Page 8

Death Has Many Sounds

I don’t know if a single note emits from the grotesque instrument at Aesthetus’s lips, because a different noise rises around us, fast and furious.

Hissing at first, like a riled den of snakes. It grows louder, building pressure inside my head. I grit my teeth against the familiar sensation.

Tziah’s power.

Sound as a weapon. If she keeps her mouth open long enough it becomes paralyzing. Debilitating. Even deadly.

The way Aesthetus is holding me, I can’t let go of him to put my hands over my ears. The beast looks around manically, snorting and snuffling as he does, then blows harder into his bone flute, but the sound isn’t audible. Not over the noise. Tziah steps out into the open and spreads her mouth wider, and the sound turns unbearable. Wetness leaks out of my nose and over his hand at my neck. Blood drips from his own snout.

Aesthetus drops me. Shock follows me down, and I flail as I hit the water with a splash, half the pond going up my nose or down my throat. Thank the goddess. From the soothing safety for my ears under the surface, I can see the creature as he uses both his hands on his flute, blowing until his bull-eyes bulge and start to bleed from the corners.

“Get away!” The Shadows are pounding at me now. Clamoring. “Save yourself.”

“No.” I have to get that flute.

Aesthetus turns on Tziah, charging straight for her with a bellow of rage that rattles me even in the water.

There’s a flash of blue and white that I can tell is Tziah spinning as she darts out of the bull’s path. She knicks him with the wicked curved blade in her hand, but he doesn’t bellow again in pain. Instead, he smiles.

Because to defend herself and fight him, she’s closed her mouth.

I break the surface and scramble out of the pond, weighed down by soaked clothes and the slippery bottom. But not fast enough.

The flute is at his lips in a blink, except a whip of leather lashes out from the opening of the Snarl we came through and wraps around his wrist.

Pella. It has to be.

Aesthetus rolls his big body over, which yanks the whip out of the wielder’s hand. He comes back up to his feet with the flute to his lips, and a single note, clear and true, sounds through the air.

It’s not a blast. Not a whine. Not a scream, either.

It’s music all by itself. As sweet as a birdsong, and more haunting than an empty grave.

The Shadows’ fear could be mine. “She’s going to kill us all.”

She ? The blasted ghost didn’t tell me what happens if the flute is blown, just that if it is, running isn’t an option and dying is likely.

With a self-satisfied smile, Aesthetus backs up. “ You made me waken her.”

With a leap, he jumps back into the pond. I lunge for the flute clutched in his hand, but miss, bellyflopping hard on the ground at the bank. Grunting at the impact, I stare at the water where he disappeared. It’s already turned glassy again. Not a single ripple. As if he never emerged in the first place.

“Stay hidden!” I call out to the others.

“Too late,” Vos says.

I climb to my feet to find all of my friends are here, weapons drawn or glowing hands at the ready. Goddess damn it. I walked them all into certain death.

I’m not fit to be queen of anything.

I’m at their side in seconds. We position ourselves back-to-back and wait for whatever is supposed to come next. If we go down, it won’t be with a whimper—it’ll be bloody and broken.

A breeze stirs the grasses that make up the Snarl, which shooshes at us, the sound not restful but ominous, dread growing heavier inside me.

“You’ve killed us all, you stupid bitch!” a Shadow barks.

“See anything?” Vos asks, low voiced.

Cain pulls Tziah closer, putting himself between her and the walls that form the Snarl.

“Noth—” Pella’s answer ends on a yelp as her legs jerk out from under her.

She shoots across the ground, dragged by something that’s got her feet. Shocked horror freezes her face but quickly turns to fury as she lashes out with her whip, trying to stop herself. Vos slams down an axe made of ice that he creates so fast I don’t even see him do it. He severs whatever rope had hold of Pella and she skids to an abrupt stop.

“Seven hells,” she grumbles as she pushes to her feet with a wince. Blood leaks from a long gash in her leg, dribbling over her boots to pool in the dirt.

We hardly have a chance to take a breath before the ground beneath our feet undulates, like the swell of a wave passing through it, only to settle firmly again. Except the swell must keep moving outward, because the grasses of the Snarl all around us shake and hiss angrily, and the tops rise and fall against the sky.

“Well, that’s bad,” Cain says.

But he isn’t facing the ripple. I track his gaze and the bottom drops out of my stomach.

The doorway into the Snarl, into the maze we came through to get here, is gone.

The blood drains from my face.

That ghost of Eidolon’s told me how to get in and get the flute. Until this moment, I failed to realize that I only asked him how to get the amulets, not how to survive.

The bastard didn’t give me a way out.

Intentionally?

From the burning lands, Eidolon’s ghosts can see everything. Was this a ploy? Did he send us to the Snarl hoping to eliminate the threat I pose to the current Eidolon? By not telling us how to get out, he’s handed down a death sentence.

A laugh—possibly with an edge of hysteria—bursts from me, earning me a few concerned glances. The ghost didn’t know I’d drag all of Eidolon’s Shadows into the Snarl with me. I didn’t have them yet when I visited him. They’ll die with me if it comes to that.

Poetic. Fucking. Justice.

Bet he’s kicking himself now.

The Snarl rustles again, and suddenly six doorways open in the circle of grass surrounding the pond. Six ways out? But they close just as fast, only to reopen somewhere else, and beyond the openings, I can see the passageways of the maze…changing direction?

Yes. The maze is moving. Reconfiguring.

This time, the ground doesn’t just undulate; it pops under our feet, knocking us all down. I scramble up onto my hands and knees, but it doesn’t stop, like something is bucking and punching, trying to break through from underneath and tossing us all around like we’re debris.

Forget the flute. The world feels like it’s turning upside down in a chaos of movement.

“Run!” the Shadows yell.

“Run!” my own yell echoes.

Too late.

The ground splits apart all around us, between us, scattering us. As I’m rolling ass over head down a hill that wasn’t there a second ago, I’m vaguely aware of Cain flying through the air in the opposite direction.

An earsplitting roar thunders around me. I manage to stop rolling just in time to see teeth. Razor-sharp teeth made of what looks to be rocks in the wide-open jaws of—

What in Nova is it?

The bottom of this new monster is the black soil, its head and back are covered in grasses, eyes and teeth of rocks, and yet alive. It’s shaped somewhere between a dog and a toad. And it’s massive.

Sticking out from all parts of it are the bones. The dead it’s killed before, I assume.

Wonderful. The ground has come alive and is going to eat us.

I frown. Wait. Is this Mimick?

We’re dead. We’re all so very dead.

The monster—Mimick, it has to be—roars again and then lunges with a clattering snap of those rock teeth. Not coming for me. For someone else.

“Everyone run!” Vos yells from somewhere on the other side of the grassy expanse. “Get yourselves out.”

In the same moment, the grasses nearest me open a doorway to the maze. I jump to my feet and take off into the Snarl, running down a never-ending passageway, the sounds of the fight fading as I go, until, with a snapping fizz, the grass moves to open a different passage. It seems to aim away from the pandemonium, so I run through it, but a rattle sounds at my back, and I glance over my shoulder to see the part I came from closing behind me.

Are the grasses aware of me and…herding me?

A sharp shout comes from somewhere in front of me, followed by a boom.

And all I can do is keep running.