Still StarGrace said nothing.

"Truly," StarLaughter said, and StarGrace finally nodded.

"Make sure that you do," she said, and lifted into the air. StarGrace had trusted StarLaughter through four thousand years, and the woman had not let her down once during this time. StarGrace could surely trust her for a few more days.

StarLaughter smiled and waved as the Hawkchild soared high into the sky, circled twice, then flew south again.

She did not realise that StarGrace did not believe a word of what she'd said.

Chapter 44

The Heart Incarnate

At dawn, Urbeth and her daughters reappeared. They were patently exhausted, and Axis and Azhure wondered at the exertions, both physical and magical, they must have undergone in order to draw the Demons away from the fleeing convoy, and then to escape the Demons' wrath themselves. Urbeth and her daughters looked at the avenue of trees, looked at Ur, dozing underneath a cart, the pot still wrapped in her arms, and nodded to themselves.

The three reappeared in their womanly forms, not as icebears. All three had dark circles of exhaustion under their eyes, and their skin was pallid, not with the reflection of the ice and snow, but with the strain they'd undergone.

"You need food and rest," Axis said, sharing a concerned glance with Azhure, and then offering Urbeth his arm.

For a moment it appeared Urbeth might actually accept his support, then she shook her head tiredly.

"Rest," she said. "Food can wait."

"What happened?" Azhure asked, knowing they were probably too tired to tell, but needing to know anyway.

Urbeth was too exhausted even to snap. "We drew the Demons off," she said, "and handed them into the care of the Chitter Chatters."

Axis smiled. He remembered how the box Ho'Demi had brought out of the Murkle mines had whispered disconcertingly to itself for months until the Ravensbund Chief had turned the Chitter Chatters loose in the northern icepack.

"Where are the Demons now?" said Azhure.

"I don't know," Urbeth said, and Axis and Azhure realised she was so strained she was close to tears. "I just don't know."

"Rest," Azhure said, "please."

Urbeth nodded, then turned slightly to address her two daughters. "Take the rear of the avenue."

Without a reply the two ice women turned, and melted away into the snow.

"Why send them back there?" Axis said.

"To protect it," Urbeth said. "The trees will protect the length of the avenue, but for the moment its two entrances are vulnerable. I will stand here."

Without further ado Urbeth took several steps back until she was at the border where snow turned to shaded walk, and began very slowly to turn about.

Within heartbeats she sped up until her form was spinning so fast Axis and Azhure could not discern her features, and then, in the next breath, Urbeth turned into a pillar of opaque green and grey ice that stood immobile and solid, guarding the entrance to the avenue.

Qeteb and his companions had escaped the Murkle mines only through the most extreme of efforts. The dark and damp mines had contained enchantment — did the very cursed soil still reek with enchantment?

— and the Demons had found it very difficult to negate its holding effects.

Eventually, after hours of temper, they had burst through the boarded-up entrances of several of the ancient shafts, sending showers of sharp-edged rock cascading through the air, and causing a massive avalanche down three sides of the mountain from which they'd emerged.

Qeteb was furious, but calm. He had finally understood that the forces ranged against him consisted not only of DragonStar and his five companions, but of the land itself.

The total and catastrophic destruction of Tencendor must wait until every creature, rock and speck of soil ranged against him and his had been destroyed.

And for this, Qeteb knew he needed a cool and calculating head, not a fount of fury erupting at every setback.

Thus, he held back his Demons for an hour or two of planning. They crouched on the desolate side of the mountain they'd escaped from, clinging to rocks like bunch-backed toads, letting the snow settle about their shoulders and lumpy spines.

They crouched, and they whispered. They let their rage feed their whispers, but not control them. They spent some time in utter quiet, sending their senses scrying about the land; not only to verify the whereabouts of DragonStar and his five, but also to truly sense the land itself, feel its purpose, know its motives.

Qeteb, his senses soaring and penetrating deeper than those of his companions, felt something else.

A thing or a purpose as intimately connected to DragonStar as his five witches. No! Even more intimately connected! Who or what was this thing? And where? Where?

Qeteb knew where the five witches were — indeed, their positions was as preordained as their forthcoming battles with the Demons — but where, where the sixth mysterious and powerful presence?

Ah! A smile crawled through Qeteb's mind as his senses showed him the icy northern tundra.

And the long, snaking convoy within which was the sixth ... and perhaps the most vital.

"There is a heart yet beating within this land," Qeteb eventually said.

He had thought he'd completely ravaged Tencendor when he'd been resurrected, but now he understood the untruth of that belief. He'd devastated its skin, but no more. Somewhere lay a great heart thumping, still pounding power through the land, frustrating the Demons at every turn.

"We must find that heart," said Qeteb, "and destroy it."

"Do you mean the four hearts of the four lakes?" said Mot.

"No."

"Then the heart of the Maze —" Barzula began.

"No! Another heart. An unknown heart. A powerful heart. A despicable heart!"

"Where?" asked Sheol.

Qeteb sat silent a moment, his black armoured form hunched against the weight of snow on his wings and back. The metal of his visor rippled, as if the thoughts contained within were too virulent to be contained much longer.

"The long line of hopelessness," Qeteb finally said, "that escaped from Sanctuary and currently wallows in icy misery to the north.

"In there lies the heart incarnate."

Sometime after StarLaughter had resumed her trek east, six loathsome shadows swept over the landscape.

StarLaughter reflexively crouched close to some rocks, but the Demons, flying high overhead, did not notice her — or perhaps were too preoccupied to notice her.