Realm of Light - Deborah Chester [160]
Their yellow eyes glowed ferociously, and their jaws dripped death.
Caelan gasped out a warning.
Orlo glanced back and turned pale. “Holy goddess mother,” he whispered, skidding to a halt. He shoved Caelan against the wall and met the charge of one of the beasts with a hard thrust of his sword. The creature screamed and fell, its deadly claws missing Orlo by mere inches. Shouting in panic, Mender stabbed at another one with his spear, but it seemed impervious to the wounds he dealt it. Orlo struck it from behind, severing its spine in one blow, and it fell dead at Caelan’s feet.
Gasping for air, Orlo stared at it, then shuddered once and gathered Caelan to run again. Other creatures appeared, frenzied and wild, as though driven forth from the realm of shadow by something more terrible than all imagination. More than once the men had to stop and fight off attacks. A cross passageway teeming with demons cut them off. Orlo, Mender, and Caelan shrank back into the shadows, and the demons rushed on without noticing them, howling in their madness.
The earth quaked again, rending and cracking. Caelan thought at any moment everything would come crashing down on them, but the old passageway timbers held, groaning, long enough for them to duck through.
They ran until he couldn’t breathe. They ran until his lungs were on fire, and every step jolted the pain back through severance like stitches from a long needle. Even with all his control he felt the agony more and more sharply. He was gasping and staggering by the time Orlo half dragged him up the last ramp into the cold air.
Demons and monsters streamed into the streets.
Then a sudden, very strange hush fell over the chaos. Caelan turned his head, sensing something stirring, awakening, coming, something unbearable in its horror.
He shuddered in Orlo’s hold, knowing this was what he had been born to face, but knowing also he was not ready, not up for it. He had lost Exoner, now in Tirhin’s hands, and without the spell-forged sword he might as well throw stones.
Without warning, weakness sagged through his knees. Orlo grunted with the struggle to hold him up.
“Quick,” Orlo said, panting. “Let’s get him to a hiding place. There’s no safety out here.”
They pushed Caelan behind a shaky wall and crept along cautiously, heading toward a collection of buildings on the other side of the city square.
“It’s coming,” Caelan whispered, swirling through a mist of darkness and raw, burning pain. Severance came and went, sustaining him for a blessed moment of relief only to fade again. “Coming.”
“He’s raving,” Mender said worriedly.
“I know,” Orlo replied. “Let’s go to the tavern. We can hide there.”
Caelan knew he must explain to them. They needed to understand that he was warning them, not babbling in delirium, but he couldn’t gather the words. Stumbling over rubble and timbers, he lost his footing and fell, half dragging Orlo and Mender down with him. From a long distance he heard them pleading with him to climb back on his feet and keep going. Orlo sounded afraid, and that surprised Caelan. He didn’t think Orlo knew what fear was.
But the earth was spinning beneath him. He reached up, but the black waters of Aithe, river of dead souls, swept him away.
He slept and dreamed and fought the creatures that tormented him in his feverish haze. Concealed in the underground cellar of a burned-out tavern, Caelan lay propped up on a crude pallet of straw and blankets. He dreamed of red-eyed demons and men who breathed smoke. He dreamed of the arena, hot in the merciless sun, the spectators screaming. He dreamed of Elandra. Her eyes were radiant, glowing only for him.
“I have a secret to tell you,” she said.
He reached for her, only to have her turn to smoke in his fingers and vanish.
And there stood Kostimon, yellow-eyed and sly, cloaked in purple with a crown of gold on his head. Pointing at Caelan, he laughed scornfully. Beyond the emperor,