her tattered gown.
“What?” Surely he recognised her!
“Who still controls the enchantment in this Star-forsaken land?” WolfStar said. “Why is there still enchantment about?”
StarLaughter chewed her lip, wondering if WolfStar’s experiences had left him slightly deranged.
“Tell me!” WolfStar shouted, managing to grab her ankle again and pull her over.
She fell atop him, puzzlement replaced with anger, and drove her fist into his belly.
WolfStar cried out and let her go, curling up into a ball and sobbing with agony.
“You are a fool!” StarLaughter said, finally understanding what WolfStar was on about. She scrabbled back to her feet, making sure that this time she retreated to a non-grabbable distance. “You backed Caelum, didn’t you? You thought he was the one to defeat Qeteb, didn’t you? Ha! He was not the StarSon.”
“What?” WolfStar said, rolling over and staring at her. “Who is?”
She smirked, revelling in the knowledge that WolfStar needed her. “Think I am going to tell you? I —”
“Who?”
Something howled far to the north, and StarLaughter looked toward Spiredore anxiously. “The Demons will be back soon,” she said. “We must be gone by then.”
WolfStar gave a harsh bark of laughter. “Have you fallen out with them, my beloved? Have they not given you what you wanted? Have —”
Exasperated, StarLaughter threw caution to the wind and stepped close, leaning down to grab WolfStar by the hair. She gave his head a wrench.
“Shut up! Do you want to live? Do you want to stop the Demons?”
“Are you trying to tell me” WolfStar whispered, “that their destruction is what you want?”
She stared flatly at him. “They betrayed me,” she said.
“Goodness,” he said. “How utterly surprising.”
StarLaughter pursed her lips, but let his sarcasm pass. “If you come with me,” she said, “I will tell you who the true StarSon is, who controls the enchantment left in this land, and I will tell you where he is.”
And for all this, she thought, you will love me and aid me. StarLaughter’s face softened at the thought, and she half-smiled.
WolfStar’s only response was a raised eyebrow. The bitch was mad!
“You bastard,” StarLaughter said. “Would you lie there until the Demons ride their beasts over you? Would you lie here until the north winds finally rob your desiccated flesh of its last drop of moisture? Would you lie here until —”
“It seems,” he said, “that at the very least I must lie here until you purge yourself of every last stored curse of the last four thousand years.”
She threw his head back until his skull cracked on the cold-baked earth. “You are worse than a fool, WolfStar.” She took a deep breath, then leaned down and grabbed his hair again. “Praise every star that exists that the Demons have not yet thought to rob me of the scrap of power they condescended to give me.”
And she began to haul WolfStar effortlessly towards Spiredore, WolfStar howling with rage and frustration and agony the entire way.
StarLaughter paused in the atrium of Spiredore and looked carefully about. Then she cocked her head and listened. Nothing.
WolfStar still hung from her hand, very slowly unwinding himself from the defensive huddle he’d been forced to assume when she’d dragged him inside the tower.
What in curses’ name was she doing?
StarLaughter ignored WolfStar’s almost inaudible mutterings and groans, concentrating instead on the silence of the tower rising above her. Should she risk it?
Ah, but what choice did she have! None! And WolfStar even less.
“Spiredore,” she said. “We would go to the northern Icescarp Alps.” And StarLaughter placed her foot on the first of the steps, and walked upwards.
WolfStar screamed as she dragged him effortlessly after her and the edge of the first step dug into his ribs and then his hip.
Within a few steps StarLaughter increased her gait to a trot, giving WolfStar’s head an impatient twist to shut him up.
Qeteb raged when he emerged from Spiredore to find StarLaughter gone. Not because he was in any manner frightened of her, or even because he needed her, but because she had disobeyed him.
She had flaunted him, and no-one did that and lived to enjoy their small rebellion.
“Sense her!” he hissed to the other Demons, and they sent their senses scrying over the entire land.
Nothing.
Then Qeteb sent his far sight and his power raging over the land. Where? Where? Where?
But wherever it was, StarLaughter had managed to evade him.
How? She had no magic that could withstand his! Where?
Furious, Qeteb sent firestorms tumbling about Tencendor. They ravaged from the Murkle Mountains to the Nordra, and from the Minaret Peaks to the cliffs of Widewall Bay. Sheets of ice fell from the sky, and impaled creatures as they scrambled to avoid the fireballs. Molten earth spurted in great gouts from the chasms that wound over Tencendor.
And even this did not flush forth StarLaughter, nor reveal her presence.
Qeteb slid down from his beast, strode over to Barzula, and hauled him from his mount to the ground.
He sent a furious armoured foot booting into the Demon’s abdomen. “Where is she?”
“I do not know, Great Father!” Barzula screamed.
“Where is she?” Qeteb roared as he punched Sheol in her throat, sending her to the ground as well.
“I do not know, Great Father!”
“Why did you not kill her?” Qeteb bellowed.
All four Demons now huddled on the ground, their faces pressed into the dirt.
“We thought you might like to play with her,” Sheol eventually whispered.
Qeteb fell silent, regarding his Demons.
“Get up,” he said, and turned away, staring into the northern distance. StarLaughter had escaped very far away, and that probably meant north. But not only had she escaped, she had somehow managed to cloak herself from his power, and that Qeteb did not like at all.
She should not know how to do that … and if she had found the means to do so, it meant that there was still some secrets left in this land
