Siege of Stone

CHAPTER 54

As the most powerful sorceress in Lord Rahl’s army, Nicci was feared and respected. She had once murdered a wizard and stolen his abilities, had learned the Subtractive side of magic through her dark service to the Keeper, and she had become known as Death’s Mistress.

Thus, when she presented her warning about Utros and his vast army, the D’Haran garrison believed her. General Linden brought in military scribes to take down her report in detail, and within hours copies were dispatched by two separate riders racing north to the People’s Palace. Nicci could crush petty dictators and slave masters, but defeating hundreds of thousands of warriors went beyond what she could deal with alone.

But she didn’t have to do everything alone. It had taken her a long time to realize that.

General Linden gathered a succession of his line officers, foot soldiers, cavalry riders, and scouts, so she could show them the terrifying images preserved in Elsa’s glass. “I want them all to know,” Linden said. “The more our army understands the scope of this threat, the better prepared they’ll be to face it.”

Nicci walked slowly along the lines of soldiers gathered inside the garrison walls, showing them the images, and she saw that she had struck fear—not gibbering terror, but a genuine respect. By nightfall she had accomplished what she needed to do and decided it was time to return to Ildakar.

She had to make sure the walled city was still safe against the siege. If so, Nicci would travel through the sliph to other large cities along the coast and continue spreading her warning.

Because it was already after dark, Nicci would not enter the dense and trackless Hagen Woods in the hope of finding the isolated sliph well. Instead, she informed Linden, “I will sleep in the barracks and leave at dawn.”

“It must be a long journey to Ildakar,” Linden said. “Do you need supplies? A military escort?”

“I have other means of travel.”

He found her a private room in the officers’ quarters, which were redolent of fresh sawdust and green pine. The sweet wood fragrance contrasted with the fishy-smelling kraken-oil lantern that burned on the writing desk. Nicci opened the window shutters to let the cool night breeze drift in. With a flick of her fingers, she snuffed out the lantern from the other side of the room and settled back on the straw mattress. She needed no further comforts. As Nicci drifted off, she cleared her thoughts of strategy, concerns about Ildakar’s defenses against General Utros, and the loss of Bannon Farmer. She would sleep.

When she descended into resistant dreams, she felt an animal presence waiting there, a feline awareness that was bound to her. Mrra. Though Tanimura was far on the other side of the Old World, the sand panther remembered Nicci in her dreams.

They ran together. Her wiry muscles pulled her along as she bounded with her hind legs to land on her wide front paws, feeling the curved claws dig into the turf. Nicci felt the joy of being part of the big cat’s fine, muscular body. She was exerting herself to her wild limits, fiercely running.

She quickly realized that Mrra was not hunting, and the cat’s pounding heart was more than just the joy of racing free. She was terrified.

Monstrous predators were pursuing the sand panther. Mrra ran along the hills, each leap a desperate attempt to escape. Her long tail thrashed, her claws tore up the dirt. She leaped over a fallen tree as she raced along the black fringe of the burned grass. Her sharp ears heard panting and slavering behind her, like the bellows in a blacksmith shop.

Two huge creatures ran after her, each as large as a small horse, dripping saliva from yellow fangs. They were ferocious and intent on tearing her apart. Mrra ran with all her might. Behind her, the creatures thundered along, their jaws and fangs ready to rip her flank, tear out her throat.

Mrra glanced back, and her golden eyes saw the pursuers, huge wolflike beasts with rounded ears, long heads, and tan fur that made them hard to see among the dry grasses. They snarled, springing forward. Mrra put on another burst of speed, and Nicci offered her own energy, driving the panther faster. But Mrra was exhausted, nearly ready to collapse.

Nicci could only guess what those beasts might be. She’d heard Richard describe heart hounds, vicious creatures that guarded the misty boundaries and the veil to the underworld. The more Nicci recalled his stories, the more convinced she became that these were heart hounds. Had they somehow slipped through the veil? But Richard had sealed it! The walls of the underworld should never have allowed such monsters to return.

Mrra dashed into a thicket of scrub oak. She clattered through fallen branches and leaped over a lichen-mottled boulder. The heart hounds rushed into the thicket after her and kept drawing closer.

Nicci knew Mrra couldn’t elude them, whether in the forests or in the grassy hills. Heart hounds had senses so acute they could hear a victim’s heartbeat even from a distance. Richard had also said the monsters would tear out the heart of their prey and devour it first as a bloody prize.

Nicci rode inside Mrra, pushed her, helped her, but she was in far-off Tanimura, and she couldn’t extend her gift through the big cat. She could only use the big panther’s body.

Running would not be enough.

There was no place to hide in the grassy hills, even in the darkness.

The heart hounds kept coming.

Nicci stirred in her sleep in the barracks room, but her thoughts stayed with the panther. The big cat’s instincts told her to do what any fleeing animal would do, but if she did that, Nicci knew, she would lose.

Listen to me, sister panther, Nicci thought. The heart hounds will run you down. You can’t fight both of them. They will wait until you are exhausted and weak.

She felt Mrra growl as she ran. The grassy slope opened up, and Mrra bounded along unhindered, but the heart hounds picked up speed, too.

You’ve got to do the unexpected, Nicci told her. You have to fight them anyway, so fight on your terms. Our terms. Now! Turn and fight!

The panther spun and, instead of leaping away, used all the power of her hind legs to launch herself into the oncoming beast like a battering ram of claws and fur. Mrra struck just beneath the jaw of the slavering monster, slammed into its barrel chest. Her claws raked along the curved lines of its ribs. Using the heart hound’s own momentum, she ripped open the tan fur, gouged into bone, and split the creature’s chest. As it crashed down upon her, she clamped her long fangs around its throat, bit down hard, and pulled back. Blood sprayed.

The heart hound collapsed, gurgling, unable to make much sound now that its throat was destroyed. Mrra’s instinct was to stay with her victim, rip open the belly and dig out the entrails, but the monster was already as good as dead. Nicci knew that.

Instead, Mrra yanked herself free as the heart hound twitched and bled, impotently snapping its long yellow teeth.

The second beast skidded past, taken by surprise, and overshot its quarry even as Mrra brought down the first victim. As the other monster scrambled to turn, Mrra abandoned the bleeding carcass and, using all her remaining energy, sprang into the air to land on the second beast’s back. The heart hound was already off balance from turning so abruptly in its full-hearted charge. Mrra’s weight knocked it down on the grassy ground, and the beast struck out with its paws, trying to throw her off.

But Nicci and Mrra bit down hard, using the big cat’s powerful jaws to crunch the back of the heart hound’s neck, biting hard enough to sever its spinal cord. With one blow, one deep bite, the second heart hound was paralyzed. When it collapsed, the lower half of its body couldn’t even twitch. A steaming puddle of urine pooled out from between its hind legs. In an instant, both enemies were dead.

Mrra stepped back, covered in blood. She padded away from the two dying beasts, her senses still alert. She pricked her ears and listened to the night, making sure there were no other heart hounds howling in the hills.

Even from her bed in the Tanimura barracks, Nicci tasted the hot iron blood in her mouth, felt her pulse pounding from the chase. She and her sister panther had defeated these two creatures that shouldn’t have been here at all. Had someone meddled with the veil after Richard’s star shift? How could these monsters have escaped from the outskirts of the underworld?

Nicci broke the spell bond, letting Mrra return to satisfy herself with ripping the heart hounds to shreds. Nicci drifted back into her own sleep, but it was far more troubled than before.