Behind him walked the Star Stallion, relaxed and sinuous in every movement, his head nodding and dipping with each stride, the stars sprinkling over the naked earth as they fell from his mane and tail.
From his withers, fixed by magic or perhaps merely by wish, hung the Wolven and the quiver of blue-feathered arrows.
Behind the horse, but slightly to one side of him, trailed the Alaunt. They loped in single file, each with head raised just enough that they could keep their golden eyes fixed on the man in front of them.
Their jaws hung very slightly open; enough that the glint of teeth and tongue spun through.
Behind them all trundled the blue-feathered lizard, occasionally snapping at imaginary gnats.
The crystal dome appeared on the horizon, but DragonStar did not increase the rate of his stride, nor change the expression of his face. He was at peace with himself, even though his mind was consumed with the image of millions of stars and galaxies tumbling through the universe, chased by a great dark cloud with the stinging tail of a scorpion raised threateningly behind it.
Thus had Evil subverted every good ever created.
Thus had the Star Dance been chased by the TimeKeeper Demons since the creation of the universe itself.
Now was the time to end it.
Now. Here. In this time. With this man, this Crusader.
And then ... then ...
… how many aeons had the Star Dance waited? How many worlds, solar systems, galaxiestorn apart had it watched?
... then could the Garden be created anew. And this time, without the scorpion's tail sting of temptation.
Only the Infinite Field of Flowers gently waving into eternity.
Faraday turned her head slightly, and she seemed to smile, even though her facial muscles did not move.
There, she could smell him.
And then he was behind her, and she could sense the sway of his body and its warmth, and her lips parted, and she shifted very slightly on the chair in remembrance.
He put his hand on her shoulder, and she relaxed back into his love. He bent swiftly down, and kissed her full on her mouth.
Leagh, Gwendylyr and Goldman lifted their faces and smiled with pure joy.
"DragonStar!" Leagh said.
He nodded, embracing each one with the warmth of his gaze, then looked at Dare Wing.
The birdman had turned his head in DragonStar's direction and opened his eyes. They were red, and horribly consumed with the weight of his sickness.
And yet, somehow, they were still glad.
DragonStar slipped past Faraday and entered the circle. He paused, then squatted down by DareWing's side. "I need you alive," he said.
"Good," croaked Dare Wing.
DragonStar grinned, then leaned down his hand and rested it on the skin of DareWing's chest.
"Do you feel like an adventure?" he said.
"For you," Dare Wing said, "I would fetch the coals that feed the flames in the firepits of the AfterLife."
DragonStar's hand rose to cup DareWing's face. "From you," he murmured, "I require far more. A flower a day from the field that surrounds you."
Both men smiled with love, and then DragonStar rose, and addressed the four witches in the circle.
"Yet the field that surrounds this dome," he said, "is a field of bare earth. It has been turned over and ribbed and ridged, but it lies barren. What does it represent?"
"Us," said Goldman, who delighted in such philosophical dabblings. "We have been ploughed, and the seeds laid within us, but we have yet to flower."
"Aye," DragonStar said.
"Perhaps we cannot," Gwendylyr said, "until Dare Wing is healed."
DragonStar nodded, but did not say anything.
"We must heal Dare Wing," Faraday said, her voice quiet and introspective. "Not DragonStar. We must."
Again DragonStar nodded.
"And I must heal myself," Dare Wing said.
"Stretch your wings," DragonStar said. "All of you."
And he stepped back out of the circle.
