The Storm Weaver & The Sand by Williams Sean

Author:Williams, Sean [Williams, Sean]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: E-Reads, Ltd.
Published: 2010-07-01T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

A SMALL AMOUNT OF LIGHT

Sal was more relieved than he’d ever been when they reached the bottom of the tunnel and found themselves in a smooth, straight passage free of hideous faces. Light shone softly in the distance. The last stretch had been awful beyond imagining, as the formless pressure in the air had closed around the light like a suffocating smog. He had begun to hear voices—or imagined that he could—just beyond his hearing. Strange, silent cries, wordless and agonised, seemed to hang frozen in the air, demanding a response. He had to bite his tongue to stop himself from shouting out—not in reply, but to beg it to cease.

As soon as the light ahead of them was bright enough to see by, he gratefully let the globe sputter and fade. It hadn’t dimmed even slightly during their descent, and he sensed that it still had plenty of light remaining in reserve. Stopping it from releasing it all at once was the problem. Instead of delivering a trickle, it wanted a flood. Keeping it in check had been more exhausting than starting it in the first place.

In his head, keeping him going, were the words of Lodo from weeks back, when the old man had given him the globe: A thing is only as valuable as the need it fills, he had said. I think you will need a little light in the future, wherever you go. Glad that he had followed the impulse to bring the globe with him, knowing only that they were going underground for an unknown length of time, he had summoned the patterns Skender had showed them in the Keep and brought the globe to life. Just a small amount of light can dispel the deepest darkness. The Mage Erentaite had told him that in the city of the Nine Stars. And it was true; the suffocating tentacles in the tunnel of faces had been pushed back for a while, allowing him to breathe again.

Shilly let go of him and sagged gratefully onto her crutch. Her assistance in maintaining the charm had been essential, although he wondered just how much of its effects she had experienced. The eyes of the faces in the bas-relief walls and ceilings had seemed to move as they passed, following him, winking or rolling maniacally. Strange shadows had swirled around the globe, like moths around a flame, desiring the light but wary of it at the same time. And around the face of the golem—

Perhaps Shilly had seen that, too: Lodo’s face wreathed with ghostly tentacles and fringes, as though one of Fairney’s many-limbed underwater creatures was growing out of it. If she had seen it, that would explain the additional tension he sensed in her. The ghostly fringes hadn’t been there when the golem had collapsed to the ground. They had appeared only when it awoke and took control of Lodo’s body. Sal was convinced that what he was seeing was the golem itself—the strange, bodiless thing that inhabited Lodo’s flesh and made it dance to its will.

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