Sentinelspire (30 page)

B
erun hit the ground rolling, careful to keep his blade away from his body, and came to his feet. The tiger was already rounding on him, her lips pulled back over her teeth. Sauk and his men fanned out behind her. Berun crouched and kept the knife out before him, hoping the smell of blood on the steel would discourage the tiger. She gave it a swipe, testing him. He jerked the knife out of the way just in time and stepped back. On the edge of his vision, he could see Lewan trying to force himself to his feet but not having much success.

“Surround him!” Sauk called out. “Get behind him and close in. He’s done running. He runs and Taaki’ll be on him!”

The tiger backed up and crouched, baring her teeth and tightening her muscles. Berun knew she was about to pounce. He might be able to avoid the brunt of her, might even slice into her with the knife, but he knew it wouldn’t be a killing blow. He’d either teach her a little caution, maybe buy himself a little time, or he’d get her so angry that she’d come at him, blade or no blade.

Berun prepared to make his own leap when that slight tickling in the base of his brain suddenly flared.

Perch hit Taaki, right on her head, coming down in a fury
of claws and teeth. Taaki roared in shock and anger and began shaking her head back and forth to dislodge the treeclaw lizard. But Perch held, and Berun knew through the link they shared that Perch’s claws had burrowed beneath the fur and well under the skin. One claw was scraping along bone. Still, the tiger was a thousand times stronger than the lizard, and she dislodged him. Keeping a tenuous hold with his front claws, Perch’s lower body fell on her face.

Berun saw her flex her right paw—claws fully extended—and he knew what was coming.

“Perch,
drekhe!”
Berun shouted, and at the same time urged him
flee!

Taaki struck, and the little lizard leaped away just in time—so close that Perch felt the fur of the tiger’s paw tickle his back in passing. The tiger’s claws ripped into her own eye and the flesh around it. She screamed—a roar that began deep but then went up into an almost human-sounding screech—then she bounded away, running Valmir down as she passed.

Sauk roared in fury and charged. Berun could see from the look on his face that any orders of taking Berun alive were forgotten. Time for bloody murder.

The half-orc brought his sword around in a backhanded blow, all of his strength and rage behind the swing. Berun threw himself back, hoping that the downhill slope would grant him some added momentum. It did, but too much. His foot slipped on the sodden ground and he went down hard, sliding a ways downhill into a thick brake of holly. He felt the ground shaking under Sauk’s heavy tread.

He pushed himself to his feet. Forest detritus and muck covered him, but he knew he didn’t have time to concern himself with any of it. Sauk was almost upon him. Another moment—

The ground in front of Berun erupted, scattering leaves and branches and shattering a rotted tree into countless pieces. The moist earth swelled until it stood almost as tall as the young
trees themselves. Seeing it, Berun’s eyes widened in shock, for the earth was shaped almost like a man—a thick, malformed man. Leaves and mud sprouted from the great lump between its shoulders, almost like a living crown. Broken branches and old roots protruded at odd angles, and even as its thick, loamy scent hit him, Berun could see earthworms wriggling on its surface, some falling away while others burrowed back inside.

The mound of earth rose, as if dirt from the torso were being forced upward, then split into a mouth. It kept growing, the bulk of the thing’s body shrinking as it formed into the jaws. The mound of earth leaned forward, towering over Berun, then fell.

When the tiger had knocked him to the ground, Berun thought he’d felt every bone in his body scrape together. This was a hundred times stronger and completely unrelenting. The tiger had struck and bounded away. This kept coming and coming and coming. He felt millions of grains of wet dirt undulating over his skin and falling down his shirt, filling his nose, burying him. Roots and rocks scraped and bruised him.

It was cold. Worse, Berun could not breathe. Dirt filled his nose, and he knew that if he opened his mouth, he would choke on the wet earth. He pitched and kicked and punched, but it was like fighting the wind. The earth flowed around every strike. He felt his knife swept away in the flood of earth. For an instant, he thought he heard Sauk screaming, but then it was gone, and there was only the roar of the earth surging around him.

Berun’s kicks and punches were no longer a matter of fighting. With no air, his body had completely separated from his mind and gone into the throes of sheer panic.

Lights danced in his vision. Were his eyes open or clenched shut? He could not remember, but neither could he feel them any longer. The lights coalesced, bleeding together, and deepened into a shade of verdant green, like dawn’s light on the dew of spring grass.

The light rippled, a green glow playing over shadow, and the ripples formed an outline, then a face.

Chereth.

It was Chereth, his master. Older. His face drawn. Even haggard. But there was no mistaking his master’s visage.

“Berun,” said Chereth, “you must help me. I release you from your oath. Come to me, my son. Come to me!”

W
ake-wake-wake!

An urgency. A will tinged by worry.

Wake-open-eyes! Wake-open-eyes?

Then he heard—really heard, not just in his mind—the chittering, almost birdlike but harsher.

He didn’t move his limbs or even turn his head. He wasn’t sure he could and was afraid to try. Part of him was afraid that opening his eyes would show him nothing, only the smothering black of being buried alive in the deep earth. But he could breathe. Not well. His nostrils were clogged, and something was partially blocking his lips.

Berun opened his eyes. Blue sky. Not entirely blue, no. Clouds low and gray floated like islands in a sea.

The chittering came again, and Berun dared to move his head, looking up just a little. Jagged shapes broke his view of the sky. Branches. Blackened branches. Blackened by lightning. He was lying under the lightning blasted tree where he had agreed to meet—

“Lewan!”

Berun sat up. He heard a startled rustling overhead and looked up in time to see Perch scrambling down the tree.
Halfway down, the lizard leaped and alighted on Berun’s shoulder.

That was when Berun got the first good look at himself. He was covered—head to fingertips to heels—in mud. It had begun to dry, and his sudden movement sent cracks across the dark surface.

Perch chittered in his ear.

Wake-wake-wake?

“Yes, Perch. I’m awake.” He smiled and ran a finger down Perch’s back. His arm trembled.

He felt weak, his limbs heavy, no strength in his muscles, the way he felt after running dozens of miles across the open steppe.

Berun looked around. Other than himself and Perch and a few butterflies fluttering through the grass, no one was around. No sign of Sauk and his men, nor of Lewan. The last thing Berun could remember was the earth creature attacking, seeming to swallow him and push him down into the earth. Then the green light and Chereth’s face.
Berun, you must help me
.

And then he understood. Somehow, even from his prison far away, his master had sent him aid. Sauk would have killed him. Berun had little doubt of that. Even if Berun managed to best Sauk—and he knew the unlikelihood of that—that still left the other assassins and the tiger. He never could have beaten them all and escaped with Lewan. So Chereth had summoned some sort of earth spirit to save him.

He raised his eyes and looked to the east. Higher hills lay between him and the steppe, and beyond, a thick haze. He could not see Sentinelspire. But from where he sat he knew it was well over a hundred miles as the crow flies. Over the hills and valleys on foot, it was probably closer to two hundred. His supplies were gone. His knife, his bow,
Erael’len
 … everything but the clothes he wore were either with Sauk’s band or buried in the earth. And the clothes wouldn’t count for much. He brushed at the mud on his sleeve to try to get the worst off,
and the fabric ripped. His pants and boots, filthy as they were, were still useable. His shirt was a loss. The dirt grinding him down had done it in. The mud was probably the only thing holding it together.

Berun, you must help me
. Had it been a panic-induced dream? Berun didn’t think so. Besides … Lewan. Sauk had taken Lewan. As far as Berun knew, the boy was still alive.

His limbs still trembling, Berun pushed himself to his feet. He winced. Mud and grit had filled his boots. He’d have to find a stream very soon and clean himself up, or walking the first mile would rip all the skin off his feet.

Berun sat down and removed the boots. He’d go slower barefoot, but until he could find a stream, he had little choice.

“Let’s go, Perch,” he said, “and let’s hope we don’t run into any spiders too big for you to handle.”

A stream wasn’t hard to find. The little creeks running between the hills were loud and full. Berun cleaned himself up as best he could, but as he’d feared, washing the shirt ruined it. The homespun fabric fell to pieces in the stream. He saved enough strips to braid a small roost he could sling around one shoulder on which Perch could sit. With no shirt, if the lizard insisted on riding the whole way, he would tear Berun’s skin to shreds. The job done, he let the final remains of his shirt float away, finished cleaning the rest of his clothes and boots, then set out.

He returned to the place where he and Lewan had spent the night. He searched for a trail but found nothing. The rain had ruined any signs, washing away even the blood. The bodies were gone.

As he stood there in the wood, cursing his ill luck and worrying over Lewan, he considered searching for the portal
of which Valmir had spoken. He knew they’d spent the day heading up into the mountains. It had to be up there somewhere. But unless he managed to find their trail, he could spend months looking for the portal, and even if he found it, without the proper key, it would be useless to him. And the farther he went up the mountains, the more dangerous his path would become. With no weapons, he’d be no match against the larger spiders—and there were worse things than spiders in the Khopet-Dag.

“East it is, then,” he said, more to himself than Perch. If he ran, he might make it to Sentinelspire in a tenday—if he didn’t have to spend much time foraging for food. Once he hit the steppe again, he might be able to beg or steal a horse.

He searched long enough to find a good, stout stick. Not great in terms of a weapon, but it was better than nothing. The sun was riding high in the sky, approaching midday. Berun turned east and started running.