Sentinelspire - Mark Sehestedt [111]
He entered the hall. The foliage was even thicker, the footing uncertain, for the floor was a mass of thick, woody vines with clusters of long leaves shaped like double-edged blades. It seemed that the farther he went up the tower, the thicker the vegetation became, almost as if it had grown from the top of the tower down.
The door closed behind him. Not a slam this time. But he heard it creak shut, and when he turned to look, three woody vines were falling away from the door, like arms going back to rest after having done their duty.
The knife in Berun's hand went suddenly cold, like grabbing an icicle through silk gloves. When he turned to face the hall, eyes were watching him from the darkness just beyond the reach of his light. Three sets of eyes-he saw one of them blink slowly-reflected his starstone's light back at him. Two glowed from about a man's height to either side of the hallway, but the third set-slightly farther back-was looking at him from near the ceiling. From their odd angle, Berun realized that the watcher was hanging upside down, as if clinging to the vines.
Everything around Berun seemed to come into sharp focus, and although his heartbeat did not increase, it beat with a stronger rhythm, and his breath came in deeper draughts, as if his body were seeking to draw in and sort every scent. Berun recognized his body's reaction at once. Fear. The old childhood fear of the dark and the unknown, the first true emotion he'd understood as an orphan on the streets of Elversult. As a young man under the tutelage of the Old Man of the Mountain, Kheil had learned to harness that fear and ride it into a formidable aggression. Take your fear and give it to your enemies, Alaodin had told him. Make them fear the dark. Make them fear the night. You must become fear. You must become the night.
Berun crouched and brought the knife up into a guard position. Another set of the eyes blinked. Berun brought back his hand holding the starstone, intending to throw it farther into the hall so it would bathe the three watchers in light while leaving him in shadow. But in the instant before his arm came forward, he felt something wrap round his forearm and constrict. He tried to pull away, but the grip tightened, and another snaked around his right leg up to his knee. He looked down and saw that the vines were wrapping round him, just as they had around Sauk and Talieth in the courtyard.
He slashed at the vines with his knife. The blade cut through them as easily as a new razor parting cobwebs, but even as he pulled his arm free, more vines rose up, grabbing both arms and then his waist. He managed one more slash before his knife arm was caught. The feeling of the vines and leaves moving against him, gentle but unyielding, almost brought a scream to his throat. But the sound of the vines was the worst. The leaves rustled and hissed, not like a breeze through boughs, but more like a snake through spring grass.
The more Berun struggled, the tighter the vines squeezed, and more came, detaching from the walls and ceiling, even rising from the floor. In moments his entire body was wrapped up to his chin, though the starstone still dangled from its leather cord in his fist. The vines tightened and pulled, lifting his feet from the ground so he was suspended from the ceiling. He hung there, slightly swaying, like a dressed pheasant hung from the eaves.
From out of the darkness, the eyes came forward, and as they entered the nimbus of green light cast by the starstone, Berun saw their true forms. Berun's first thought was that they were elves, but he dismissed that almost at once. Their ears had sharp points like elves, and their eyes were angled so as to gather even the faintest light. But their limbs were lithe and too long for elves, and the tint of their skin