Word of Traitors_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [86]
Comforting numbness vanished, laying bare his injuries. A scream tore out of him and left him gasping. His entire body ached and nausea hit him in waves. The end of the shifting brought a gift, though. Sharp pains pinched him here and there as the very worst of his injuries healed themselves—which wasn’t saying much. Arm, ribs, and face still hurt, but his knee throbbed a little less and when he lifted his hand, the deep hole in his hip had become a paper-thin, paper-smooth scar.
The wound Chetiin’s betrayal had dealt to him didn’t seem likely to ever close.
He wanted to sit. He wanted to sleep. He didn’t dare. Daavn would be hunting him. Geth stumbled out of his hiding place and on through half-familiar streets, trying to stay in the shadows. He turned the scraps of his attention to going unnoticed and let his feet guide him away from Khaar Mbar’ost. Once, he thought he heard the commotion of searching soldiers and dived into a stinking alley, then hastened along its crooked length to emerge onto another street. He pressed on, the sense that hunters were close behind raising the hair on his neck and arms, until the city became a string of streets and alleys.
Icy cold seemed to creep into him. Some part of his mind recognized the shock that descended on a body after great injury. Even if he found some hiding place where Daavn wouldn’t find him, his own body might kill him. He needed help. He needed refuge—but his only allies still in Rhukaan Draal were behind him in Khaar Mbar’ost. Ashi. Midian, redeemed now. Vounn. Senen. Munta.
He didn’t think he’d ever felt more alone, a fugitive in a city where he had been a reluctant king. He tried to laugh but it hurt. He stumbled and spat blood as he rose. All of his friends, practically everyone he knew in Rhukaan Draal were in Tariic’s power.
No. Maybe all his friends, but not everyone he knew. Geth looked around himself at buildings that leaned on each other like drunks and realized where his staggering footsteps had taken him. He turned around and found the low stone building that had once been a barn, though for some reason, it and the rest of the world insisted on spinning around him. He reeled up to it and banged his gauntlet against the double doors.
There was no response.
It took the last of his strength but he hammered his fist on the wood a second time. His legs gave out from under him and he slid down to lean against the stone wall. It was enough, though. The door opened and Geth managed a smile as he looked up into Tenquis’s startled gold-eyed, black-skinned face.
“You wanted to have another look at the sword?” Geth said.
Then the tiefling, his door, the street and all of Rhukaan Draal blurred together and he squeezed his eyes closed to shut them out.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
25 Sypheros
Away from the city, the number of stars visible in the sky multiplied ten-fold. By turning her back on the few campfires that had been lit, Ekhaas could see far up into the depths of the night. Only a few of the moons had risen and most of those were thin crescents, bringing even greater life to the stars and, drawn like a veil across the southern sky, the bright band of the Ring of Siberys. She drew a deep breath of cool night air, so much fresher than that of Rhukaan Draal—except for the lingering stink of cold, wet ashes.
The burned shell of Tii’ator clanhold clawed the sky above the camp. Around the hill on which clanhold and camp stood, burned fields scarred the gently rolling landscape. In the eastern distance, the dead gray mists of the Mournland rolled under the starlight.
Ekhaas tried to fix the scene in her memory, a beginning to the story she would take back to Senen Dhakaan and to the Kech Volaar. Burned clanhold and shifting mists, pale starlight and bright campfires. Forty warriors drawn from Dagii’s army to accompany their commander forward to a scouting position.
No sign of the Valenar raiders save