Ten
I gave a yelp of pure terror, throwing myself backward as the statue lunged. Its single stony arm swiped at me, the fingers
missing my face by inches. Pulling my dagger, I slashed desperately as it kept coming. The blade screeched as it raked across
the smooth, eyeless face, leaving behind a thin white scar but nothing else. Unhindered, the statue grabbed for me; I dodged,
feeling stone fingers catch my hood as I scrambled away. It was shockingly fast for a thing made of solid rock. I slashed
at it again, cutting the side of its head as it swung at me, and it didn’t even pause as stone fingers curled around my arm.
Instantly, the pressure was unbearable, like my arm was caught in a stonemason’s vise, squeezing with bone-cracking strength.
The statue dragged me close, the crushing grip bringing tears of pain to my eyes. Thankfully, it only had one arm. The stump
of its other limb raised toward my neck, as if to grab my throat with fingers it no longer had.
With a screech and a burst of sparks, Raithe’s sword clattered off the statue’s arm, sending a vibrating jolt of pain up my
shoulder. The statue whirled toward the kahjai but didn’t let me go. My wrist bones ground together under the relentless grip,
and I cried out, expecting my arm to snap in the next second.
And then Ratuk plowed into the statue with a bellow, his four-foot horn crashing into the statue’s chest. The impact sounded like two boulders smashing together.
The statue was flung backward, the pressure on my arm releasing, the front of its chest caved in.
I collapsed, cradling my wrist, as the rock beetle shook his head and charged again.
His horn caught the statue as it was struggling to rise and flung it high into the air.
It plummeted onto the roof of one of the houses, smashing through the boards in a cloud of splinters and dust.
Silence settled over the town once more. I waited, holding my breath, listening for the shuffle of feet, for the crash of
planks as the statue came through the house and attacked us again. Except for the settling of a couple boards, nothing moved.
The air was still.
“Sparrow.” Raithe knelt beside me, eyes shadowed with concern as he reached out. Gentle fingers took my wrist and brushed
back my sleeve. Beneath the cloth, I could see the bright red marks where the stone fingers had gripped my arm, each one like
a brand across my wrist. Looking at them made it hurt even more than it already did.
Raithe’s lips tightened. Very slowly, his fingers moved down my arm, probing, squeezing. I gritted my teeth against the pain
and turned my head away, trying not to gasp.
“I’m sorry,” Raithe murmured, finally easing up on the bruises. He still held my arm but was careful not to put any pressure
against the skin. “I know it hurts, but can you move your fingers and wrist?”
I tried, flexing my hand and moving my wrist in a circle. The motions sent stabs of pain through my arm, but my joints seemed to be functioning normally. Raithe nodded and relaxed.
“Good,” he murmured. He seemed reluctant to let go of my hand, and I didn’t want him to. Even through the pain, the touch
of his fingers sent shivers racing over my skin. Those pale blue eyes met mine, the worry in them clear. “I don’t think anything
is broken. Did it grab you anywhere else?”
I shook my head. “It wanted to,” I said, still shivering from both pain and the feel of gentle fingers on my skin, a sharp
contrast to the horrifying grip of the statue. “But it didn’t have another hand, thank the Weaver.”
“Thank the Weaver for that,” Raithe agreed softly, and helped me to my feet. Ratuk pressed close, still huffing in agitation,
and I patted the beetle’s blocky head. “You were amazing, Ratuk,” I told him. “Thank you.”
“Okay, what in the Weaver’s mercy was that?” Halek wondered loudly as he and Kysa approached on Rhyne. “I thought we just
had to worry about spirits in the valley, not statues that come to life and attack us. That was the most terrifying thing
I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of terrifying things. Giant spiders, the walking dead, centipedes that spit poison at
you. But I think this pretty much takes the prize.”
Kysa gazed into the town, eyes narrowed. “Do we have to worry about others coming after us?” she wondered, looking at Raithe.
“I . . . don’t know,” Raithe said, sounding frustrated.
He raked a hand through his silver hair, shaking his head.
“There haven’t been any reports of the statues coming to life,” he muttered.
“And we passed dozens on our way here. None of them moved or came after us. Why would this one be the exception?”
“The spirits,” I said, remembering the voice I’d heard that first night, calling to me from the darkness. “In certain stories,
spirits can possess things. Other people, but sometimes objects.”
“That’s true,” Halek echoed. “I once spent the night in a haunted tomb, where the spirits of the dead kept making the candles
fly at me. It was, if I remember correctly, one of the longest nights of my life.”
“What if . . .” I looked back toward the woods, where the shadows had grown very long. Was it my imagination, or did I see
movement between those trunks? “What if the spirits here can possess the statues?”
Raithe’s eyes narrowed, and he gazed at the forest. “If that’s true,” he murmured, “then we are in the worst possible place
right now—close to a settlement, where there is likely to be the greatest concentration of both spirits and statues. If we
have drawn their attention, then the statues we passed before . . .”
He trailed off, his dark skin going ashen, and took a single step back from the clinging shadows of the trees. Heart in my
throat, I turned from him to gaze at the looming forest.
And that’s when the horde of statues came through the trees.
My blood turned to ice, and my stomach dropped in absolute terror.
The statues made little sound as they came, their footsteps muffled by layers of dust and ash as they shuffled forward.
They were the same statues we had seen before, the iylvahn who had been caught fleeing their homes.
I saw the figure of the mother with her two children shambling toward us, and a statue whose leg had been snapped off crawling through the dust, dragging itself by the arms. Another effigy walked steadily forward, seemingly unhindered by the fact that its head was missing.
There were probably a few dozen; pale, silent figures converging on us in the dark, moving with that jerky, sporadic gait
that made my skin crawl.
“Weaver’s mercy,” Halek whispered, as Rhyne shook his head and gave a bellow of challenge to the coming horde. “We’re not
going to stay and fight that army, are we? I don’t think I have anything that will hurt solid stone.”
“Get on Ratuk, Sparrow,” Raithe told me, his voice low and intense. I scrambled atop the rock beetle, as Raithe mounted his
hissing sand dragon “Stay together,” he called. “We’ll try to lose them between the houses.”
With the chilling sound of feet shushing through the dirt, the horde charged, coming at us with stony arms raised. I wheeled
Ratuk around, hearing Rhyne’s angry clicking as Kysa spun him away from the horde, and we fled into the town.
The rows of iylvahn houses closed around us, and the streets, littered with rubble and fallen branches, seemed to narrow.
As we fled farther in and the shadows grew darker, I began seeing structures stacked on top of each other, perched in the limbs of enormous trees, or even wrapped around the thick trunks.
The ancient iylvahn seemed to build vertically, as well as on the ground.
I had never seen such a thing before, and gazing up at the towering structures, which seemed to sway against the evening sky, made me slightly dizzy.
More statues appeared in the town, standing in front yards and in doorways, as well as out in the roads. At first, they didn’t
move. We passed several statues that remained frozen in place. But as we pressed farther into town, the statues began to stir.
Heads turned, limbs began to twitch, and the effigies eventually started to lurch in our direction. This was horrifying enough,
but to make things worse, I could hear the shuffling feet of the rest of the horde behind us. Their pale forms shambled between
houses and past trees, always following, always getting closer. My stomach was in knots, and a cold sweat was trickling down
my back as the mob of killer statues edged closer and closer.
Namaia sank fully over the horizon, plunging the world into twilight. The town continued, vast, sprawling, and towering. There
seemed to be a lot more statues now, clogging the roads and blocking our path. We were forced to change directions several
times, darting down side roads and alleys as the way ahead filled with lurching, shuffling effigies of death.
“Why are there so many?” Halek gasped, as our path was blocked once more by a trio of hollow-eyed statues. “How many restless
spirits are in this land, and why are they all coming after us? Is this normal?”
“No,” Raithe answered, directing his sand dragon down another street. “There haven’t been any reports of this happening in
the Dead Lands. People go missing, but this mass spirit congregation is new. Something is very wrong.”
As the chase continued, I began to have the terrible, nagging sensation that we were being . . . driven somewhere. As road after road was blocked, forcing us to go another way, the sensation of being herded did not dissipate.
As we turned down another street, the road opened up, and we found ourselves at the edge of a large plaza. What was once a
fountain stood in the center, smashed beyond recognition. Raithe pulled his sand dragon to a stop at the perimeter, staring
at the open square with narrowed eyes, and shook his head.
“Turn around,” he said in a low voice. “We can’t be caught in the open like this. Go back.”