• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Rat!” roared Geth over the wail. “How do we fight that?”

A bit of stone fell past Ekhaas’s eyes and bounced off her arm.

She twisted her head and looked back to Tenquis. The tiefling was on his feet, drawing his hand out of a bulging pocket. Ekhaas couldn’t hear him, but his lips formed a word, and she saw the lines of embroidery on his long vest shift. The bulge of his pocket vanished. In the ground at his feet were three empty holes in the shape of shaari’mal.

Ekhaas grabbed Geth and shouted in his ear. “Get everyone out of the hall!” She shoved him in the direction of one of the last unblocked doorways but didn’t wait to see if he obeyed. The construct was advancing with the unrelenting patience of centuries. Ekhaas raised her eyes to the leaping spans and trembling vaults over its head, filled her lungs, and threw all of her will into the magic of the song.

Dissonant cacophony exploded among the age-weakened stone, as loud as the construct’s wails but more focused. Mortar that had endured for millennia burst. Stone cracked with a report like a lighting strike and started to slide.

Nature’s laws took over. With a roar that punched all the way into Ekhaas’s belly, the ceiling of Suud Anshaar’s great hall came crashing down. The construct scarcely seemed to notice. It was still slithering toward her when the first blocks slammed into it.

Walls followed ceiling, but Ekhaas was already turning and sprinting in the direction she’d pushed Geth. Chips and chunks of stone flew around her. She ducked her head and ran. The doorway was close—and through it she could see Tenquis, the fingers of one hand tight around his artificer’s wand, the fingers of the other splayed and trembling as if they supported an invisible weight. Ekhaas threw herself through the arch. She caught a glimpse of pained release on Tenquis’s face, then he dropped his hand.

The doorway crumbled just as her feet cleared it. The ground hit her hard, and for a brief instant, it was all she could do to catch her breath. Hands took her arms. Geth and Tooth hauled her to her feet. Ekhaas turned to look back at the heap of rubble she’d made. Dust swirled above it in the moonlight.

Then was sucked back down among the toppled stones. Rocks shifted and clattered as the thing underneath the heap moved. A muffled wail filtered into the night.

“Khaavolaar!” cursed Ekhaas. “We need to—”

The wail went silent. The movement beneath the heap stopped. Instinctively, Ekhaas froze for just an instant. They all did.

In that instant, a long, glittering black tentacle stabbed out of the rubble. It lashed through the air like a whip in the moonlight, so close Ekhaas could feel the knife-edge wind of its passing.

Tooth was the one who took the blow, however. His arm snapped up as if he could block the tentacle’s attack, but it just wrapped around his forearm and pulled. The hunter screamed.

CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

13 Vult

When the shrieks and howls of hunting varags had broken over the Khraal the previous afternoon, Midian had looked to Makka and asked, “Is there anything in this bloody jungle besides Geth and the others that would bring out that many varags?”

Makka had grinned at him. “Us.”

Whatever the shifter and his group had done to provoke the varags’ hunt—and Midian had a feeling it wouldn’t have taken much—it had left the way clear for the pair of them to follow without fear. Every varag in the area seemed to have been drawn into the chase. They’d found the Dhakaani road, and even the need to track their quarry had been eliminated. When Makka had offered prayers of thanks to the Fury, Midian had been almost tempted to join in.

Then dusk had come and with it a terrible wail like nothing Midian had ever heard before. Moments later, Makka had frozen for an instant, ears cocked, then leaped for the nearest tree and climbed it like a squirrel. Midian hadn’t stopped to ask why, but simply followed the bugbear’s lead.

He’d barely reached a hidden branch before a flood of frightened varags came pouring along the road and through the undergrowth.

When