Читать книгу Rise to the Rahz - Erik van Mechelen - Страница 5

Kaydin closed his eyes and unlit Retain. The sharp after-image of the boy’s portrait disappeared beyond the door, fading to mere echoes on the back of his eyelids. He opened his eyes.

On with the job. He exchanged several more earthlights. The first dislodged easily. The second forced him to scratch the stone with his knife. The larger stones within which the earthlights were embedded didn’t always want to give up their eyes. Just as he took the third, something wrapped his wrist. A vine. He tugged but the tendrils sunk their thorns deeper. Fortunately Kaydin had tangled with them before. He let his arm give, then slashed through the vine just as the thorns receded. He skipped out of range of two vines that had crept toward his feet. The plants liked their earthlights, too.

From his sixteen years of hiding in the bowels of this city, Kaydin knew the time lapse between tolls instinctively. He was almost out of time. His inner rhythm, which played in his consciousness as a drum, reached its climactic crescendo with a second gong. It had the same quality of the first toll, but a half-pitch lower. The start of the tone brought to Kaydin's mind the familiar image of a white cliff sprinkled with light. Part way through the reverberation the snow fell away from the cliff. At its conclusion, he glimpsed a forest path leading to a clearing; there, looking out on what Ry had called mountains, waited a bench.

Kaydin felt the satchel pocket’s bulge and knew he was almost done. He came to a dip in the room’s topography and leaned into a crevice. There an earthlight shone across the vines lining the alcove. The woody tentacles slid toward him but eased back when he showed them his knife. As Kaydin reached for the light-giving stone, he heard something he’d not expected quite so soon. A hiss.

He wanted to take the stone. It was a bright one, crimson blended with amber. But, hearing claws scrape against stone near the cavern's entry, he had to pull way.

Kaydin hugged the side wall as he moved away from the entrance. He climbed the large stone he'd used before. He spotted the holds he wanted on the balcony wall just as a hiss slithered through the air. He could hear the beast coming. The grips of its claws and the swish of its long tail. Catch me if you can, sentinel. Kaydin prepared himself. A mistake at this height could be fatal with or without the sentinel. Now or never.

For a breath he was airborne. His hands connected with the holds; his nine fingers tightly gripped them. A moment later his feet caught the wall too. He flipped himself up and over the railing, then, in one motion, located his crawlspace and dove through the opening. He found the hand holds, twisted them, sliding the block back into place.

Crouching below the slit, satchel of stones on his lap, Kaydin listened for the sentinel. The scrapes seemed to come from below, as if the sentinel was scaling the wall. More anxious noises rounded the room near the railing, nearing. The sentinel might now be right there on the other side of this stone wall. Kaydin wondered how long the creature would search for him. You can smell me, but can you see through walls?