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They had left him his prosthetics but his crutches were gone; and so, Zolf reflected grimly, they might just as well have taken it all. He struggled into a seated position, fighting the panic that arose as the burlap sack that was tied around his face pressed against his nostrils with each desperate sucking inhale. The ground beneath him was hard-packed dirt. He had the uneasy sense of not being able to tell whether he was being held in a building or outside–the air was cold, but windless, and he could sense neither the shelter of roof and walls nor the freedom of sky. All he could sense was that, beyond the bag over his head, there was light enough to see. His hands were tied behind his back. He was not alone.
Someone was sobbing next to him, as quietly as they could. They sounded young and terrified. On his other side, Zolf thought he could hear the labored breathing and shifting of one or two more creatures.
“Hey,” Zolf whispered. The weeping stopped with a sharply indrawn breath. “I don’t know what’s happening, but…” He groped for words, trying to think of what someone else would say. Someone to whom kindness came more readily than honesty.
“We’re going to be okay, all right? I’ve been in worse situations than this.” That, at least, was true. “Name’s Zolf.”
The voice next to him heaved and stuttered before finding itself. “I–I’m Ishak. Ishak Saleh Amoun al-Tahan. Wh–where are we?”
Zolf felt a lump of cold iron drop from his heart to his bowels. “You’re not Hamid’s little brother?”
The figure next to him gasped. His body shifted and wriggled excitedly. “Yes! You know my brother? Are you a mercenary too?”
The exhale that forced itself from Zolf was half-laugh, half-sob. “I–no. I used to be. It’s a long story.”
“Where are we? What’s happened?”
“I don’t know, Ishak.” He had left the tavern in Prague to limp back to the cheap boarding house on his mundane prosthetics and crutches. Wilde had made good on his promise, he’d give the man that much. The new legs weren’t bad and had been properly fitted. The water legs had dissolved when Zolf had ripped the driftwood dolphin from his neck and flung it into the Vltava. He could still feel the sting of the leather cord snapping against his skin. Since then he’d dedicated himself to quietly drinking away the last few thousand gold he’d earned as leader of the London Rangers (Wilde had smirkingly let him know they’d worked on the name without him), waiting for someone who wanted to hire an ex-cleric, ex-pirate, ex-Navy dwarf with no legs.
The black-robed figures had accosted him almost as soon as he’d left the tavern. He’d seen the faces of passers-by turn away and didn’t blame them for a second as the figures forced a bag over his head and bound his hands behind him. He had struggled more for the look of the thing than anything else.
“I’m only going to say this once.” The uncanny voice seemed to come from beneath miles of cold black water. Zolf felt himself hauled upright by his upper arms, prosthetics scraping the ground. “We won’t try to catch you. You’re not worth it. Don’t fall.”
Then the bottom had dropped out of the world. Zolf would have screamed if his mouth had not been several thousand miles ahead of his vocal cords. Everything in him had stretched, and snapped, and painfully reconvened; and then he was lying in the dirt, blind and bound, with a weeping young halfling beside him.
Someone on the other side of him groaned. Zolf could tell by the sound of their body shifting against the floor that they were large. After a moment, a male voice said something in a language Zolf didn’t recognize.
“Sorry, mate. English?”
Ishak said something in what might have been Arabic.
The voice rumbled again.
“He wants to know where we are,” said Ishak.
“Could have guessed that without the translation. I don’t know. My name is Zolf. Do you speak English?”
“Yes.” The voice was agitated and rough. “I can’t–” The man struggled audibly against his bonds. “Where are we? What is this place?”
“Question of the hour, mate.”
Another groan, smaller and higher-pitched. The creature just beyond the recently awakened one with the deep voice sounded, to Zolf’s practiced ear, like they were in a bad way.
“Right. Names and languages, as best we can, or this is going to be impossible. Even more impossible than it already is. My name’s Zolf, I’m a dwarf, and English is pretty much all I’ve got.” Or ancient Greek, he thought but did not say. Someday it was bound to come in handy.
“Ishak Saleh Amoun al-Tahan.” The young halfling was trying to keep himself together. “Egyptian, halfling, er…Arabic and English.”
“Al-Tahan like the bank?” The voice was still slurred, but Zolf was relieved to hear that the smaller creature was awake enough to hear and respond.
“Er…yes. My family…” Ishak trailed off.
“My name is Emeka. I was taken from my village in Kenya. I am an orc. I want to know what is happening and who is responsible.”
“That makes two of us, Emeka. And…”
There was a ragged inhale. “Vesseek. Schlupwinkelzwanzig Berlin. M’a goblin. If that’s a problem best have it out now.”
“Ain’t a problem for me. You all right, Vesseek? I’m a cl–I’ve got some medical training. You sound a bit worse for wear.”
“I’ll be all right. They didn’t take me without a fight is all.”
“Everyone bound and hooded?”
Murmured assent rose from the group. “Figured, but best to make sure. Right then. We don’t know where we are, or why, or who brought us here.”
“They were powerful magic users,” Ishak piped up. “I’ve never been teleported before. Proper weird, it was.”
“Yeah, good point. Also, I should point out that when we find a way out of here, I’m gonna need some help to move.” Zolf thumped his left prosthetic against the floor. “Don’t have any legs.”
He felt the orc lean closer to him, until he could smell Emeka’s sweat. “You have all my strength, Zolf. Were your legs taken in the–teleport?” He pronounced it like it was a word he’d never heard before.
“Ah, no.” Zolf was grateful for the darkness. It hid the tears that sprung to his eyes. “Unrelated. Long life of adventuring, you know? Thanks, Emeka.”
A kick to his back sent him sprawling to the floor again. Bastards must have been standing there the whole time. His chin hit the stone painfully and he tasted blood. Ishak’s sobbing broke out anew, and Zolf heard grunts and scuffles as Emeka and Vesseek tried to fight. Someone’s head hit the floor--he guessed it was Vesseek–-with a thud that made Zolf tremble with rage and fear.
“Shut up.” It was the voice that had taken him in Prague. Zolf could feel the deep coldness in his bones. He was jerked upright by the back of his shirt. “Be still. Act your part.”
“What bloody part might that be?” For all the times Zolf had needed to say something and couldn’t, there were times like this when he couldn’t shut up to save his life. He choked and gasped as the owner of the voice kicked him in the sternum.
“Bait.”
We just want you to stop what you’re doing. That’s it. A smooth, oily voice rippled not through their ears but through their minds. It was the voice of a person Zolf would have hated on sight even if he hadn’t heard it bound and blind.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Emeka’s voice was hoarse and somewhat slurred. Kicked in the teeth, Zolf would guess. “Stop what? I have never seen these people before. We are not doing anything!”
If you flood the place, we’ll kill one of them. The figures standing behind them shifted slightly. Zolf’s mind was racing. Bait. They were bait. Ishak had been brought there to put pressure on Hamid, obviously, which meant that–
Zolf drew in a lungful of fetid air. “Don’t listen to them, Sasha!” he bellowed. “Keep going!” Something slammed into the back of his head and he fell forward into oblivion.
He hurt. The sharp pain in his cheekbone stood out in vivid relief against the dull, throbbing ache at the back of his head. Zolf groaned weakly and tried to sit up.
“Mr. Zolf? Mr. Zolf, are you okay? I–I could–” Fabric rustled against the hard-packed dirt as Ishak scooted his body closer. Zolf could hear the young halfling’s shaky breath.
“M’all right, Ishak. How’re the others?”
Emeka growled. “I knocked one of them down, I think. The cowards have left us. If my hands were free…” He trailed off. “I think Vesseek is badly hurt. I can’t rouse him.”
Zolf crawled inside his own guilt like an animal into its den. Once there had been a place inside him where he had drawn on Poseidon’s power. His mind dropped into that place during his dawn meditations, a place as free and unbounded as the sea itself. All he’d had to do was ask and obey, and he could help the people around him. All he’d had to do was humble himself. He could have been of use. Now that place inside him was gone, and nothing had filled it, and there was a goblin with a head wound bleeding out on the floor a few feet from him. He was useless. Nothing but a liability.
“Sasha…” said Ishak. Zolf startled to hear her name said in what was unmistakably a younger, even more naive version of Hamid’s voice. “Is she…is she Hamid’s friend? The one with the daggers?”
Zolf drew in a shaky breath. “That’ll be her, all right. You met her?”
“She came to my sister’s funeral. They all did. They were brilliant.” The uncomplicated hero worship in the boy’s voice was a knife to Zolf’s heart.
He’d been too wrapped up in his own self-pity to work it out, but it was obvious that the dead halfling singer in Prague had been this boy’s sister. Hamid’s sister. Her portrait had been plastered all over the city; first advertising some opera or other, and then draped in black in tawdry souvenir programmes. It had been all he could do to withstand the fear effect Kafka had cast over Prague. He’d deliberately avoided the newspapers after that, but it had been impossible to escape hearing about the tragically heroic death of Sir Bertrand McGuffingham in an attempt to save beloved soprano Aziza Hawaa al-Tahan. Another emotional morass that he’d avoided by walking away. That was what being a hero got you.
“I’m sorry, Ishak. I…I lost my brother. Many years ago now.” It surprised him how easily it slipped out. Normally that particular bit of painful truth was locked so deeply away he couldn’t have spoken it aloud if he’d wanted to.
The halfling was weeping again. “Does it stop hurting?”
“No. But you keep on going, and after a while the hurt becomes a part of you. For better or worse, you can’t think who you’d be without it.”
After that there was a long silence. Zolf was pretty sure Ishak fell asleep. Emeka had gotten to his feet and begun to pace around cautiously in slowly widening circles. Zolf listened to Emeka’s footsteps and Vesseek’s stertorous breathing as he stared into the darkness, even though all his vision could show him was the inside of the tightly woven burlap over his face.
Eventually the orc gave a grunt of surprise.
“What is it, Emeka?”
“Standing stone. Taller than me.” More shuffling sounds. “Two of them, like a…a doorway.”
There was a rending sound like the visceral silken rip of walking through a spiderweb. Zolf could not hear Emeka’s footsteps anymore. He shouted the orc’s name, causing Ishak to start up in fear beside him.
“What is it, Zolf?”
“Emeka found something. A doorway. I don’t–”
Another rending sound and Emeka’s voice roared through the air, shouting their names. His feet pounded the earth as he raced toward them. Zolf shouted back, and the orc stumbled to a halt just in time to avoid charging over and into them.
“Zolf,” he panted. “Thank the gods. What’s happened? Are you all right?”
“S’only been a minute, Emeka. Are you all right?”
The orc’s breathing caught. He was silent for a few seconds, and then said, “Been running for…hours. Through the doorways. One bare dirt room after another. You say it’s only been…”
“Then this place is a trap,” Zolf said slowly. “A demiplane, or a series of demiplanes. Outside of time, outside of the world.” He felt Ishak’s breathing begin to come in ragged whimpers, and he shifted his body until they were sitting back to back. His fingers found the boy’s trembling hands. “Hey. Hey. Stay with us, Ishak. We’re gonna get out of here, all right? People travel between planes all the time. We’ll think of something.”
“My sister will come for us. Nothing will stop her.” Emeka had slumped to the ground, exhausted. “Azu is the bravest and kindest of orcs.”
“Right,” said Zolf. “
“Do you think they could hear you?” asked Ishak. “When you told them not to listen.”
Zolf shook his head. “I dunno. But if they’re all together–Sasha and Hamid, and Azu, and…whoever Vesseek is important to–”
“Oh, he’s called Grizzop!” The panic had faded already from Ishak’s voice. Zolf envied him. “He was with Hamid too. He’s amazing! He’s a paladin, I think.”
“Sure. If they’re all together, then they’re on a job. And if these guys are trying to stop ‘em, then it must be important. We’re a distraction. I didn’t want her to stop doing what she needed to do.”
“I will say it again,” Emeka growled. “Nothing will stop Azu from coming here. Family is not a distraction. Family is everything.”
Zolf shrugged as expressively as he could. It was a waste of energy, since no one could see, but it was some relief to his aching shoulders. “They got a choice to make, Emeka. I ain’t always made the right choices. Sometimes it feels like there’s no way to do good in this world. Sometimes it feels like there’s too many ways, and every one of ‘em works out bad for someone. Whatever choice they make, I hope…” he trailed off. “I guess I don’t know what to hope for. I just hope.”
***
Time passed strangely with no sun or change in the light to mark the hours. Even the needs of their own bodies seemed somehow distant and unreal. When the figures returned to drag the others off Zolf shouted at them that Vesseek had a head wound, that Ishak was a child. All it got him was a sharp kick to the kidney that made him writhe in silent agony. Zolf was alone. He lay panting against the dirt for several minutes before painfully hauling himself to a seat. He knew the others weren’t there, could tell by the sound of his own breathing and the empty chill of the air around him that he was the only one, but he shouted their names until his voice gave out.
There was nothing to stop him from meditating. He could imagine the sea, but that wasn’t the same as being able to access its vastness and power and so Zolf turned his mind away from the sound of the waves. He sat alone and silent and meditated on the future. For the first time in his life he meditated without expectation, without the thought of trading his will and obedience for power. He dropped his mind out of the cramped, cold present and into a boundless realm of possibility. Zolf meditated, and prayed, and hoped.
The dull, grinding roar that filled the space had Zolf lurching to feet that weren’t there anymore in a desperate attempt to run away before his brain had even registered what he heard. He fell to the ground and scrabbled helplessly, his veins flooded with panic. It was some minutes before he could force himself to slow his breathing and override the signals in his mind that said the room was caving in and the bag over his head was suffocating him. It sounded like a cave-in, he told himself. But this was not a mine. He knew what a mine felt like, knew how you could feel the ceiling above your head even if there was clearance; and he knew the smell of rock and stale water. This was not a mine. He had enough air to breathe. The sound was distant and receding.
***
There was a rending sound, and then the sound of several people running. Zolf barely had time to turn toward the noise before they had reached him.
“All right, boss?” His bonds were cut with a quick, skillful stroke. Someone ripped the hood from his head and then Sasha was looking at him with a smirking glint in her eye. Zolf inhaled greedily and flexed his aching shoulders. The light in the room was dim and a gray fog drifted strangely in the windless air. There was no ceiling and no walls that he could perceive. Around them stood a ring of standing stones arranged into doorways, just as Emeka had described.
Zolf looked beyond Sasha to the rest of the group that had run into the room. Hamid was there, looking warily from Zolf back to the doorway they’d presumably run through. The halfling had been altered by grief in the days since they’d seen each other.
No. It wasn’t grief–or it wasn’t just grief. Zolf could see the darkness under Hamid’s eyes and the way his face had sharpened and drawn inward. There was something more. Even in the odd gray light he could see the change in Hamid’s skin, the metallic highlights that danced across his face when he turned his head. His face was no less handsome than Zolf had last seen it, but now it held the suggestion of a snout; and his curved fingers cast a shadow of claws.
There were three figures whose armor glowed so brightly he had to narrow his eyes: an orc, a goblin, and a human. Paladins all, Zolf assumed, though he’d never known a paladin’s armor to glow like that. Usually the gleam of holy superiority was implied. At the back of the group was a tall elf woman who had at one point been elegantly dressed but now looked bedraggled and exhausted.
“Didn’t take you long to get into trouble without me to look after you, did it?” Sasha looked well. No evidence of the ailment that had brought her to his room on the airship, scared and skittish as an injured wild predator, to show him her freshly bloodied scar. Maybe she’d found someone more helpful.
“There’s three more of us. They dragged the rest away somewhere, I don’t know where. Help me up.” She reached for his arm. The orc ran to assist her and they lifted him from the floor. Zolf stumbled as his cramped thighs almost refused to do their job. The elf woman strode towards the center of the stone circle and knelt to the ground, reaching a cautious hand towards the floor. Zolf was not so exhausted and disoriented that he missed the profound distrust in Sasha’s eyes as she watched her walk by. Sasha glanced down at his prosthetics.
“You and Poseidon on the outs again?”
“Pretty much. Now’s not the time.”
“No magic!” The elf woman had leapt backward from whatever she had been trying to do, shaking her hand as if it had been burnt.
“Who’s that then?”
“Now’s not the time.”
“Sasha, did you finish the job?”
“Told you so!” shouted the goblin, already turning and running from the room. As he ran he nocked an arrow in his bow and fired it at the floor near the doorway. “This guy gets it! Come on!”
He was slowing Sasha down and he knew it. “Took three paladins to replace me, did it?” he muttered as she and the orc helped him stagger to the door.
She snorted. “Grizzop replaced you. That’s the little fella. Azu replaced Bertie–”
“Hello,” said the orc gravely.
“Your brother was all right, last I was with him,” said Zolf. Azu’s eyes widened and she clapped the hand that wasn’t holding Zolf over her mouth.
They had reached the doorway. There was a mercifully brief version of the pulled-apart feeling Zolf loathed, and then they were in an identical stone circle to the one they had left.
“And Ed–-erm, I dunno about Ed, actually. We found him in Rome. I think he’s a friend of Bertie’s or something.”
“Rome? Sasha, what were you doing in Rome?”
“What are we doing in Rome, you mean.” Hamid had drawn his crossbow. “You okay, Zolf?”
“Yeah. I will be. Listen, this place is a trap,” said Zolf. The others had moved off to peer through doorways. The goblin was hopping from foot to foot with wild impatience. “Doors don’t lead to the same place every time. Emeka tried to get out.” Zolf tried to cling to a train of thought. Rome . Where arcane magic was bizarre and unpredictable, and the gods did not wish to venture too close even when their foolhardy followers risked it. The city had been punished as thoroughly as a place could be, blasted and ruined until it was little more than a cautionary tale.
A crack, a tremor, and the doorway they had just run through collapsed to the ground in a cloud of dust. Zolf jerked backwards instinctually and Sasha gave a grunt of surprise as she tightened her grip on his arm.
“We need to stay together,” said Hamid. “Zolf, did you–”
“Ishak’s here, somewhere. He was fine.” Hamid gasped out a sob of relief and visibly pulled himself together.
“This one!” shouted Grizzop.
It was hard to see through the fog, but the body on the ground must have been Vesseek. Grizzop ran to them, calling their name, then gently turned them over and placed his hands on their chest. Azu began to shout a warning.
“Divine magic,” said Zolf. “Might work, long as he’s still right with his god.” The empty place inside of him ached, as his missing legs sometimes ached.
Vesseek leapt to his feet. The goblins briefly embraced and then Grizzop pulled the longsword from his belt and thrust it at them. They raced back the way they had come, Vesseek calling “Wotcher, Zolf!” over his shoulder as they sped by.
The figure in the next room was unmistakably not a hostage. It stood with its back to the entering party, fully robed in black and hands extended over a glowing crystal ball. Sasha shoved Zolf towards Azu and took off running, drawing a dagger as she did so. Azu lowered him slightly more gently to the ground, with a stammered suggestion of an apology, and ran after her. Zolf had just enough time to think that Sasha had gotten faster, stronger, more sure of herself, before the dagger made contact with the black-cloaked figure and exploded in her hand. A flash of blinding blue-white light coursed through the fog. Jagged shards of ice splintered and smashed on the floor. Sasha’s unconscious body was blown backward across the room. She skidded limply across the dirt and landed a few feet from Zolf.
Hamid screamed. The paladins ran forward, and Zolf was dimly aware that they were trading blows on the evildoer. He dragged himself forward to where Sasha lay. She was breathing. Just. Her face was covered in blood. The shards of the ice dagger had pierced her skin, her clothing, working their way towards her heart. Zolf yanked his sleeve up over his hand and wiped her face as gently as he could.
“No,” he muttered. He cradled her cheek. Her face was cold and unresponsive. “No,” he said again, louder this time. “This ain’t the end for you, do you hear me? You’ve got a whole life ahead of you. You don’t go now, all right?”
The power that flowed through him in that moment was not a gift from any god. It was of himself, intrinsic; it was a shining part of his own nature that had long been shouted down by his darker side. Now he had dropped all his defenses and allowed it to come and it burst forth, powerful and free.
Sasha gasped before her eyes opened. It startled Zolf so much that he fell backwards away from her. The golden paladin let out a final roar and smashed his morningstar down and through the cloaked figure. It fell with an unearthly scream.
Sasha pushed herself to a seat and moved her hands immediately to her bandolier. She swore. “Ah, Zolf, that was an ice dagger. A magical–oh.” She looked so crestfallen Zolf almost laughed.
“And just think, you’ve only got fourteen or fifteen daggers left.”
“Yeah, but I liked that one!” Of course she didn’t think anything of it. He’d healed her so many times. Sasha was wise in her way, but what she didn’t know about religion could fill the Channel. Why would she note the seemingly impossible contradiction of mundane prosthetics and divine healing?
The goblin paladin had seen him, though. Grizzop. He skidded to a stop next to Zolf and said, “Cleric of…?”
“Don’t reckon I know.”
Grizzop’s red eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Zolf raised his hands. “Used to be Poseidon. Definitely not anymore. Don’t reckon I know.”
Grizzop took a step back, keeping his gaze fixed on Zolf. He sketched a pattern in the air, jabbing with impatient fingers, and muttered a couplet under his breath. There was a blinding pulse of green light that swept through Zolf and out around the room. The feeling of being seen and known was overpowering. Grizzop staggered backwards, almost bowling Vesseek over, and swore.
“Did you just bloody try to detect if I’m evil?”
“Y-yeah.” The goblin was panting, hands on his knees. He slapped himself briskly in the face and shook his head. “You’re not. This place is…” He blew out a breath. “Really, really evil. But you’re not.”
“I bloody know!”
“And how’m I supposed to know that, when all you can tell me is you don’t know what you’re a cleric of?” Grizzop had fully recovered and was drawing his bow again.
“Leave it, mate. Zolf’s all right.” Sasha hoisted him from the floor and she and Azu again helped him limp for the door. “Plus you can’t shoot his knees off, he ain’t got any!”
Emeka had already torn through his bonds. The shredded remains of rope and burlap lay discarded on the ground as the orc paced angrily back and forth. When the party ran through the doorway he turned as if to spring at them and clumsily checked his movement as Azu raced forward. They crashed together in a hug that would have killed anyone else.
When Emeka saw Zolf he grinned. Before Azu could take his arm again Emeka had intervened.
“I have him, Azu. You are battle ready and I am not. As I said before, Zolf, you have all my strength.”
As they moved through the doorway, Emeka said, “What did I tell you? Azu is here, because nothing could have stopped her.”
“They made their choice all right. But I’m pretty sure they finished the job.”
The next few doorways were a series of confusing turns and false starts, and they grew more worried and frustrated with every step. The spaces between the doorways seemed to stretch out farther than they had. Zolf panted as he struggled to keep up with Emeka, even as he could feel the orc slowing himself down to match pace. He had never tried to run on these legs before. You didn’t need to run if you didn’t go looking for trouble. Doorways kept on shuddering to the ground behind them, and the roar of whatever distant force they had awakened had returned.
Hamid was growing increasingly frantic with worry about Ishak. At one point he ran back and forth through the same doorway several times, following only the pattern of his own footprints.
“Hamid!” Zolf called out, as Grizzop yelled, “Stop it!”
The halfling’s eyes were darting wildly around him. He had not appeared to notice the claws that had unsheathed themselves from his hands.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I just–”
“Don’t go through the doors!” Sasha called. She was staring through a doorway. Hamid raced to join her and she blocked him with an outstretched arm. As Zolf and Emeka followed, Zolf could see the tiny, slumped body of a young halfling through the drifting fog. “It might take you somewhere else. Go through the gaps in between!”
It was the right idea. Hamid ran for his brother, calling out his name, and clawed through the rope around his wrists. The two halflings’ sobs were mixed with frantic reassurances as they hugged each other. Ishak broke the hug first, looking around himself curiously in the shifting fog and unearthly light. When he saw Zolf he shouted excitedly and ran for the dwarf, throwing himself into a hug that would have knocked Zolf over if Emeka had not been firmly braced at his side.
“Thank you, Zolf.” Ishak’s face was pressed into his chest. Zolf patted the halfling automatically on the back. “I was so scared.”
Zolf looked over Ishak’s head and caught Hamid’s eye. He was staring at them with an expression Zolf couldn’t quite read. There was sorrow in his face, and gratitude, and something approaching resentment. Zolf remembered the catacombs under Notre Dame. Hamid had reached out to him for comfort then, for hope, and Zolf had given nothing. Had nothing to give. He didn’t know why sometimes the words came and sometimes they didn’t, why sometimes he could see a way through his own pain to reach out to someone and sometimes that way seemed impossibly barred. But now he thought he knew the place inside himself where hope came from. It was deeper than his doubts and insecurities and it was always there. It would wait when he could not reach it.
“Eldarion, we’re done! Let’s go!” Grizzop raced over to the elf woman and planted himself beside her, holding firmly to Vesseek’s hand.
“Hold hands.” Eldarion’s voice was resolute and commanding, but Zolf could hear the undercurrent of dread. Ishak ran back to Hamid, and Zolf was left with Emeka’s strong hand gripping his upper arm and the enormous golden paladin holding the other. Sasha was across the circle from him, holding hands with Hamid and Vesseek. She winked and nodded.
“See you on the other side, boss.”
Zolf had just enough time for the incongruous thought that this paladin was the most beautiful man he’d ever seen before Eldarion began to scream.
It was deep and primal. It was more of a roar than a scream. Zolf had been called upon to assist at a few births during his time in seminary, and those women had screamed as Eldarion was screaming now, because what she was doing was taking all the strength and love she possessed. She stepped backwards from the circle, joining Azu’s hand with Grizzop’s, and stared at Sasha as tears ran down her face.
A massive, yawning pit opened beneath their feet. The swelling roar that had been building steadily for several minutes now rose to an unbearable crescendo. Zolf heard Hamid shouting at everyone to close their eyes, and gratefully obeyed. Suppose I'll have to get back in touch with Wilde , he thought, and then the world dropped from under his feet and all he knew was the overwhelming chaos of an angry god and an infinite rending.