Page 53 of Heart of the Shadow King

Movement draws my gaze. A hideous figure appears at the top of the waterfall, long and low, crawling on all fours, its awful, angled elbows protruding higher than its sway-backed spine. Flesh hangs loosely from its skeletal body, and white bone covers most of its eyeless face. Its mouth sags open, saliva dripping between enormous teeth.

My heart lurches, and my crystal covering melts away, leaving only my shivering, vulnerable body. I take several paces back, opening my mouth to cry a warning to Maylin, but the words die on my tongue. Now that the crystals no longer shield me, I feel the pulse she sends out across the water more clearly, feel how it connects with thewoggha.

My eyes widen. She is controlling it. She is drawing it here.

“What is this?” I breathe even as the devil climbs down the crystal-studded cliff, its awful body silhouetted starkly by the multi-colored lights. It enters the water without hesitation, swimming straight toward us. “Maylin, what are you doing?”

The old witch, still holding her crystal high, casts me an impatient look. “None of your timidity now, girl. I’ve got the beast well under control.”

But that’s what horrifies me: to see that monster controlled, its will subdued. I have been inside the heads ofwoggha. They are grotesque and terrifying, but solitary hunters who prefer to dwell in the depths of the Under Realm, far from other living souls. While it may look demonic and can certainly kill with unprecedented savagery, they do not seek out blood sport. This beast is far from where it belongs. If Maylin were to lose control . . .

“Send it back,” I urge, my voice thin in my throat. “Send it back, please. This is wrong.”

“Wrong?” Maylin turns to me again, and her blue crystal flares momentarily to a dark, vicious purple. “We’re facing the end of the world, child! Now is not the time to be tenderhearted over cave devils.”

I watch the monster approaching. Its slitted nostrils flare as its ungainly limbs splash awkwardly through the steaming water. “And what do you expect me to do?”

Maylin snorts again. “Enstone it, of course.”

“How?”

“That is not something one can teach. It’s like learning to walk—I can stand you on your own two feet and give you a push. But you will have to find the balance within yourself to place one foot before the other. No one can teach you. No one can do it for you.”

The devil reaches the shore and heaves up onto the nearest stones. It sways back and forth as water streams from its misshapen body. Its whole attention is fixed upon Maylin. Maylin, who studies me.

“Go on, girl,” she says. A thread of feeling appears in my soul. Not the fear and dread and revulsion that belongs to me, but a bright spark ofurgency. “Go on. Try.”

The urgency grows. It isn’t mine, I’m sure of it. Or not wholly mine. This is Maylin’s doing. She’s found my weakness and even now uses her powers to augment it. Images appear in my mind, images I neither want nor can resist: Vor. On the battlefield. Covered in blood. Striving with everything he has against impossible odds. Vor, Vor,Vor.

Crushed under stone.

The light snuffed from his eyes.

Buried.

Gone.

I set my teeth and face the monster. Is this one of the very devils I freed not so long ago? One of those poor, suffering creatures, caught in a poisonous thrall it could not resist? But no. I mustn’t think of that. Instead, I must remember all those shrouded bodies in the sacred hall. All those people, brutally slaughtered. How much more death might I prevent by making use of this creature’s life?

A natural outcropping ofurzulstands just to my right. I rest one hand against the stones. Resonance hums through my bones, into my chest cavity, spreads through my spirit. Slowly, carefully, I turn that resonance around, send it out in a wave straight toward thewoggha. Hurt radiates back, strikes me like a blow. I gasp, stagger. Red light explodes in my head. The devil is afraid. It might stand there, docile as a hideous lamb. But its fear is no less real.

“You must learn to push through whatever feelings you encounter,” Maylin urges.

I let out a slow breath. How does she expect me to do this? Maybe . . . maybe . . . I look down at the crystals beneath my hand and press my thumb against one sharp point. The small cut I’d given myself this morning has scarcely crusted over. The wound reopens, and a bead of blood spills forth, rolling down the crystal in a crimson stain. The blueurzuldarkens, pulsing a faint, pinkish hue. I feel the subtle change in the resonance.

Holding onto the crystals with one hand, I stretch out the other toward the waiting devil and send a pulse flowing out from me. The beast’s head swivels, its attention turning from Maylin to me. Its jaw opens. A long, low hiss burns the air between us.

“Keep your focus, girl,” Maylin says. I cannot tell if she speaks the words out loud or if I simply feel them inside. I grip theurzultighter, refuse to let the flow of resonance falter. It’s a deep, gut-plunging pulse, not unlike the chant I’d heard in the dark chapel. But I don’t need a chant. I can summon enough power, pull it up through the soles of my feet from the very depths of the world.

Thewoggha’snostrils flare. Its body shifts as it tries to lunge at me. But it cannot. Its feet have turned to stone. Stone gripping stone, keeping that awful figure fixed in place. But stone skin is not enough. Not for trueva-jor.I must get all the way down to the very center of the beast.

This is wrong,something in me protests. I ignore it. I’m in the rush of the resonance now, a powerful wave which lifts and pulls me along. It’s glorious, this power of mine. So different from standing in the Urzulhar Circle, so different from that wracking pain. There is no pain now. Not with a stone shield wrapped around my heart.

I feel it working. Layer upon layer, thicker and thicker, filling thewogghafrom the inside. With each layer, the fear, the anger, the struggle for freedom simply vanishes. A crust of gray stone spreads across the creature’s flesh, bone, and soul alike, and when it is done . . .

I let out a ragged gasp and let go of the crystals, staggering back. My hand shakes. When I look down, I find many cuts have opened across my fingers and palm. Blood drips, and the crystals pulse a steady, shimmering red. Nausea churns in my gut. But I clench my trembling fingers and lift my gaze to the shore. To the cave devil which stands there, a perfect, frozen statue.

Leaning heavily on her stick, Maylin approaches thewoggha, looking it over slowly. “Excellent,” she murmurs. A smile breaks across her face. “Excellent!” To my surprise, she presses her stick against the stone devil’s head and, with a single push, sends the whole thing crashing into the lake. The lapping water seems to grab it and pull it down into its depths, out of sight.

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