Movement flickered in his peripheral vision, then a blow landed on the side of his head. His head went one way and his legs the other and he landed hard and skidded on the stone floor and forgot how to think altogether.
Hands, clawed demon hands, grabbed him. He snapped at them. Surrounded—he was surrounded by enemies and he kicked and tried to bite and struggled, desperate to protect the precious burden in his arms, but there were too many of them. They imprisoned him in hard arms and pried Ryder out of his.
He screamed. And something broke.
Pain. It hurt so much—
Voices babbled, meaningless and unintelligible, and he was swinging between two sets of hands, one set holding his ankles, the other gripping his arms at the shoulders. They carried him back across the big room and he knew he must not let them, must not go where they wanted to take him, but the knowing was wordless. He writhed and grunted and hurt. He couldn’t see through the pain, couldn’t think, but was hit with a sudden assault of smells—sweat, blood, meat, copper, stone, urine, dust, and others, more than he could identify—a kaleidoscope of smells, each so layered and dense he wanted to sniff and sniff for hours. And wanted to stop breathing altogether, overwhelmed.
There was something he had to do. Had to. The pain pushed him, forced him to do it. And he couldn’t. Whatever had broken inside him struggled and fought, desperate to come out. And it couldn’t. Something was wrong, horribly wrong, and for a second he hung limp in his captors’ grip, motionless and panting.
In that single breath of stillness he heard his father’s voice saying, There is no moon in Dis.
These words meant something. Unlike the outside voices, which babbled and babbled, these words had meaning. They were important. But his brain wasn’t working right. Before he could follow that meaning, track it down, and make sense of it, the man holding his feet dropped them. The other man heaved him up over his shoulder and took a few quick steps forward.
The world changed. It went from the dim, demon-riddled underground room to the slanted orange light of sunset and fresh green scents.
And he heard it. Heard her song. The most beautiful, most real thing he had ever heard. And it was easy, after all, to do what he must.
THIRTY-FOUR
A sword slashed Rule’s side. He spun and locked his teeth in the man’s thigh. Blood spurted into his mouth. He ignored how good it tasted and shook the man, throwing him into another man. Both fell. Rule jumped over them to escape another sword thrust and broke another man’s ankle with a quick bite-and-twist. He dodged another sword thrust and leaped again, putting a dozen feet between him and the nearest threat so he could assess.
His side burned, but the slash wasn’t deep. Neither was the one on his haunch, which had already closed. Minor damage.
The enemy had taken more. Seven of them were down, either dead or too injured to fight. The remaining six had spread out and were trying to encircle him. Sensible of them, although they were too few to hold that circle. They were good fighters, though. They might have frozen briefly when he first landed among them, but some of these men had fought beasts larger than him. They hadn’t run.
Pity. He started turning in a slow circle, caught a glimpse of Lily and Cynna standing near Grandmother, several of the seated figures of the Kanas huddled nearby. Lily had her weapon out, but hadn’t fired it again. He’d known she wouldn’t, not with him in the midst of her targets, moving fast and unpredictably. Cynna stood with one hand raised as if poised to hurl some spell. Grandmother . . . just stood.
Where was Gan? Ah, there. He saw her blurry shape amid another clump of the Kanas as he continued to turn. The Fists had tightened their circle. Time to break it, before they charged. He picked his target but continued to turn to deceive his enemies.
Now. He dug in with his rear paws, pivoted, and leaped—going for height this time. Aiming for the empty air over the head of the shortest Fist—who swung his sword up, forcing Rule to twist in the air to keep his belly away from the blade. As he sailed past, he kicked out with his rear feet. One connected. He felt the claws catch flesh, felt the impact against the man’s skull.
Only five Fists able to fight now. And he was out of their circle and able to steal a moment to glance up.
The spawn were darting around the sky like maddened mayflies. Reno was motionless. No, not quite . . . he hung in the air with his wings outspread, moving neither forward nor backward, up nor down. But he rippled.
Rule blinked. It didn’t help. His distance vision wasn’t as good in this form as when he was two-legged, but he didn’t think the rippling was due to a problem with his eyes. Either Reno was doing something that caused his body to look like water in a disturbed pool . . . or something had been done to him.
Rule really needed to know which it was. He tried to appraise the actions of the spawn. It was difficult. He couldn’t find a pattern in their darting flight, and two of them didn’t seem to need to fly. They disappeared from one spot and reappeared elsewhere without visibly crossing the space between. Cullen had told him once that a few of the old adepts had been able to teleport. It was not reassuring to think that some of the spawn had discovered an adept’s trick.
Most of what they did was invisible to him, but lightning arced once, blindingly visible. Elsewhere a streamer of mage fire flew out like incandescent night. But he couldn’t see magic, so while he assumed other assaults were taking place, he had no idea what they were. But the battle was clearly three against two, with the larger number on the wrong side. Those three weren’t behaving as if Reno’s immobility meant they’d stopped him from destroying the construct, however. They didn’t act as if they’d won. They continued to attack him in between attacks on their brothers, who fought to stop them.
He decided that Reno must have opted out of the fight. He would not kill his children, and his best nonlethal weapon—mind magic—didn’t work on the spawn. And he didn’t have time to keep stopping them from killing him, over and over, not if he wanted to destroy the construct. So he’d created some kind of shield, leaving the battle to his children while he did what only he could do.
A small sound made Rule whip around as one of the Fists came at him, sword already swinging. He darted in beneath the strike and severed the man’s hamstring.
The Fists were down to four now. Surely they would . . . yes, they drew together, either rethinking their strategy or considering retreat. He wished he still had the translator charm to tell him what they were saying, but it was on the ground with his clothes, lost when he Changed.