Not long. Not long.

Beyond the door of the round chamber stood the ranks of the Lake Guard in double file, forming an avenue of ivory and determination.

Beyond them squealed and roared ten thousand crazed creatures from millipedes to humped bulls.

They made no attempt to storm either the Lake Guard or the round chamber hung with diaphanous curtains.

Another would storm the chamber for them.

It lingered on the ridge of the crater, staring down, its hand on its own horribly distended belly.

Roxiah: body of Niah, soul of Rox, and receptacle for ... for whatever waited to squirm its way out.

Soon. Soon. The birth was imminent.

Roxiah turned its head and looked to where Qeteb and DragonStar sat at the luncheon table.

Qeteb nodded, and Roxiah grinned. It turned, and took a step downwards.

In her chamber, Leagh suddenly screamed and doubled over in agony as the first of her birth pangs stabbed home.

Chapter 58

Sweetly, Innocently, Happily..

All Qeteb's genteel bonhomie was gone. He leaned forward over the table, a glass gripped tight in his hand, his eyes intent on the billowing curtains of the circular chamber in the hollow beneath him. On the other side of the table, DragonStar was no less tense. Although he sat back, apparently comfortable on his chair, the muscles of his face were tight, and his eyes narrowed.

A very slight movement in the far distance caught DragonStar's attention, and he shifted his eyes slightly so he could see.

Startlement — almost gladness — momentarily transformed his face. The massive column of trees, peoples and animals had reached the lower Minaret Peaks and was slowly wending its way into the passes that would bring them to Fernbrake.

Axis rode ahead on his sweet brown mare, and not far behind him came Zared on his draughthorse

— even at this distance DragonStar's eyes could pick out the desperation in Zared's face. Behind Zared, Gwendylyr riding close at his side, and behind them ... behind them loped the great ice bear, Urbeth.

DragonStar's face went slack in amazement. For once the proud Urbeth had allowed someone to ride her back. Ur, still clutching her precious terracotta pot.

Well, at that DragonStar was not surprised. If Leagh won out against Roxiah, then Ur would be desperate to get to Leagh before she gave birth.

DragonStar almost smiled. No doubt Ur had been niggling and irritating Axis for days upon days to get here as fast as he could.

And then DragonStar's face emptied of all emotion, for he remembered what it was that Axis had ridden from. Zenith. Dead. Lost, finally, for WolfStar's sins.

DragonStar turned his eyes back to the birthing chamber far below.

Roxiah had gained the flat of the crater, and was now waddling its bulky figure through the ranks of the impassive Lake Guard towards the birthing chamber.

Leagh walked slowly, painfully, about the chamber, pausing every time a new pain gripped her.

Her face appeared impassive, but Leagh's mind was running wild with what might, or might not, occur in this chamber.

She was comforted by the sweet voice of her child, reaching up through blood and bone and sinew to her heart to reassure her mother.

Do you not realise how close we are to the Infinite Field of Flowers? the child asked, using her words more as a consolation than as a question that needed to be answered.

Close enough to lose it forever, Leagh said.

The child shifted, unperturbed at the thought of the travail ahead. Have more faith, mother, she said, and think only of the lilies ahead.

Leagh smiled, a hand on her belly, and then she stilled and looked up.

There was a shadow behind one of the fluttering curtains: dark, oppressive, horribly gleeful.

"Roxiah is here," she whispered.

And one more besides it, said the child, but Leagh did not know what she meant, and so she ignored it.

Roxiah proceeded into the birthing chamber in grand style, its belly breaking through the curtains first, long before Roxiah's grinning face was revealed.

Leagh winced, for the woman's face — Niah's — was nevertheless so much like Zenith's that Leagh found it difficult to concentrate.

Poor Zenith. Dead in the dust of some desolate gorge in the Urqhart Hills. Leagh had been well aware of the manner of death visited on Zenith and StarDrifter.

But this entity was not Zenith. This was the Demon Rox, writhing in Niah's womb, awaiting birth, and the combination of Niah's soulless body and Rox's demonic spirit (and infant flesh) was loathsome to behold.

Roxiah's face was a frightful combination of outward blankness with corruption that writhed only just beneath the skin. It was twisted, bland, malevolent, torpid. It combined soullessness with the depravity of evil. It combined vacancy with a sinister and perverted tenancy that waited to explode forth in fiery and death-dealing birth.

"A joust!" Roxiah crowed, "between you and me! The battle of the bellies, I think! What is the challenge, milksop? What 'choice'," and Roxiah made that word a foulness, "do you have for me?"

Leagh straightened, despite the pain and discomfort that gripped her. "The choice is obvious," she said. "Only one child can be born. Yours, or mine. Bleakness or hope. Your choice. Yours. Which child is to be born, Roxiah? Which?"

"Mine! Mine! Mine!" Roxiah shouted, jumping up and down in a display of ungainly joy. "Mine!"

Niah's Demon-controlled body dropped to the floor, writhing and contorting as if gripped in the final pangs of birth. It lifted and spread its legs, as if determined to force out the infant Rox here and now.

"Mine!" Roxiah crowed yet once more.

Far above, Qeteb turned to DragonStar and grinned. "A stupid choice to give Roxiah," he said, grinning his joy. "How could Leagh have possibly thought that —"

"The choice must still be born," DragonStar said calmly, although inside his emotions roiled. Leagh had lost, it seemed.

Hello Niah, said Leagh's baby, and Leagh's face dropped in shock at the strength of her child's mind voice as it sped from the womb.

"Niah doesn't live here any more," Roxiah chortled. "Someone else does. Me, me, me!"

Roxiah rolled about and finally managed to get to its feet. It spied the table with its birthing implements spread about, and it seized a large hook, raising it threateningly as it advanced on Leagh.

"Time to go, my dear."