Chapter 2
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Coming up fast behind the soldiers was a towering pillar of fire. Moments later whirling tornados of dust sprang up on either side. As Rome watched in disbelief, first one, then the other, exploded into flame with crackling booms.
Pirnu was telling the truth.
Rome turned back around. Quyloc was in the distance, waving his arms wildly. Rome squinted and then saw the rock pile on the horizon beyond Quyloc. Something about the stones looked unnatural, but there was no time for that now. Rome turned back to his men. One of them, Fouts it looked like, straggled far in the rear. Rome saw in a glance that he wasn’t going to make it. Realization and action happened in the same instant and Rome began running towards him.
As he passed soldiers, he yelled at them to run, follow Quyloc, there was shelter up ahead. The blowing sand grew thicker as he went. Visibility was dropping fast. The sand stung his skin and made his eyes burn. The burning pillars grew closer, the heat coming off them increasing.
Rome was choking by the time he found Fouts. The man had fallen to the ground and wasn’t moving. Rome grabbed him and dragged him to his feet.
“Move, soldier!” he screamed. “That’s an order!”
He slung one of Fouts’ arms around his neck and began dragging him. The heat and blowing sand grew worse. Each breath was torture, the sand driving deep into his lungs. He could hear the tornados of fire all around him, roaring like beasts deprived of their prey. The day was a vicious red color. Blisters rose on his neck and face. Fouts was a dead weight hanging around his neck.
Somehow, Rome carried on. Every muscle cried out to stop. Self-preservation demanded that he drop Fouts and run ahead. Stubbornly, he continued on, though the sand became too thick to see through and he was stumbling blind.
Suddenly, out of the reddish gloom, a figure loomed. It was Quyloc.
“This way!” he yelled. “We can make it!”
The pillars of fire pressed close on all sides. Rome’s uniform was smoldering, his exposed skin raw and blistered. Each breath felt like it would be his last. But he fought through it. Quyloc was there. Quyloc would lead them to safety.
Huge stones loomed out of the gloom. They stumbled toward them, into their protective embrace.
Suddenly the heat and roaring subsided. Blessed calm flowed over Rome. The air was still filled with sand, but it was manageable and the pillars of fire couldn’t get to them here. Rome set Fouts down and collapsed to the ground, coughing.
Outside, the firestorm raged, but they were safe for now.
“Did everyone make it?” Rome asked when he had regained his breath.
Voices spoke up, then Darin said, “I don’t think Linul made it. He was right behind me but I didn’t see him come in.”
“I don’t think Levin made it either,” another said.
“How are you doing, Fouts?” Rome asked. There was no answer. He felt for a pulse and found none. He swore silently. That meant they were six now. More deaths to lay at Rix’s feet.
A few hours later the firestorms gave up and dissipated. When it had been quiet for a while, Rome said, “I’m going outside to take a look around. Quyloc, come with me.”
It was night time. The sky was a black bowl glittering with thousands of stars. The dunes stretched silently in every direction. “What happened, Quyloc?”
Quyloc didn’t answer for a while. Finally, he said, “I don’t know. There was a voice. It seemed to be calling me, offering me something. Something I want more than anything.” His voice was bleak and empty. “I…lost myself in it. Then the firestorms started.”
You’ve killed us all, Rome wanted to say. But when he looked into his memories he realized he had followed the voice too. It seemed like lunacy now. “I heard it too,” he admitted. “Remember that entertainer we saw in that tavern? The one who hypnotized that man and made him meow like a cat? I felt like that man.”
“Can you hear it now?” Quyloc asked. “The voice?”
Rome listened, then shrugged. “I don’t know. It seems like I can, but when I try, it slips away. I don’t know what to believe.”
“How are we going to get out of here?”
“We let the men rest a couple more hours, then we start back. If we’re lucky, we make it out while it’s still dark.”
“And the Crodin?”
“If they see us, we fight. We’ll lose, but we’re getting out of this desert one way or the other.”
Quyloc nodded, the motion barely visible in the starlight. The two men were turning back to their shelter when Quyloc grabbed Rome’s arm suddenly.
“What’s that?” he hissed.
A moment later Rome felt it too. A vibration underneath the sand. A feeling of something huge and powerful coming fast.
“We have to get them out of there!” Quyloc yelled.
But it was too late.
The vibration turned into a crunching, grating sound. The ground buckled under their feet, knocking both men down.
Something huge burst up out of the ground underneath the piled stones. Stones flew up and out.
Rome got to his feet. There was a crater where their shelter had been.
Then something rose out of it.
It was three times the height of a soldier. Its body was covered in a black shell and its two arms ended in pincers. From one hung the body of a man, twitching feebly. Its armored head swiveled and a row of dimly glowing eyes fixed on them.
“HE WAITS!” the thing thundered. It tossed the body aside and then climbed back down into the crater and disappeared.
“What was that?” Rome yelled.
Quyloc didn’t answer. He went to the body the thing had flung down. It was Darin. He was dead. Together they searched the debris, looking for the others. Two lay crushed under huge stones. They couldn’t find the last one. While Rome was searching he noticed something strange: the stones had been cut. They were the ancient remains of some kind of structure. He looked around, wondering if there were more, buried in the sand. He walked to the edge of the crater and looked down into it.
Quyloc joined him. They stood there for a while in silence. Then Quyloc began making his way down into it. After a moment, Rome followed.
The voice was back. And it was calling them.
Neither man saw the three creatures which watched them from the top of a nearby dune. Once Rome and Quyloc had disappeared into the crater, the three creatures made their way down off the dune and followed.
Rome and Quyloc wandered in darkness deep into the earth beneath the Gur al Krin. The darkness was absolute, but neither man stumbled in the rocky, uneven tunnel, guided as they were by the voice. Immersed as each was in listening to it, they did not speak to each other, were barely aware of each other’s presence. They walked for hours or days. Neither would ever know for sure. Time disappeared. Hunger and thirst became distant and unreal.
The tunnel led steadily downward at a steep angle. As they walked, they became aware that they were approaching something poisonous, something antithetical to life. It was as though they approached a place where life itself was unwelcome. As the feeling grew stronger, they shivered and looked around in the darkness, wondering what it was.
But still they did not slow. The voice gripped them, drawing them on with its promise. What that promise was neither man knew, but it spoke to their deepest desires, their most earnest hopes and hidden fears.
A cold, white glow appeared in the tunnel ahead. It bathed their faces as they drew closer, casting sharp shadows. The tunnel opened up onto a vast cavern. On the far side of the cavern was a glowing, white wall. It was seamless and extended out of sight in either direction.
The wall was clearly not stone. It looked almost like it was made of ice, but as they drew nearer they saw that it wasn’t that either. There was a hint of deep purple rippling under its surface. A low, discordant buzz came from it. There was a feel of vast, unnatural energies barely contained within it. They knew instinctively that to touch it would mean death.
The voice called again and both men’s heads turned. They followed the wall, careful to avoid coming too close to it. As they walked they began to jockey for position, subconsciously aware that only one could receive the promise of the voice.
They walked for several minutes. The wall curved slightly. Something different appeared.
Set into the wall was a roughly oval section of gray granite, easily ten feet tall and half that wide. They stopped before it. The voice was coming from the other side of it.
Further on, the monster that had killed the other soldiers waited, crouched down, watching. It was well away from the white wall, as if it feared its touch as well. Its shell was dull black and scarred by countless years. Part of one of its pincers was broken away. The row of eyes watched them unblinking. The two men ignored it.
“Where is it?” Rome demanded. His voice was rusty. Dust coated his beard and his face and there was dried blood on his shirt.
“It’s here,” Quyloc replied, his eyes moving over the granite. “But I can’t find it.”
“You promised,” Rome said loudly. “We came.” The white glow from the wall was blinding, seeming almost to throb.
There was a concussion from the other side of the granite, as if it was struck by something heavy. A small cracking sound followed, loud in the stillness, and then a single flake of stone fell away.
There was something there now. They peered at it. Something black. A clawed hand or foot, which it was they couldn’t tell.
Rome stepped closer, started to reach for it—
“No!” Quyloc cried, shaking himself as if awaking from a dream. “Rome, don’t—”
But Rome had already taken hold of it. He frowned, then slowly pulled it free of the wall.
The black-shelled monster stood. Something glittered in its eyes. A faint crack ran through the center of the granite.
But neither man noticed.
They were staring at the thing in Rome’s hand. It was a black axe, but it was clearly no normal axe. It was made of a translucent black stone. Carved into the sides of the head were closed eyes. Cut into the lower edge of the blade was the suggestion of a mouth. The haft was the body of a strange creature, stretched out, claws emerging from the end.
The black-shelled monster touched the wall. There was a flash of light, a silent explosion of power, and both men were flung to the ground, where they lay motionless. The black-shelled creature’s arm was blown off. It staggered, black ichor pouring from the stump, then slumped to the ground.
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