But once the Hound caught him, what of himself would be left?
“He drove you to the mortal girl,” he muttered, walking on. “He drove you against your will. And now see what has become of you! She ran you completely off course, and now she’s . . . gone.”
His heart hurt in his chest. The thought of Imraldera dragged off by those monsters to some unknown fate sickened him. He reeled, shaking his head, and suddenly took on his man’s form again. Leaning against the wall of the nearest tower, ignoring how the stones burned through his thin shirt, Eanrin took his head between his hands.
“You should never have done it!” he snarled. “You should never have helped her. Curse that Hound! Curse that girl! Curse them all and let them rot in their curses, or they’ll destroy everything you are.”
No time passed in Etalpalli. No shadows or drifting clouds. It might have been a thousand years, for all Eanrin knew or cared, before he stood and shook himself out. He was hollow inside.
Once more in cat form, he continued on his wandering way. The streets he walked were more ruinous than those he had traveled earlier. More than half of the towers were toppled into rubble; most of the cobble road was burned and blackened. A thousand evil smells assaulted his pink nose, and his pupils dilated until his eyes were large black disks on his face. “At least it’s a change,” he told himself without conviction. “At least it’s not the same street again and again.”
He wondered how many hundreds of immortal lives had ended in this very spot in a flood of torrential fire.
Ahead of him lay a pit.
In this place so blasted by fire, the ruins gave way to flattened, melted rock that vanished into blackness at the center, blackness more absolute than the shadows hiding within the towers. Eanrin felt the pull like the currents of a river dragging him to this place. He realized suddenly that all Etalpalli was nothing but a whirlpool of hatred, and the center of that whirlpool was here, down that pit.
He must resist it, he knew. He must back away and flee up the street, fight with everything in him against that inexorable draw. Instead, he found himself creeping low to the ground, placing each paw carefully, but drawing ever nearer to the edge. He smelled rather than saw indications that a tower had stood here once, perhaps the greatest tower in the city. But it was long gone, swallowed up in that hole.
It gave Eanrin the wild urge to jump.
He knew that was wrong, evil even. Yet something about that chasm, that plunge into nothingness, beckoned to him, filling his body with unholy need—a need for the pitch, the fall, and the swallowing that must follow.
Shaking himself and backing up a step or two, he cast about for some anchor, anything at all to hold him back! He knew in his rational mind that this wild, consuming craving was suicidal. Yet all the deathly smells of Etalpalli rolled in upon him, urging him to give in. His ears pricked, then went flat to his head, for he thought he heard thousands of voices calling, rising from the darkness. Did the dead Sky People call his name? Did they cry out for him to join them?
It was the foul city! He knew, but the pull was so great he did not want to fight it. Etalpalli would swallow him, and he would willingly leap down its gaping throat.
A new voice, like a caress, crooned to him.
Choose my darkness, Eanrin.
Eanrin had never before in his life been so afraid. Until that moment, he realized, he had not known what fear was.
Choose me.
There must be some escape! There was always an escape for the heroes of epics. Hissing, flashing his sharp fangs, Eanrin drew himself together. The fur on his spine and tail bristled, but there was no one to combat. Only the pit.
Choose me, before I choose you.
As though a noose had closed around his neck and dragged him, Eanrin found himself pulled to the lip of the void. He strained and twisted, but deep inside he knew he could not resist, wasn’t even certain he wanted to. The choice was so easy! The fall, so inevitable.
Then suddenly his front paws were out over the edge. He scrambled and snarled and felt that terrible rush through his body that precedes a plunge. He had only an instant to cry out, inarticulate in his terror.
Then his voice was lost as he fell into the arms of darkness.
Hri Sora’s eyes were two yellow candles, flickering but intent. The only other light on the roof of that Midnight-shrouded tower came from the smoldering eyes of her children. The Dogs crouched on either side of her, tense and trembling, as though expecting a blow at any moment. Their gazes followed their mother’s hands when she moved them in deft signs or folded them quietly before her. There was fear in their ugly faces, fear mixed with unfathomable love.