Unbound (32 page)

Our circling around the table had put me in the position the magician had been in when I entered. He, on the other hand, now had the exit ramp to his back. I didn't like that. He might be trying to confuse me, waiting for the right moment to bolt out of here. I jumped up onto the table. No need to circle it when I could go over it.

"You can ramble all you want," I said. "I'm not falling for it. You tried to kill Prince Khufu but got me instead. Don't think you can talk your way out of it."

He cackled. Literally, he threw back his head and cackled. He began backing toward the exit. He was trying to hide it, but he was definitely moving that way. I balled my hands into fists, leaped down, and moved toward him. Enough talk. It was time for action.

"Ravenous One!" he called. "I have need of you!"

That stopped me in my tracks. "What did you just say?"

"You thought I lured you here to fight me?" the magician asked, still inching backward. "No, that would be beneath me. There is someone else who is keen to rip you to pieces. You know her. She goes by many names."

I realized, to my horror, that something was descending the ramp toward us. Judging by the heavy crunch of its footfalls, it was something big.

"You can call her the Devourer of the Dead," the magician continued.

The foulest reek I'd ever smelled wafted down into the chamber. It smelled of dead things. Rotten things. Evil things.

"She is sometimes called the Eater of Hearts."

A shape lumbered into view behind the magician. It towered over him.

"She'll even answer to She Who Is Great of Death." He moved to one side, to allow the creature to step past him. The evil thing came into view, its eyes and teeth and claws all glimmering. "Surely, you know by now to whom I refer."

I did. "Ammut . . ." As I whispered the demon's name, I realized just how big a fool I'd been.

* * * * *

The magician backed away, saying, "I will leave you to it, Ammut. Enjoy." He turned and disappeared up the ramp. A moment later, I heard the stone door grind shut. And that was it. I was trapped.

With Ammut.

The problem with Ammut was that she combined the strengths of the three deadliest creatures in Egypt. The demon had the head and jaws of a Nile crocodile. Her midsection was that of a lion, including the savage claws. And her lower portion . . . well, she's got the rump of a hippopotamus. Her victims could be swallowed whole, ripped to shreds, or sat upon. Simply put, there were no good options with Ammut.

As she strode toward me, several things occurred to me all at once. I was alone, without magic to call on and weaponless. In fighting the bau I'd lost my spear. With the demon bird I'd given up my daggers. Trapped as I was in a subterranean room, my stylus was useless. Maybe the magician had done his homework after all. He had managed to deprive me of all of my weapons.

Ammut came at me with her hippo legs stomping, her lion arms spread wide, her jaws open and slathering. She was all stampeding rage. The old girl was faster than she looked. Not as quick as me, though.

I faked to the right, just enough to get her to turn that way. Then I dove low and to the left. I grasped one of her ankles as her foot crashed down. The idea was to trip her. Didn't work. Ammut just walked forward a few more steps, me hugging her chubby leg, getting yanked up and down. When she realized where I was, she lashed at me with a paw bristling with long claws. I released her leg and rolled behind her. That got me away from the claws, but it put me in the line of fire of her rump. I scrabbled away just as her heavy bottom crashed down on the stones.

Before she could rise, I ran up her back. I reached over her head and got a grip on both her eyelids. She bellowed and thrashed about. Hauling myself up to the crown of her alligator head, I let go with one hand long enough to plant a stiff-handed chop right between her eyes. Then I grabbed both lids again and hauled back with all my weight. I let go when I couldn't hold down anymore. Her eyelids slapped back against her eyes. She howled with pain and fury.

I landed on my feet, feeling pretty impressed with that little move. The feeling didn't last long. Ammut was on me in no time, just angrier than before. Going toe to toe with her, I punched and kicked, ducked and dived. She slashed at me. She tried to stomp me. Her neck shot forward at unexpected moments. Her jaws slammed shut so near me I felt the heat of her breath. Her spittle sprayed my face.

It wasn't an even contest and we both knew it. I landed blows every now and then, but they hardly fazed her. Punching Ammut in the gut was like driving your fist into a furry stone wall. I did no real damage. She, on the other hand, did. Hitting her hurt me; my knuckles grew swollen and bloody. Once, when I didn't dodge fast enough, she slashed her claws down my leg. She even stepped on my toe. That left me limping and off-balance. It was only a matter of time before her claws sunk into me and held. Then it would all be over. So I did what I'd done in similar circumstances in the past.

I ran. I darted and dodged. I slipped between Anubis statues and slid under the altar table. I even dashed up the ramp once to check the door, just in case I could budge it. No chance. Maybe if I had time to work at it slowly, but I couldn't open it in a rush, that's for sure. Before long, I'd crisscrossed the entire chamber, touching each of the four corners of it. Ammut lumbered behind me the entire time. Truth was, I was going to get tired before she did. We both knew it.

When I leaped up onto the table, it wasn't so much that I had a plan in mind. It was more just that I hadn't been there for a while, so I figured why not? As Ammut shoved a statue of Anubis out of the way, sending it crashing into jagged pieces, I scanned the room. I couldn't see any place that I hadn't been already. Nothing I could use as a weapon. I looked up into the narrow opening that
let that faint light in. It was just a long chute that stretched upward. I couldn't say how far up it went, but it ended in a pinprick of light. Daylight. It drew me like a moth to a flame.

Ammut barreled toward me. I bent my knees and jumped straight up.

* * * * *

For an awful moment, I dangled from the narrow rim that ran along the inside edge of the chute. That was as high up as I could leap. Ammut appeared beneath my feet. She climbed up onto the table, rose, and reached for me. I planted one of my feet on the tip of her snout and pushed off. It gave me enough upward motion to jam my body into the chute. I had to press my back against one side and my feet against the other. By putting force against both sides, I managed to stay crammed between them, just out of Ammut's reach.

She was a bit too close for comfort, though. As the demon raged beneath me, I worked my way toward that pinpoint of light. It offered hope. Maybe it was a way out.

It was hard going. I had to inch my feet up one by one, and then press back with my arms to scoot my body a little higher. Then I had to do it all again and again. The chute stayed uniformly narrow all the way up. The stone was so smooth there was nothing to hold on to, no ledges to get purchase on. Keeping up the pressure on the walls was a constant strain. By the time I reached the top, I didn't have much left in me. What I did have left nearly drained out of me when I saw what the light was.

The chute narrowed in the last few feet. The opening was a small triangle, just wide enough to fit a hand through. There was no way I could squeeze my whole body through it. I could see the morning sky clearly, bright blue and beautiful. So close, and yet I was still trapped, and growing weaker every second. I wasn't getting out of here this way, but maybe if I could reach into the light . . .

Leg muscles quivering and burning with the exertion, I held myself in place. With one hand, I felt for the stylus. I got ahold of it and stretched it up toward the small triangle of light. Sweat stung my eyes. My grip on the stone slipped a little. I extended the stylus as far as I could, but it wasn't enough. The sunlight was still out of reach.

One foot slipped. Gasping, I got it back in place. But I couldn't hold on any longer. My legs felt like molten iron. There was only one thing I could do.

With the last of my strength, pushing off with my legs and with the arm that had a grip on the wall, I lunged upward. I thrust the stylus point up into the sun. For the briefest moment, the tip of it flared as it absorbed Ra's energy. And then I fell.

I had never drawn a spell in mid-plummet before. Bit of an advanced technique, one I hadn't received training in. I wasn't even sure if it would work. Still, I wrote a fast, simple glyph. It wasn't fancy. Nothing elaborate. I slashed it into life as the walls of the chimney opened, dropping me back into the chamber. I saw Ammut, waiting with open jaws and grasping claws, a look of rapture in her reptilian eyes.

That was the last thing I saw before I smashed down on her, riding atop my spell. It appeared beneath me at the last moment. A stone. That's what I drew the glyph for. It must've been quite a surprise for Ammut. Instead of devouring me, she got crushed between a falling stone and the stone table on which she stood. The force would've turned a person to pulp. With a demon it wasn't quite as visceral as that.

Riding on top of the stone, the impact knocked the breath out of me. I lay stunned for a moment, and then slowly climbed to my feet. Every inch of me was achy and swore, scratched and bruised. I coughed. The air around me swirled with an unpleasant green vapor. That was all that remained of Ammut. The moment the stone killed her, her demon essence disappeared from here and appeared back in the underworld caverns that had spawned her. So it went. Ammut couldn't really die. She could only be defeated for the day. Chances were we'd meet again.

Limping, I climbed the ramp back toward the exit. I didn't want to hang around down there any longer than I had to. It took a while to get the stone door open, heavy as it was, but eventually I managed it. I slipped through and stumbled out of the dark interior of the temple. The light of day shone wonderfully warm on my face as I emerged into it. The fresh air was sweeter than any I'd ever tasted. I sat down, enjoying it.

Babbel flew toward me, weaving and chaotic as usual. He landed in a tumble, got up, and dusted himself off. He sat down and took in the view beside me. "So," he said, "you lived."

"Can you believe it?"

"No, not really."

"All in a night's work," I said.

After a minute, Babbel added, "I'm glad you're pleased with yourself, but . . ." The beetle hesitated.

"But what?"

"Well,
you
lived, but so did the magician. He got away."

Babbel seemed to have a way of seeing the dark side of everything. He was kind of a downer.

He was also right. The unnamed magician was still out there. When he found out I was alive, he wasn't going to be happy. I'd been wrong to be so cocky. Clearly he had planned every stage of the trap he led me into. He'd only miscalculated in one aspect; he'd expected me to be larger than I was. If I had been, I wouldn't have been able to fit up the chute. I'd be demon food. No, the guy deserved respect--the kind reserved only for your worst enemies. As with Ammut, I knew I hadn't heard the last from the magician. For today, though, I'd done as much as I could.

"Hey," I asked, "how about a lift back to the palace?"

Exhaling, Babbel climbed to his feet. "Sure, but don't make any jokes about my flying, all right?"

"Deal," I said.

Tim Marquitz

The clouds gnawed at the moon, devouring it in slow, steady bites. It wasn’t until the last shimmers of light had been swallowed by roiling gray that Gryl crept toward the small caravan camped in the valley below. The coins wrapped tight in his purse weighed upon his conscience, a promise of blood unfulfilled, but dawn would see their burden lifted.

He’d tracked the caravan across the quiet plains of Andral for six days, drawing closer until he’d spied it crossing the southern border of the Ural Province, the land butting up against the foothills of the Jiorn Highlands. The air had grown colder the last few nights, each breath brisk in his lungs, pleasantly bracing after the trek across the warmer clime of Andral. Memories of the north sprang unbidden to his mind as he tasted the moisture on the breeze, felt its frost-borne kiss gentle upon his cheeks.

They were bittersweet, those recollections, for Gryl had first come to the Shytan Empire in the frigid clutches of winter, on a mission of war. He’d been little more than a slave then, a Prodigy whose entire existence served the cruel whims of his Avan Seer mistress. Still, he had earned his freedom in the snowy north, born again at the Avan defeat.

That freedom came with a price, however. Scarred from toe to pate, only his face unmarred by the sorceries embedded in his ruined flesh, he would forever be an outcast, his disfigurement a glaring reminder of an enemy who’d come to the shores of Shytan and left destruction in its wake.

Yet it offered opportunity as well.

Opportunities like the one that had brought him here in search of a slaver who preyed upon children just finding their feet, leaving them desiccated husks before their tenth year. Gryl’s jaw tightened at the thought, his teeth clenched. He’d seen this man’s
work
—if Althun Rathe could be called a man—on display in the pens at Amberton and the shanty towns beyond, eyes devoid of life, the dead in shuffling husks only playing at life. It might well be too late to save the poor wretches who’d come before, but a taste of steel would keep this particular wolf from the rest of the flock.