Thief Who Spat in Luck's Good Eye by Michael McClung

Author:Michael McClung [Michael McClung]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ragnarok Publications
Published: 2016-06-14T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

When Holgren opened the first gate to Thagoth, we went through one at a time. When we plummeted through this one together, I found out why.

Stepping through that first gate had been unpleasant. To disappear from one place and reappear in another the next instant wasn’t a natural act, and my body had known it. This time, both Holgren and I occupied the same non-space, the same space between here and there, the same fissure in reality. We shared an intimacy that living things were not meant to know. There are no reference points, nothing to proceed from. It was as if our very souls mixed and intermingled. I saw—I felt—just who he was, his own essence, whatever made him him. And he saw and felt me. For that brief eternity, we became each other. It was terrifying and elating. Then it was over.

We hit the ground hard with Holgren on top of me. The familiar, putrid stench of the death lands forced its way into my nostrils. I suppressed my gag reflex, breathed through my mouth. I pushed Holgren off me and looked back to see if anything was coming after us.

Something was.

Through the rapidly dwindling gate hurtled Ruiqi, a look of abject terror on her face. Was she trying to escape the Shadow King, or had she been sent to do his bidding? I wished that I had a knife.

Most of her made it. The gate contracted down to nothing just after her knees cleared. The double amputation was instantaneous. Her scream was a twin of the one Holgren had uttered months before in this very spot.

She fell to the ground next to us and writhed and shrieked in the dark. Blood spurted from the stumps of her legs, dark gouts spraying the hideous foliage around us as she twisted in agony. I saw the pale, fleshy flowers of a thorny shrub bend down to catch her blood.

I couldn’t leave her like that. She had tried to warn me of what the Shadow King was capable of, had tried to help in her own way. However, she had fallen under his sway, she had obviously tried to balk his will more than once with horrifying results. I didn’t trust her or even like her, but walking away from her was beyond me.

“Help me out if you can, Holgren. We’ve got to get tourniquets on her legs. Rip some strips from your cloak. I’ll find sticks or something to twist ‘em with.”

“All right.” His voice was weak but certain. He began to rip at his threadbare cloak. I searched around the area with blind hands, trying to find a stick or even a rock, something to tighten the strips of cloth around her stumps and stop the bleeding. I came across a moldering piece of canvas.

It was the remains of the pack I’d thrown down months ago in my haste to drag Holgren to safety. I searched some more with greater hope.

The contents were scattered far and wide. I found the shovel I’d missed while burying Holgren and, after a few seconds, a pickax.

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