Chapter Nineteen

Khyven

Slayter took a deep breath and slowly let it out. With steady hands, he scratched a line through the scattered dirt, carefully building a symmetrical symbol that meant nothing to Khyven. The mage’s hands moved economically and confidently like he had done this a thousand times. He never raised the scratcher from the dirt. It took him less than a minute and the symbol looked complete except for one little line.

Slayter let out another slow breath, careful not to disturb his creation.

Khyven had never seen Slayter at work before. He’d never noticed how deft the man’s hands were, his fingers long and agile. They seemed almost to have a life of their own as they handled the first scratcher, then produced a second from some pocket in his robes.

Even Khyven, who had relied on his reflexes and his sense of his body to save his life over and over again, didn’t have the kind of manual dexterity Slayter now displayed. Every motion was intentional, every move through the air, every single shift of the scratcher in his hand, they all seemed to have a ritualistic purpose and Slayter was aware of each tiny movement.

“Slayter—” Vohn began, but the mage gave a curt shake of his head.

Khyven put a hand on Vohn’s shoulder. The muscles in Vohn’s jaw flexed, but he didn’t say anything else.

“Vohn, hold this for me please,” Slayter murmured, nodding at the coin resting on the pedestal.

“This is a bad idea,” Vohn said.

Slayter remained completely focused on his dirt drawing and the coin beside it, never looking at Vohn, but his forehead wrinkled a little in frustration. Khyven moved forward and carefully touched the clay coin without moving it, holding it firm.

Slayter nodded, closed his eyes, and drew a breath, then opened them again. He lowered both hands simultaneously. The tip of each scratcher touched their respective symbols, one on the coin and the other on the dirt drawing. Slayter drew two lines at the same time, one an eighth of an inch long through the clay and the other two inches long on the dirt. He finished each symbol at exactly the same moment.

Blue light flared from the lines of the dirt drawing and orange light from the coin. The sudden color in the otherwise gray-and-black landscape was shocking. Khyven started, though he kept the coin pressed firmly against the black marble.

“Let go,” Slayter murmured, and Khyven lifted his hand away.

“Lotura!” Vohn whispered harshly. “No light! You can’t make light in here!”

Slayter ignored him.

The orange light from the coin slithered up the legs of the statue, circling around and around until it reached his waist. The blue light chased it like a little brother trying to catch up.

Slayter held his breath. He held both scratchers at shoulder level.

The statue moved!

Its hands clenched into fists, making a grinding noise. Vohn stepped back and Khyven drew his sword. The statue craned its neck, making the same grinding noise, and it looked down at them. The rage-filled expression hit Khyven like a blow. The statue opened its mouth as though he was yelling, but no sound came out.

Then the blue light caught up with the orange, wrapping around the Giant’s throat, and a roar exploded from its mouth, shattering the silence.

“Release me!” the Giant demanded.

“Senji’s Teeth!” Khyven exclaimed. He hadn’t known what to expect, but by the abyss itself, he hadn’t expected the statue to speak!

Slayter held up an imperious hand to Khyven, indicating he should be quiet.

“Who are you?” Slayter demanded.

“Cockroach,” the Giant said through his teeth. He strained, veins pulsing in his stone neck as though he was trying to lift a boulder. His arm jerked forward an inch, popping and cracking. “Release me, Human!”

“Answer my question,” Slayter replied calmly.

“I will kill you.”

“Answer my question and I will release you.”

Both Vohn and Khyven looked in horror at Slayter, but again he gestured that they remain still.

The Giant roared again, head tilting pitifully upward with the same popping and cracking sound.

“You attacked this castle, didn’t you?” Slayter asked. “You came to do harm.”

“Your bones will splinter as I twist them!” the Giant raged, painfully shifting his head as he looked down again at Slayter.

“You’ll do nothing unless I allow it,” Slayter said. “Answer my question and I’ll release you.”

The Giant’s eyes blazed with blue fire and his stone lips peeled back from his teeth.

“What is your name?” Slayter insisted.

“I am Harkandos,” the Giant ground out. “Which will be the last name on your lips as I crush you to paste, cockroach.”

Slayter twitched as though he recognized the name, but the zeal in his eyes only increased.

“Who did this to you?” he demanded. “Tell me his name—”

The earth jumped, rippling like a wave, and threw the three of them away from the pedestal. Khyven shouted, launching from the sudden rock wave, flipping in midair, and landing on his feet. Slayter and Vohn tumbled like rag dolls.

The Giant raised a hand like he was holding a chalice by the bowl. Earth rose up on either side of Slayter and Vohn, throwing paving stones and showering them in dirt.

“Khyven!” Slayter yelled. The mage looked terrified. The earth rose high and smashed down on Khyven’s friends.

“Slayter! Vohn!” Khyven yelled.

But the earth crumbled in a swirl of orange light. The dust cleared, revealing Vohn and Slayter, unharmed. Slayter’s eyes were narrowed in concentration. Orange light emanated from two fingers, where crumbles of a broken clay disk sifted downward.

“Khyven!” he shouted. “The symbols. Break the symbols!”

Khyven looked at the pedestal. Despite the upheaval of the earth, the pedestal remained completely undisturbed. The disk still lay at the Giant’s feet, as did the dirt drawing, completely intact.

But the Giant had changed. His arms were moving almost normally. The earth heaved again, rising like a wave over Slayter.

Khyven sprinted for the pedestal—

The ground launched him upward, twenty feet in the air. He yelped, dropped his sword, and flailed his arms. The ground rushed up fast and he barely managed to turn his fall into an awkward roll.

He tumbled badly. The wind was slammed from his body and a rock jammed into his kidney so hard he felt it must have punctured his back.

But Khyven had been in pain before. The key to survival was to keep moving. When you danced with death, you had to keep moving or death would catch you.

He rolled just as a curling wave of earth smashed down where he’d been, and he launched himself to his feet with a grunt. His sword was too far away, so he left it.

He still had the Mavric iron sword on his back. They weren’t even an hour into this rescue and it looked like he would already have to draw it.

Blue wind gusted past him, showing him the path to the pedestal. He charged forward as a wave of blue wind rose to his left. He jumped away at the last second and a ton of rock and earth landed where he had been. He sprinted forward.

The blue wind formed into another wall, and he pulled up short just as a rock wall thrust up from the ground. Spikes of blue wind thrust up beneath him and everywhere around him. Khyven jumped straight up just as they became rock spikes. If he’d been a second slower, he’d have been impaled. The nearest spike grazed his shoulder, glancing off his shoulder plate, and he tumbled between the spikes.

The attack stopped, but he realized it was only because the wall that had blocked Khyven from reaching the pedestal obscured the Giant’s vision. Perhaps he thought Khyven was dead.

He let out a quiet breath and looked at the jagged protrusions in the dirt-and-rock wall and saw a way up. Moving rapidly, he leapt onto the first tiny ledge and launched toward the second, grabbing it and pulling himself up the wall. He crested the top—

And stood face to face with the surprised Giant, who could now apparently move from the waist up, though his legs still seemed entirely made of stone.

Khyven pulled a dagger as three spears of blue wind stabbed up from the wall. He jumped toward the Giant, twisting as the spikes barely missed him. Khyven whipped his arm up and threw his dagger—

The Giant swatted him from the air.

It was like being hit with a pillar of stone. Pain exploded in Khyven’s chest. He crashed to the ground and tumbled. Stars swirled in his vision. He couldn’t breathe.

He had to get up. The Giant wouldn’t hesitate. Spikes of earth would spear him if he didn’t get up!

Khyven struggled, rising shakily to his hands and knees.

Flickers of blue shot up through him and all around him—

A raven’s caw pierced the air so loudly it felt like someone had boxed Khyven’s ears. The blue spikes vanished.

“Rauvelos!” the Giant growled. “I will gut you, bird. I will feast on your entrails!”

Enormous raven’s wings blotted out the sky. A hurricane wind rolled past Khyven and slammed into the pedestal.

“Rauvelo—” the Giant’s grinding voice cut off as the dirt of Slayter’s spell scattered. The orange light burst apart like sparks from a fire.

Rauvelos’s huge talon reached in, beneath the Giant’s swinging fist, and its point shattered the clay coin. Blue light exploded into sparks, just like the orange light. The Giant screamed soundlessly, fists clenched in utter agony.

Then the stone took control again.

The Giant’s flexed arms uncurled. His clenched fists opened and softened into relaxed hands. He stood straight and resumed the same haughty posture as before, staring off into the distance.

Heavy wings beat as Rauvelos landed before Khyven, settling himself on part of the cobblestone path that hadn’t been uprooted. He folded his wings against his sides and the courtyard fell silent except for the hard breathing of Khyven and his friends.

The bird turned glittering black eyes upon them and Khyven felt the raven’s anger emanating like a heat wave.

“I should eat you all,” he said.