Standing unsteadily, she found her balance and flipped forward over the stair rail, hanging from her fingers. She swung out feet first and let go, landing in a painful crouch on the first floor. Her eyes tracked the room for Balram—corner pillar; there you are.
She jumped before she heard the twang of the crossbow. Her feet left the floor at the same time her hands came down. She pushed off, into a forward roll, and the bolt struck wood somewhere above her head. Free in that breath, she sprang up and ran, ran as she used to run with the mist stags in the deepest parts of Mir. Her leg was on fire, but she ignored the pain.
She hit the doors to the garden, flung them open, and the third bolt slammed into her back, driving her forward. She felt the tip scrape a rib and resisted the urge to scream. She would not give Balram, a man who reveled in pain, the satisfaction of seeing hers.
Cesira stumbled into the garden, breathing night air and taking in her first—and possibly last—glimpse of the cloudy sky since her vigil on the tower. She ran through the gardens heart, calling silently as she went. In her mind, she screamed their names with her true voice, a voice only the wild beasts could hear.
Sparks flew as an arrow skittered off the stone fountain. Distracted, Cesira tripped and fell to the walkway, striking her head against the ground. To the side, she saw Elsis and another man with a lantern step into the garden alongside Balram.
“So many memories from Esmeltaran,” Balram remarked idly. He reloaded his weapon as he approached. “An empty garden, a dry fountain, and finally an end to the Morel family.”
He stepped onto the walkway. “What form would you care to die in, my lady?” he inquired politely. He raised the crossbow. “The woman … the beast?” His lips curved. “Or are they all the same?”
All, my lord, the druid gasped as a rush of wind filled the garden. We are all bitches with sharp claws.
Balram felt the wind and looked up in time to see the birds—Morel’s hunting raptors—descend on the garden. Balram snapped his crossbow up, aiming for Cesira’s heart, but the flock absorbed the bolt. The night filled with wings, talons, and the high, shrill cries of incensed animals.
Balram took a step forward, but the swarm only increased the closer he got to the druid. A sharp pain burst from his ear, ripping up into his head. He touched the side of his face and found the earlobe gone. Blood dripped down his neck.
“Back inside!” Elsis cried. “Get back!”
“No, damn you!” Balram grabbed the lantern from the other man’s hand. He waved it in the air, batting aside the large bodies. The lantern broke, sending birds up into the sky aflame. Balram threw up his other arm to protect his eyes, but he felt scratches and bites all over his body.
Through the violence, he saw Cesira—once helpless at his feet—now with her eyes changing shape and color. Her arms joined the mass of wings, and for a bizarre breath she was a hybrid of woman and bird. Balram swung the lantern again, charging forward, but she was already gone, transformed and carried away by the flock.
Meisha had never seen the bottom end of the Climb, but her research since she’d left the Delve told her it should be there. Still, it took her a while to find it. She’d only traversed a portion of it in her search for Shaera—a search that had ended in tragedy. Now she had to lead an entire group to safety through the treacherous passage to the surface—if it still led all the way to the surface. Damn the Howlings anyway.
Kall stood at the base of a tunnel that slanted upward until it was almost vertical. Stone platforms jutted from the walls to form uneven rungs.
“I’ll lead,” Kall said. “Meisha and Talal come behind me, then Dantane and Garavin. Morgan, take Borl and bring up the rear.”
“Slow going,” Dantane commented, “with a dog and an injured dwarf.”
“Then we go as slowly as necessary,” Kall said. He pulled himself up onto the first stone ledge.
Meisha floated globes of shimmering fire ahead and behind them, so they would be unencumbered by torches. She could see nothing of Kall beyond his boots and the tail of his cloak, but she could sense the urgency in his movements.
“What will you do once we reach the surface?” Meisha asked. “Aazen and the Shadow Thieves will be long gone.”
“Cesira,” Kall said, hauling himself up another rung. “They’ll be going for the house. I have to be there.”
“And Varan?” Meisha asked.
“The Shadow Thieves will have him,” Kall said. “They won’t give him up easily.”
Neither will I, Meisha thought.
Below them, Garavin succumbed to a fit of coughing that echoed through the shaft. Kall stopped the group.
“How are you doing, old friend,” he called down.
Morgan answered him. “He’s spitting some blood, Kall. That silver light messed him up bad.”
“Hang on just a little longer,” Kall said. “We’re almost out of this shaft.” He closed his eyes and murmured a prayer to Dumathoin.
Don’t forsake your servant now.
Kall looked up. He could see an obstacle ahead. He motioned for Meisha to send a fire globe up so he could see.
“Son of a god’s cursed whore,” he hissed under his breath.
Staring him in the face was a rusty shield floating in a cloud of viscous fluid. The fire globe drifted higher. Kall could make out the edges of a gelatinous cube suctioned to the walls of the shaft.
“Is it alive?” Meisha asked. She touched the oozing substance dribbling down the walls.
“Alive or dead, it can still suffocate us, depending on how far up the shaft it reaches,” Dantane said.
Kall leaned closer to the cube. The slime distorted the objects within—relics of the creature’s last victims—but he could make out enough of the stone handholds inside the cube to pull himself through.
“Morgan, I need your rope,” he called down.
Morgan unhooked an end of silk cord from his belt and tossed it up to Kall. Tying one end of the rope around his waist, Kall handed the other to Meisha.
“When I pull the cord in three quick jerks, it means I’ve reached the other side,” he said. “The next person uses the rope to climb up. We pull Garavin and Borl up last.” He looked at Talal. “Big breath,” he told the boy.
Talal muttered, “Already drowned once today, why not twice?”
“Hold it in tight,” said Kall, “You don’t want a lungful of what’s up there. You won’t come back from it.”
Secured by the rope, Kall positioned himself in a crouch on the stone ledge and thrust up from the knees, into the gelatinous cube.
Sound and light instantly disappeared. Kall tried to lift his arms, but it was as if someone had attached sandbags to his muscles. His muscles burning and stretching with the effort, he gripped the next rung and climbed.
His face brushed something hard that felt vaguely like fingers—a lost gauntlet, perhaps, all that was left of one of the cube’s victims. Kall would have shuddered, if his muscles could have responded to the impulse.
His lungs burned. The rough stone grated against his injured hands. They would be raw and bleeding again soon. With a desperate shove, he broke through the slimy surface and hit his chest against a stone platform.
Coughing and spitting slime, Kall hauled his lower body out of the cube and onto the stone platform. He lay on his back gasping for a moment. His entire body was saturated with slime, but at least he could breathe air again.
Kall wiped his eyes clear and saw darkness, illuminated faintly by Meisha’s fire globes drifting below. The light filtering through the cube cast eerie green glows on the walls.
Gathering the rope about his waist, Kall pulled until it came taut three times. He hoped Meisha’s slighter weight would make the climb easier.