DragonStar took a moment to respond, and when he did, his voice was filled with gladness.

"The Mother transformed and drawing breath as one with the Infinite Field of Flowers," hesaid, "so not the Mother at all."

He looked up, and lifted the Girl into Leagh's arms.

"My Child," said Leagh, and took her Daughter in her arms.

DragonStar rose to his feet amidst the flowers and stared into Axis' eyes. "Not theMother at all" he repeated. "God."

Chapter 60

The General's Instructions

Qeteb turned slowly about, one arm extended as he indicated the wasteland that stretched for leagues about them. Balls of dust and ice rolled slowly across the plains of Skarabost, while great fingers of mould and putrilage crept over the southern parts of the continent.

Qeteb was all black armour: visored, inscrutable, indestructible.

Before him Mot and Barzula stood attentive and quiet.

They respected the consuming anger that filled Qeteb.

"All this lies at risk," Qeteb said, his voice a hiss behind his visor. "All this beauty. Our home. How hard have we fought to attain this? How many millennia? How many worlds? And now all is at risk!"

Mot and Barzula flinched, but otherwise did not move.

Qeteb strode to within a pace of the two other Demons. "You go together to meet DareWing and Goldman. You rise or fall together. I do not need to explain what this means."

Having said that, Qeteb made a lie of his words. "Raspu and Roxiah have fallen: one turned, one dead. If you fail then I am weakened to a point where I may flounder myself."

"We will not fail," Mot said.

"Make sure that you do not," Qeteb whispered, then reached forward and grasped each Demon's chin in his mailed hands. "Do not fail!"

He let them go, and the Demons turned and faded into the wasteland.

Qeteb stood a moment, watching the space where they had vanished, then he turned about.

Sheol was standing behind him, a robe in shifting shades of decomposing and putrid matter, wrapping itself about her malformed body.

"I know I do not have to concern myself with your success," he said.

She grinned, and when she spoke the stench of the grave issued from her mouth.

"Faraday condemns herself," she said. "She does not even want to succeed."

"I cannot understand her preoccupation with self-sacrifice," Qeteb said, "but I am mightily grateful for it."

Then, without further ado, he, too, vanished.

Chapter 61

For the Love of a Bear Cub

They again sat their mounts — Qeteb his beast of blackness, DragonStar his stallion of drifting stars —

but now atop Cauldron Keep itself.

They were uncomfortably close, and both Qeteb's beast and the Star Stallion constantly shifted slightly to keep the maximum possible distance between them.

"Well," said Qeteb from behind his visor, "at least we have a good view."

And he pointed. "Look."

Goldman and Dare Wing stood by an outcrop of rocks. Behind the rocks stretched the remains of the Silent Woman Woods: tall spikes of blackened timber with occasional spars of charred branches jutting out like the battered rigging of a storm-damaged ship. A path wound through the trees, leading back into the unknown depths of the dead Woods.

DareWing stood straight and tall, his black wings folded tightly against his back. He wore only a white linen tunic and sandals.

He carried no weapon, and his face was expressionless.

Goldman, on the other hand, was clearly excited, impatient for the fun to begin. He shifted from leg to leg, as he also shifted a heavy staff from hand to hand.

Incongruously for a Master of the Guilds, he was dressed as a woodsman.

The lizard was nowhere to be seen.

DareWing and Goldman waited.

Qeteb and DragonStar waited.

Hours passed, and Goldman grew ever more restless.

"Where are they?" he asked Dare Wing.

"Soon," DareWing said.

"How do you know?"

"I can smell them," DareWing said.

Goldman opened his mouth to say something further, but closed it as he saw two mangy hunting hounds emerge from behind one of the blackened trees.

They looked like deformed Alaunt. Pale ivory in colour, and with the lean but muscular long-legged shape of the Alaunt, both hounds had running sores covering their pelts, and foulness oozing from eyes and mouths.

The hounds grinned, and one, Barzula, said: "What temptation do you have for us, then?

What choice?"

"We have a hunt," DareWing said softly.