hand and straightened, his eyes surveying the forest before him. He took a deep breath, then stepped forward, following the flash of blue feathers between the trees below him.

Like the Demons, he walked for hours, marvelling that the forest extended so far. Always the feathered lizard scrabbled, and sometimes slid, two or three trees in front of him, leading him downwards.

In time the creature stood before a blackened crust that lay on the forest floor in a small glade. Drago stopped, and looked about him. He could feel the faint resonance of Demons in this place. What had they done here? He looked down at the crust. The feathered lizard was snuffling about its edges, reaching out one claw to scrape hesitantly at the stuff. His talons came away encrusted in flaky red filth, and the lizard backed off, hissing.

“What is it, my friend?” Drago said, squatting by the lizard and stroking its feathers. “What is this …”

He dropped his hand to the crusty stuff, and made a sound of disgust as his fingers touched it. Dried blood! Drago screwed up his face and stood, rubbing his fingers free of the crumbling flakes.

His fingers stilled, and he bent down again, scraped up a handful of the blood and dropped it into his sack.

His other hand momentarily tightened about the rosewood staff, and without thinking, Drago lifted the staff forward and scraped away a part of the blood.

He fell motionless, and looked awhile, and the lizard raised its eyes and studied Drago curiously.

“I think,” Drago said tonelessly, “that we have reached our destination.”

Underneath the dried blood was a trapdoor.

Grimacing, Drago bent down and swept away as much of the blood as he could. Then he lifted the door, revealing a well of steps circling down into darkness.

Much as, had Drago but known it, steps had once led from each of the Ancient Barrows into the Chamber of the Star Gate.

“Well,” Drago began, speaking to the lizard, but he got no further, for the lizard had leapt into the stairwell and was already slithering and sliding his way down.

Drago smiled, and stepped after him.

He did not walk very far down the narrow, twisting staircase before it opened into a corridor that stretched some fifty paces, ending in a circular door. The lizard was snuffling about its hinges.

Drago stepped onto the smooth, grey metallic floor of the corridor, and paused to study it. The floor was slightly levelled out, but only about the width of an arm, otherwise the passageway was completely circular, rising to a point about half an arm’s length above his head. The roof of the corridor was lit by gently-glowing circles, each a pace apart down its entire length. The walls were cool to the touch, but vibrated very gently.

As if they were alive.

A line of inscriptions ran at shoulder height down the walls. Drago stared at them, then lifted his staff and compared the inscriptions set there with those on the wall. They were the same, the strange black circles with feathered handles rising from their backs, running in a dancing, weaving line.

“These ancients,” Drago said to the lizard, “had a strange script indeed.”

Then he walked down to the door and inspected it.

There was no handle, although one side had hinges. Obviously it opened. But how?

Drago pushed, but with no success. He frowned, his fingers tapping gently against the door. On the wall by the door was a recessed rectangular section, filled with nine slightly raised knobs of the same cool, grey material as door and corridor.

Drago stared at them, then slowly raised his hand and rested his fingers on the raised knobs.

Instantly his mind flooded with an extraordinary vision.

Two old men, one short and squat, the other tall and thin, had marched down this very corridor once.

Drago’s frown deepened. Who? One of the men turned and spoke to his companion, and Drago recognised the voice instantly. They were the Sentinels, Ogden and Veremund, and this was the doorway by which they had accessed the Repository.

He watched as the vision unwound itself.

The Sentinels walked to the spot he now stood, and the tall one, Veremund, lifted his hand and placed it as Drago now had his placed.

Then he had hummed a fragment of melody, and his fingers had danced accordingly.

The memory faded, although the short melody lingered; it was a part of the same tune the Sentinels had taught him before he’d been dragged back through the Star Gate.

Drago stood, almost as if in a trance, replaying the vision over and over. Then, in a flash of inspiration, Drago realised that Veremund had transferred the melody into a pattern, and had then transferred the pattern onto the raised knobs.

Drago ran the tune through his head, translating it from melody to pattern almost without thought. He transferred the pattern onto the rows of knobs with his fingers.

Instantly the door swung inwards with a soft hiss.

The lizard gave a soft cry and scampered through.

But Drago stood still, his head bowed, thinking. Something very, very important had just happened, and he struggled to understand it. He … he …

“Damn it!” Drago whispered. “ What did I just do?”