Fate had bound them for eternity.
"The Field," she whispered, and her fingers tightened around his arm.
And so they approached the Field, the husband and wife, their voices raised in acrimoniousmarital dispute.
They approached the Field, but they did not enter.
They could not.
A thin, pockmarked man, incongruously dressed as a butler, stood before a latched gardengate.
He crossed his arms over his chest, and in a stern voice he said: "Go away. The Field rejectsyou."
"But —" the husband began.
"Go away."
"We demand entrance!" the wife cried in shrill tones.
"Begone!" the Butler roared, and the husband and wife flinched, and left, each blaming theother for their rejection.
They were left with only one place to drift — the frigid spaces between the stars.
But even there they were not left in peace, for the stars spat at them, and the comets flungblazing embers from their tails at them, and finally that husband and wife drifted to the very edgeof the universe where, in loneliness and hate and recrimination, they prepared to spend theireternity.
Axis stared down at StarLaughter's corpse for a very long time, then raised his head towards the Hawkchilds.
They had finished feeding now, and one of them, StarGrace, hobbled towards him.
"If you think you can persuade us to kill ourselves," she said, her beak rippling into pouting, red-lipped form then back to horned abomination, "then you are very, very wrong. We have no need to chase WolfStar into the mists of death."
"Then I must perforce use a bit of persuasion," Axis said, and, raising his head so that he looked beyond the Hawkchilds, smiled.
StarGrace considered him carefully, then she slowly turned and looked herself.
And gave a scream of rage.
Advancing down the back slopes of the gully were hundreds of ghostly trees, their branches weaving and waving into the dawn sky.
"Fool!" StarGrace said, as she whipped back to Axis. "They cannot catch us!"
And she spread her wings and rose into the air, her companions behind her.
Axis lifted his head to watch them ... and smiled yet again, cold and hard.
Every Hawkchild had been trapped in the net of branches that had extended into impossible heights into the sky. As he watched, the trees pulled their branches back down to earth, dashing each Hawkchild into bloody fragments on rocks and into their own clutching roots.
Again and again the trees raised the corpses of the Hawkchilds into the air, and again and again thundered them earthwards.
When it was all finished the trees retreated, and Axis was left to stare at the now deserted, bloody field of death.
It was only then that he again saw the white wing, splotched with blood and, finally, new horror hit him.
"StarDrifter!" he screamed, and fell to the earth. He scrabbled over to the wing, and grabbed at it, burying his fingers amid the feathers as if by that action alone he could bring his father back. "No! No! No ! "
Far away Qeteb leaned over the snowy tablecloth and squeezed DragonStar's arm. "You mustn't let your sister's and grandfather's deaths distract you. Life must go on after all."
He received no reply, save for a look of implacable hatred.
Qeteb laughed. "Fernbrake next. Fancy a wager on the outcome?"
Again, no reply.
Qeteb was not discouraged. "I must tell you, DragonStar my Enemy, that I have been thinking about this little girl you seem so determined to protect. What was her name? Ah, yes, Katie."
He dragged out Katie's name so wetly it slobbered on the table between them.
"I was thinking, my dear boy, that should one of my companions triumph over of one yours, I might send them after her. To fetch her for me."
Qeteb sat back and rested a forefinger against a cheek, rolling his eyes in a parody of indecision.
"Ah, dear me. Which one to go for? Katie ... or Faraday? You do understand that we are caught in the same fight your father engaged in against Gorgrael, don't you? I am caught in Gorgrael's dilemma. Of two females, I know that one of them will destroy you. But which? Which?"
And Qeteb grinned, for he knew which one it was.
Chapter 57
South, Ever South
