What was happening down there? Crouched close to the earth all afternoon and evening, Leagh imagined at times that she could feel the destruction roiling up through the earth to her hand.
Was Zared safe? And Axis? What about Katie?
Leagh closed her eyes, forcing her mind away from the fate of her husband and friends, and wondered if she should find somewhere safer and warmer for the night.
And then something grabbed her from behind.
Leagh was too frightened and shocked to scream. She rolled away, but whatever had grabbed at her had too firm a grip for her to escape.
Leagh turned her head and managed to see what had seized her. An old and completely demented woman, naked and covered in sores. Leagh took a deep breath, then drove her free foot into the woman's face.
There was a horrible crackling sound, and the woman's grip loosened enough for Leagh to drag herself free.
She scrambled to her feet, catching at the blackened stump of a tree for support, and looked frantically about.
At the top of the ridge, outlined by the last of the light, another three or four maddened people appeared, crawling forward on their hands and knees, gnashing their teeth, drooling horrible liquids — perhaps their partly digested last meal — down their chins and chests.
And, behind them, more: maniacal livestock as well as people.
Leagh twisted about, looking for an escape. There was no shelter to be seen, apart from the fire-ravaged stumps of what had been the daughters of the Minstrelsea forests, who had grown down the slopes of the crater towards Fernbrake.
A few paces in front of the gathering crowd, the old woman crept closer to Leagh.
More and more of the creatures poured over the edges of the crater, and now black shapes spiralled down from the sky to hunch speculatively on a dozen or so of the tree stumps.
Hawkchilds.
"Help me, damn you!" Leagh whispered, but the Hawkchilds merely cocked their heads, and whispered to themselves.
They might not harm her, but neither would they help her. Among them was StarGrace, and the Hawkchild looked at Leagh curiously, wondering at both her obvious pregnancy and the power that emanated from her.
StarGrace felt no urge to destroy, but neither did she feel any urge to help.
Leagh backed up against a tree stump, thinking as fast as she could. The only thing that would keep her safe, and keep her child safe, was to use her Acharite power. But she'd had so little practise!
Opening and closing glowing doorways was all very well, but...
The maniacal creatures, drooling, spitting, howling and whimpering, covered with self-inflicted wounds and the crusty remains of their excreta, crept closer.
The old woman was almost upon her.
Leagh stilled, and she remembered all she had learned over the past few weeks, and she smiled, and rested a hand on her belly.
She was at one with the earth, a part of the landscape itself, and the child she carried within her ...
Leagh raised her head and looked at the approaching crowd.
"Do you not see the beauty surrounding us?" she said, and waved a slow hand around.
The once-humans and animals hesitated, eyes darting about uncertainly, and then resumed their creep towards their prey as nothing leaped out to bite them.
Wave after wave of their blackness rose over the lip of the crater.
"You may think the landscape wasted and barren," Leagh said, and now held out a hand in appeal, or perhaps invitation, "but see its true beauty!"
And she flung her hand out in a wide arc, and suddenly flowers and herbs washed over the devastated walls of the crater in a torrent of beauty and fragrance.
The Hawkchilds rose into the air, squawking in surprise.
"See!" Leagh cried again, and half stepped forward, one hand still swept out, one resting on her belly. "See!"
Summer fragrance exploded about them, and the initial ranks of the creatures screamed and capered. More than the beauty of the flowers was the hope that had infused the entire landscape.
"See ..." Leagh whispered, and the hand on her belly tightened.
Flowers reached skyward, and those that grew close to the mass of demonic creatures waved forward, as if they wanted to embrace them.
The creatures panicked.
StarGrace, circling far overhead, frowned in thought.
Far away DragonStar smiled, his eyes unfocused. "Good girl," he whispered. "Lovely Leagh. You deserve your place among the lilies of the field."
She had not created the Field of Flowers, nor taken the creatures through to the field, but had instead shown the creatures the beauty and hope that still (after all the Demons had done to the land) rested within the blasted landscape.
Even amid death, hope still survived.
"Now," he whispered, and behind him Sicarius whimpered with eagerness.
