Page 36 of Sightwitch
He sighed. His face and shoulders drooped. “I suppose I’ve forgotten how to smile along with everything else …” He trailed off. Then he flung up a hand, eyes widening. “Um, there’s something behind you.”
“I’m not stupid.”
He gulped. “No doubt that’s true, but I’m not lying. A shadow is rising behind you. Very snake-like in shape—and very large.”
At that moment, the Rook erupted in a warning of feathers and howling.
So I turned.
I saw.
Ink spilled across the ice. Darkness slithering in two distinct columns, each with a thousand feathery legs on either side.
“Shadow wyrms,” I said at the same moment the man said, “Hagfishes.”
I flinched. He was right beside me, and this close, there was no ignoring how much he stank.
Of course, my awareness of his stench was a cursory, background thing compared to the approaching wyrms.
I had seen pictures of shadow wyrms in Tüll’sCompendium of Creatures. Though nothing in that tome had prepared me for their size—easily as long as the Convent—nor for the sound they made.
If it could even be called a sound. It was more a punch of surprise in my chest. Of hunger in my belly.
It was, in all ways, the opposite of the spirit swifts’ gentle call. This was visceral. This was hard. This was deadly.
“I think maybe we should run!” the man shouted, voice distorted by the shadow wyrms’ cry.
“I agree!” I shouted back, pivoting for the fire. “But not together!” I grabbed for the Firewitched matches. I couldn’t leave them behind. They were all I had for warmth. “Douse,” I commanded, and the flames snuffed out.
A half breath later, the wyrms stopped screaming. Somehow, the silence was worse. An echo to jitter down my spine and knock inside my organs.
The beasts were coming this way. Crossing over the glacier ceiling, they would soon reach the path behind us.
“I know you specifically said ‘not together,’” the man said, “but I don’t have a choice. You’re running this way, I’m running this way, and if we don’t do it at the same time, then one of us is going to die—”
“Enough!” I shrieked. “Come on!”
Another scream knifed over us, but we were running now. No time to dwell, no time to look back.
For the second time that day, I ran for my life.
The wyrms didn’t like it. They let loose another cry that hardened in my belly and tangled in my limbs.
I stumbled. My pack listed sharply forward—had it always been this heavy? But the man steadied me with a grip.
“Don’t touch me,” I snapped, an instinctive reaction. Even with the shared enemy of the shadow wyrms, I still did not know who this man was or what he wanted.
He released me, and the air around us seemed to gust colder.
The wyrms stopped screaming right as my feet slammed off the platform onto the ledge cutting forward. My escape was an overloud gallop, made all the louder by the pack’s jangle and clank.
“Maybe … they won’t … hurt us,” the man said between gasps. Already he wheezed, and we’d barely begun our escape. “Maybe they’re just curious!”
“Curious how we taste,” I barked back. “Faster!”
I don’t know why I added that command—it wasn’t as if he could move any faster. I blocked his way, and the pack slowed me down. Plus, my legs were half the length of his.
Ahead, the walkway cut left, curving with the ice before vanishing around a bend.
