Here, this night, awaited the final choice.
Belaguez snorted again, and DragonStar raised his head and opened his eyes.
The StarSon looked through the Maze Gate.
Hell waited within. Millions, perhaps billions, of deformed bodies and minds tumbled and scratched and pummelled as one entity, caught in the infinite bleakness of the beating heart of the Maze.
It writhed and pulsed and throbbed.
It screeched and caterwauled and mewed.
It sang seductively, it beckoned enticingly, it begged for his presence.
In the Dark Tower.
The Dark Tower.
The Dark Tower was where Qeteb waited ... with his choice. Qeteb's lieutenants had won the battle of the Demons and witches, now it lay with Qeteb to offer the final choice.
DragonStar blinked, and refocused on the Gate itself.
The millions of seething characters had all gone, and the Gate surrounds were now blank stone.
Save for the single carving that topped the archway.
It depicted The Sacrifice. The Sacrifice that DragonStar would have to choose. Katie? Faraday? Or himself?
DragonStar stared at the carving, and nodded, for it told him nothing he had not known for a very long time.
The carving blurred, and then rippled away, leaving nothing but bare stone in its passing.
DragonStar turned his head slightly to look at Sicarius sitting at the head of his pack. "Wait here," the StarSon said, "until I whistle my need for you."
Sicarius inclined his head. The Hunt was surely close now.
Then DragonStar looked at the blue-feathered lizard, sitting slightly to one side of Sicarius.
"Wait here," said DragonStar, "until I have need of your light."
And the lizard inclined his head.
DragonStar looked back to the Gate, and drew his lily sword. Belaguez tensed.
"For this," DragonStar cried, "you and I were both born, Demon!"
And the Star Stallion leapt through the Gate.
As soon as he had disappeared, the forty-two thousand trees drifted as close to the Maze as they dared, forming a single line around its entire perimeter.
There, Ur standing and shifting impatiently from foot to foot among them, they waited.
DragonStar rode, but he did not find the journey to the Dark Tower as easy as the first time he'd ridden through the Maze.
Then, the way had been free and clear, and the Maze had sung and screamed its encouragement propelling him towards the Dark Tower.
Now foulness sought to block his way. All the creatures packed into the veins of the Maze seemed as one. Legs and arms and limbs and teeth lunged at him indiscriminately, as if attached to the one body, the one mind. DragonStar sliced to this side and to that with his sword, and it wrought great damage, but it was Belaguez who worked best to clear a path for him.
The Star Stallion screamed and shook head and tail. Millions of tiny stars exploded into the dense blackness that surrounded them, and as they struck home, the creatures drew back, snapping and snarling, or screaming and writhing if one of the stars burned its way through flesh.
A way opened before horse and rider, and the Star Stallion needed no encouragement. He plunged forward, breasting his way through the dark creatures as a swimmer through the surf, lunging with teeth, the thousands of stars sizzling about his head and haunches catching and reflecting the mirror blade of the lily sword as it arced through the air again and again.
They rode through a nightmare.
The stars and sword created a path, but that did nothing to alleviate the fetid savagery about them.
Hands and claws and gaping jaws reached incessantly for them, teeth snapped a finger's breadth away from flesh, foulness filled the air. Horse and rider both found it difficult to breathe.
But though DragonStar responded to the threat, and though he swung the lily sword this way and that, he barely saw the horror about him.
His mind had let go the images of past battles and the memories of countless, extinct races.
Now all DragonStar thought about was Faraday.
Faraday, caught in the arms of Qeteb.
Faraday, undergoing again the same horror she had at Gorgrael's touch.
Beautiful, courageous Faraday, no doubt intent on sacrificing herself again, if only it might save one person beyond herself.
