The whistling sound came again. It rose in pitch, and Kamahl leaped the other way. With a profound concussion, the deathwurm smashed against the corpses just beside Kamahl.
He only ran. Holes opened across the ground, dragging bodies into them. Another wurm struck, and another, and Kamahl evaded each by a narrower margin.
A hundred more running steps and he would be beyond the nightmare lands, where perhaps he could fall and rest… But even then, Jeska would die.
He couldn't think of that now. He could only run.
All around him, deathwurms crashed.
Braids crowed in mad delight. "Death! Carnage! Destruction!" She turned a back flip atop the caravan. "Amazing! Incredible! Inescapable!"
She was right. A deathwurm crashed down atop a nearby wagon, gobbling up the conveyance and the noble within.
"Who wants to take odds on survival?" Braids shouted, bounding down onto the sands. She leaped along the curve of caravans as more deathwurms snatched up her patrons. "I'll give any of you fifty to one against. If you survive, you'll be rich. If not, it won't matter!"
It was an excellent wager, but no one seemed interested. The nobles were scampering everywhere. Folk who had not taken a single step this whole trip now took hundreds. No longer did they cower in their wagons.
They ran.
They fell.
They died.
Braids shook her head in a paroxysm of sadness. All that money lost. If only they had taken the bet!
"Where are you going? This is the payoff! This is what you came for! You wanted death! I give you death!" Braids grew angrier and angrier as she ran beside the wagons, overturned and half-chewed, spilling bodies both living and dead. Didn't they understand? This had ceased to be mere entertainment. This was art. "So few people appreciate art."
Braids did. She gave up on her patrons-after all, she'd gotten enough money out of them. Instead, she turned to the wurms and watched as they ate.
"Beautiful!"
Their flesh was like hers, their appetites-these were friends, things she understood. Surely, they understood her.
One of the huge beasts lunged down to snatched a man beside her. Braids took the opportunity to leap onto its head. While the wurm munched, she settled in, grasping its fleshy spikes. She would ride the wurm right through this war. She only hoped its appetite would hold.
"Come one, come all! Death calls everyone! Experience the thrill of a lifetime-the end of a lifetime!" cried Braids as she rode the darting wurm.
Zagorka lashed Chester, though the mule needed no encouragement to run.
A deathwurm thudded to ground behind them. The monster rose, leaving a pit that sucked wind like the moaning of the damned. Another wurm crashed down nearby, sinking its teeth into a platoon of goblins.
"Death bites!" shrieked Zagorka.
Chester snorted his agreement.
The wurm yanked its head free, opening a roaring pit.
"Death sucks!"
Chester shook his head bitterly.
"I thought we'd already faced down our worst nightmare!"
They had. Chester's worst nightmare was an enormously fat man who kept trying to mount him. Zagorka's was, interestingly, the same man trying to do the same thing to her. They double-teamed him. The mule's hooves pummeled the man's backside while Zagorka's boots pummeled his front. In short order, he pleaded for mercy, fell dead, and disappeared entirely.
It would be an absolute irony to have survived that atrocity only to die now.
A deathwurm surged down, mouth agape, and slammed over the rushing pair. The hot, bright battlefield was swallowed in cold blackness.
"We've been ate!" Zagorka shouted, glancing around at the jaws. She stared up the gullet of doom and saw a big flap of blackness. "A uvula!"
The pendulous thing struck Chester's backside, and he kicked. A pair of giant hooves struck the dangling flesh.
The wurm gagged. Its sinews convulsed. From its cold, cavernous gullet came a deep gurgle. Things flooded down-living vomit. A mass of struggling limbs and gaping mouths came tumbling out the wurm's throat. The glutinous tide struck Zagorka and Chester, flinging them to the ground. The wurm recoiled and left them there.
For a shocked moment, the creatures in that oozy mound looked around, stunned. Then they struggled up and began to run.
Somehow, Zagorka had remained atop Chester. The huge mule bolted full-out toward the desert.
Another hoofed creature thundered up to run beside them. Only when Zagorka flung the muck out of her eyes did she recognize the centaur. "General Stonebrow! You were one of those in the belly of the beast?"
The horse-man didn't answer, keeping his famous pate turned toward the open spaces beyond.
Zagorka let out a barking laugh. "Even the mighty Stonebrow runs!"
The general grunted irritably.
"Don't be ashamed. Nobody can blame you for running from death."
"I'm not ashamed," rumbled the gigantic centaur.
Nothing remained to be said. The crone, the mule, and the horseman ran for their lives in companionable silence.
Kamahl stumbled out of the nightmare lands. He took ten staggering steps in the sand before he could go no farther. Falling to his knees, Kamahl lowered Jeska gently to the ground. He crouched above her, spreading his good arm protectively. It was a futile gesture, for if a rhino wanted to run over them, it would.
The allied legions were in full rout, stampeding back toward the desert. Goblins, slaves, serpents, squirrels, elves, dwarves, and every other creature fled past Kamahl and Jeska. Feet and hooves beat the ground, their clamor punctuated by the profound boom of deathwurms. They rose, snapped, and advanced. No one could stand against them. Every living thing fled and hoped that Ixidor's nightmares could not escape the dreamlands.
Kamahl clung to his sister and said, "We'll be fine. We'll be fine."
Jeska shook her head weakly. "You go. Go. You shouldn't die."
Heaving a sigh, Kamahl said, "The brother who would have left you is dead already. I'll not leave you this time, even if we must die together. I came back to save you."
Jeska's eyes brimmed. "You have saved me. I used to think that dying in Krosan would be the worst fate I could suffer. Now I know there are worse things. Much worse."
Nodding, Kamahl glanced over his shoulder. The battlefield was emptying. Only a few hundred souls remained between them and the ravenous wurms. "Do you think you could run?"
Jeska shook her head sadly.
"Walk."
"I don't think so."
He smiled tightly. "At least we will be together." He looked down into her eyes and saw there affection and something else-a bright presence that looked like hope. "What is it?"
She pointed. "Look."
There, above the riling mound of deathwurms, a vision floated-a marvelous creature in white, bearing a great and shining lance.
Together, brother and sister said, "Akroma!"
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: PALLAS AND JOVE
Absolute darkness could not exist without absolute light. Anyone who stared on the deathwurms in their convoluted mass would have known that a pure light was coming: the angel Akroma.
Wide wings spread above the tangled wurms. Perfect pinions flashed the sunlight as they bore her above the swarm. The wings sprouted from feline shoulders, and a spotted tail lashed the air as she came. In one muscular arm, Akroma bore a staff like a jag of lightning. The other arm pointed down into the mess of monsters. Within a mane of flesh, the woman's serene face stared at the darkness, her white eyes intense.