And all about them, the Star Dance embraced them and loved them.

Urbeth and her daughters huddled, unseen, under the trees of an orchard.

"Why did they do that?" one of the daughters hissed, low and angrily. "They could have been saved if they stayed with the column!"

"I think they have just saved themselves," Urbeth commented, as the Demons snapped and snarled and twisted themselves into knots trying to find where the corpses of the Star Gods had got to.

"And given Axis a precious few more minutes. As we must do! Come!"

The Demons lifted into the sky, or what was left of it, furious that the Star Gods had somehow evaporated before they could be torn satisfactorily to pieces.

Never mind. There was doubtless far better and far more extensive eating ahead. The Star Gods would have made thin fare, anyway.

Almost all the air had gone, but its lack did not bother the Demons at all. Evil existed as easily within an airless vacuum as it did dancing among the leaves of the most agreeable of apple trees.

They soared, and basked in their power.

Beneath and before them spread beauteous orchards, delightful palaces and shaded groves.

All empty.

At first this did not concern the Demons overmuch — surely the doomed peoples would have sought a hidey-hole somewhere — but as they soared and dipped and tore apart palace after palace and toppled orchard after orchard, the Demons began to get impatient.

And frustrated.

Where were the people?

"Deeper and deeper," growled Qeteb, and so they flew deeper and deeper, their destruction growing more wanton as they went.

And yet no people.

"It is one of the Enemy's tricks!" Sheol cried, but Roxiah growled a disagreement.

"The Enemy have nothing to do with this. Nothing! They built no Sanctuary within Sanctuary, and no Sanctuary after Sanctuary. This was the last stand."

"Then where are they?" screamed Mot and Barzula in unison.

Qeteb remained silent, soaring higher and higher until he could see, in the very distance, something that made his blood literally boil in fury.

A small crack in the horizon.

And through this crack, a shifting mass that looked very much like people and animals fleeing into the distance.

His entire body burst apart in the extremity of his wrath, and boiling blood scattered over all of Sanctuary.

"Zared? Where's Urbeth?"

Zared turned and stared at Axis and Azhure. He was wrapped close in several blankets, but even so, what Axis could see of his face was blanched with the freezing conditions.

"Gods, man," Zared said. "Aren't you cold?"

Axis suddenly became aware that, firstly, he was wearing nothing but a black wool tunic and trousers as well as boots, and, secondly, he was, indeed, frozen nigh unto death.

He shuddered, and hugged himself closer to Azhure.

Zared beckoned to a man in a cart behind him, and the man rummaged in the tray of the cart before tossing Axis a hooded cloak.

He grabbed at it, fumbled and almost dropped it, then managed to drape it over his shoulders and back and pull the hood close about his face.

"Urbeth?" he said again.

Zared shrugged. "She said nothing. Just growled, and vanished."

Qeteb pulled himself together with the most extreme of efforts, but even then columns of smoke rose over Sanctuary where his blood droplets had fallen.

He resumed the shape of the handsome man dressed in grey and cream, although now he had huge black, clawed wings — far too large for his body — protruding from his back. Qeteb could not quite manage the perfectly congenial form in his current state of anger ... and ... and frustration*.

"Why will no-one stay still on this cursed piece of soil!" he screamed, still circling high in the air.

"The Enemy were ever slippery," Mot hissed at a point just below Qeteb, and the other four Demons cursed and howled and spat, spinning in tight circles through the air, yet still managing to fly with utmost speed towards the offending crack on the horizon.

The crack through which their food was escaping.

The entire populations of Tencendor that had not fallen under

the sway of the Demons had now become the Enemy, whether they were humanoid or not, and whether they had a single drop of the Enemy's blood in them or not.

No doubt they think we will not follow, Qeteb said in the other Demons' minds. What fools! Did they truly think we would simply stamp our feet sulkily about Sanctuary and just let them go?

"Qeteb!" said Roxiah, and it jabbed a finger — that every heartbeat or so metamorphosed into a piece of intestine — to their left.

Qeteb jerked his head about, reluctant to take his eyes off the escaping columns — such feeding that lay ahead!

But, ah! There was some feeding to the left, too. Not much, but something to vent his frustration and fury on.

Three white rabbits, bounding terror-struck across the blackened landscape of Sanctuary.

All six Demons swung as one towards the rabbits.

"Night is only a few hours away," Axis said, and wrapped his cloak even tighter about himself. Azhure now sat in the cart, huddled under some blankets, and Zared and Axis had turned their horses so they stood with their tails to the freezing wind.

The men looked back over the column.

It stretched as far as they could see, which, truth to tell, was not that far, because a snowstorm was rapidly moving in from the extreme north, and Axis and Zared could only see some ten paces before them.

And within minutes even that ten paces would be denied them.

"Is everyone out of Sanctuary?" Azhure said.