This time he found it harder to control his panic. He beat his de-feathered wings frantically, but without the means to caress the air they could not hold him aloft. DareWing tried to imagine new feathers sprouting along his wings, but he could not hold the image, and he fell through the air towards the ground.

DareWing closed his eyes, and prepared to embrace it. The ground would not harm him, for he did not fear it. He could exist without flight, he had already proved it...

The sound of a choir filled the air, and, distracted, Sheol let her magic waver.

Suddenly DareWing found himself soaring again, his wings whole, and he grinned. "Sheol!" he cried.

"Do you like the music?"

And he started to sing himself. It was no enchantment, and had no inherent magic, and no real meaning in its words. Its enchantment and power lay in the emotions it caused to well up in the breasts of both singers and listeners.

It was a song all Icarii sang when they celebrated a particularly blessed event — a marriage of a well-loved friend, or the birth of a child after a difficulty-fraught labour.

It was called Freedom Flight.

Feather drifting

Skyway beckoning

Freedom flight Never

ending.

Sun is burning Crest

is rising Wings are

arching Soul is

soaring.

Child seeded Hands

uniting Friendship

laughing Love

triumphant.

Feather drifting

Skyway beckoning

Freedom flight Never

ending.

Sheol's eyes widened. "Think that will hurt me?"

DareWing grinned yet more, and waved at the choir behind him, floating in the thermals rising from the black peaks below.

Their singing doubled, if not in volume, then in intensity.

Many among the Icarii were crying with the strength of their emotion — with the strength of their joy.

Sheol hissed, and wriggled back a little. "You cannot hurt me with that!"

"No?" whispered DareWing. "No? What would happen, Sheol, if I could make you sing a verse?

Hmm? Would you like to try? Now, come on. You have heard enough to know the words, surely.

Come, sing with me ... Feather drifting, Skyway beckoning..."

DareWing flew towards her with a hand outstretched. "Come ... Freedom flight, Never ending.'"

She snarled, and wriggled further away. "Think that pitiful song will destroy me?"

No, maybe not, DareWing thought, but it is a step in the right direction. And then hope did consume him, and he knew beyond any doubt that DragonStar would find the way to defeat these Demons.

"Get.you gone, Sheol," DareWing snapped, "for you are not welcome here in these wastes."

She stared, not knowing what to do, wondering if somehow this entire episode was meant to be a preamble to one of the preordained challenges, and, if so, what she should do about it. Then, fortuitously, Qeteb touched her mind.

Come back! Come back! We have a visitor.

"Fool!" Sheol shot at DareWing as a form of goodbye, then she flowed her form back into that of the winged serpent, and retreated back south.

Chapter 19

The Apple

Spiredore deposited Isfrael in the Demons' den. It surprised him. Somehow Isfrael had expected something truly horrific: a seething atmosphere of flames and acidic smoke filled with the screams of the tormented and the stink of the damned. A chamber furnished with rocks and chasms, and with blood-rusted spikes to embrace welcome and unwelcome visitors alike.

Instead the Demons had constructed for themselves a boudoir of pleasantness. There was a circle of apple trees, stunted, true, but sweetly fruited nevertheless, and an inner circle of stumps each topped with a tasselled violet or scarlet cushion. Overhead spread a sky that was only mildly stained with grey-streaked clouds.

The only aspect that was truly unpleasant was the torn and half-eaten body of a dog that lay to one side (possibly the remains of a picnic) and, of course, the Demons themselves.

They each stood between and very slightly behind the apple trees. A silent, watchful semicircle. Four were clad in pastel robes of varying hues, their faces bland, their eyes glowing like gems.

Qeteb had not varied his dull black armour, and trailed his metalled wings on the ground behind him in a parody of the Icarii gesture of welcome.

When he stepped forward, as he did now, they gouged great wounds into the earth.

"And you are ...?" he inquired. He stopped just under one of the apple trees. As Qeteb moved, Isfrael could see that behind him lay the form of the Niah-woman. She was arranged neatly, her legs straight, her arms at her side, her eyes gazing upwards without thought or warmth.

Isfrael walked forward until he stood just before the inner circle of stumps. Qeteb was directly across the clearing from him.

"My name is Isfrael," he said, "and I am Mage-King of the Avar, Lord of the Forests."