“I’ll try.”
Grace shut her eyes and reached out with the Touch. It should have been simple; she had done it a thousand times. Instead, the threads of the Weirding tangled in her imagined hands. She tried to tease them apart, only they were so thin– like wisps of gossamer. If she pulled too hard they would tear. Carefully, she cast her net wider. . . .
“I sensed something,” she gasped, eyes opening.
Vani moved close. “Was it Kylees?”
She held a hand to her forehead. What had she glimpsed? It was life, it had to be; the threads of the Weirding had coiled around it. Only something about it hadn’t seemed right.
“I’m not sure. I think so, but–”
“Where?” Avhir said. “Where did you sense her?”
Grace pointed south and west. “That way.”
Vani and Avhir were already moving. Grace, Travis, Larad, and Farr hurried after them, but they could not keep up with the assassins. The T’golvanished over a low rise.
“What was it, Grace?” Travis said, panting as they ran. “What did you see?”
“Hurry,” was all she said.
To their right, the sun sank toward the horizon, spilling bloodred light over the sand. Sweating, their breath ragged, the four reached the top of the rise. They saw a lone, dark figure below, standing on the edge of a vast plain of sand. Vani and Avhir bounded down the slope like black leopards. Grace and the others followed. As they drew near, Grace saw that the lone figure was indeed Kylees, and that Vani and Avhir had halted a half dozen paces from her.
“Stop!” Vani said, holding out a hand. “There is a pocket of slipsand just ahead.”
Grace stumbled to a halt alongside Travis, Larad, and Farr. Strangely, Kylees’s back was turned to them, her shoulders hunched. She was shaking. What was wrong?
Avhir edged forward a step. “Kylees, what has happened?”
She did not answer.
“If you come directly toward me, you will avoid the slipsand.” Avhir held out a hand. “Come!”
A spasm passed through Kylees’s body, then she turned around. The T’gol’s eyes were dull as stones, and her pretty face was puffy and bloated. Her right hand twitched at her side. Grace saw that the small cut on her hand was red and crusted, oozing fluid. Was Kylees sick, suffering from an infection? She could have blood poisoning.
Vani moved forward, probing the sand carefully with her boots. “What has happened to you, Kylees? Tell us.”
For a moment a light of recognition flickered in Kylees’s gold eyes. “Flee,” she croaked. Another spasm, more violent than the last, passed through her.
Then her skin split open.
It happened swiftly. Kylees’s skin slipped away from her body, falling to the sand along with her black leathers, as if both had been mere garments. Left in her place was a thing that was human in shape, but only vaguely. It had no nose, mouth, or hair; twin points of light burned where its eyes should have been. It was dark, its surface glossy and smooth, but not hard like onyx. Instead, its skin moved and rippled like dark water.
Only it wasn’t water. As the thing moved, it left crimson footprints behind it on the sand, as well as a jumbled pile of bones.
“A blood golem!” Vani hissed, leaping back, pulling Avhir with her. “Do not let it near you!”
Grace stared, at once horrified and fascinated. Blood. The thing was made of blood. And not only Kylees’s.
Its volume is too large to be made up of the blood of only a single person, she thought, her scientific curiosity operating despite her terror. It has to contain the blood of several people.
“Do not come closer!” Avhir shouted, brandishing his scimitar, but the blood golem continued to advance, moving with a silky fluidity that was familiar to Grace. So this was the shadow that had followed her on her journey south. She had thought they had left it behind when they crossed the sea, but she had been wrong. Only how had it followed them?
The cut on Kylees’s hand, her doctor’s voice spoke in her mind. There was a sailor on the ship who also had a cut. The blood golem must enter its victims through an open wound and travel inside them.
These rational thoughts vanished, replaced by primal fear, as the blood golem lashed out with an arm. Vani sprang back, but the golem’s arm extended, stretching into a long pseudopod. It snaked through the air, reaching for the T’gol.
Avhir swung his scimitar, cutting the pseudopod in two. One end snapped back toward the blood golem, causing the surface of its body to ripple. The other end rained to the sand, wetting it with crimson.
So the thing could be harmed. They could destroy it–as long as it was not able to draw more blood into itself. They couldn’t let it touch them. Even as Grace realized that, the blood golem’s arm re‑formed and lashed out toward her. At the same moment its other arm shot toward Travis.
Avhir spun, slashing through one of the tentacles with his scimitar. However, the other snapped out of reach, then struck like a whip, coiling around him. Avhir cried out, falling to his knees, but the sound was muffled as the pseudopod forced itself into his mouth, his nose. The T’golwent rigid, back arching, the scimitar slipping from his hands.
Vani materialized out of thin air, kicking at the tentacle with a boot. The pseudopod burst apart in a spray of scarlet. Avhir gripped his scimitar and lurched back to his feet.
“Keep striking at it!” he called out, his face stained with red. “If it loses enough blood, it will not be able to hold its form.”
He was right. Each time the golem shot out another pseudopod, he and Vani hacked at it, and more blood soaked into the sand. The thing began to move more slowly, and its surface rippled constantly.
“We must help them,” Farr said, drawing a dagger from his serafi.
However, there was no need. Vani and Avhir had continued to kick and hack at the blood golem, and now blood oozed from it, drunk greedily by the sand. Pseudopods reached out from its body but were just as quickly reabsorbed. Vani aimed a kick at the center of its form, while Avhir slashed with his scimitar, separating its head from its body.
Like a water balloon pricked with a pin, the blood golem burst apart in a crimson spray, covering the two T’gol. The dark fluid pooled on the ground for a moment, then the sand gobbled it.
30.
“I don’t like this,” Farr said, kneeling beside the crimson stain on the sand. “That was too easy.”
“Not for Kylees,” Vani said, using a cloth to wipe blood from her face, her hands, her leathers. It was black and smelled foul.
Larad moved closer to Grace. “Surely this was what was following us on our journey south, Your Majesty.”
Grace only nodded; she could find no words.
Travis circled around the remains of the golem, careful not to get too close. “How was this thing created?”
Farr stood; his fingers were wet and dark. “Only the Scirathi have such skill. A blood golem is created using the blood of a sorcerer. One must give his life in order for the golem to come into being. His blood is animated by sorcery while it still flows in his veins, and the golem bursts forth. From then on, the golem must periodically take more blood into itself in order to maintain its form and strength.”
“You know much about the forbidden craft of the Scirathi,” Avhir said, wiping blood from his face.