AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Seth did not have time to wonder if he should have phrased that more politely—because a boom shook the building. Plaster rained down, peppering Seth and Malik. Stacks of books toppled and spilled across the floor.
The bookseller peered out from the back. Seth shouted for the man to get out. Earthshakes could level buildings. The old man turned and fled back the way he’d come. Seth let him go, figuring there must be another door, and hustled after Malik into the street.
Seth struggled to make sense of what he was seeing. A mass of people surged along the avenue, all fleeing the same direction: east. But they should be moving west. The western gate was closer, and they had to get to open ground, away from the buildings.
The second thing that Seth couldn’t make sense of was the fact that Raider was on the steps of the building across the street. Seth barely had time to wonder what the hell Raider was doing there before his heart leaped—because Raider started scaling the building to its rooftop.
“Raider!” Seth shouted. What the hell was Raider thinking, getting on top of a building that might collapse at any—
“Great Kasha!” Malik exclaimed, invoking the goddess of mysteries and the arcane.
Seth followed the arcanist’s stunned gaze. Beyond the western gate, visible even above the rooftops, reared the massive, monstrous black head of the sand serpent.
CHAPTER 35
THE INSTANT RAIDER saw the sand serpent rear above the western gate, all other concerns fled his mind. At the moment, it didn’t matter whether Seth had lied to him, manipulated him, intended to betray him. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t decide whether to confront Seth about it. It didn’t even matter that he was still shaking from all the times he’d thrown up over the last hour as he’d tracked down Seth and Malik.
No, none of that mattered. Not when the sand serpent could destroy the city. Not when it might kill hundreds, even thousands.
And he and Seth had woken it up.
Long dormant, its hunger must have drawn it to Aqarat’s concentration of easy prey.
The quicksilver’s overlapping ridges and vicious studs gleamed from Raider’s left shoulder to his fingertips, adding power to his grip as he scaled the mudbrick building. As soon as his sandaled feet hit the flat rooftop, Raider burst into a run. He sprinted to the edge of the roof and leaped across the alleyway gap to the next, his kaftan streaming behind him.
Rooftop after rooftop, Raider bypassed the chaos of the streets.
Heavier and burdened by his weapons, Seth would have to fight his way against the movement of the fleeing crowd. He would do it, though. And the damned fool would get himself killed in a fight he couldn’t possibly win—which meant Raider had to reach the sand serpent ahead of him. Even amid his awful, desperate questions about Seth, Raider’s instinct to protect him still raged with full force.
Whether Raider could actually stop the sand serpent, he had no idea, but he had to try.
The creature’s head had vanished from sight beyond the wall. It was no doubt preparing for another assault on the gate. But Raider was almost there.
He launched himself over another alleyway, this one wider than the others. He gave it everything he had, but his stomach dropped mid-leap because, fuck, fuck, fuck, he wasn’t going to make it.
Raider’s toes brushed the rooftop edge and slipped off, but it was enough to pitch him forward and slam his chest into the ledge. He scraped downward, his whole body raking against rough mudbrick, but managed to catch a scrabbling hold with his quicksilver fingertips. Before he could pull himself up, however, a fresh boom shook the city.
Raider’s grip slipped on the shuddering building. He fell for a breathless moment—
Then slammed into a wooden structure. It collapsed under his weight. As he rolled clear of the debris, groaning, Raider dimly registered that he’d landed on a goat-milking stanchion. If only he’d been in the merchant’s quarter, he might have landed on an awning and maybe some fruit. Here, near the livestock gate, it was a fucking stanchion.
Raider staggered to his feet and lurched into a run, ignoring a dozen points of pain. He didn’t have time for them.
As he careened around the corner into the street, near his goal, Raider felt keenly the absence of his scimitar. He’d left it behind so he could move quickly and silently through Aqarat to tail Seth and Malik.
Of course, the sword wouldn’t have done him much good anyway. Not against the sand serpent.
His only chance lay with his quicksilver. If he could reach the sand serpent’s point of vulnerability, if he could punch hard enough, maybe he could stop the creature.
Maybe.
Raider raced along the now-empty street to the cracked mudbrick wall and the gate twisting on its hinges. Even the guards had abandoned their posts. Raider couldn’t blame them.
Another earthshaking blow against the weakened gate had the wood shattering and the massive, spiny tail of the sand serpent whipping through.
Raider hurtled the debris and leaped onto the mudbrick steps leading to the guards’ platform. He raced to the top.
Even knowing what he would see did not prepare him for the full, unobstructed view of the sand serpent. The creature’s massive body looped and coiled over the scrubby hard pack. Its innumerable scales and the ridge of black spines gleamed under the sun as it wound around to face the opening that its tail had struck into Aqarat.
