Kalam rolled over and drove his right fist down into the creature’s throat.
Then released the handful of blood-soaked sand, gravel and rocks it had held.
And drove the dagger in his other hand deep between its breast bones.
The huge head jerked back, and the assassin rolled in the opposite direction, then regained his feet. The motion took all feeling from his legs and he toppled to the ground once more-but in the interval he had seen one of his long-knives, lying point embedded in the ground about fifteen paces distant.
The enkar’al was thrashing about now, choking, talons ripping into the bleached earth in its frenzied panic.
Sensation ebbed back into his legs, and Kalam began dragging himself across the parched ground. Towards the long-knife. The serpent blade, I think. How appropriate .
Everything shuddered and the assassin twisted around to see that the creature had leapt, landing splay-legged directly behind him-where he had been a moment ago. Blood was weeping from its cold eyes, which flashed in recognition-before panic overwhelmed them once more. Blood and gritty froth shot out from between its serrated jaws.
He resumed dragging himself forward, and was finally able to draw his legs up and manage a crawl.
Then the knife was in his right hand. Kalam slowly turned about, his head swimming, and began crawling back. ‘I have something for you,’ he gasped. ‘An old friend, come to say hello.’
The enkar’al heaved and landed heavily on its side, snapping the bones of one of its wings in the process. Tail lashing, legs kicking, talons spasming open and shut, head thumping repeatedly against the ground.
‘Remember my name, Demon,’ Kalam continued, crawling up to the beast’s head. He drew his knees under him, then raised the knife in both hands. The point hovered over the writhing neck, rose and fell until in time with its motion. ‘Kalam Mekhar… the one who stuck in your throat.’ He drove the knife down, punching through the thick pebbled skin, and the blood of a severed jugular sprayed outward.
Kalam reeled back, barely in time to avoid the deadly fount, and dropped into another roll.
Three times over, to end finally on his back once more. Paralysis stealing through him once again.
He stared upward at the spinning stars… until the darkness devoured them.
In the ancient fortress that had once functioned as a monastery for the Nameless Ones, but had been old even then-its makers long forgotten-there was only darkness. On its lowermost level there was a single chamber, its floor rifted above a rushing underground river.
In the icy depths, chained by Elder sorcery to the bedrock, lay a massive, armoured warrior, Thelomen Toblakai, pure of blood, that had known the curse of demonic possession, a possession that had devoured its own sense of self-the noble warrior had ceased to exist long, long ago.
Yet now, the body writhed in its magical chains. The demon was gone, fled with the outpouring of blood-blood that should never have existed, given the decayed state of the creature, yet existed it had, and the river had swept it to freedom. To a distant waterhole, where a bull enkar’al-a beast in its prime-had been crouching to drink.
The enkar’al had been alone for some time-not even the spoor of others of its kind could be found anywhere nearby. Though it had not sensed the passage of time, decades had in fact passed since it last encountered its own kind. Indeed, it had been fated-given a normal course of life-to never again mate. With its death, the extinction of the enkar’al anywhere east of the Jhag Odhan would have been complete.
But now its soul raged in a strange, gelid body-no wings, no thundering hearts, no prey-laden scent to draw from the desert’s night air. Something held it down, and imprisonment was proving a swift path to mindless madness.
Far above, the fortress was silent and dark. The air was motionless once more, barring the faint sighs from draughts that flowed in from the outer chambers.
Rage and terror. Unanswered, except by the promise of eternity.
Or so it would have remained.
Had the Beast Thrones stayed unoccupied.
Had not the reawakened wolf gods known an urgent need… for a champion.
Their presence reached into the creature’s soul, calmed it with visions of a world where there were enkar’al in the muddy skies, where bull males locked jaws in the fierce heat of the breeding season, the females banking in circles far above. Visions that brought peace to the ensnared soul-though with it came a deep sorrow, for the body that now clothed it was… wrong .
A time of service, then. The reward-to rejoin its kin in the skies of another realm.
Beasts were not strangers to hope, nor unmindful of such things as rewards.
