“Good,” he murmured. He seemed reluctant to let go of my hand, and I didn’t want him to. Even through the pain, the touch of his fingers sent shivers racing over my skin. Those pale blue eyes met mine, the worry in them clear. “I don’t think anything is broken. Did it grab you anywhere else?”
I shook my head. “It wanted to,” I said, still shivering from both pain and the feel of gentle fingers on my skin, a sharp contrast to the horrifying grip of the statue. “But it didn’t have another hand, thank the Weaver.”
“Thank the Weaver for that,” Raithe agreed softly, and helped me to my feet. Ratuk pressed close, still huffing in agitation, and I patted the beetle’s blocky head. “You were amazing, Ratuk,” I told him. “Thank you.”
“Okay, what in the Weaver’s mercy was that?” Halek wondered loudly as he and Kysa approached on Rhyne. “I thought we just had to worry about spirits in the valley, not statues that come to life and attack us. That was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of terrifying things. Giant spiders, the walking dead, centipedes that spit poison at you. But I think this pretty much takes the prize.”
Kysa gazed into the town, eyes narrowed. “Do we have to worry about others coming after us?” she wondered, looking at Raithe.
“I... don’t know,” Raithe said, sounding frustrated. He raked a hand through his silver hair, shaking his head. “There haven’tbeen any reports of the statues coming to life,” he muttered. “And we passed dozens on our way here. None of them moved or came after us. Why would this one be the exception?”
“The spirits,” I said, remembering the voice I’d heard that first night, calling to me from the darkness. “In certain stories, spirits can possess things. Other people, but sometimes objects.”
“That’s true,” Halek echoed. “I once spent the night in a haunted tomb, where the spirits of the dead kept making the candles fly at me. It was, if I remember correctly, one of the longest nights of my life.”
“What if...” I looked back toward the woods, where the shadows had grown very long. Was it my imagination, or did I see movement between those trunks? “What if the spirits here can possess the statues?”
Raithe’s eyes narrowed, and he gazed at the forest. “If that’s true,” he murmured, “then we are in the worst possible place right now—close to a settlement, where there is likely to be the greatest concentration of both spirits and statues. If we have drawn their attention, then the statues we passed before...”
He trailed off, his dark skin going ashen, and took a single step back from the clinging shadows of the trees. Heart in my throat, I turned from him to gaze at the looming forest.
And that’s when the horde of statues came through the trees.
My blood turned to ice, and my stomach dropped in absolute terror. The statues made little sound as they came, their footsteps muffled by layers of dust and ash as they shuffled forward. They were the same statues we had seen before, the iylvahn who had been caught fleeing their homes. I saw thefigure of the mother with her two children shambling toward us, and a statue whose leg had been snapped off crawling through the dust, dragging itself by the arms. Another effigy walked steadily forward, seemingly unhindered by the fact that its head was missing.
There were probably a few dozen; pale, silent figures converging on us in the dark, moving with that jerky, sporadic gait that made my skin crawl.
“Weaver’s mercy,” Halek whispered, as Rhyne shook his head and gave a bellow of challenge to the coming horde. “We’re not going to stay and fight that army, are we? I don’t think I have anything that will hurt solid stone.”
“Get on Ratuk, Sparrow,” Raithe told me, his voice low and intense. I scrambled atop the rock beetle, as Raithe mounted his hissing sand dragon “Stay together,” he called. “We’ll try to lose them between the houses.”
With the chilling sound of feet shushing through the dirt, the horde charged, coming at us with stony arms raised. I wheeled Ratuk around, hearing Rhyne’s angry clicking as Kysa spun him away from the horde, and we fled into the town.
The rows of iylvahn houses closed around us, and the streets, littered with rubble and fallen branches, seemed to narrow. As we fled farther in and the shadows grew darker, I began seeing structures stacked on top of each other, perched in the limbs of enormous trees, or even wrapped around the thick trunks. The ancient iylvahn seemed to build vertically, as well as on the ground. I had never seen such a thing before, and gazing up atthe towering structures, which seemed to sway against the evening sky, made me slightly dizzy.
More statues appeared in the town, standing in front yards and in doorways, as well as out in the roads. At first, they didn’t move. We passed several statues that remained frozen in place. But as we pressed farther into town, the statues began to stir. Heads turned, limbs began to twitch, and the effigies eventually started to lurch in our direction. This was horrifying enough, but to make things worse, I could hear the shuffling feet of the rest of the horde behind us. Their pale forms shambled between houses and past trees, always following, always getting closer. My stomach was in knots, and a cold sweat was trickling down my back as the mob of killer statues edged closer and closer.
Namaia sank fully over the horizon, plunging the world into twilight. The town continued, vast, sprawling, and towering. There seemed to be a lot more statues now, clogging the roads and blocking our path. We were forced to change directions several times, darting down side roads and alleys as the way ahead filled with lurching, shuffling effigies of death.
“Why are there so many?” Halek gasped, as our path was blocked once more by a trio of hollow-eyed statues. “How many restless spirits are in this land, and why are they all coming after us? Is this normal?”
“No,” Raithe answered, directing his sand dragon down another street. “There haven’t been any reports of this happening in the Dead Lands. People go missing, but this mass spirit congregation is new. Something is very wrong.”
As the chase continued, I began to have the terrible, nagging sensation that we were being... driven somewhere. As road after road was blocked, forcing us to go another way, the sensation of being herded did not dissipate.
As we turned down another street, the road opened up, and we found ourselves at the edge of a large plaza. What was once a fountain stood in the center, smashed beyond recognition. Raithe pulled his sand dragon to a stop at the perimeter, staring at the open square with narrowed eyes, and shook his head.
“Turn around,” he said in a low voice. “We can’t be caught in the open like this. Go back.”
I turned Ratuk, difficult to do in the narrow, tight alley, only to spot a trio of statues coming down the street behind Rhyne. Several more spilled into the road behind them, making my blood run cold. “We can’t,” I called back to Raithe. “We’re blocked in.”
A statue staggered out of a doorway and lunged at Ratuk. The beetle swung his head, knocking it aside, but he couldn’t maneuver well in the cramped alley. The statue lurched back to its feet and came at us again, and with nowhere else to go, we fled into the square.
Pale figures spilled into the open space, coming from everywhere, it seemed. They crowded forward, a swarm of grinding stone and grasping hands, reaching out for us. Rhyne and Ratuk smashed into the statues with their horns, knocking them back, but there were always more staggering toward us. In moments, we would be overrun.
“Well,” Halek said, gazing down at the death coming at usfrom all sides. “This is not what I imagined my fate to be. I can’t decide if I’d rather be eaten by giant insects or pummeled to death by living statues, but I guess it doesn’t matter.” He reached into his jacket and withdrew a short, straight blade, giving me a defiant grin. “If you manage to survive and tell this story, Sparrow, be sure to include how devastatingly brave I was, okay?”
“Kysa.” Before I could reply, Raithe yanked his snarling sand dragon away from the horde to face us. In the fading light, his expression chilled me. “Take Sparrow,” he told the insect rider, pointing at me with his blade. “Take her, and fly out of here with Rhyne. Head east across the Shifting Dunes until you reach the World Scar. Nothing else matters but getting the Fateless to the loom. Protect her, as I would have done. Fatechaser...” His gaze went to Halek. “Your story isn’t ending here. Go with them.”
