Chapter 6 Xylon
XYLON
Trapped.
The thought is a cage of iron slamming shut in my mind. Behind us, the sounds grow. The clatter of many armored feet on stone. The sharp, hateful barks of the hounds. The foul scent of the guards, a wave of malice rolling down the stairs. They are coming.
The beast inside me screams. It does not understand tactics.
It does not understand retreat. It understands only the trap, and its answer is violence.
A red tide of pure, primal rage surges, seeking to drown the flicker of the man.
The beast wants to turn. It wants to meet them here.
It wants to feel their bones break in its claws, to rip and tear until this stone-walled tomb is a charnel house.
A low growl builds in my chest, a rumble of thunder that is not my own. My claws extend, digging into the packed earth of the cellar floor. The curse burns hotter, feeding on the enclosed space, on the approaching threat. The urge to lash out, to destroy everything, is a physical sickness.
Then I hear her. A small, sharp intake of breath. A gasp of pure terror.
Her scent, which had been a steady flame of stubborn courage, now flares with fear. The smell of it cuts through the red haze of my rage. It is a clarion call, a command that silences the beast’s mindless screaming.
Protect her.
That is the purpose. Not to fight. Not to die here in a blaze of meaningless fury. The purpose is her survival. I force the growl down, my muscles quivering with the strain. I turn from the sounds of our pursuers and face the wall. The dead end. Her hope, extinguished.
I will not allow it.
My focus narrows. The sounds of the hunt fade to a distant roar. There is only the wall. I press my face against the new-laid stone, the rough texture scraping my hide. I breathe in. Deeper.
My Urog senses, a curse that has been my torment, now become my greatest weapon.
Beneath the cellar’s scent of soured wine and dust, there are other stories.
I smell the deep, damp earth on the other side.
The wet, mineral tang of living stone. The bitter scent of crushed roots.
And underneath it all, faint but undeniable, is the cool, clean promise of night air. Of freedom.
The wall is a lie. It is a patch, a scab on the skin of the world. It is not the living rock of the mountain.
A memory surfaces, a gift from the man I was.
…I am a boy, no older than ten seasons. My father and I are tracking a razorclaw high in the Ironfang Peaks.
We are blocked by a rockslide. He places his hand on the wall of stone.
“Everything has a weakness, Xylon,” his voice rumbles, a calm counterpoint to the howling wind.
“The mountain looks strong, but the water finds a way. The frost finds the cracks. A warrior does not fight the mountain. He finds the path it gives him.” His thick finger traces a hairline fracture, a line of discoloration I had not seen…
I look at the bricked-up wall. I’m not just a brute. I am a warrior. I must find the path.
My eyes scan the surface. I see what my father taught me to see. The mortar is new, yes, but the archway it fills is old. The keystone above is ancient, part of the original foundation. The new bricks are a weak patch on an old wound. That is the weak point.
I turn to her. She is pressed against a wine rack, her face pale in the gloom, her eyes wide with a despair that I will not permit.
I nudge her with my head, a single, deliberate push toward the side of the archway.
Out of the path of destruction. She stumbles back, her expression shifting from terror to confusion.
There is no more time. The hounds are in the stairwell now, their baying a frantic, hungry chorus.
I back away from the wall, giving myself space. I lower my stance, my powerful legs coiling like springs. I pour all of my will, all of my rage, all of my singular, desperate purpose into my right shoulder.
For her.
I charge.
The impact is a white-hot explosion of pain that shudders up from my shoulder and through my entire skeleton.
The sound is the scream of a mountain dying.
The wall does not just break; it detonates.
Bricks, mortar, and chunks of foundation stone fly outward into the darkness beyond.
Dust and grit fill the air, a choking cloud that stings my eyes.
For a moment, I am deaf and blind, the agony in my shoulder a roaring fire. But then the dust begins to settle.
Where the wall had been, there is now a gaping, black hole.
A tunnel. It is not the clean, man-made passage she expected, but a raw, ragged wound leading into the earth, choked with a thick web of ancient roots.
The clean, cold scent of the Oshta wilds washes over me, a balm on my battered senses. We have a path.
I turn and grab her, my massive claw surprisingly gentle as I lift her and set her on her feet, pushing her toward the opening. "Go," the word is a guttural rasp, more of a feeling than a sound.
She does not hesitate. She scrambles into the root-choked darkness. I follow, my huge frame barely fitting, the roots and splintered stone scraping my back and shoulders. We crawl into the suffocating blackness of the earth, leaving the sounds of the hunt behind us in the ruined cellar.
We are just inside, the sounds of the estate muffled by the earth, when a new sound slices through the night. It is a howl, long and mournful and utterly unnatural. It is not the sound of a wolf or a dog. It is the cry of something made, not born, a creature of dark magic and relentless purpose.
The first of Lord Jildred’s enchanted Batlaz hounds. The hunt has begun.