eyeball, but he could not raise his hands to remove the irritation.
Someone had buried him.
But I’m not dead! Why would someone bury me alive?
Panic rippled through his body, but still he could move nothing but his eye. The last thing he could remember was Duon’s foolish attempt to free them from Husk’s clutches. It had obviously not worked. Conal could have told the stupid southerner and the fat girl it would not work, the voice was too clever for them. He could feel the voice even now, nestled in the back of his head, ready to inflict further suffering on him and everyone else.
Conal willed his muscles to move, but there was no response. His head was clear of rocks and dirt, but the rest of him had been covered. Why, why, why? Had he been caught in a landslide?
A slurry of mud trickled into his good eye. He tried desperately to blink it away, but it filled the gap between his lower eyelid and his eyeball. Needles of pain burned into his eye, reducing his vision to blurred shapes.
Something moved above him.
“They buried you deep,” it said. “They must have wanted you to stay dead.”
A hand scraped the mud from his face, one of the fingernails casually scoring his eyeball. He yelped, and his mouth filled with dirt.
“Won’t be long and we’ll have you free,” said the voice. “Then we’ll see what shape you’re in. Not good, I expect.”
While Conal attempted to spit out the dirt, the figure busied itself clearing mud and rocks from the priest’s torso and limbs, humming all the while. It seemed to take forever.
“Who are you?” Conal forced the words out.
The figure bent over him and the face drew close. Conal screamed.
The storm had blown itself out. All that remained was a thin, cold rain spattering from low, formless cloud. Lenares insisted the hole in the world had gone and that Umu was nowhere near, so Kannwar had let the barrier above them dissolve.
Strength had been slow to return to Robal’s limbs. Even now, hours later, he leaned against the cracked base of the former column at the edge of Corata Pit, his shaky legs barely able to bear his weight. The Destroyer apologised to him for such an abrupt and deep drain of his energy, but stopped short of acknowledging it as theft. Instead, it seemed he wished for praise, repeatedly emphasising how Stella had survived and the barrier had held.
“Had you not been willing to give of yourself, many more people would have died,” the man said in an oily voice. Robal seethed at the patronising words. “Though the depth of your strength was a surprise. You kept pouring yourself at me long after I’d taken what I thought you could bear.”
What on earth was the loathsome man talking about?
His wittering continued. “Have you ever been tested for magical potentia1?”
“We don’t do that in Faltha,” Robal responded. He didn’t care how rude he sounded; this man could not be borne.
“I have returned the favour,” said the Destroyer. “You should be feeling better. I infused you with some of my own strength.” When Robal didn’t respond, the man frowned and said: “You should be honoured. In Andratan my servants compete to be the ones I drain to perform my magic.”
“This isn’t Andratan. I gave nothing to you willingly, thief. You took it. You ripped it out of us.”
“Your queen lay dying on the ground, man! What did you want me to do? Hold a meeting perhaps? The Daughter could have struck at any time. Lenares’ brave actions gave me the time to repair the canopy, and then everyone’s strength kept Stella alive. How can you find fault with that?”
“There is no fault,” Stella said.
Her voice had an odd timbre, as it had since she had awoken; something damaged in her throat perhaps. Whatever the cause, it made Robal’s flesh creep.
“No fault,” she repeated. “Everyone did what they could. Now we need to move on.”
Robal flushed at the rebuke. How could the woman be so ignorant of the Destroyer’s manipulation? Or was the priest right after all? Was she in his thrall? He settled for casting a single glare at the Destroyer.
“Move on from blame, or move on from this pit?” said Anomer.
“Both,” she replied, “but particularly the former.” Absently she scratched at her face and a piece of skin flaked off.
Something is wrong. Stella is conscious of her appearance. She ought to have noted that. A dark suspicion entered his mind, but he