Crusader

“Ah!” Qeteb loosened his grip. He hefted the bowl lightly, and then in a smooth action threw the bowl spinning into the darkness of the domed ceiling.

It disappeared.

“The one thing I like about secrets,” Qeteb observed, his visored face once more looking at StarLaughter, “is that they keep indefinitely. The bowl is mine, and eventually its secret will be mine.”

StarLaughter held the Demon’s stare, difficult as that was with no observable eyes to be found behind the latticed metalwork of the visor. “Your brothers and sister,” she said evenly, “promised me power in return for all my aid.”

To one side Sheol sniggered.

“Your aid,” Qeteb said. “How amusing that you think you provided —”

“I provided you with life!” StarLaughter yelled, balling her fists at her side and taking a step closer to Qeteb.

Barzula and Mot glanced at each other, then back to StarLaughter, and then they smiled slowly.

You did not provide me with life!

The thought boomed about the mausoleum, and although no spoken word sounded, all heard Qeteb’s words.

“You are my son!” StarLaughter screamed, unthinking anger giving her voice unusual strength. “I provided you with life, I bore you through adversity, I gave birth to you while I drifted among the stars. I loved and nurtured you through three thousand —”

“You provided the scrap of flesh which I chose to inhabit!” Qeteb stepped forward, and StarLaughter finally had the sense to retreat slightly. “My existence needs no ‘mother’. You were merely the cow that delivered the meat for my needs. You are the one who should be grateful… and yet you have the stupidity to demand it of me! I do not know,” he continued, growling now, and stepping forward once more, “why you still live or why your mind is still your own.”

StarLaughter paled, although her eyes remained bright with fury. “Because no-one else in this gloomy tower knows their way around this land and its secrets like I do!” she said.“You deserve another hundred thousand years trapped in some Enemy’s gaol if now you destroy the one Tencendorian remaining at your side, and with a reasonably intact mind!”

“You would be better crawling mad at my feet!”

“You wouldn’t dare!” StarLaughter countered, squaring her shoulders in defiance.

Qeteb stared at her, then raised a fist and struck StarLaughter across her face so hard he flung her sprawling several paces away across the floor.

“Bitch-sow,” he said, his voice tight with frustration. “One day I will dare, and I will leave just enough of your mind intact to know exactly what I will do to you.”

StarLaughter raised herself on an elbow and stared at him. Her left cheek was livid, blood running freely down her chin and neck. “If there is one being in existence you should never alienate,” she whispered, “it is your mother.”

Qeteb took one heavy step towards her. He laughed, whispery and harsh. “When I inhabited this flesh, StarLaughter, I also gained its memories. Do you want to know what I can remember of your son, StarLaughter? Do you? I remember that he despised you —”

“No! My son adored —”

“— he regarded you with contempt, as he knew all the Icarii in Talon Spike felt nothing but contempt towards you —”

“No!”

“You silly, vacuous woman. You thought you were the most powerful Icarii in the land, didn’t you? You thought that all power could be yours, didn’t you? And yet you were nothing but an embarrassment to the Icarii nation, someone to be greeted with silent sneers at every entrance into a room, and with laughter at your departure. The Icarii loathed you, your husband was revolted by you, and your son could not wait to escape your body. He hated you, StarLaughter. He was sickened by you, and he escaped into death rather than spend an eternity amid the stars with you.”

StarLaughter remained silent, rigid with shock. She stared at Qeteb.

Qeteb laughed again. “Queen of Heaven?” he said. “Never!” Then he spat a glob of phlegm through his metal visor into her face.

She gasped, recoiling.

“That was from your son, bitch, not from me.” And Qeteb turned and strode away.

StarLaughter lay on the cold, cold floor of the mausoleum.

Lies! Lies! He spoke lies! Her son had adored her, loved her.

From the moment he had come to awareness in her womb, her son had been the only one who had understood her power, and who had understood that she was destined for greatness and was justified in choosing whatever path she had to in order to grasp her destiny.

Qeteb spoke lies!

Didn’t he?

StarLaughter lay on the floor of the mausoleum and hated. More, she lusted for revenge. Qeteb could not speak such lies and blacken her son’s memory —

Gods! Was her son trapped under that mountain of metal and odious flesh, screaming for her to get him out?

— and think that she would do nothing about it.

StarLaughter bared her teeth, and made a small sound deep in her throat that was half curse, half growl.

Her hands clawed on the floor, her nails scratching at its surface.

She lay there and hated, and she lay there and lusted for revenge.

StarLaughter was very, very good at nourishing both hatred and revenge. She had had many thousands of years of practice at both.

I nurtured my son, she thought, her entire body rigid with the intensity of her animosity. I nurtured him and kept him and held and loved him through such extremes of pain and despair that you — a Demon — cannot imagine. I offered him my breast, and he took it.

I loved him, and yet you stole him from me, Qeteb, and then sullied his memory with lies.

“My son hated me?” StarLaughter whispered, her hands still clawing slowly at the floor. “He didn’t hate me, he adored me … every Icarii adored me! No-one laughed at me. No-one!”

She lifted her head slightly and stared at Qeteb, now on the far side of the mausoleum whispering with his fellow nightmares.

You are the simpleton, Qeteb, if you think you can deny both my son and myself our destinies.

At StarLaughter’s thought, Qeteb turned slowly and regarded her.

StarLaughter did not move, nor drop her eyes, nor even disguise the hatred and resentment in them.

After a moment Qeteb turned his back to her again.

Now you have one more enemy, StarLaughter thought, and began to mop at the blood on her face and neck with a corner of her much-bloodied robe.

Her son hadn’t hated her… had he?

StarLaughter paused in her attempts to clean her face, and her entire face trembled as doubt overran her mind.