Kunas
The ledge of rock they were standing on jutted out from the cavern behind them, big enough for eight men to stand on. It was nearly a third of the way up the wall, with about twenty feet of nothing below them. But the thing that made him the most nervous was what the ledge faced.
Kunas wasn’t sure if the Chovathi matriarch was growing out of the rock or if the rock was slowly swallowing her into itself. Across from them was another cave wall, huge, maybe a hundred feet high, which looked more like a mural than a cave: out of it came a white, twisted face twice as big as a man, with fragmented arms reaching out in either direction, slowly blending into the rock. Veins lined the arms, but Kunas wasn’t sure what they carried; he didn’t think there was any way it could be blood.
It was like looking at someone floating on her back in a pool: partially submerged, yet somehow also a part of the water.
The creature itself was enormous. He had no idea that Chovathi even got that big—she was perhaps seventy feet tall—and he wondered if it had to do with her place in the rock.
She was certainly not normal. And the last thing he expected her to do was speak. So when she said, “Come forward, Kunas,” all he could do was blink and stare.
The words echoed throughout the cave and, for the moment, were the only sound. Finally, Captain Hunt asked in a small voice, barely above a whisper, “How in the Khel does she know your name?”
Kunas tried to say, I don’t know, but the only thing that worked on his body were his eyes, which moved over the surface of the gargantuan rock-borne creature in the same way that water moved over a riverbed. He observed the mammoth limbs and the horrific face that jutted out of the rock like a nightmare. He looked at the huge clawed hands, half sunken into the rock and seemingly immobile, just like the rest of the . . . thing. And, lastly, he looked at the eyes.
As if the craggy horror before him weren’t already unnerving enough, the eyes in its head were another thing entirely. They bulged and darted about like the eyes of a dreamer, neither focused nor predictable, changing seamlessly in color from white to red to black; there was no way to tell what they were looking at, or what they were seeing, for that matter.
Kunas finally found his legs and stepped forward to the ledge, footsteps echoing in the blue-hued interior.
“I am Kunas,” he managed to choke out. “Of Ghal Thurái.”
He was probing the rocks around them for weakness in case he had to bring them down on everyone, but something about them felt strange.
“I know you are,” the creature said. Her voice was not at all like Kunas had expected a Chovathi to sound; it was titanic and hollow, like a windstorm. “Khaz has told me.”
Kunas glanced at the Chovathi beside him, who was looking, stone-faced, at the matriarch.
“And what else has he told you?” Kunas managed to ask.
“He has told me,” the great Chovathi said, “that you seek an agreement.”
“I do.”
The chamber rumbled, and Kunas suddenly realized that the creature was laughing. It was a deep, menacing laugh that made him consider bringing down the mountain regardless.
“And what can a creature like you offer Zhala, matriarch of the Xua’al?”
Now it was Kunas’s turn to laugh.
“I think you underestimate me,” he said. “And you underestimate the Khyth. I have the ear of the most powerful general in Gal’dorok and the trust of the most feared Khyth in the land. If we can reach an agreement, and if your Chovathi will fight with us, we will crush your enemies together. And then you will have my ear.”
The ever-moving eyes of the matriarch seemed to pause for a moment; whether it was Kunas’s eyes playing tricks on him or the giant creature was actually looking at him, he wasn’t sure. But when she spoke again, it was certainly to address him.
“Then you will have the help of the Xua’al. I will give you our numbers and my gratitude.”
Kunas thought about asking what good her gratitude would do him when she was trapped in the rocks here, but he thought better of it. Something told him that he wouldn’t like the answer.
“Done,” he said.
“But first,” she said slowly, “a blood pact.”
Kunas raised his eyebrows in surprise. He wasn’t expecting that request. “Ah,” he said, pausing. “Whose blood?” He wasn’t exactly in a position to bargain.
Hunt and Ohlez drew their swords.
But before he could say anything more, the hairs on his neck stood up, and he realized that Khaz was behind him. He could hear the lumbering warrior’s breathing, and suddenly the wound on his hand felt like a burning knife being dragged across his skin.
He could have sworn that he remembered closing up the cut.
Didn’t he?
He felt Khaz’s hand on his shoulder.
Kunas reached out again and thought about bringing down the rocks on top of them. This time he meant it.
But something dark and awful made sure he would never do that again.
Whatever it was, it was powerful.
And whatever it was, brought pain. And . . . something else.