I twist around as best I can, trying to see what I’m imagining in my head as every muscle waits for the attack. There are dark shapes from the corner of my eye. Moving, but—I realise after a rattled few seconds—not madly rushing like they did when I came out here alone.
Finally, some of them come into view. They’re crowding around us but pausing a few feet away, as if at an invisible barrier. Not reaching out, even if menace rolls off the inscribed obsidian discs that comprise their faces. Each one is turned toward us. Toward me. And every step the form carrying me makes, every single obsidian statue takes a corresponding one.
They’re coming from everywhere. More.More. Flowing around us, barely any space between them. All pulsing in my mind. The silver statue walks on,a bright island through a sea of black. They follow in a rippling, dark wave. Clogging the street, now. Still only a few feet between me and the nearest of them. Never any closer. Never any farther. Only the thundering clattering of their polished feet against damp stone to accompany us.
“Um,” I whisper shakily. “Could we go a little faster?”
We do not.
We move on, shadowed by our eerie, massive coterie. Me barely able to breathe from both position and dread. Willing the body beneath me to increase its pace. There’s a faint light in the sky to the east. Getting rapidly stronger. I don’t have long, but I think we can make it.
We walk the slick streets for twenty minutes. Forty. My muscles ache from trying not to move, from the constant tension and terror. The glow on the horizon is too bright. The clicking roar of a thousand feet stamping in time to keep up, never breaking position, never getting too close or too far.
Then, finally—abruptly—we stop.
I have time only to register the sudden lack of motion before silver hands are hauling me upward and then tossing me bodily forward. I shout and twist awkwardly in mid-air, manage to land on my side and roll to lessen the impact. Scramble to my feet and then backward, hand out defensively, expecting a flood of obsidian to be rushing at me.
Instead, I am met with a sea of silent, motionless black forms on either side of the silver one. They are arrayed in a perfect, invisible line that extends between the edges of the two last buildings on either side of the street, and I cast a quick glance over my shoulder to find only cobbled stone and an archway, identical to the one through which I entered the city, ahead. The shore of the lake past it is tinted a rapidly lightening blue-green as it reflects thickly forested hills beyond. A lone, white-cloaked figure waits beneath the trees.
We’ve reached the outermost edge of Fornax.
The silver sentinel suddenly moves again. Tosses its counterpart’s arm after me with a disdainful, almost peevish motion. It makes a hollow ringing as it clangs and clatters and rolls to a stop next to me.
“A pleasure spending time with you, too,” I mutter acerbically. Cautiously pick it up, struggling again with its immense weight. Never taking my eyes from the massive crowd of watching, pulsing statues only a few feet away.
The first rays of sunlight hit the buildings behind me, and the ground trembles.
Vek.
I run.
Nothing chases, no terrifying clatter of feet in pursuit as I struggle with freezing, stiff limbs and the burden of my trophy. The water over the steps ahead, leading down from Fornax, has started to froth. The stone begins to sink.
Then I’m stumbling through the archway, leaping wildly. My feet hit the sludge of the lake’s floor. I splash madly toward the shore, ignoring the renewed shock of the icy water.
Lir is waiting. The white-robed druid looks horrified as he watches, his gaze fixed behind me. I don’t dare turn until I’ve reached the safety of the small beach; when I do I see the city has already sunk several feet, the heads of the statues that followed me just now level with the surface. They are still gathered, crowded at the city’s edge. Motionless. No struggle as they slip beneath the waves.
I collapse onto the shale. Breathing heavily.
“Deaglán.” Lir’s voice shakes. Something is wrong—anger or fear, and either way not a good sign—but he is following the forms. “What favour have the gods shown you in Fornax?”
With an exhausted motion, I slap the silver arm down in front of the dismayed druid.
“A great gift.” The heavily engraved limb lies there, palm upward, the three interlocked whorls of Fornax visible on it. Lir pales as he stares, transfixed. The dawn casts his haggard features in sharp relief.
I take in his expression. Unease suddenly overcoming relief.
“A great gift indeed.” The deep, amused voice from behind him sends my bare hands twitching for a weapon I no longer have. A hulking shape emerges from the trees. Then three more behind it, cutting off any thought of flight. “Surely the gods have favoured you.”
There’s motion, the tossing of something toward me. Several pieces of wood, rent and splintered and hacked and charred, scatter in front of me. I stare, confused, until I gradually spot familiarity in the symbol-covered remains.
My heart drops. No pulse coming from any of the pieces, but I know straight away that I am looking at the shattered remnants of my spear.
The largest of the shadows steps forward out of the forest and into the dawn.
“Good to see you again, Leathfhear,” says Gallchobhar.
LXV
