Page 91 of Queen Demon
Stone cracked so loud it took Kai’s hearing. He felt more than heard the rumble that shivered through the tor. Visceral fear shot through him; he had been nearly crushed here once already. It froze him for half a heartbeat.
Fortunately Tenes didn’t freeze. She grabbed Kai’s arm and slammed a hand against the debris blocking the doorway. It exploded outward into a dark room beyond. Kai jolted back into motion and shouted, “Here!”
Tahren grabbed Ziede and charged toward him. She scooped Ramad up along the way and flung him into Kai’s arms. She reached them just as Tenes planted her hands on the doorway’s stone jambs.
Rock and dirt rained down on both sides of the opening. Ramad’s arms wrapped around Kai’s neck and Kai clung to him as the tor slammed down. A huge slab shifted and fell on the center of the room, crushing the Hierarch and extinguishing the light intention, plunging them into total darkness. Icicle claws scrabbled over Kai’s skin as Ziede directed her wind-devil to snatch the remaining air out of the room and form it into a hard shell around them. It deflected the debris and smothering dirt, but the heavy rock pressed in on it.
Kai’s back was against Tenes’ side. Tahren gripped his shoulder, Ziede pinned between them.
After an eon, the rumbling stopped. They were crushed in on all sides by the collapsed weight. Only Tenes’ control over the solid stone frame of the door and Ziede’s air bubble kept them alive.
Kai called an imp. It arrived with a burst of soft light and a tiny squeak of dismay at its surroundings. Ramad gasped in disbelief. “We’re alive.”
“Yes,” Ziede said breathlessly. She squeezed Kai’s arm. “Don’t anyone jostle Tenes.”
Kai bit his cheek against the useless urge to ask Tenes questions she couldn’t answer without the use of her hands. She would either save them or not, there was nothing the rest of them could do now.
“Highsun,” Tahren said, her voice loud in Kai’s ear. “He isn’t here.”
Ramad’s beard scratched Kai’s cheek as he moved his head a little. “He was still in the corridor. He must have been killed—”
“Was he?” Kai’s voice came out a little strangled and Ramad relaxed his grip a bit. “In the corridor?”
Ziede said slowly, “He didn’t come in the room. A scholar—”
“Ahistoricalscholar,” Kai said, stronger now that more air was getting through his windpipe. Not that they had air for muchlonger; it was already starting to warm with their breath. “Who didn’t come into the room. Where a Hierarch was.”
Coldly angry, Tahren said, “A live remnant of the people, the place he had come all this way to study.”
Ziede agreed. “Ramad wanted us to put off killing them so he could ask where they’d been born—”
“I wouldn’t go that far—” Ramad protested, then hesitated as all the implications struck home. “Surely Highsun didn’t do this.”
“He’s the only one who could,” Tahren said damningly. “There are devices of the Well of Thosaren that can cause more violent effects than the one he used to break the slab over the passage. He must have had one with him.”
“But why try to kill us?” Ramad sounded exasperated. “The plan was to collapse the tor after killing the Hierarch. Did he think you were lying, that you wanted to take control of the Well yourselves?”
For an instant Kai wondered if that was the case. Perhaps Highsun had only pretended to trust them, perhaps he had interpreted their resolve to guard the Well as something more sinister. It would be so much easier to deal with than the alternative. Then Kai felt Tenes tremble against his side, a gasping breath. He said, “Brace—”
The wall of debris in front of Tenes exploded outward. Kai fell into a pile of sharp rock and broken tile, Ramad beside him. Dazzled by gray daylight and the relief of cool air, he could do no more than lie there, hoping the pain in his back was a broken rock and not his bones again.
Ziede dragged at his arms to pull him up. Kai managed to stagger upright. It had already dawned on him that daylight this deep in the tor was a very bad thing so the sight that met him was not wholly unexpected.
A full quarter of the tor had turned into huge piles of broken rock, fine dirt choking the air. It had buried the other rooms that must have been part of the Hierarch’s suite; the door frame andthe pillars to either side of it, part of the wall attached to them, were all that was still standing in this part of the debris field. The dome over the central Well chamber was laid bare but unbroken. Made of a gray veined stone that must be stronger than everything around it, the curve of it loomed high over them. If there were any entrances on this side, they were buried under debris.
Tenes stumbled as she climbed out of the shattered door frame. Tahren was already standing, helping a dazed Ramad up.
Kai felt Ziede’s alarm just before she cried out a warning. Highsun stood atop the pile of debris that had been the outer wall of the tor. He held a metal device and Kai thought at first it must be whatever he had used to cause the collapse. Then he recognized the shape; it was a Well of Thosaren weapon. And Highsun was aiming it at them.
“Scatter,” Tahren snapped, and charged forward.
She drew her sword so fast Kai only saw a silver flash; then another as she deflected the shot from Highsun’s weapon. The whine of the device resonated in Kai’s bones, the way it had during the war.There goes any chance Highsun had a reasonable explanation for this,Kai thought as he shoved the slower Ramad into the cover of the rocks and dodged sideways. Tenes tucked herself behind the doorway’s still upright pillars. Ziede lifted upward, her hands guiding wind-devils as she prepared a blast of air to flatten Highsun.
Tahren deflected two more shots and lunged up the debris slope toward Highsun.
Kai felt the second whine before he heard it, out of step with Highsun’s weapon. His warning shout died as Tahren fell backward and slid down the slope of the rock pile. Ramad yelled, “Eleni, no!”
Eleni stood on what was left of the outer wall, some twenty paces from Highsun. She held her Thosaren weapon, her expression conflicted and determined at the same time. It had been her shot that hit Tahren.
