Then the world exploded.
From every earthen surface massive vines, each thick as an ancient oak, broke forth, rending the air and crushing the walls. The ground below their feet buckled and reared up violently, shattering beneath the swirling wall of spiny flesh as even bigger roots ripped out of the earth, surrounding them and tossing them about like acorns.
A great wave of stench roared forth, blinding them, causing them to choke and gag. The malodor was unmistakable.
F’dor.
Achmed covered his head as a large chunk of falling debris glanced off him, sending waves of shock through his shoulder and torso. He could feel the heartbeats of the others racing in a cacophonous crescendo, pelting his skin like hard rain. Rhapsody had been thrown out of his line of sight by the violent upheaval of the earth and the lashing vines. “Get out!” he shouted to her, coughing to clear the dust from his lungs and hoping she could hear him over the noise of the chaos.
In answer, a humming light appeared amid the falling rubble, shining through the black ash clouds that obscured all other vision. A metallic ring like a clarion call accompanied it, reaching down into Achmed’s heart, sending an electric thrill coursing through him. The rippling flames hovered steady in the air for a moment, then began a furious, humming dance as the sword hacked into the thrashing vines, throwing flashes of light around the darkness of the crumbling cavern. The Iliachenva’ar was standing her ground, fighting back.
An ear-splitting roar exploded next to him. Achmed turned as a huge tendril lashed around Grunthor’s foot and dragged him from the slab of ground he had fallen against, lifting him upside down into the smoky air. Dozens of whipcords wound like lightning around his neck and limbs, then simultaneously snapped with a gruesome force. Grunthor screamed again, more in fury than in agony, before the nooses tightened, choking off his roar.
With a flick of both wrists, daggers were in Achmed’s hands, and he leapt to where the giant was hanging, slicing at the writhing tendrils in a flurry of gouging slashes. He grabbed for one of the weapons, hanging upside down in Grunthor’s backsheath, and began to strike at the vine with both hands. He aimed first for the vines around giant’s wrists, freeing one of them before a large clawlike vine flexed and slapped him against a slab of upturned earth, pinning him beneath itself.
Achmed breathed shallowly, trying to minimize the pain from the crushing blow to his ribs. In the distance he could still hear the ringing of Daystar Clarion, the screaming of the vines as Rhapsody sawed through them, searing the ends. Her heartbeat was remarkably slow and focused, given the thunderous pounding he knew must belong to Grunthor. By the sound of it, the sergeant had wrestled himself free and was hacking ferociously at the vine above Achmed that was holding him captive. A moment later the great root snapped in two, proving him correct. He grabbed hold of Grunthor’s hand, and the giant Bolg hauled him free of the morass of slithering roots that flailed beneath him, hissing and striking at his heels like serpents.
“Hrekin,” the sergeant swore, gulping for air. It was the last thing Achmed heard him say before the ground beneath his feet buckled again, hurling him back toward what had been the cavern entrance, now in ruins.
One of his daggers was wrenched from his hand and fell as he did, though he couldn’t hear where it landed in the fury around him. The cold, gangrenous hand of terror clutched at his viscera as he realized the impossibility of escaping this monstrous root, this demon-vine that was devouring the cavern of the Sleeping Child. The Earthchild’s catafalque was gone, blasted into the air in the initial moments of the attack. Her body was now undoubtedly buried beneath a mountain of rubble or, far worse, wrapped in the tendrils of the serpent vine, being dragged back to the clutches of the F’dor, just like Jo. He could taste his own death in his mouth.
Frozen waves of fear washed over him. It was not death itself he feared, but the hands that were delivering it. He had become used to the freedom that had been his since that humid day in the backstreets of Easton a lifetime ago when Rhapsody had changed his name, snapping the invisible collar of demonic servitude from his neck. He had almost learned to breathe again, to believe that his life, his soul, were his own once more. And now he was about to die, back once again in the demon’s iron grasp.
And worse, so were his only friends.
The scratching sound of the wind filled his ears, spreading a moment later into four separate notes, held in a monotone. The ritual singing rang through his head, vibrating in his Dhracian blood. He could not see the Grandmother through the upheaval, but he could hear her clearly, the fifth note of the Thrall ritual cutting through the noise like a knife.
As the ritual clicking joined the monotonous tune, the tangled sea of roots and vines pulsed for a moment with the same rhythm as the Thrall ritual, then went rigid. For a moment Achmed was acutely aware of all the sounds around him—the throbbing of the colossal network of vines, now filling the entire cavern above and around him, dwarfing him in their titanic size; the ringing hum of Daystar Clarion, gleaming in the darkness beyond his reach; the spitting growl of the thousands of snakelike tendrils that hovered near him, threatening to strike at any moment; Rhapsody’s flickering heartbeat, and the ritual cadence that was the heartbeat of the Grandmother.
He could not hear Grunthor’s heartbeat.
“Achmed.” Rhapsody’s voice was barely audible, and smoke was wafting from the place it originated. He pushed past a tangle of wriggling rootlets, ignoring their failed strikes, and climbed over to where he had heard her, following the sound of her heart.
He found her, wedged between two great slabs of earth, searing the end of an enormous stalk with the flames from Daystar Clarion. The tributary of the demon-vine was moaning, withering to blackness in the ethereal fire. Her eyes met his, burning green with the same intensity as the sword.
“Elemental fire cauterizes it,” she said softly when she knew he was close enough to hear her. “Do I hear the Thrall ritual?”
Achmed nodded, wincing from the shooting pain that tore through his head with the movement. “The vine’s an extension of the demon, a construct like the Rakshas was,” he answered, taking care to avoid the ropy flesh. “She may be able to hold the demonic essence in stasis for the moment, but she won’t be able to kill the root; it’s much too powerful.”
“Vingka jai,” Rhapsody said to the flame glowing on the root’s edge. Ignite and spread. The fire leapt as if in righteous anger, and the vine shrieked in fury and pain.
“Get—out of there,” Achmed ordered, gesturing toward where the exit to the Loritorium had been. “I don’t know how long she can hold it off.”
“Where’s Grunthor? The child?”
Achmed shook his head. “Get out of there now,” he commanded.
“Where are they?”
“I don’t know!” he snarled. The loss of Grunthor, coupled with the knowledge that the keys that would open the prison vault were on their way to the depths of the earth, was more than he could contemplate without losing his mind. The one thing he could concentrate on was getting Rhapsody out of the shards of the Colony before it collapsed. Distantly he wondered if that was doing her a favor, given what was coming. “Damnation! Get out while you can!
She still wasn’t listening. Instead, she was staring off into the crumbled ruin of the cavern, her mouth open in astonishment. Achmed turned toward where she was looking.
There, standing amid the clouds of ash and dust hanging in the air, was the Sleeping Child. Her eyes still closed, the Earthchild was standing erect, her feet melding into the rubble that littered die Colony floor. The light from Daystar Clarion, now rigid in Rhapsody’s grasp, was breaking in rippling waves over her, illuminating the smoothness of her face, the polished gray of her skin. In the firelight she seemed enormously tall, taller than she had appeared in repose, her long shadow dancing off the broken cavern walls.