With each morsel of flesh and sliver of bone that slipped down his throat, Qeteb consumed yet more of the power of the trees and the earth.

By the time the Demon had devoured the entire bloody mess his feathers were iridescent with power, and the raven tipped back its head and cackled with happiness.

Nothing would stand in its way now.

Nothing.

Not even the Mother.

The raven snapped shut its beak and cocked its head, thinking. Its eyes blinked rapidly.

The Mother. Another meal sat waiting ahead! The raven burped, then flapped its wings and rose into the air. As it did so it crowed, calling to the other four Demons.

They lifted their snouts from the dead flesh they'd been consuming and looked to the black shadow circling in the air. Then, as one, they loped to the east, where waited the final meal.

Urbeth snarled, and paced restlessly in a circle through the snow. Behind her, shore-bound icebergs groaned and cracked. Her two daughters, as impatient but not as restless as their mother, sat to one side, their claws red from the dead (and sour, for it had been crazed) seal they'd eaten earlier.

All that was left was the abandoned rib cage lying at the very edge of the sea, red shards of flesh flapping in the wind.

Urbeth ignored both her daughters and her surroundings. Everything was wrong, wrong, wrong! It was not her task to save the Mother! Her role was only to wait in the snow, dispensing advice and tart wisdom, and keeping her eye on her children and their descendants.

Hadn't she done enough for this cursed land already?

All Urbeth wanted was to spend the rest of whatever and whichever eternity her residual powers allowed in jumping from icefloe to icefloe in the southern Iskruel Ocean, sinking her teeth into the spines of shrieking seals, and enjoying the odd, amusing discussion with whatever sentient being came within conversational range.

Instead, she'd been forced to hide the Ravensbundmen during Gorgrael's stupid grab for power, and ever since then she'd been obliged to step in and guide the footsteps of her irritatingly dense children.

And now DragonStar wanted her to save the Mother. What? Couldn't the Mother save herself?

"We'd better go," one of her daughters remarked. "The sky is falling apart."

Urbeth glanced upwards, but her daughter's comment was metaphorical only. If the Mother died, if the Demons consumed Her power, then the sky would indeed fall apart.

"And the icepack will melt," observed the other daughter, and at that Urbeth's temper cracked completely.

"Why can't the Mother mind Her own back?" she roared. "Why am I supposed to do everything?"

Her daughters slowly got to their feet, stretching backs and paws as they did so.

i I

The Mother sat and watched the forest to the west. There were' only a few score trees left, and even as She watched, many among them trembled and fell.

There was a darkness moving through them.

Worse was the darkness winging overhead. The Midday Demon, in the shape of a raven, its feathered and shadowed wingspan seemingly reaching from horizon to horizon.

There was no sun left, no beauty, no hope. Nothing but approaching despair, bleakness and destruction.

"I am the only thing left alive in the Groves," the Mother whispered.

And shortly even She would be gone.

The Mother fought an overwhelming urge to run. Run where? At Her back were nothing but shifting shadows and pools of darkness. The Sacred Groves had all but been consumed, and the only patch left was this island of cottage and garden, and the tumbling patch of forest before her.

The winged nightmare in the sky flapped slowly closer.

The Mother stood up, and smoothed out her gown.

"I'm sorry," She whispered, thinking of Faraday and the now-hopeless sapling secreted within her rainbow belt. "I'm sorry."

"You're the last person I thought to see submit to despondency," an aged but sharp voice said behind Her, and the Mother jumped.

Ur had emerged from the doorway of the cottage, holding a large terracotta pot and saucer in her arms. The saucer sat over the opening of the pot, hiding its contents.

"I... I thought you'd ..." the Mother said.

"Been eaten?" Ur said. "Everyone always forgets me," she added, grumbling, and plonked herself down on the bench the Mother had just risen from.

The Mother looked between her and the approaching storm of Demons.

"I don't think we have much longer," She said.

Ur's mouth twisted in a ghastly parody of a smile, and she clutched the pot even tighter.

Her hands had tightened like claws.

The Demons screamed closer.

Urbeth, her two daughters a few paces behind her, leapt from icefloe to icefloe. Even in this stark portion of the world, far, far north from the Demons' central influence, disease and blight had left their mark.

Many of the icefloes had turned a sad grey from their previously sharp blue-white, and were rent with cracks and soggy, sad saucer-shaped depressions that threatened to give way whenever one of the icebears put an inadvertent paw on one.

Urbeth's head swung from left to right as she leaped and ran. How much longer would the Icebear Coast be safe? Not long, not long at all if the Mother was consumed.

Urbeth abruptly stopped, sinking back onto her haunches and swiping a furious paw at the sky and at all of creation.

"I've had enough!" she bellowed. "Enough!"

Her daughters grinned, and their jaws dripped in anticipation of the hunt.

Urbeth recommenced her run north across the ice. But even as she moved into her stride, a shadowy movement in the distance, over to the east caught her far-seeing eye.

A pack of Skraelings, shimmering south to join in the general slaughter and mayhem.

And for a second time Urbeth halted and sank back to her haunches. But this time she remained silent, her eyes fixed on the Skraelings, and then her eyes drifted north-east, and yet further north-east, until she had concentrated her entire being on the unmapped tundra that stretched into the infinite unknown.

The sorry breeding grounds of the Skraelings, to be sure, but what else did it harbour?