Page 63 of Queen Demon
Of course Ramad could understand Witchspeak. As Sanja glared at him in affront and didn’t answer, Kai raised his voice to a battlefield carry and said, “Sura! The key to the anchor stones, where is it?”
Everyone fell silent. Sura, leaning over the map on the table, jolted upright, her hand going to the pocket of her tunic. Her expression turned horrified. “It’s gone. I had it here—”
Tahren strode toward her. “Where is the first anchor? The vessel?”
Alarmed, Domtellan pointed toward the archway at the back of the room. “That way, outside and up—”
Kai ran.
The room erupted in chaos around him but the scholars scrambled out of his way and he made it to the door first. In his head, Ziede said,Go, hurry, we’re behind you.
Kai ran through two more rooms, a short passage, and shoved open a heavy wooden door. He was outside in another paved garden area, lit only by a few guttering stone lamps. No sign of Dahin, but Domtellan had saidup. Kai turned back and saw the narrow stone steps up to the next level terrace of the pyramid just as Ramad and Sura stumbled out the door. “This way!” Sura called out and started for the steps.
Kai elbowed Ramad aside and passed Sura before she reached the second level. He saw the next set of stairs going up towardthe domed enclosure on the building’s roof. Ziede cursed angrily through her heart pearl. From the bare glimpses he got, Arnsterath had run in the confusion, bolting out the front. In trying to chase her the Immortal Marshalls had managed to block Ziede’s way. It had slowed down everyone who might have been helpful, and Tahren had thrown one Blessed into a wall and was now dragging the other by the hair. Arnsterath taking the first opportunity to run was predictable and absolutely not Kai’s biggest problem at the moment.
The stairs opened inside a lamplit dome that must have been for watching stars at some point. It had sliding metal panels in the curved stone ceiling, some partially open. In the center was a small ascension raft, barely ten paces across. Stacked next to it were heavy canvas bags of supplies, ready to be lifted aboard. Kai hissed out a breath. Of course, Ilhanrun Highsun would have come here in an ascension raft, and of course would have used it to help transport the expedition on the first long journey to the Capstone. Then he had employed it to allow the mortals to pass unharmed through the anchor stones. There was no way the raft could have gotten into this chamber otherwise; the openings in the dome weren’t large enough.
Some bags had already been put onboard, blocking Kai’s view of the interior. Then Dahin stood up from behind the pile, something cradled in his hands. He stepped toward the steering column. Kai said, “Dahin, what are you doing? We’re all going, I—”
Dahin whipped around, a full-body flinch, and grimaced in annoyance and guilt. He started to speak. Running steps sounded behind Kai as Ramad and then Sura slammed through the doorway.
Dahin’s expression hardened and he lunged for the steering column. Kai flung himself forward and vaulted over the rail into the raft.
He landed on the metal deck and felt it shudder under him, as if the raft was trying to lift up. Dahin yelled, “Dammit, Kai!”
Ramad leapt over the side and landed beside Kai. Sura tumbled over the bags of supplies and slid to the deck. The raft lifted off the floor, shuddering. Something started to howl, like a wind through a deep narrow canyon.
“You— This is not—” Dahin snarled at Ramad. “How dare you—”
“Then stop this and let’s speak about it,” Ramad shouted back.
Sura said, “He can’t, it’s too late!” She grabbed on to a strap bolted to the raft’s floor. “Hold on!”
Kai crouched and caught hold of a cargo net. He exchanged an irritated glare with Ramad, who did the same.
The raft rose toward the dome, rotating in a way that Kai was sure ascension rafts weren’t supposed to. A force pulled all the air from the room, as if a pit had opened up and their little part of the world poured into it.
A thump overhead jerked Kai’s attention upward to the open roof panels. The raft around him dissolved just as Arnsterath landed beside Sura.
Kai expected a jolt. He didn’t expect the sudden sensation of plunging off a cliff. His vision went black for a heartbeat that lasted far too long. It wasn’t like falling, it was faster, like being pulled, dragged, careening helplessly down a mountainside, ripping the breath out of his lungs—
It ceased so abruptly the sudden absence of sensation was almost more disorienting. Kai found himself crouched on the deck of the raft in near pitch dark, his heart pounding. He called an imp by reflex. It appeared almost immediately, reassuring him that they were still in the mortal world with its channels to the underearth.
The imp’s wan light fell on the raft. Ramad sprawled next to Kai, Dahin still standing but wide-eyed and pale, with a death grip on the raft’s steering column. Sura huddled next to the net holding the bags of supplies. And Arnsterath next to her; Kai hadn’t imagined her abrupt appearance.
Kai lunged an instant before Arnsterath reached for Sura. He tackled her and bowled her over, caught her wrist before she stabbed at his eyes. His first impulse was to throw her over the side, but they might be in the center of a city, and he couldn’t risk that. He wasn’t sure when he had decided to kill her but evidently he had decided.
The heartbeat of indecision about heaving her out of the raft gave her a chance to throw him off. Kai rolled into a crouch and she scrambled to put her back against the far railing.
“Stop! Kai, stop!” Dahin snapped. “We’ll move again in a moment, I can’t stop it once it’s started. If you keep moving you’ll throw us off balance and we’ll all die.”
After Arnsterath, Dahin was next to be thrown off the raft. Kai stayed where he was, seething.
Sura thumped back against a supply bag. She stared in alarm at Arnsterath, then blinked up at the imp. “Is that— What—”
“Kai called an imp,” Ramad said. He focused on his prisoner, ally, new friend, whatever she was. “Arnsterath, what are you doing?”
“You promised me a chance to prove myself to the Rising World,” she said, her wary gaze on Kai. She had fought him when all he had wanted was to escape with his companions. She had never fought him when his only thought was murder.
