The Ippos King (Wraith Kings #3) - Grace Draven Page 0,35

blue sparks of sorcery flickering earlier under the blanket covering Megiddo now encased the entire bier in a halo of luminescence. It spilled onto the ground, spreading in a pool that surrounded Serovek. The margrave lay on his back, face contorted into an expression of agony, jaw clenched. He breathed hard through his nose, and his eyes squeezed shut as if refusing to gaze upon some horror that faced him in the most terrifying of dreams.

He muttered a string of words, all of them nonsensical. Anhuset reached for him, intent on bodily dragging him away from the bier and out of the stall where the magic pulsed and swelled. She froze in mid-crouch, every hair on her nape standing on end, as laughter—insane, unnatural, and otherworldly—echoed throughout the stable.

Chapter Five

A Kai under a blue sun.

Demons danced in the maelstrom of Serovek's nightmare. He stood in a whirling darkness, hemmed in by a miasma of smoke that shrieked and gibbered. If evil had a voice, it sounded like this. Icy horror spilled over him. He knew that sound. It had filled his ears as he, a monk, a chieftain's son, an exiled nobleman, and a Kai king battled their way through the ruined streets of Haradis to reach the chamber whelping galla like a diseased womb. This wasn't the chamber from which they spilled; it was the womb itself.

Something slithered against his shoulder while something else flitted along his fingertips—thin, sharp, like the edge of a razor. He recoiled, jerking to one side even as he pulled away. A mad gibber abused his ear, and the smoke spun and whipped around him, tattered veils caught in a hard wind. Within the gloom, he spotted pinpoints of crimson and cerulean light that flickered and darted to and fro. Eyes, he thought. They were eyes, and they watched him with the predatory stare of the ravenous.

Laughter rebounded off invisible walls, echoing back and back until one peal faded only to be replaced by another. Serovek gasped at the unearthly, inhuman scream above the mad cacophony. An awful, agonized shriek of despair, it built and built until he thought its reverberation might shatter his skull into a thousand pieces.

Instead of running from the ghastly clamor, he raced toward it. Desperation roiled in his gut to reach the source of torment and stop it. He batted away unseen hands tipped in claws as pointed as any Kai's. Sinuous tethers wrapped around his legs and grasped his arms as he hurtled in the direction of the ungodly screaming. The hovering feral eyes followed, watching him with a palpable hunger.

He plowed through shield walls of shadow thick as the morning mists that purled over High Salure before the sun burned them way. The sun didn't reach this unclean place to immolate its disease and never would. Mantle after mantle of convulsing darkness tore beneath his hands as he struggled to reach the voice of penultimate suffering. He stumbled, almost falling, when something firmer than shadow glanced off his side, leaving a burning sensation along the ladder of his ribs.

The tortured voice was louder now, closer, and where he'd heard only guttural screaming before, Serovek now made out words along with sobbing. Pleas for mercy, for surcease from the pain. Prayers not to many gods, but to one. Another tide of horror cascaded over him. He recognized the god's name and the voice of the man whose beseeching cries fell on a deity's deaf or uncaring ears.

“Megiddo!” he bellowed into the heavy gloom, and the gloom spasmed at the name before taking up the call in a venomous chant.

“Megiddo! Megiddo! Megiddo!”

The screaming halted just as Serovek burst through a drape of darkness into a pallid twilight. What greeted made him want to shriek as well. Megiddo hung before him, impaled at numerous points on a scaffolding of short spikes, a corona of blue light shimmering around him. He didn't bleed, but his skin bore the look of earth trapped in drought, fractured and fissured to reveal more of the cerulean luminescence.

Shadows spiraled around him, fluid and quick, revealing monstrous visages with gaping maws and glowing eyes that glittered with a twisted kind of glee. They capered through and around the scaffolding, a construction of polished blackness that reminded Serovek of obsidian and reflected the light spilling from Megiddo's eidolon. The shadows wrenched the structure one way and then the other, creating a torsion that wracked the captive monk's body in every direction until the snap of bone echoed