The Gates of Night_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [7]
“You were just talking to him?” Lei pulled her staff from her satchel and leaned heavily upon it. “Daine, he’s dead.”
“I know!” he snapped. His back itched, and he considered scraping off the skin with his dagger. “I was dreaming, and he was there, and he said—”
“You were dreaming? Are you even listening to yourself?”
“I’m not imagining this! It was him. The vial I was carrying, the liquid, it must have—”
A loud rattling interrupted him … a shiver running through the shards of metal scattered across the floor.
“We don’t have time for this!” Lei said. “That thing could pull itself together at any moment. And I don’t have the strength to bring it down again. We need to get out of here now!”
“She is correct.” Pierce had abandoned the shattered remnants of his flail in favor of his longbow, and he had an arrow nocked to the string. “Whatever you may believe, Jode is not in this chamber. And we are in poor condition to fight any foe, least of all this one.”
“You’re right,” Daine said. He knew his encounter with Jode had been more than just a dream, and he’d assumed that Jode would just … appear when he woke up. But Jode wasn’t here, and this wasn’t the time for analyzing dreams. He took a deep breath, clearing his thoughts and considering the situation. “If these two made it inside, perhaps their little friend with the spiked arms is here as well. Pierce, take point. Scout the path to the front gate, then return to the central chamber. We’ll meet you there.”
Pierce leapt across the shards and disappeared into the hallway. Following the motion, Daine’s gaze was drawn to one of the pieces in the rubble. He plucked out an object battered and scorched, but quite recognizable. The head of a warforged soldier.
As he picked it up, two sensations swept over Daine. The first was a sense of familiarity: staring at the face and the sigil engraved into the forehead. He was certain he’d seen this soldier before. And now it occurred to him …
Greetings, Daine. It’s been a long time.
The creature knew who he was. How?
At the same time, a wave of energy flowed out of the head … a faint, numbing tingle. As the sensation spread across his body, the links of his chainmail began shaking and pulling against him, as if caught in a powerful magnetic force. Daine tried to let go of the head, but he couldn’t pry his fingers loose. The pressure on his armor grew greater, and the shards around him began to rustle.
“Lei!” he called.
Before he’d even completed the word, the stinging pain replaced the mystic tingle. Lei had smashed the head with her darkwood staff, catching Daine’s fingers in the process. The head struck the nearest wall with a satisfying crash. The force pulling at Daine’s armor disappeared, but as he rubbed his hand, he saw one of the metal shards skid across the floor toward the head, immediately followed by another.
“Are you hurt?” Lei asked.
Great, he thought. First I’m a madman, now I’m a fool.
He clenched his injured fist; the pain helped shield him from his embarrassment and the burning across his back. “Let’s catch up with Pierce,” he said. “I’m beginning to see why you want to get away from this thing.”
The two sprinted out of the room. Behind them they could hear the sound of metal on stone, as an ever-increasing stream of shards flowed across the floor toward Harmattan’s head.
Time was running out.
Daine was injured. He wanted to tear the skin off of his back. An unstoppable monster followed them. The mystery of Jode was heavy on his mind. And he was doing his best to prepare for whatever enemy might unexpectedly appear.
But the heart of the monolith still took his breath away.
Karul’tash was a hollow tower, an astonishing work of engineering. Daine could barely see across the central chamber, let alone spy the distant ceiling. He’d seen tall towers before. He’d spent much of the last year in Sharn, and the central spires of the city dwarfed the monolith. But it wasn’t the size of the tower that was so impressive. It was what