He looked around for the shadowy figure, but saw no sign of it. He closed his eyes, seeking the insubstantial presence that he knew was nearby, and yet he could not find it. There was nothing. The harder he looked for it, the less certain he was that he had ever felt it, that the whole experience had ever been anything more than a muddled, lingering dream. Perhaps he really was going mad after all.
He tightened his grips on the swords and braced himself, looking upward into the narrowing funnel of mist above him. The shrieks of the Nar’ath queen hammered at him in waves now. The soft caress of the mists felt more and more like the howling bite of a sandstorm. He closed his eyes, pushing back doubt and fatigue, seeking the center of the void he would need to survive in the maelstrom awaiting him in the waking world above.
He exhaled slowly.
“Are you with me?” he whispered.
Yes, I am with you.
Rough hands shook him.
The ingrained instincts of the warrior took over, and he lashed out before he was fully aware, before his eyes even opened. A grip of iron caught his forearm in motion and clamped there, holding him firm. Amric’s eyes flared wide to find Valkarr crouched over him. He could read the relief in his friend’s tight expression even through the swirling, wind-borne sand. Behind Valkarr stood the hazy figures of Sariel and Innikar, peering down at Amric.
A broad grin creased Valkarr’s scaly face. “If you are done resting, warmaster, your warriors are quite ready to leave this place.”
Amric lurched up to a sitting position, and helping hands boosted him to his feet. His head spun and his body ached in more places than he could count, but he managed to stand on his own. His face and hands stung as if burnt, and there was a stabbing pain in his left side when he took too deep a breath.
To his surprise, he found his swords back in his hands, just as in the strange dream. He frowned. His weapons had been lost in the sandstorm as he fought the Nar’ath queen, tumbling from his numb fingers and scattered in different directions. How, then, had they found their way back to him while he was unconscious? The waking world was not like the dream landscape, where he had summoned his belongings with desire alone. Had his friends found them on the chamber floor and pressed them into his unresponsive hands as he was lying there? Whatever the cause, he was grateful for their return.
A sharp tremor shook the ground, accompanied by an ear-splitting peal of agonized fury. The center of the chamber was enveloped in a great cyclone of sand, and from it came waves rippling along the ground like low-hanging smoke. It seemed the Nar’ath queen was injured and angry, and had once more cloaked herself with her eerie control over the wasteland. As Amric studied the tempest, wondering if they could find their way through it to strike at the monster, another tremor ripped through the hive and almost threw him from his feet. There was a sound like the breaking of dry branches, and a network of cracks spidered through one side of the dome overhead. A piece of sandstone the size of a horse cart fell away from the high wall and shattered into a thousand shards of rock upon the ground. Several more followed, and the cracks in the dome began to spread and widen.
“The hive is collapsing,” Sariel shouted. “We need to leave now!”
Amric threw another glance toward the dark, raging heart of the storm, and then nodded. “Let her pull the place down on her own head,” he said. “We will wait for her above, if she emerges.”
They ran for the nearest of the winding stairways. At the foot of the stairs, Amric paused and spun about.
“Bellimar!” he said. “Did you find him as well?”
Valkarr shook his head, his expression grim. “We found no sign of him, but it is hard to locate anything out there. We were very fortunate to find you, once the queen raised the sandstorm again.”
Sariel grabbed at Amric’s arm, pulling him toward the stairs. “There is no time to look again,” she hissed. “We can only hope that he found his way out on his own.”
Amric hesitated, lifting his gaze to the shaking dome above, then gave a reluctant nod and turned back to the stairs. The old man had shown himself to be canny and tough; hopefully that would be enough to see him free of this place of death and destruction.
The warriors sheathed their blades and raced up the curving stairway. The ground fell away below, and they were soon above the roiling clouds of dust and sand, but their ascent proved no less harrowing than the battle below had been. The whole place trembled and heaved, threatening to throw them from the narrow stairs with every step. Twice the steps began to crumble away beneath their heels, and only quick leaps and the clasping hands of their comrades allowed them all to continue climbing toward the night sky.
They were partway up when a fluttering shadow shot free of the maelstrom below and rose through the air in an impossible leap. It clamped to the wall below the stairs ahead of them, clinging like some ragged spider. After a moment’s pause, the figure began to move, scampering up the sheer stone wall. Amric reached over one shoulder for the hilt of a sword as he neared the thing, but then he froze as he recognized the pale, slender hand that reached over the edge of the stairway.
“Bellimar!” he cried.
The old man pulled himself onto the stairs with a grunt, and then rose shakily to his feet. His clothing was torn and he bore countless gashes and scrapes, though his wounds were all puckered and bloodless. He swayed for a moment, clutching his side, and then gave the warriors a rueful look.
“Remind me never to do that again,” he muttered. “I suppose I should be grateful that I am already dead.”
Below, the angry cries of the Nar’ath queen rose to a crescendo. The swirling sands drew together across the hive and toward the core of the storm, leaving the chamber floor bare as they receded like a sudden tide. It all hung there for a moment, dense and dark, and then exploded outward with a sound like a thunderclap. The concussive force pressed them all to the wall of the hive for a moment as the sands bit at their exposed flesh. Then it subsided, and the sand sheeted down the outer wall. The chamber was clear to view once more, as was the Nar’ath queen.
She stood hunched in the center of the hive, seething with rage. She was surrounded by a dozen of her heavyset black minions, which milled about her in fretful uncertainty. The queen’s face was a charred ruin, and her heavy outer jaws hung twisted and useless from the lower part of her elongated skull. From the midst of that blackened visage, however, her green eyes burned with brilliant and unremitting malevolence. Those glowing slits raked over the room, searching for her prey. Her head lifted toward the tiny figures high above her, and her eyes narrowed. With a harsh, gurgling hiss, she burst into motion, surging for the foot of the stairway. The hive, which had become still momentarily, began to shake again with renewed vigor.
Amric’s brow furrowed. The stairs were narrow and unstable; there was no way they would support her bulk. He was about to say as much aloud when the Nar’ath queen reached the wall, and the words died in his throat. The stone wall warped at her approach, twitching and rippling like the hide of a beast. The ground lifted before her, and the stairs near the bottom melted and flowed slowly together to form the beginnings of a ramp. Amric felt a chill. The monster was reforming the place to meet her will, and it would not be long until she was able to pursue them out of the hive.
Amric glanced down. The stone beneath him had begun to shift, as when a strong ocean current pulled the sand out from beneath one’s feet. The edges of the steps were becoming less definite, rounding and disintegrating before his eyes. He shared a quick glance with the others.
“Run!” he barked. “Now!”
They raced up the stairway as it eroded and crumbled, by turns running and scrambling on all fours. When at last they reached the lip of the dome’s opening, Amric could not recall a time when he had been more grateful to stand beneath the open sky. A roar of frustration followed them as the Nar’ath queen continued her climb. Thalya, Syth and Halthak were waiting for them with the frightened horses.