The dust and ash churned up by griffon wings slowly settled. Adala sought her tent. Little Thorn clopped along patiently behind her.
Her tent had fallen but was unburned. Kicking at it, she wondered what Those on High intended for her now. How could she complete the wall by herself? A weaker person might have yielded to despair. Adala decided there was a greater plan at work, a plan so vast and complex she couldn’t see it yet. But she would.
Her fallen tent rippled, though no breath of breeze stirred. Little Thorn brayed.
The beast exploded from the collapsed tent, teeth bared and paws extended. He hit Adala and knocked her flat, rolling her over and over on the ground. His head thrust forward, and he sank his fangs into her throat. To ward off the valley’s cold, she wore several layers of cloth around her neck, and those stopped his teeth from piercing her skin. His four legs securely pinned her limbs.
“You,” he rumbled. “Sign is you. Now you die!”
She twisted her face away from his foul breath and groped with one hand, seeking the dagger hidden in her bedroll. Her questing fingers found cold metal. Heedless of the pain, she grasped the bare blade and pulled the weapon closer so she could take hold of the hilt. She plunged the dagger into the beast’s neck.
Shobbat grunted in pain, but his suffocating grip on her throat did not ease. Instead, he rose up on his haunches, lifting Adala off the ground. With a single sideways snap of his wolfish head, he silenced her breathless gasps.
Immediately he released her. It felt as though the dagger had gone completely through his throat; he could hardly breathe. He managed to hook the thick fingers of one front paw around the slender cross guard and drag the blade out. Next, his blunt fingers gripped the
The Weya-Lu woman hadn’t moved. She didn’t breathe. Her neck was twisted so that her open eyes gazed unblinkingly at the stony soil.
Shobbat had killed. As prince, he had ordered the deaths of others, but never had he killed anyone personally. Killing was an ugly business, but the ignorant desert fanatic was too unpredictable and too proud to be a loyal underling. Better for him if she be dead. Such were the choices of fortune.
An owl hooted nearby, and Shobbat flinched. His injuries were painful but not grievous. Already the arrow wound was clotting, and the bleeding from the knife thrust had slowed to a trickle. His beast form was strong, but more than ever he was determined to find the wayward sorcerer Faeterus and force him to lift his curse. Shobbat was Crown Prince of Khur. With the nomads defeated and their fanatical Weyadan dead, Khur would be ready for a new leader, a prince who (at least outwardly) revered the old gods and decried his father’s corruption.
He loped away through the destroyed camp. The fires had died. The pass was once more cloaked in darkness. Shobbat circled the end of the unfinished wall and trotted north, into Inath-Wakenti. The owl did not speak again. But a cloud of bats whirled overhead, squeaking like a palace full of rusty door hinges.
The elves were camped atop a knoll surrounded on three sides by titans of stone. At Gilthas’s command, bonfires had been kindled along the open fourth side and in the gaps between the monoliths. The fires would be kept burning all night. Guards on top of the stones reported will-o’-the-wisps darting in the darkness, but none came near the encampment. The light or heat of the bonfires seemed to keep them at bay, for the moment.
The first day’s trek had proceeded without incident. Since no other goal had presented itself, Gilthas had decided they would make for the center of the valley. The lifelessness of Inath-Wakenti was disrupted by the tramping of feet, by elf voices, by the bleat and snort of the few domestic animals they retained, and by the occasional calls of Eagle Eye and Kanan circling overhead. Royal griffons and Goldens were rivals in nature, competitors for territory and food, and Kerian hadn’t been sure how the two would get on. Alhana had suggested that Kanan, being young, would submit to the elder beast, and pining for his rider, would be glad of Eagle Eye’s company. She had been proven right.
Soon they came to a wall of massive white blocks. Kerian said it ran for more than a mile in each direction, northwest and southeast. Blocks up to twenty feet long and eight feet high lay end to end, but there were plenty of breaks between the blocks. Hamaramis commented on its unsuitability as a defense and Kerian shrugged.
“I don’t think it was meant to defend,” she said. “None of the ruins make sense. They don’t connect. They don’t seem to be parts of buildings, just enormous blocks of stone dropped at random.”
