Page 124 of Red Dragon
The wind picked up, swirling around like a cyclone, and a force like a battering ram struck Syla in the chest. She hadn’t been holding on, and it sent her flying across the laboratory, over creatures and crystals, and far away from her comrades.
When she struck a wall, she hit hard enough to knock the air out of her lungs, dazing her. Even the strap attached to her spectacles wasn’t enough to keep them from flying off. They struck the ground and skidded away as more wind blew.
Cursing, Syla scrambled after them on hands and knees as her stunned diaphragm made it hard to breathe, terrifying her. But losing her vision would be almost as bad.
As she rushed after the skidding spectacles, the dreadful wind kept knocking them farther from her grasping fingers. It was as if an intelligence guided it.
The world around her was nothing but a dark blur, save for movement. The movement of many things. More of those creatures. Were they heading toward her? Disoriented, she didn’t know if she was going toward the bed or away from it. And what of her allies? Had they also been knocked across the laboratory?
Her knuckles brushed the lenses, and she snatched them up. Something pulsed near her head, and she twitched, lifting an arm in case an enemy meant to attack. No, it was a small crystal, growing up like a flower out of the floor. Other crystals glowed in niches carved into the nearby rock wall. And in that large niche, was that…
Syla reached for the spherical silver orb growing on a slender crystal stalk before catching herself. It was as the scroll haddescribed, the third component, identical to the large outer spheres of the shielders themselves, with two divots on its surface to represent the eyes of the moon.
If the orb was alive, as the text had suggested, might it defend itself? Or offer some magical backlash to whoever tried to pick it from its stem? Glowing drops of water like dew coated its surface and seemed to run up from the base of the stalk, from within a fuzzy blue substrate growing atop the stone in the niche.
An itch from the back of her hand signaled her that those droplets were more dangerous than dew. Everything the mad god had touched was. To brush one might hurt her. Orkillher.
In the laboratory behind her, battle noises continued, and the storm god’s likeness railed against invaders. Scurrying sounds suggested some of the creatures had located her new position and were heading her way.
“Syla?” came a call from the front of the laboratory near the bed. Vorik.
She opened her mouth, almost calling her position, but now that she had located the orb, should she reveal herself? What if Vorik leaped over, sliced through the stalk, which could be vulnerable to his powerful magical sword, and snatched the third component before she could?
One of the bug-lizards came around a counter and into view, tongue flicking out, beady black eyes focusing on her. With eager hisses, it headed straight toward her.
With the orb on its stalk less than two feet away, Syla wrestled with indecision.
27
Vorik had been knocked awayfrom the marble bed when the cyclone struck—theyallhad been—and now he sprang from crystal workstation to table to unidentifiable object, trying to avoid the creatures swarming the floor so that he could find Syla. Though they were difficult to kill with their solid bodies and scaled carapaces, they weren’t the speediest of foes, and he’d only suffered a couple of lashes from the antennae. Those wounds burned though. More than that, his muscles felt heavy and sluggish, and he worried some venom had flowed into his bloodstream.
“Syla?” Vorik called again, worried because she hadn’t responded.
Might she have struck her head and blacked out? He’d only glimpsed her flying toward the back of the cavern. The powerful swirling wind had hurled him in another direction.
It was the creatures that made him realize Syla’s location. Some were still after Teyla—fortunately, Fel had found her quickly and was defending her, helping her return to the bed and whatever she believed it could help them with. But the other bug-lizards…
Drawn by—he assumed—moon-marks, they scurried toward the back of the laboratory. Vorik sprang past more of them, hoping to find Syla before they did. Especially if she’d been knocked out. His gut tightened at the thought of losing her to the creatures. He wanted to get the components but not that way.
“I could use a hand, Vorik,” came her call from the direction he was heading.
“Coming!” Relief renewed his strength, and he leaped from a workstation to what looked like a huge crystal pin cushion. “I have two excellent hands. Very skilled.”
That was assuming his muscles didn’t grow more sluggish. He hoped to finish this as quickly as possible so they could find a way out of here before they triggered any more of the storm god’s defenses.
“I can’t argue with that assessment,” Syla called back, the words light, but there was a tense—or scared?—warble to her voice.
“No, you cannot.”
A gust of wind blasted into Vorik when he was in midair, jumping to the next platform. It knocked him off course, and he landed on a creature heading toward Syla.
Antennae slapped him before he could spring free. He received another painful welt—another brush with whatever cilia delivered the venom. Irritated, he slashed his sword throughbothantennae, then twisted his grip and drove the blade into the back of the creature’s broad skull.
Leaving it to die, he rushed toward numerous glowing crystals and artifacts along the side wall of the canyon. Panting by the time he arrived, with the ichor of the creatures dripping from his sword, Vorik found Syla kneeling on the floor. With her tongue tucked into the corner of her mouth and her surgical kit spread before her, she lifted a small tool to pluck glowingdroplets of who knew what from a sphere a little smaller than one’s head.
Vorik gaped. Was that the orb he was supposed to find?
“Thank you for killing those things,” Syla said mid-pluck.
