What he eventually found made him bow his head and weep.

Sigholt had been utterly destroyed. Sigholt! Axis could not believe it. All the magic, the laughter, the happiness, the memories; all had been turned to dust and rubble.

The bridge was gone.

The town of Lakesview was gone.

The lake itself was a dry, dusty bowl. (Axis was not to know that Gwendylyr's victory at the Lake of Life had at least turned the putrid virulence into more palatable dust.) Everything had gone.

The war band had hung back as Axis slowly rode forward, tears streaming down his face. Even Pretty Brown Sal hung her head as if in sorrow.

Axis let Sal pick her own way as she walked towards the pile of rubble that had once been the enchanted castle. Gods, the memories! It hurt so badly Axis was not sure if he could bear it, and just as he thought that, he became aware there was a woman standing at Sal's shoulder.

So lost was he in his grief, Axis gave a great start, thinking it was StarLaughter come back to deal him a mischief.

But it was Gwendylyr, one warm, comforting hand resting on his leg as she looked up at him.

"Trust in your son, and in my other four companions," she said, "and you never know what happiness we may achieve."

Axis opened his mouth to say something, but then there was a thunder of hooves from behind him, and a whoop, and then Theod was flinging himself down from his horse and grabbing Gwendylyr into his arms.

Axis turned his head away, and stared at the rubble.

Chapter 54

A Troubled Night's Dreaming

In the hour before dawn they had lifted from the cliffs and the heaps of rubble where they'd roosted during the night, and they'd flown north, harking to StarGrace's call.

He is here. He is here. He is here.

StarLaughter had found WolfStar for them, as she always said she would.

He had thrown them through the Star Gate.

He had murdered them.

Uncaringly and coldly and only for the sake of his own personal ambition and lust for power.

They had lusted themselves now for many thousands of years, and that lust consisted of only one thing.

Revenge.

Now it was at hand.

Silently, purposefully, they descended through the pre-dawn gloom, great black leathery shapes, the hands at the tips of their wings opening and closing in silent anticipation.

StarLaughter had allowed her hatred and disappointment and unending mortification to consume her. It was the only comfort she had. For days she'd trailed after the massive convoy of animals and peoples and trees, drifting just beyond arrowshot, hoping for a single glimpse of the woman that WolfStar had abandoned her for.

The whorel

If only she were disposed of! WolfStar would surely come back to her then ...

No. No! That was wrong! She should not think that!

WolfStar would never come back to her. StarLaughter could finally see that. He'd made a fool of her in front of his trifling companions, all for the woman that he now thought to love, and for that StarLaughter would not forgive him.

StarGrace, and all the other Hawkchilds, had been right. WolfStar was unredeemable. He would never love her, and he would never help her regain her son.

He must die.

And, in dying, suffer as much as he'd made them to suffer.

And so StarLaughter drifted along the margins of the convoy and she waited and watched and planned.

And finally, after days of watching, she understood.

It had not been difficult, truth to tell. WolfStar was kept under watch by the guardsmen who wore the ivory tunics with the peculiar knot of gold in the central panel.

And so was a woman — a woman kept well guarded and well away from WolfStar, as if she might be a danger to him ... or he to her.

StarLaughter's mouth had parted in red-lipped joy. She understood.

And she knew what she had to do.

WolfStar's night dreams were troubled with discomfort. He found himself drifting disoriented through cold stars. He did not know their patterns or their movements — he was lost in a distant and unknowable part of the universe.

It frightened him beyond measure.

Strange voices touched him, but they were afar and uncaring, and after a while they left him alone.

He drifted, alone and lonely beyond measure.

Until a voice, far stronger than the others that had touched him, reached out and sent sharp knives into his soul.

I have her.

WolfStar twisted about in the cold void, trying to find the speaker of the voice, and trying to beat down the black wings of despair that threatened to envelop him.

Ihave her.

"Who are you?" WolfStar screamed into the universe, but he did not require an answer, nor even desire one, because he knew very well to whom that voice and that hatred belonged.

StarLaughter.

I have her.

WolfStar groaned, and twisted himself out of the dream.