“They are here?” Leitos asked, looking to the darkest corners for movement that was not there.
“Yes,” Zera answered, and said no more.
They made their way out of the building by another route than the way they entered. Every step was precarious, and more than once they had to climb over wobbly mounds of brick, leaning tangles of collapsed timbers, or dusty piles of furniture.
Once free of their temporary shelter, Zera led them deeper into the city. They crossed open areas in a crouched run, hugged walls between places that offered cover. Where she stalked along leaving no trail, Leitos made a terrible racket no matter how he tried to mimic her stealth. She scowled at him when his foot loudly crunched through a slat of wood. Without a word, she placed his hand on her trailing shoulder, indicating with a look that he dare not let go. Soon after Zera halted in a dark alley.
“You are not telling me something,” Leitos whispered, but even that sounded too loud.
She eyed him a moment, then nodded in appreciation. “You are no fool, but your insight will earn you no comfort. The few Mahk’lar that have always resisted joining with the Faceless One,” she said, resuming her sneaking stride, “have hidden themselves away in order to build their own army. Some believe they mean to rise against both the Faceless One and humankind, and take the world they believe is rightfully theirs.”
Leitos swallowed. “An army of what?”
“Abominations, horrors unimagined by even the most depraved and forsaken mind,” Zera said. “Strange breeds of Alon’mahk’lar.”
“Is that why we are fleeing?” Leitos wondered aloud.
Instead of answering, Zera jerked him off the street and into a readily defensible nook created by a building’s collapsed side wall. In the same motion, she dropped into a crouch and dragged him down by her side. A long, slender dagger appeared in her hand.
Remembering the knife she had given him earlier, Leitos drew it from his satchel. In comparison to hers, it was a paltry example of a weapon. He waited, looking from Zera to the narrow, twisting street. Zera fixated on something, but he made out only darkness, outlines of collapsed buildings-
He detected a shape … a shadow within a shadow, low to the ground, sliding along in perfect silence. Something about the way it glided over the roadway, like a thick mist, raised the hair of his head. Once seen, he noticed more shapes like the first. Their paths seemed aimless, and thus unpredictable.
“Gods good and wise,” Zera breathed. Though just audible, her voice carried a note of fear that compounded Leitos’s own. “The city is overrun with Mahk’lar.”
“Then why did you bring us here?” Leitos demanded, his voice little more than a trembling hiss.
“Bone-towns have always been haunts for Mahk’lar,” Zera said. “Stones of protection prevent them from possessing the living … but I have never seen such a gathering.”
“What do we do?” Leitos asked, clutching the stone dangling from its leather cord around his neck, even as he wondered how a bit of polished rock could offer any defense against creatures of the Thousand Hells.
Before she could answer, a chill blade slid up Leitos’s spine. He flung himself against Zera, who first cursed his clumsiness, then went rigid, eyes locked on something over his shoulder.
Leitos wheeled. Within the darkness before his eyes hung something darker still, a total absence of light in the shape of no living creature he had ever seen. The blade that had caressed him was no blade at all, but a jagged, inky-black talon. That terrible claw raised up amid eight others, all spread in a wide fan. They slashed suddenly, almost playfully, across his face. Cold agony raked through one cheek, the bridge of his nose. He wrenched back with a garbled shout. With the pain came a brief flaring of dull blue light that originated from the stone of protection and raced over his skin, then dissipated in crackling sparks.
The Mahk’lar jerked away with a hiss, a twisted thing trailing wisps of vapor. A single gray eye centered in its forehead narrowed in hate. “Yours is a destiny cursed,” it snarled. “The age of men is an undying corpse longing for the reeking soil of the grave.” The demonic spirit said more as it retreated and vanished, the words spoken in a language beyond human understanding.
“Come,” Zera urged, rising from her knees.
Heart pounding, Leitos touched his face, and found the skin whole. “What of the Fallen?” he asked.
“Safeguarded as we are by the stones of protection, no Mahk’lar can harm our souls or our flesh, but their creations-the Alon’mahk’lar-can destroy us.” She dragged him up and over the rubble at their backs, and they dropped into a lightless alley.
Shaking off his revulsion, Leitos pulled his wrist from her grip. “I will follow.”
Zera thought about that for a heartbeat, then set off. Soon, they were jogging along, crisscrossing the barren city on what seemed to Leitos a haphazard path. He did not question her. He did not have the breath, for one, and for another it was apparent that she wanted to escape the Mahk’lar as much as he did. Still, he could not help but wonder if wandering about, instead of simply climbing over the nearest city wall, was the best choice.
Large as the city was, they kept on for an hour or more, and still there seemed to be no indication that they were getting closer to escaping. Zera paused at a building that had burned hot enough to powder its brick structure. Around its foundation grew a stand of tall, stiff, bushy weeds yellowed and dried from the summer heat.
“Here we are,” she said, as if she had been looking for those weeds in particular. She used her dagger to cut through several woody stems, and pulled her skein of cord from her satchel. Dividing the weeds in half, she tied each bunch together, then secured one cord around Leitos’s waist, and the end of the other around her own.
She moved off, the trailing foliage obscuring her tracks. Leitos could not help but think it was a pointless endeavor, given that they had left a trail throughout the city, but amended his judgment when the city wall abruptly materialized out of the night. Understanding dawned. They were about to escape onto the road to Zuladah, and she was still trying to confuse Sandros and Pathil.
Not for the first time, Leitos felt inept for the task with which Adham had charged him. He had completely forgotten about the two Hunters. If left to his own devices, he would have simply run. Such an oversight would surely have meant his capture. He berated himself, but also committed the lesson to memory.
Zera angled toward a sprawling break in the wall, and a din of growls rose up. Zera slid to a halt. Leitos careened into her and bounced off.
“Cut yourself free,” she said, low but insistent. In place of the dagger she had been using, now her sword came to hand. “Defend yourself, Leitos, for we face Alon’mahk’lar.”
As monstrous figures closed in, Leitos stabbed his fist into the satchel tangled about his shoulders, slicing his fingers on the small knife he had stored away. Hissing, he pulled the weapon free and slashed the cord tied about his waist. He backed away as one of the creatures came closer than the others, an enemy so hideous that the sight of it threatened to unravel his mind.
The Alon’mahk’lar had the shape of a dog, and a cluster of bulbous eyes, glowing an ugly amber, sprouted from its broad, knotted forehead. Spines of bone stretched in a ridge from its thick neck to its lashing, club-like tail. Powerful limbs propelled it, legs that had more joints than they should, each knobby and dense with rippling muscle and cords of taut sinew. A rough, splotchy maroon hide covered it.
Zera flung Leitos aside as if he were no more substantial than an empty sack. At the same time, she flitted sideways as the creature sprang. Its mouth, a reeking cavern filled with back-curving fangs, snapped closed around the empty space where she had just been, spraying slaver. Her sword flashed, parting the side of the creature’s neck. Spinning, Zera whirled her sword in a tight circle. The blade rose high, arced down, parting the beast’s spine with a crunching shriek. The creature howled as it tumbled into the sand, forelegs clawing for purchase, its hindquarters convulsing amid the spill of bloody intestines.