A sound pushed into her head. The Roar, the herald of Polis’ arrival. Grinding. Metallic. Harsh. And louder than she’d ever heard it. Terrifying, exalting, enervating.
The Sudaman spirit pushed her satchel’s strap into her hands. “Flee and live, Terese. Live and defend, Custodian.”
What?
But the man vanished into darkness as her stone dimmed.
Flee? She could flee? Shaky, she clambered to her feet. What did he mean, ‘Custodian’? She thrust Pella’s picture back in her satchel and tucked the stone into her plate. She put the helmet back on her head. The room shook and the ground jolted, the Roar penetrating, tearing at her mind, madness waiting within the sound.
Flee and live.
It was impossible to survive a Swallowing. But could she escape one?
She stumbled back up the corridor. Another jolt sent her to the floor. The room shuddered. Chunks of clay fell from the ceiling. The corridor tilted, turning the building on its side. She pushed forward, straining and stumbling. Another jolt toppled the world again. When she rose, the room lay sideways. She pushed out of the corridor behind the hidden bookcase.
Holder Mathra’s quarters were bent out of shape, filled with fallen wooden shards, glass-filled cabinet doors and millennia of Seeker tradition. Her escape, the door from Mathra’s quarters, was up an impossibly steep incline.
Sumad, how do you expect me to get out of here?
Another shake tipped the room and she fell backwards. She landed on the broken glass of a fallen picture frame. The tear from her first raid scorched her side, and she cried out, her voice drowned in the Roar. There was no way to reach the door. Even if she made it, how could she get beyond a Swallowing?
A large brick fell toward her head. She punched it. The brick flew away, shattering against the wall. She blinked. The pain should have been excruciating, but there was nothing. Her arm wasn’t numb—she’d knocked it aside like a bug.
The stone burned against her hip. What had the Sumadan spirit done?
Another seismic shake, rendering the Holder’s apartments even more unrecognizable. This time she didn’t buckle when the stone vibrated, hot, almost scorching. Feeling an unfamiliar strength in her legs, she jumped for the door, twisting to seize the frame at the top of a fifteen-foot leap.
She buried plate-gloved hands in the wooden timbers, leaping upwards toward the surface like a cat up a tree. Stone blocks loosened and masonry crumbled every time she touched a surface. She jumped and ricocheted up the corridor without pause, bounding from bulb fastenings, bannisters and any irregular surface in reach. The bulbs had failed, plunging the sinking chapterhouse into darkness, yet she saw everything.
A small, glow. Above her, in the darkness.
Her back tingled, her nerves afire, her body burning with power.
The Roar was all. It sang. Deep melodies of thumping cadences beating in time like a leviathan’s heartbeat, taking everything to the ocean floor. It pushed her onwards, upwards, streaks of light streaming in her wake.
She flew up stone halls, past dining rooms and offices. Falling masonry and furniture sped toward her, but she was faster. Barely seeing the debris, she dodged and ducked as she ascended. Her kicks landed on the heavier falling objects and gave her more speed.
Nothing she’d ever heard had suggested this was possible.
She was light and energy given body and purpose. Soaring from the darkness to the light above, through a distant window.
Calling her.
The light was a glowbulb, shining above the chapterhouse battlements. The corridor flew past.
A final leap took her to a barred window. The black, starless sky above her, shaking buildings falling apart. Not caring that it wasn’t possible, she pulled the bars from the window, squeezed through the space, and gasped the cool night air.
But she was below ground level, sinking within an enormous, dark pit, atop the disintegrating chapterhouse. What had been ground level was now twenty feet above her head.
The Swallowing’s hole continued sinking into the Roar, the distance to ground level increasing by the second.
Another jolt shook her to all fours, looking down into the window she’d escaped moments earlier.
Wait! What was that, rising up through the darkness below? The Swallowing itself. The bodies that performed the destruction. She had no description or useful metaphor for what she saw. Armer bless, what was that?
She turned, running from the sight below, for the building’s rim. At the edge, she took a final push into the air for the ruined courtyard overhead. The height she reached came from no strength of hers, with an acuity of aim not her own.
Time slowed.
She soared from the pit, rising above the ground, fleeing the Swallowing. Her flailing limbs moved through the air like jelly and the pit’s edge passed beneath her as in a dream. She was above a courtyard, tumbling toward the solid ground. She fell on impact and tumbled, rolling over until she collided against a fountain, the impact emptying her lungs. She lay in a trembling heap. Nearby, a thick palm tree wavered and collapsed. She gasped, sucking in more dust than air, and coughed. A cool winter breeze blew through her damaged plate and helmet.
The Roar was quieter outside the Swallowing.
Screams everywhere. Cries of pain and terror began replacing the Roar as it subsided. The Swallowing pit, vast and dark, kept sinking. It was far, far larger than the pit that had been created at the Immersion Chamber. In minutes the missing space would be replaced with new soil that Polis would pull from somewhere to replace what had gone missing.
Terese looked around. Here and there, bodies lay still. Seekers and their families watched from apartment rooms that had just opened to view. Some pointed at her: Terese Saarg, the woman flown from a Swallowing.
Lijjen would have spread word she’d gone rogue, or homicidal. People would be desperate and angry and wouldn’t listen to her defenses. She had to get away.
She stood, her head swimming. She checked for her satchel. Incredible: it still hung about her neck.
Nearby lay a body
