Thrump. Thrump. Thrump.
They sat huddled in the darkness, listening, as the sound withdrew, then grew louder once more. A pause—total silence. Inside the house, even the noise of breathing vanished.
Crack!
Hadrian jumped at the loud burst that sounded as if a tree across the common exploded. Snapping, tearing, splintering, a war of violent noise erupted. A scream. A woman’s voice. The shriek cut across the common, hysterical and frantic.
“Oh dear Maribor! That’s Mae,” Lena cried.
Hadrian leapt to his feet. Royce was already up.
“Don’t bother,” Esrahaddon told them. “She’s dead, and there’s nothing you can do. The monster cannot be harmed by your weapons. It—”
The two were out the door.
Royce was quicker and raced across the common toward the little house of Mae Drundel. Hadrian could not see a thing and found himself blindly chasing Royce’s footfalls.
The cries stopped—a harsh, abrupt end.
Royce halted and Hadrian nearly plowed through him.
“What is it?”
“Roof is ripped away. There’s blood all over the walls. She’s gone. It’s gone.”
“It? Did you see something?”
“Through a patch in the canopy—just for a second, but it was enough.”
CHAPTER 5
THE CITADEL
Royce and Esrahaddon left at first light, following a small trail out of the village. Ever since they had arrived in Dahlgren, Royce had noticed a distant sound, a dull, constant noise. As they approached the river, the sound grew into a roar. The Nidwalden was massive—an expanse of tumultuous green water flowing swiftly, racing by and bursting against rocks. Royce stood for a moment just staring. He spotted a branch out in the middle, a black and gray fist of leaves bobbing helplessly against the current. It sped along, riding through gaps in the boulders, ripping over rocks, until it vanished into a cloud of white. In the center, he saw something tall rising up, most of it lost in the mist and tree branches that extended over the water.
“We need to go farther downriver,” Esrahaddon explained as he led Royce to a narrower trail that hugged the bank. River grass grew along the edge, glistening with dew, and songbirds sang shrill melodies in the soft morning breeze. Even with the thundering river, and the vivid memory of a roofless home and bloodstained walls, the place felt tranquil.
“There she is,” Esrahaddon said reverently as they reached a rocky clearing that afforded them an unobstructed view of the river. It was wide and the water rushed by with a furious strength, then disappeared over the edge of a sudden fall.
They stood very near the ridge of the cataract and could see the white mist rising from the abrupt drop like a fog. Out in the middle of the river, at the edge of the falls, a massive shelf of bedrock jutted out like the prow of a mighty ship that ran aground just before toppling over the precipice. On this fearsome pedestal rose the citadel of Avempartha. Formed entirely of stone, the tower burst skyward from the rock shelf. A bouquet of tall, slender shards stretched upward like splinters of crystal or slivers of ice, its base lost in the billowing white clouds of mist and foam. At first sight it looked to be a natural stone formation, but a more careful study revealed windows, walkways, and stairs carefully integrated into the architecture.
“How am I supposed to get out there?” Royce asked, yelling over the roar, his cloak whipping and snapping like a snake.
“That would be problem number one,” Esrahaddon shouted back, offering nothing more.
Is this some kind of test, or does he really not know?
Royce followed the river over the bare rocks to the drop. Here the land plummeted more than two thousand feet to the valley below. What stood before him was a vision of unsur-passed beauty. The falls were magnificent. The sheer power of the titanic surge was hypnotizing. The massive torrent of blue-green water spilled and sparkled into the billowing white bejeweled mist, the voice of the river thundering in his ears, rattling his chest. Beyond it, to the south, was an equally breathtaking vision. Royce could see for miles and marked the remaining passage of the river as it wound like a long shiny snake through the lush green landscape to the Goblin Sea.