Adept (The Essence Gate War, Book 1) - By Michael Arnquist Page 0,180

She was surrounded by a dozen of her heavyset black minions, which milled about her in fretful uncertainty. The queen’s face was a charred ruin, and her heavy outer jaws hung twisted and useless from the lower part of her elongated skull. From the midst of that blackened visage, however, her green eyes burned with brilliant and unremitting malevolence. Those glowing slits raked over the room, searching for her prey. Her head lifted toward the tiny figures high above her, and her eyes narrowed. With a harsh, gurgling hiss, she burst into motion, surging for the foot of the stairway. The hive, which had become still momentarily, began to shake again with renewed vigor.

Amric’s brow furrowed. The stairs were narrow and unstable; there was no way they would support her bulk. He was about to say as much aloud when the Nar’ath queen reached the wall, and the words died in his throat. The stone wall warped at her approach, twitching and rippling like the hide of a beast. The ground lifted before her, and the stairs near the bottom melted and flowed slowly together to form the beginnings of a ramp. Amric felt a chill. The monster was reforming the place to meet her will, and it would not be long until she was able to pursue them out of the hive.

Amric glanced down. The stone beneath him had begun to shift, as when a strong ocean current pulled the sand out from beneath one’s feet. The edges of the steps were becoming less definite, rounding and disintegrating before his eyes. He shared a quick glance with the others.

“Run!” he barked. “Now!”

They raced up the stairway as it eroded and crumbled, by turns running and scrambling on all fours. When at last they reached the lip of the dome’s opening, Amric could not recall a time when he had been more grateful to stand beneath the open sky. A roar of frustration followed them as the Nar’ath queen continued her climb. Thalya, Syth and Halthak were waiting for them with the frightened horses.

“Where are the captives?” Amric asked.

“Marching back toward that outcropping of rock we camped on last night,” Thalya responded. “They are weak, and the desert may be no friendly place, but the men seemed to find it preferable to remaining near the hive.”

Amric nodded. “Nice shot, by the way. You have my thanks.”

“You are welcome,” she said. “And you owe me for that arrow.”

But she flashed a smirk as she said it, and he grinned back. Then her gaze strayed to Bellimar, taking in his bedraggled state, and her smile faded. Bellimar met her emerald eyes with an unblinking, unreadable expression. Amric tensed. The huntress had expended two of her powerful ensorcelled arrows, but she had a third remaining. It might look to her as if Bellimar was evincing a moment of vulnerability worth exploiting, but Amric had seen the vampire’s unnatural speed and strength firsthand below. In addition, the Nar’ath queen would reach the top of the dome in short order, and the battle would be resumed. They might need every weapon in their arsenal to stop her, if it was even possible to do so. A confrontation between the two of them here and now would prove disastrous for them all.

Before he could step between them, however, Thalya took a deliberate look up and down Bellimar, her cold expression promising a future reckoning, and then she turned her back on the old man. She stepped into the saddle of her black mare.

Amric let out a slow breath and swung atop his bay gelding. Sariel vaulted up to sit behind him. The others mounted their own horses, with Valkarr and Innikar riding together again, and the group began to pick their way around and down the dome as rapidly as its steep slope allowed. The horses seemed to be having an easier time on the descent than they had when climbing the structure, and Amric realized that the slope was less severe. The hive was slowly sinking, settling as it shook, almost deflating. The riders picked up speed, coaxing the horses to a sliding trot over the crumbling surface.

With a shriek like tearing metal, the Nar’ath queen burst from the hive. Her baleful gaze fell upon the riders, and long black claws tore into the stone as she surged forward after them.

“I hope you have a plan to stop that thing, swordsman,” Syth called as he cast worried looks over his shoulder. “That arrow only seems