Crusader. Sara Douglass
the Star Stallion, relaxed and sinuous in every movement, his head nodding and dipping with each stride, the stars sprinkling over the naked earth as they fell from his mane and tail. From his withers, fixed by magic or perhaps merely by wish, hung the Wolven and the quiver of blue-feathered arrows.
Behind the horse, but slightly to one side of him, trailed the Alaunt. They loped in single file, each with head raised just enough that they could keep their golden eyes fixed on the man in front of them.
Their jaws hung very slightly open; enough that the glint of teeth and tongue spun through.
Behind them all trundled the blue-feathered lizard, occasionally snapping at imaginary gnats.
The crystal dome appeared on the horizon, but DragonStar did not increase the rate of his stride, nor change the expression of his face. He was at peace with himself, even though his mind was consumed with the image of millions of stars and galaxies tumbling through the universe, chased by a great dark cloud with the stinging tail of a scorpion raised threateningly behind it.
Thus had Evil subverted every good ever created.
Thus had the Star Dance been chased by the TimeKeeper Demons since the creation of the universe itself.
Now was the time to end it.
Now. Here. In this time. With this man, this Crusader. And then … then …
… how many aeons had the Star Dance waited? How many worlds, solar systems, galaxies torn apart had it watched?
… then could the Garden be created anew. And this time, without the scorpion’s tail sting of temptation.
Only the Infinite Field of Flowers gently waving into eternity.
Faraday turned her head slightly, and she seemed to smile, even though her facial muscles did not move.
There, she could smell him.
And then he was behind her, and she could sense the sway of his body and its warmth, and her lips parted, and she shifted very slightly on the chair in remembrance.
He put his hand on her shoulder, and she relaxed back into his love. He bent swiftly down, and kissed her full on her mouth.
Leagh, Gwendylyr and Goldman lifted their faces and smiled with pure joy.
“DragonStar!” Leagh said.
He nodded, embracing each one with the warmth of his gaze, then looked at DareWing.
The birdman had turned his head in DragonStar’s direction and opened his eyes. They were red, and horribly consumed with the weight of his sickness.
And yet, somehow, they were still glad.
DragonStar slipped past Faraday and entered the circle. He paused, then squatted down by DareWing’s side. “I need you alive,” he said.
“Good,” croaked DareWing.
DragonStar grinned, then leaned down his hand and rested it on the skin of DareWing’s chest.
“Do you feel like an adventure?” he said.
“For you,” DareWing said, “I would fetch the coals that feed the flames in the firepits of the AfterLife.”
DragonStar’s hand rose to cup DareWing’s face. “From you,” he murmured, “I require far more. A flower a day from the field that surrounds you.”
Both men smiled with love, and then DragonStar rose, and addressed the four witches in the circle.
“Yet the field that surrounds this dome,” he said, “is a field of bare earth. It has been turned over and ribbed and ridged, but it lies barren. What does it represent?”
“Us,” said Goldman, who delighted in such philosophical dabblings. “We have been ploughed, and the seeds laid within us, but we have yet to flower.”
“Aye,” DragonStar said.
“Perhaps we cannot,” Gwendylyr said, “until DareWing is healed.”
DragonStar nodded, but did not say anything.
“We must heal DareWing,” Faraday said, her voice quiet and introspective. “Not DragonStar. We must.”
Again DragonStar nodded.
“And I must heal myself,” DareWing said.
“Stretch your wings,” DragonStar said. “All of you.”
And he stepped back out of the circle.
An expression of mild panic crossed Leagh’s face, and one hand tightened briefly over her belly. “How do we do this?”
“We all have Acharite magic within us,” Faraday said, “now freed, as we have all come through death.”
DragonStar had now walked very quietly out of the dome, and was wandering through the ploughed field. The Alaunt had settled down into a restful, watchful pack to one side of the dome, while the Star Stallion rested his weight on one hip and dozed, ignoring the lizard who lay stretched out behind him idly swatting at the stallion’s twitching tail.
A tiny star fell from the stallions mane and fizzled momentarily in the damp earth.
“How strange,” Faraday continued, her voice still very quiet, “that we have the use of Acharite magic, and that DragonStar has placed us within a field of ploughed earth, and has emphasised these things to us.”
Of the others, only DareWing had enough memories of the old Achar to truly understand what Faraday alluded to.
“You speak of the old god of Achar,” he said, then paused to cough violently. “Artor the Ploughman.”
“Artor was evil!” Leagh and Gwendylyr both said together.
“Yes,” Faraday said, “but perhaps we should not disregard the influence Artor would have had on the literal physical realm of Achar, as also the influence that that would have had on our power.”
She paused, trying to sort out her thoughts. “Of the five of us, it is DareWing who is sick. He has a mixture of blood, Icarii and Acharite … and maybe the Artor influence that — possibly — exists in all of us has sickened him nigh unto death.”
“I thought DragonStar said it was ground fever,” Gwendylyr said, frowning.
“Ground fever is the outward face of the sickness,” Goldman said, catching Faraday’s train of thought, “but the stain on DareWing’s spirit is the Artorite stain. It would affect him far more than any of us.”
“And is that why this field has not yet flowered?” Leagh said. “And why DareWing cannot get better? We must expel the remaining influence of Artor?”
“Yes!” Faraday said, and the others all smiled, for the explanation felt good to them. “Yes. We must reject the rib and ridge of the ploughed earth.”
“How?” said Gwendylyr, ever concerned with the practical.
There was a silence.
“We must ask ourselves a question,” Goldman said. “What is it that remains within us of Artor the Plough God?” Another silence.
“Faraday,” DareWing said, his voice now nearly a death whisper, “of all of us here, you have been the only one who has been thoroughly taught in the ways of Artor the Ploughman. I only fought against it, and Goldman …”
“Was but a boy of twelve when Azhure ran Artor into his grave,” Goldman said. “Faraday, what can you tell us?”
Faraday sat in silence for a while, remembering her childhood lessons in the Way of the Plough, and her allegiance to, and love for, Artor the Ploughman. The months, months that, in all, amounted to years, she’d spent studying the Book of Field and Furrow. How blind I was, she thought.
But the faith of the