Shadow's Edge - Brent Weeks [188]
The silence was broken by the sound of a snapping chain and a throaty, almost-human roar. The creature, long-backed now like an enormous caterpillar, shook itself and the rest of the chains popped like roasting corn. Kylar was forgotten.
Standing on six human arms, the creature rushed a meister and trampled him. Six arms and hands tore the meister apart and stuck his limbs to its body. The little mouths worked better than any glue. A fireball caromed off the beast’s hide. It wasn’t so much blocked as redirected. The fireball lost no momentum, did no damage.
Three more fireballs followed in the next moment, each flying away and bursting against the walls or the floor. The meisters shrieked. One ran up the stairs that spiraled out of the depths. The creature ran after her, but instead of following her up the stairs, it cut across the circular hall. It tried to grab her. She fell back against the wall, as far away from the grasping hand as she could get.
It was far enough. At that height, the creature’s arm couldn’t reach her. She started scurrying back up the stairs on her hands and feet. Kylar thought she was going to get away, but then the creature slumped. Its arm-legs sagged. Under the surface of its skin, long arm bones slid, one after another, to the arm reaching for the woman. The hand detached and slid forward, each section locking with the sickly sucking sound of a joint being dislocated and relocated. In no time, the arm had added four more arm-lengths. The creature grabbed the woman and pulled her onto itself. Her screams became muffled burbles.
The creature rounded and crushed three more meisters against the wall. It paused as all its little mouths chewed through their clothing and flesh. A fourth wytch grabbed one of the three by the hand, trying to pull her free. He put a foot on the creature’s hide to get leverage. But even though the creature didn’t seem to notice, it was as if its very skin was possessed of intelligence or at least insatiable hunger. The meister hadn’t pulled for a second when his eyes bulged. He threw himself backward, but his foot stuck to the creature’s hide. He landed on his back, screaming. For a second, it looked like he might pull free, at the cost of all the meat on his foot.
One flank tremored, the way a horse’s flank twitches to rid itself of flies, and in a wave, the toothy skin lapped up over the meister’s foot up to his ankle. Another twitch and it reached up to mid-calf. Another, and the creature was digesting four meisters.
It was all the break Kylar needed. He launched himself off the wall and ran up the south tunnel toward the castle. He passed four bloody meisters that Vi had dispatched on the way. He found Vi rifling through the purse of a dead guard standing in front of a formidable oak door. He smiled recklessly. She looked at him, wide-eyed.
“Shit, Kylar, you’re glowing.”
“I was amazing back there,” he said, forgetting that he should have been invisible.
“No, I mean, shit, Kylar, you’re glowing.”
Kylar looked down. He looked like he was on fire, all in purples and green in the magical spectrum and in a dull, forge-fire red in the visible spectrum. No wonder the meisters had been staring. He’d jumped through the heart of all their magic and it had been too much for the ka’kari to devour. It was bleeding excess magic as light.
Without thinking, he tried to suck the ka’kari back in. It was like taking a bellyful of hot lead into his glore vyrden. “Ow! Ow!”
“Did you kill it?” Vi asked.
Kylar looked at her like she was crazy. “Didn’t you see what that—that thing did?”
“No. I obeyed my orders and secured the tunnel.” Vi, Kylar realized, could be a real snot. “Not that it does a whole helluvalotta good, because there’s no key. They must have been afraid of that—that thing,” she mimicked. “Now we’re going to have to go back. I’d recommend sneaking, but you seem to be on fire.”
Kylar pushed past Vi and put his hands on the near edge of the oak door, one above the other.