A hole the size of the drake itself had been blown clear through the ship and the water rushed in with eager greed to join in the killing.
‘By Sel’ari, the ship is sinking!’ Sellemar realized in horror. He pulled himself to his feet, scrambling through his injury and up the stairs. Even as the ship around them groaned in warning, the demons clawed toward him in pursuit—not to save themselves, but in hopes of retrieving a swift and fresh meal.
Sellemar tossed himself through the open doors and onto the main deck. He spun around, eyes frantically sweeping the ship.
The five men still lay sprawled and unconscious. ‘Damn it!’ Sellemar swore, running to one of their listless forms. He ripped the sword from the slacked grasp and shoved it between the handles of the storage hold.
It would not seal the way for long.
Sellemar was moving away instantly, his mind hastening to form a plan. He calculated how long he had to implement it before everyone was lost to sea with the beasts of the Phantom Isles. Sellemar had fair time to save himself, but the crew as well…? And worse still, the noise had surely brought the Night’s Watch to the dock’s shore! Even with the din of the beasts roaring behind him, he could hear shouts from somewhere beyond the bow of the ship.
Sellemar yanked his singed mask to cover his face.
“Damn my sense!” he swore as he rushed to the skiff at the side of the helm and lowered it swiftly until it was near level with the railing. He rushed to the farthest men, dragging them across the deck. “Going to your deaths sleeping is far more than you deserve,” he growled resentfully. But it was not Sel’ari’s way. He flung the five men into the small boat as rapidly as he could, praying fervently that the ship would stay afloat just long enough for him to get free as well.
Sel’ari heard his prayer and the ship did not capsize toward the stern until the skiff had dropped with a resounding splash into the water and the men bounced once within.
Cries of alarm rose louder from the Night’s Watch on the docks. The sounds of hurried paddles hit the water as someone rowed out to meet the unconscious crew.
Sellemar stood upon the railing of the sinking vessel, his resolute silhouette briefly illuminated as another explosion rocked the ship from beneath. Then he kissed his thumb once and raised it to Emal’drathar. Tonight, he was glad for the darkness, for he too would vanish within it.
But what he had uncovered…? That would remain.
The warlord would not solidify his grip upon the elven nation. Instead, come dawn, he and his queen would behold their first taste of his Resistance.
CHAPTER TEN
A piercing scream rent the night air, penetrating Jikun’s exhaustion and fatigue like a lance to the heart. He wrenched himself upward through his pain, at once fully aware of the world around him. The blanket dropped away from his pounding chest and he grasped for the kitchen knife. His eyes darted to the right for his companion—Navon was still there beside him, his stricken face illuminated in the glow of Keshal’s dying fire. He had likewise risen to one elbow, his alarmed expression a confirmation that the sound had been more than a figment of Jikun’s imagination.
Across the inn, the hearing-impaired humans were stirring and a white-cloaked man was already on his feet.
Jikun’s mouth opened dryly. “What was—?”
But his words were culled into silence, drowned beneath a second scream of terror. No sooner had it begun to fade than a howl of cries pursued it across the city.
“W-what in Sel’ari’s name?!” Navon stammered as he clambered to his feet beneath his cloak. He flattened his body against the wall as a maddened human barreled past him, frantic to escape the confines of the inn.
Jikun had experienced enough battles to recognize the sound. To know the sound. They were not merely screams of fear. Howls of warning. These were the last cries of the living.
His head snapped about Keshal’s interior and he spotted the white-cloaked man leaning out of a curtained window. “What do you see?” he demanded. Deep within the recesses of his mind, military tents danced with blackened flames. ‘What in Ramul is occurring?! We’re in the middle of god-damn nowhere!’
The man clenched the curtain, and for a moment, there was no response. Still, his breathing was audible from across the room—quickened and loud, made erratic by fear. “There is something moving in the darkness…” He hesitated. “But it looks like… smo…ke? What in the—?” The man flung himself from the frame, narrowly avoiding a dark shape hurtling through the window. It smashed into the fire in the center of the room, spewing a shower of sparks high into the dome.
Even if Jikun had not been riveted to the floor by the dim illusion of torched soldiers, it was too late to do more than watch as the scrambling humans fought to claw their way from the windows and door.
“Osin, don’t let it touch you!”
“GAHHH!”
“Shit!”
“Zane!”
Emerging from the street beyond, tendrils of black smoke cracked like whips, twisting about the ankles of the thrashing, scampering men. As the bodies were tangled into the ethereal web, a host of gleeful skulls materialized in the cloud above.
“Necromancy!” Navon choked, reeling from the doorway.
Jikun’s mind jolted. ‘Necromancy? Here?! From whom?!’ He recoiled, for the first time conscious of the growing fog of sneering faces flooding into the inn.
Navon’s nails dug into his cloaked shoulder, yanking him toward an adjacent window. The howls were escalating with a tumultuous wind, railing across the city and growing into a vociferous wail of terror and woe. “We have to leave!” he shrieked, flinging his hand straight against the billowing necromantic cloud. “While I have them restrained!” He tore the curtain aside and leapt through the open sill, turning back to extend a frantic hand. “JIKUN, NOW!”
The engulfed tents disintegrated suddenly, leaving Jikun naked in reality. ‘Pull your mind together, damn it!’ he cursed, clasping Navon’s hand and launching himself through the window. Behind him, a smuggler and the cloaked man were the last two who managed to escape before Keshal was consumed in a deafening roar.
Outside, Dahel was awash in equal chaos and blood. The streets were overrun with a churning mass of horrified and confused Eph’vi, who fled with smoke licking their heels.
Jikun’s magic tore from his fingers before his fear could rally the resurgence of Sevrigel’s screams. What little humidity graced the cold air was sucked from it, pooling at the feet of a scrambling Eph’ven and rushing toward the black sky as an impenetrable wall of jagged ice. The tendrils smashed furiously against the barrier and dissipated left and right, determined to seek a way around.
“Loedrin’s Breath upon you, now is not the time to play heroics!” the man in white berated as the tendrils ceased their futile attempt, instead rounding upon the remaining victims.
Which now was them.
“Damn you to Ramul!—RUN!” the burly smuggler bellowed, his arms flailing as he pivoted and deserted them around the side of Keshal. There was an immediate, drowned cry; a spray of blood glittered once in the moonlight before it fell to the sandy street.
The man in white managed an impressively fast retreat and darted around the opposite side of Keshal’s exterior. With a firm kick, he vaulted over the low wall of a nearby building and caught the edge of the roof, dissolving into the night beyond.
Navon snatched Jikun’s arm, nearly ripping him off his feet. “We can’t mimic that in our condition! Come! There must be another street this way!” His palm extended once more, forcing the necromancy to hiss and still as they plunged around the side of Keshal.
The intersecting street was little better than what lay behind, surging with trampling Eph’vi and the swarming, hideous skulls.
“It’s everywhere!” Jikun shouted, watching as a male clawed crazily at the frame of his door in his final attempts to free his soul from its grasp. He shot a wall of ice behind the male and the Eph’ven sprang free—straight into the tendrils bur
sting from an adjacent alley.
A body dropped suddenly at their feet from the upper balcony. “Stay close, General!” Navon bellowed, and with renewed determination he broke into a sprint along the sandy streets, pausing only to make certain that Jikun was at his heels. Together, they wove and shoved through the stampeding throng, diving past crowded doorways and hurdling over mangled remains. Navon’s driven commands to keep the mauling tendrils at bay ferried them to the path where Esra had guided them mere hours before.
It was nigh unrecognizable through the churning chaos and ravaged bazaar.
“We have to vacate the city!” Jikun cried, leaping over a lifeless, spreadeagled body.
To his right, a rug was torn from its hangings as an Eph’ven leapt through the now-open window. Before her feet could touch the earth, a writhing coil of smoke wrapped about her torso and wrenched her back inside, smashing her head against the frame as she went.
Navon averted his gaze from the congealed mess. “They’re on their own, General! You are my responsibility!”
Jikun hurled a wall of ice before a surge of smoke, temporarily setting a child free from the trailing cloud. Instantly, a tendril launched from an open door and ripped the little girl inside. “Gods damn it,” Jikun hissed, biting his lip.
“We’re close!” Navon rallied above the wailing. “Just a little farther!”
Just a little farther. Jikun could glimpse the faint glow of auburn sand from up ahead as dawn’s first light infused the grains with a hint of fire. “Just a little farther…!”
He clutched his hope fiercely as he passed the next familiar building. The curtains from the windows and doors were gone, revealing a bare home twisting with remnants of smoke about a shattered vase.
Something lashed against his ankle, burrowing a chill deep into his body. ‘Come away, broken one. The flames cannot follow you here,’ a voice whispered. ‘Here we pass no judgment.’
But Jikun’s adrenaline spurned the offer before the wall of his emotional dam could crack. ‘Just a little farther… Just a little farther!!’
And a moment later, they broke through the city line between Dahel and the endless desert, kicking up sand as their feet met the cold grains of salvation. Behind them, the necromancy yowled with rage. Eph’vi were still clawing to free themselves from the clouds of smoke rising like a thunderstorm from the sands.
A fierce tremor coursed through the earth. Jikun whirled, past the scatter of Eph’vi who had managed to escape Dahel. ‘Gods, what now?!’ But before he could utter his confusion aloud, something hurtled across the orange sky… an enormous, sable mass that arched toward Emal’drathar before smashing violently into the earth.
“By Sel’ari,” Navon wheezed in horror.
Jikun’s grip tightened on the small kitchen knife. Was that…?!
The earth rumbled once more and Jikun spun toward the source, where a cluster of Eph’vi floundered in a struggle for balance. ‘MOVE!’ his mind urged, but as his mouth opened to echo his cry, the sand caved in beneath the Eph’ven stragglers and they were engulfed within the monstrous shadow.
“What?!” Navon gasped, not daring to voice Jikun’s fear.
And then the ground convulsed beneath them. Jikun staggered, feeling the sand writhe beneath him. Navon’s arms soared outward for balance. “It’s coming!” Jikun roared.
The earth rolled like a maravian worm beneath the flesh, rising and dipping in a fluid arc. The sand cascaded past their feet in a wave of gold. And to Jikun’s alarm, it kept falling, collapsing into the earth as a great hole was torn wide below them.
There was a sudden flicker of red from beneath the golden grains, a forked tongue to their left and two great yellowed fangs to their right.
Jikun had no time to gather exactly what was transpiring, but he had observed enough of the vanishing Eph’vi to venture a guess. He lunged on instinct, grabbing Navon by the arm and flinging him away. As he extended his palm, a thick pillar of ice shot out from the water suddenly present around him. Jikun slammed it into the upper and lower jaw, reinforcing it long enough for him to kick off and catch the lip of the creature’s mouth.
He had nearly been swallowed into the jaws of a reptilian monstrosity!
The hel’onja.
‘It is huge…!’ he heaved.
The strange symbols across the serpent’s body bore an unsettling familiarity to those Jikun had seen scrawled in Navon’s book. So this was the necromancer’s assurance that no elf would leave Dahel alive. ‘There is no chance by Lady Luck that we can outrun this beast… let alone kill it!’
“JIKUN!” Navon yelled, catching him below the shoulder. He yanked him onto the sand as the jaws clamped shut, the broken pillar of ice left half-buried in its wake.
There was the briefest moment of stillness as though the earth had frozen… and then it roiled.
Jikun’s throat constricted as the creature erupted from the sand to their right. The air outside the beast’s mouth was dry… useless! And what little strength he had recovered at Keshal was almost spent… A scream in the distance threatened to coax his own to join, but it was culled too quickly by the swift flick of the serpent’s tail.
Gods damn it, he had not left Sevrigel to be devoured by a fattened worm! Yet as Jikun glanced around himself into the flat, endless horizon he so despised, a chilling realization seized him.
He and Navon were the only remaining survivors outside of Dahel.
“Run!” Navon’s voice rang as the serpent’s tail lobbed high once more.
Jikun struggled to his feet, the escalating fire of the sand unfelt as he sprang away from the glistening scales. ‘A plan… a plan…!’ his mind battled, but without his magic or soldiers, he could only flee helplessly.
“By the goddess almighty…!” Navon swore as the creature careened forward.
The serpent’s nose dove into the ground beside Jikun as he scrabbled away. His toned soldier’s body was faster than those of the citizens of Dahel, and yet the force was so great that he was thrown to the side like a child’s toy. He bounced twice and rolled to his side. “Sh…it…” he groaned, black splotches dancing before his eyes. He felt a wave of nausea loosen his throat and he weakly attempted to lift himself upright.
And then a shadow swept over him.
‘Dead.’ It was the only concept his mind could grasp. Above him, the serpent reared, jaws loosening as the beast prepared to thrust down upon its dazed prey.
A form wavered at the edge of his vision and Jikun caught sight of the Helven: Navon’s hollow face had grown ashen, his cracked lips parted as though struggling to breathe, his long fingers elevated as sable smoke billowed from the earth around him. It raced upward toward the creature in a storm of skull-like faces. A biting cold washed over the air as the smoke whisked past Jikun and over the creature’s head.
This he knew. This he had just fled. As immense as the pillar Navon had hurled upon the Beast at the temple of Sel’ari, this torrent of souls was likewise filled with the hollow-eyed faces of the dead.
Necromancy.
There was a venomous hiss and a scraping like bone against bone, screeching out across the desert sands. Before the beast had reared away, Navon flew to Jikun’s side, jerking him to his feet. “Go!” Navon commanded, tugging at his arm. “Can’t you cast anything? Any spell at all?!”
Jikun felt his stomach lurch as he tried to draw moisture from the beast’s distant body. “By Ramul, no,” he heaved as he broke into a pathetic run. “All the water I could control outside a direct source went into that damn pillar! I missed a full night’s rest…! But it looks like there is something up ahead… North!” He glanced behind him in time to see the serpent’s tail disappear into the earth, diving free of the necromantic magic.
Navon’s face contorted with every bandaged foot that struck the ground. “I have never contended with anything so large… I cast more souls than I ever did upon the Beast and I don’t believe I did much except to—”
They vaulted
away from each other, diving and rolling onto the sand on either side of the serpent’s head as it ruptured through the earth between them. The thick scales over its ebony skull had been partially eaten away, revealing bloodied bone and flexing muscle. Its mandible swung low in a silent shriek, its eyes narrowing in enmity. Then they flared, locking onto Navon. Jikun was now nothing compared to the little beast that had dared wound it.
It lunged.
Navon flung his hand up in desperation, screaming in the ancient tongue as he frantically lurched toward the empty earth. But the hel’onja was faster—and with a triumphant snap, its jaws closed about his waist. In stunned horror, Jikun watched as Navon’s body flailed in the beast’s jaws and then went still.
His arm fell loose to dangle in the hot air beside him. Lifeless.
“Na…von…” Jikun whispered as the serpent tilted its head against the blazing sun to swallow the Helven like the countless Eph’vi before him.
Navon’s head lolled to the side, staring blankly toward the earth, a thin trail of blood dripping from the corner of his mouth and catching in the ends of his raven hair. His last spell washed over the creature’s skull as a billow of sable smoke, and for a moment, a face seemed to quiver in the darkness, its eyes bulging, its mouth gaping wide…
‘Navon’s face!’
“NAVON!!” Jikun screamed.
The cloud that surrounded the hel’onja’s head was dissipating, taking the visage of Navon with it.
What in Ramul had happened?!
He threw his arm backward, tendons flexing. ‘Cast something…’ he chastised his magic. ‘Damn it, CAST SOMETHING!’ The air around him remained sickeningly dry and Jikun felt a wave of fatigue pulse from his wound as a small shard of ice began to crystallize in his palm. ‘Useless!’ He bit his lip hard, flinging the ice aside.
If that would not avail him…!
But his resolve was shattered by a roar so bestial in nature and thunderous in power that his movements were smothered beneath a blanket of fear. In an uncontrollable response, his knees began to buckle, begging him to crumple to insignificance before the unseen source. Not even the Beast had invoked such terror! ‘Damn coward!’ he swore at himself, and forced his trembling gaze upward in time to see a massive silhouette tearing out of the dawn sky. ‘What in Emal’drathar is—?!’ was the last thought he managed. The shape smashed into the back of the serpent’s head and the hel’onja was thrown toward the earth as though it were weightless.
Heroes or Thieves (Steps of Power 2) Page 12