Sentinelspire - Mark Sehestedt [84]
The mound of earth rose, as if dirt from the torso were being forced upward, then split into a mouth. It kept growing, the bulk of the thing's body shrinking as it formed into the jaws. The mound of earth leaned forward, towering over Berun, then fell.
When the tiger had knocked him to the ground, Berun thought he'd felt every bone in his body scrape together. This was a hundred times stronger and completely unrelenting. The tiger had struck and bounded away. This kept coming and coming and coming. He felt millions of grains of wet dirt undulating over his skin and falling down his shirt, filling his nose, burying him. Roots and rocks scraped and bruised him.
It was cold. Worse, Berun could not breathe. Dirt filled his nose, and he knew that if he opened his mouth, he would choke on the wet earth. He pitched and kicked and punched, but it was like fighting the wind. The earth flowed around every strike. He felt his knife swept away in the flood of earth. For an instant, he thought he heard Sauk screaming, but then it was gone, and there was only the roar of the earth surging around him.
Berun's kicks and punches were no longer a matter of fighting. With no air, his body had completely separated from his mind and gone into the throes of sheer panic.
Lights danced in his vision. Were his eyes open or clenched shut? He could not remember, but neither could he feel them any longer. The lights coalesced, bleeding together, and deepened into a shade of verdant green, like dawn's light on the dew of spring grass.
The light rippled, a green glow playing over shadow, and the ripples formed an outline, then a face. Chereth.
It was Chereth, his master. Older. His face drawn. Even haggard. But there was no mistaking his master's visage.
"Berun," said Chereth, "you must help me. I release you from your oath. Come to me, my son. Come to me!"
Chapter Twenty-Seven
19 Tarsakh, the Year of Lightning
Storms (1374 DR) The foothills of
the Khopet-Dag
Wake -wake-wake!
An urgency. A will tinged by worry.
Wake-open-eyes! Wake-open-eyes?
Then he heard-really heard, not just in his mind-the chittering, almost birdlike but harsher.
He didn't move his limbs or even turn his head. He wasn't sure he could and was afraid to try. Part of him was afraid that opening his eyes would show him nothing, only the smothering black of being buried alive in the deep earth. But he could breathe. Not well. His nostrils were clogged, and something was partially blocking his lips.
Berun opened his eyes. Blue sky. Not entirely blue, no. Clouds low and gray floated like islands in a sea.
The chittering came again, and Berun dared to move his head, looking up just a little. Jagged shapes broke his view of the sky. Branches. Blackened branches. Blackened by lightning. He was lying under the lightning blasted tree where he had agreed to meet-
"Lewan!"
Berun sat up. He heard a startled rustling overhead and looked up in time to see Perch scrambling down the tree.
Halfway down, the lizard leaped and alighted on Berun's shoulder.
That was when Berun got the first good look at himself. He was covered-head to fingertips to heels-in mud. It had begun to dry, and his sudden movement sent cracks across the dark surface.
Perch chittered in his ear.
Wake-wake-wake?
"Yes, Perch. I'm awake." He smiled and ran a finger down Perch's back. His arm trembled.
He felt weak, his limbs heavy, no strength in his muscles, the way he felt after running dozens of miles across the open steppe.
Berun looked around. Other than himself and Perch and a few butterflies fluttering through the grass, no one was around. No sign of Sauk and his men, nor of Lewan. The last thing Berun could remember was the earth creature attacking, seeming to swallow him and push him down into the earth. Then the green light and Chereth's face. Berun, you must help me.
And then he understood. Somehow, even from his prison