though, that body became a woman’s leanly muscular torso and arms. The thing’s face was narrow, with a fine jaw, knife-edge cheekbones-and a smooth expanse where eyes should have been. Above that blank brow, thick tendrils longer than arms, with sharp pointed tips took the place of hair, writhing with an independent motion.
But for all that it moved like something alive, Ekhaas knew that it wasn’t. Its face was a statue, stiff and unemotional. Its skin was as black and glittering as the transformed bones of the skeletons that littered Suud Anshaar. The millstone noise that ground against Ekhaas’s ears was, she realized, the sound of its great body slithering forward, accompanied by the fine grating of its twining tendril hair. The thing was stone given mobility, a construct like a golem or a warforged, but more finely crafted and surely far older than any Ekhaas had heard told of in any tale. As it slithered into a patch of moonlight, she saw the scars of millennia on its surface Something about the flash of moonlight on that stone made her vision blur, and when she blinked, the weathered scars were gone and the stone was smooth and flawless. She blinked again, and the scars were back. The black stone crumbled into dust with every movement, only to drift across a new patch of stone and resurface it. Just looking at the creature made Ekhaas’s head spin and ache. It was as if time and space had only the loosest grip on the ancient thing. For all that it made her nauseated, though, the strange play of dust to stone and back again was captivating, the cycle of ages collapsed into moments…
“Look away from it! Everyone look away from it!”
Geth’s hand was suddenly on Ekhaas’s shoulder, shaking her. She wrenched her gaze away from the construct and staggered as reality crashed back around her. Geth caught her, held her up as she regained her balance, then turned her loose. Around them, she saw the others were also twitching and stumbling as if waking from sleep. Only Geth seemed fully alert.
The collar of stones around the shifter’s neck was so cold it steamed in the humid air. The gift of the Gatekeepers had saved them all.
As if realizing that its prey had broken free of its influence, the construct opened its stony mouth and let loose another terrible wail. It came slithering into the hall amidst a pattering rain of dust and masonry.
“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 they’d passed, he and Makka had descended and continued on their way. More wails had drifted through the darkening jungle. The barren hill and its crown of ruins at the end of the road had been a surprise, but not much of one. They’d known their elusive prey was heading somewhere.
“Do we follow them in?” Makka asked, eyeing the ruins under the moonlight.
Yet another wail rolled out. “I don’t think so,” Midian had said. “They’ll come out again-or they won’t.” He found a comfortable perch in a tree with a good view of the ruins and settled in to wait, with Makka crouched below.
After that, it was just a matter of patience.
Geth acted without thinking, roaring and swinging Wrath in a flashing arc. The byeshk blade jerked in his hand as it hit the black tentacle that held Tooth, but smashed through it with a crack like splitting stone.
The cut tentacle collapsed into a long line of glittering black dust.
Tooth didn’t stop screaming, though. Ekhaas’s voice joined his, shouting at him to stay still. Geth spun around. Ekhaas had the bugbear’s arm in her grasp, struggling to hold it immobile as she beat at something black and squirming on his forearm. For an instant, Geth couldn’t help but wonder how Tooth had come to have a swarm of tiny insects on his arm-then he realized what the black stuff really was. Just like the rest of the tentacle, the end that had grabbed Tooth had turned into dust.
But it hadn’t stopped moving or released the hunter. The dust curled around his hairy arm as if it were a single unit, sifting back together where Ekhaas tried to scrub it away. None of it clung to her fingers. The curling thread flowed under Tooth’s skin through a bloody hole made by the sharp tip of the tentacle.
“I can’t move my fingers! By Balinor, just kill me. Kill me!” Tooth shrieked, and Geth remembered the skeletons with bones of glittering black stone. He clenched his teeth and made a decision.
