Stardeep_ The Dungeons - Bruce R. Cordell [44]
Gage had heard her dead lover's name from Sathra's lips. A name displaced in time and forgotten. It could not be active and involved in the theft of the sword imprinted with a life lost…
Each notion she entertained that might explain such a possibility seemed more ludicrous than the previous. Impossibility heaped upon ridiculousness, until she felt she would go mad.
She groped for her flask and took a drink that temporarily numbed her racing thoughts.
The answers to all her questions lay in Stardeep.
She didn't dare hope those answers might fall from the lips of Nangulis himself. As she pressed him in her arms. She didn't dare imagine that scene, but once entertained, she couldn't sctub away her soul's fondest wish.
Some time later, Kiril paused in her breakneck rush through the forest. Her furs were too damn hot for one moment longer, even in the canopy's shadow. She was tempted to fling off her cold-weather clothing and keep going. But she would need the furs again at night. Which meant she would have to carefully pack them. She growled. Repacking supplies was finicky work, just the sort she hated. But it was now or never, otherwise she would broil.
To her left, Kiril spied a fallen tree-broad, unrotted, and most importantly, free of snow. She removed the heavy pack and balanced it on the log, then shrugged out of het coat.
From behind, Gage called, "Splendid! I could use a break, too." He joined Kiril and threw himself down on the log next to her pack. She noticed with some irritation he had already removed his coat, hood, and single fur glove. Removed and stowed them in his bulky pack while walking behind her, without raising a sweat. She narrowed her eyes, but didn't give him the satisfaction of commenting on his feat.
As she undid the knots securing her pack, Xet lit suddenly on her shoulder, pinching her flesh with its crystal-hard claws.
"Damn it, I told you to warn me before you do that!"
Xet pealed a strangely familiar tone… when had she last heard it? An image of the dark halls of an Imaskaran ruin to the southeast came to her, with Xet's cry echoing on stone. In that dark tower she had wielded Angul against cteatutes that deserved the Blade Cerulean's righteous bite…
Xet was sounding a warning.
"Gage-"
He turned to regard her, and the black-fletched arrow only tagged his shoulder instead of finding his heart. He giimaced, flipping backward off the log. He landed on his back behind the fallen tree.
Xet flew up as Kiril spun around. She stared into the thickets of wavering daylight. The dark trunks of pines multiplied in all directions in numbers beyond counting. Where was the archer? There…
A pulse of dimness, like night's clasp when the sun dipped below the horizon, oozed from every shadow. But darker yet, a squirming ball of gloom bounded across the forest floot, ricocheting between the unmoving pine boles… aimed right at her. Kiril dropped and the shadowy missile struck the log. A burst of fire with flames the color of coal arced in all directions. Kiril cried out in relief, until she spied several more shadows racing toward her.
"Blood!" she swore, rolling to her feet.
From behind the log, she heard Gage mutter, "Sathra! Why would she…?"
Her head jerked around. Too bad-no time to ask the thief how Sathra could be attacking if she were dead, as he had told her in Laothkund. If they both survived, she would skin the truth out of him.
The racing shadows resolved into humanoid silhouettes, each merely a dark outline cast on reality.
Kiril drew Angul.
Truth's clarity burned away the darkness all around her, searing her consciousness in the bargain. Doubts, worries, and pains of mind and body were cauterized in the absolute conviction of Angul's steel. The Blade Cerulean flamed triumphantly in her welcoming grip, its