"Safe enough," StarLaughter said, determined not to let DragonStar's pessimism ruin her joy. She sighed happily, her fingers kneading uncomfortably into DragonStar's arm. "And soon we will be reunited. DragonStar, where is he? Where?"

DragonStar jerked his arm away, annoyed not only at her inane and persistent belief that WolfStar could not wait to see her again, but also at her irritating presence. This would be a long night, and he would prefer not to spend it with StarLaughter at his side.

"North," he said, not wanting to give StarLaughter the happiness of a more specific answer.

"North? North? What? In the depths of the Iskruel Ocean? DragonStar, I must go to him! I can't leave him to the fishes and the —"

"Oh, for the gods' sakes, woman! Leave it alone! He is in the northern tundra, and —"

"The tundra? But there are Skraelings out there and —"

Despite the trouble a harsh word might bring him, DragonStar's temper snapped. He twisted around and grabbed StarLaughter's shoulders. "Leave him be, you demented woman!"

"I cannot!" she responded, her eyes flashing in the clouded night light and pushing his hands away.

"He is mine, and I will not let him go!"

Dear stars in heaven, DragonStar thought wearily, but he moderated his tone when he replied to her.

"StarLaughter, he is with those who can protect him, and besides, I doubt they will stay in the northern tundra. They will come south soon enough, and you can wait for them at the foot of the eastern Icescarp Alps — where they met what was once the Avarinheim. You can't miss them from there."

And gods help them, he thought, when the meddling and completely crazed StarLaughter turns up.

But whatever their difficulties (or, more specifically, WolfStar's) at least StarLaughter would be out of his hair.

StarLaughter narrowed her eyes as she thought it out. "But they might swing west along the Icebear Coast," she said. "And if I were waiting at the foot of the eastern Icescarp Alps then I would miss them completely. How do you know they will come directly south?"

"Because I believe that my father Axis is leading them, and Axis is a sensible man, and he'd damn well take the shortest bloody route to come south! Does that answer your question?"

"My, my," StarLaughter murmured, "you are testy, aren't you?"

"It is cold and I am tired of your company," he said. "Go find your Wolf Star if you will, but leave me alone this night."

She leaned back very slightly, her face angry. "Tonight will be a night of terror," she said. "I hope you enjoy it. Nay! I hope you survive it!"

And then she was gone.

DragonStar looked after her retreating form with relief ... and some regret that he'd not thought to ask her to leave her cloak. Terror-ridden or not, this night was going to be a cold one.

When the column of creatures that had wormed their way north from the Maze to the Lake of Life appeared, Gwendylyr initially contented herself with throwing rocks at them from her well-protected fortress within her cave. She'd arrived here just as dusk was falling, and it had taken her only a cursory glance about to know she'd found herself an easily defensible and fortifiable shelter.

The cave itself was roomy and dry since the spring had dried up in the aftermath of Qeteb's resurrection, but the opening to the cave had been built up with masonry to allow only a relatively narrow opening for the water to gush through. Gwendylyr supposed Sigholt's engineers, in doing so, had thought to protect the spring from contamination by loose vegetation and wild animals.

Whatever, it took only the work of a half an hour for Gwendylyr to further fortify the entrance with the branches of trees blown down in Qeteb's fit of ressurective destruction.

Then she had sunk to the floor of the cave and dozed for some hours.

When she'd awoken, it was to find that night had fully enveloped the landscape, and there were horrid whisperings and scratchings at her dry-branched doorway.

And so Gwendylyr had sighed, risen, brushed herself off, tucked away a few tendrils of stray hair, and prepared to defend herself.

There were loose rocks lying everywhere, and once she'd managed to drive the first ranks back a cautious twenty or thirty paces with her well-aimed missiles, Gwendylyr set to piling up an armoury.

The only trouble was, the rocks were not replenishable. She could probably keep the gathering hordes at bay for a few hours (but what if they all rushed her at once?), but come morning, she would undoubtedly be out of ammunition.

Gwendylyr stood thinking, hands on hips, her eyes drifting from her neat piles of rocks to the entrance and back again.

"The trouble with me," she said, "is that I am far too neat and way too organised."

She moved closer to the entrance and peered over her barrier of tree branches.

There were several hundred, possibly several thousand, creatures out there now, huddled in the darkness, and slowly, slowly creeping their way forward.

Gwendylyr threw a rock.

It struck a creeping dog squarely in the forehead. He yelped and cowered, then recovered and crept forward again, even though his forehead had caved in and thick sludgy matter — Gwendylyr presumed it was the dog's brains but couldn't see clearly at this distance and in this dark — was sliding down the right-hand side of the dog's face.

Gwendylyr shrugged. The rocks were losing their potency. Neatness and organisation would not win the day for her.

She smiled, and stood very still.

She closed her eyes and lowered her head, concentrating.

Gwendylyr was thinking very unneat thoughts. She was, in fact, reliving her recently-found friendship with the forces of disorder.

And then, just as the first of the creatures had reached her barrier and had seized the branches in order to tear them away, Gwendylyr let all the forces of disordered nature fly forth.

The creatures did not know what had gone wrong. They had been creeping through a world that they knew and loved: a world of bleakness and madness, a world of devastation, a world that belonged truly to their masters and no-one else.

And then, everything had fallen apart. The ground had shifted, split, reformed — but reformed into geological features that had not been there previously. Stone pillars thrust upwards where once had been flat ground, caverns yawned where once had been solid rock.

And over all crept entwining ivy, tangling paws and claws and limbs, pulling creatures into pits and under toppling rocks.

None of the creatures could find a toehold, for in this disordered world toeholds did not exist. They tumbled and shrieked, tearing each other apart in the effort to find a foothold anywhere, and all the time ripping and snapping at the ivy that rioted everywhere.

This was not a world they understood.

Gwendylyr smiled.

When the three Wing of the Strike Force DragonStar had sent arrived, they found nothing but Gwendylyr sitting in front of her cave, lighting a small fire with the remains of what appeared to have once been a stack of firewood.

Everything seemed calm and perfectly normal.

"Have you been troubled by any of Qeteb's creatures?" asked the Flight Leader who settled before her.

"Hardly at all," Gwendylyr replied.

DragonStar smiled, and turned his attention south towards Cauldron Lake.