Ryne opened his mouth.
“A way to your answers has been provided for you. A way to make things right. If you seek it.”
“What way?” Ryne asked.
“You’ll know him when he is ready.” Halvor paused and cocked his head to one side. “Be careful what you pray for. The gods march.”
Ryne fell, his mind spinning as if he spiraled into cavernous depths. Darkness engulfed him.
CHAPTER 16
Dimly aware of her eagles following high above, blood thundering in her ears as she fled for all she was worth, Irmina crashed through brush and branch, flower and fauna, vine and leaf, her breaths a burning rasp in her chest. Sweat drenched her shirt, causing it to cling to her back and chest and trickle down into her crotch. Behind her the rockhound’s heavy footsteps pounded, and more than once she heard the splintering crash of wood as it sheared through another tree trunk, head first, not bothering to skirt them in its pursuit.
She’d barely managed to reach the Nevermore Heights’ Cloud Forests ahead of the beast, having to rely on a headlong plunge off a precipice to gain her some distance. A glance over her shoulder after she landed and rolled, showed the mottled girth of the stoneform creature pacing at the cliff’s edge. Smiling, she relaxed. That had been her first mistake. The loud thud of the beast landing behind her sent her scampering away once more. Her second mistake was thinking the undergrowth and thick boles within the forest would win her a big advantage. They certainly did slow the rockhound, but it was inevitably catching up.
Thighs numb from the constant pumping of her legs, Irmina continued to flee. Through the brush, another mottled form sped adjacent to her. A second hound. Her heart thumped louder, and she drove her legs harder. The one pursuing her roared, the sound reverberating through the air as it announced its territorial claim. A whine issued from the new hound, and it drew to a halt, its gaze still fixed on her before the beast passed from the edge of her vision.
Irmina sucked in a deep breath, her heart rate soothing just a touch. Until another roar from her pursuer echoed. This time closer. At least within twenty feet if her judgment was correct. She dared not look back. Not that she needed to; the crashes of a massive body through brush, the crunch of stone paws on broken branches, the guttural snarls of the beast told a story all of their own.
She’d be lucky to make it another hundred feet.
Whipping her head from side to side, she desperately sought something, anything, that might ensure her safety. But the forest was the same wherever she looked. Gigantic trees stretched a hundred feet or more into the air, trunks smooth, sometimes covered in moss that made climbing near impossible. The smaller trees proved to be even less ideal. The rockhound’s penchant for charging through the trunks as if they were paper and not wood made that point abundantly clear.
Irmina’s fists clenched against the urge to look back, to see just how close the rockhound was. Instead, she focused ahead, her mind racing. Like lightning on a dark day, it struck her. How had the beast decided to chase her after appearing so intent on the giant? Silvereyes must have…
But could she risk trying? So far, her control of Ostania’s creatures had proved tenuous at best. There was no time to doubt. If she continued running, she was dead. If her taming failed, she was dead. Somehow, she needed to put a little more distance between her and her assailant to make an attempt. Dread lumped in her throat with the thought.
Seventy feet, maybe.
She veered toward the biggest tree she could find: a giant redwood whose upper branches disappeared in gloom among dense canopy broken by pale slivers of sunlight. Branches from saplings snagging at her clothing, vines attempting to trip her, she darted forward, her chest a living firebrand as she pushed herself.
Fifty feet.
The hound’s paws thundered closer. She could hear its snarling breaths now.
Thirty feet.
Now the footfalls were directly behind her. She imagined stony claws tearing through decomposing vegetation, crushing worms and any other slow moving creatures that called the leafy mass home. A blood-chilling growl made her skin crawl.
She reached the tree. Two nimble outstretched leaps from her sore legs up onto buttress roots brought a grimace to her face. Then she was around the massive trunk and sprinting away. She called to her two eagles, and they answered with high-pitched cries.
Behind her came a snarl, abruptly followed by a resounding crash. Irmina’s heartbeats slowed to mere increments as she stopped and turned to face the beast.
Splinters exploded from the giant redwood. Through the shower of wood chips flew the rockhound, leaving a gaping hole in the center of the tree trunk. The tree leaned listlessly and began to topple, the roar of branch tearing against branch rumbling through the air.
Eagles screamed in defiance. Giant, living arrows of feather, beak, and claw shot down through the canopy.
Sunlight streamed through the space that slowly cleared as the tree continued to lean to one side before stopping, supported by its neighbors, their branches snapping under the weight. The hound’s chipped rock surface glinted when it landed in that patch of radiance with a thud, its bestial, golden eyes shining with violent intent. The creature roared, its maw lined with white, stony teeth, its tail sweeping back and forth.
The sound of beating wings played a slow rhythm as the first eagle swooped onto the hound’s head, claws clicking as they gouged into flesh and left bloody furrows. The hound howled, swiping a huge paw through the area where the eagle had already vacated. Before the stoneform beast could draw back, the second eagle alighted on its back, beak stabbing, claws tearing. The hound bounded to one side, lost its balance, and crashed to the ground, its massive frame leaving indentations in the earth before it sprang upright once more.
As the creature gained its feet, the eagles screeching and circling to attack in sudden bursts, a transformation began. Its body, previously stone-like but covered in parts by mottled green moss, rippled. The lichen receded beneath hard skin etched with fissures like some eroded stone formation. The rockhound became stone in truth, a carapace of what could pass for grey feldspar covering its body. When the change completed, the hound ignored the now harmless attacks of the eagles, focusing on Irmina instead.
Their gazes locked. The rockhound bounded forward, its long strides eating up the remaining distance between them.
Heart racing, Irmina sucked in a deep breath and pushed the lump of fear crawling through her chest down into her gut. She stretched her mind out, similar to reaching out to pet the animal, to soothe its rage. Her touch sped along the eye contact and pierced the beast’s psyche. And slammed into a wall. The lump threatened to come crawling back up her gut, but Irmina drew her brows together in concentration.
The hound snarled, the sound a heart-stopping rumble, and leaped the last ten feet. Its maw opened wide, a slimy rain of slobber flying from its jaws.
Seconds seemed to stretch into minutes. Irmina pushed against the wall with all her willpower. It gave a little before rebounding back at her with near insurmountable force. Staggering from the recoil, she clung to her link as dogged as the hound itself. She could see the golden irises of the beast now, locked on her, murderous intent clear.
“No! Damn you! No!” Irmina yelled, her heart a thump that drowned out all else. “You’re. Mine!” With those words, she snatched her mind back like a bullwhip and snapped it forward into the resistance.
But it was too late. There would be no way to avoid the impact now or those fangs. Was she left to die like this? Eaten? Without fulfilling her revenge, or completing her training, without revealing who and what the Dorns really were? Never seeing Ancel’s emerald eyes and long dark hair again?