Ihave her.

The words still echoed about WolfStar's mind as he struggled into wakefulness. He lurched up on one elbow, and looked about, his eyes widening at the scene.

The Lake Guardsmen assigned to watch over him were lying twisted and ugly, their faces contorted as if something heavy and dark had taken hold of their minds and twisted them until they could bear no more.

They were dead.

Beyond the circle of WolfStar's immediate campfire, the rest of the convoy's sleepers lay twisting and murmuring, as if something troubled their dreams as well.

Ihave her.

"You bitch!" WolfStar snarled, and sprang to his feet. "This time you will die!"

Only soft, mocking, echoing laughter answered him, and WolfStar lifted into the sky, so furious he'd locked his hands into white-knuckled fists at his sides.

That bitch-wife of his would cause the collapse of all his plans. He would not lose Zenith now! Not after all the work he'd put into getting her!

And he most certainly would not let StarLaughter have the satisfaction of thinking she'd succeeded in annoying him. She would die, here and now, and this time he'd do a better job of it than the last time he'd tried.

Zenith was gone, her watchers equally twisted and dead.

WolfStar hovered for a heartbeat or two, then he gave a powerful flap of his wings and lifted higher into the darkened sky.

Where was she?

This way.

WolfStar followed the voice.

He did not see the other birdman lift into the sky behind him, following at a distance of several hundred paces.

Zenith sobbed in terror. She couldn't understand what had happened, and how everything had gone so wrong, so quickly.

She'd woken to find the Lake Guardsmen assigned to her care twisting and convulsing at her side.

As she'd scrambled to her feet, hands had seized her from behind, their fingers digging into her flesh.

"You have been whoring about with my husband," a flat voice whispered in her ear, "and now, like all harlots, you must pay for your adultery."

Zenith twisted frantically, but she could not escape StarLaughter. The demented birdwoman physically dragged her through the sleeping convoy — past people and animals, past trees whose branches drifted gently in the wind, and even past a snoring Urbeth — and none had wakened.

None had opened even a single eye to see Zenith being dragged past weeping and screaming.

At Zenith's back, StarLaughter grinned in crazed satisfaction. The kernel of power the Demons had given her was proving useful, even to the end.

From the convoy StarLaughter dragged Zenith deep into the Urqhart Hills, refusing to respond to the woman's cries or questions.

StarLaughter didn't give a damn about the woman. She had committed adultery, and she must die.

As soon as the harlot had performed her final task: attracting WolfStar to his death as well.

And so now Zenith sat hunched uncomfortably on the ground, her hands tied to a pole behind her, listening to StarLaughter pace back and forth in the dark.

An hour before, the Hawkchilds had arrived to populate the ridges of the Urqhart Hills.

"Not long now," StarLaughter said somewhere behind Zenith. "He has woken, and thinks to come to your rescue."

Zenith lowered her head, no longer weeping, utterly resigned to her death.

"Axis."

Axis woke with a start at the word and the hand on his shoulder. He'd been lost in a dream of Sigholt, a dream filled with laughter and love and frightful great bats that beat at his head and settled in smothering droves over both laughter and love.

"Zared?" Axis accepted his brother's aid to rise, silently cursing his stiff limbs and sleep-fuddled mind.

"There is something you need to see," Zared said. "Fast."

Axis jumped to his feet, reaching for his axe as he did so, and allowed Zared to lead the way toward the edge of the camp.

"Look."

Axis squinted into the faint light now staining the sky.

He opened his mouth to say that he could see nothing, and then he shut it with a snap.

There were strange, dark shapes huddling on the craggy ridges of the Urqhart Hills that ringed the camp.

And then, as if listening to a silent voice, each one of the shapes lifted into the lightening sky.

"Hawkchilds!" Axis said.

"And worse," Zared said at his side, and Axis turned to stare at him.

"Worse?"

"WolfStar and Zenith have gone. Their guards are dead."

Chapter 55

A Tastier Revenge Than Ever

Imagined

Axis turned his head and stared at Zared. His eyes were as cold as the interstellar wastes. Zared took a half step back, even though he knew Axis' emotion was not directed at him.

"Zenith is my daughter," Axis said, and Zared shuddered at the combination of flatness and desolation in his brother's voice.

"Damn all stars into dust!" Axis screamed, and Zared cried out involuntarily. "Where is my power when I need it most!"