screaming. The third had fled. The lion had his massive paw on the screaming guard’s chest, pinning him to the stone floor. Zarin growled as he looked back at Dar and Raia.
“You came to rescue me?” Dar said to Raia.
“We both did.” Raia pulled Dar with her to the lion. Climbing on, she scooted forward so that there was room for Dar behind her. He climbed on and wrapped his arms around her waist. He smelled faintly of mildew mixed with incense, the scent of the older parts of the temple.
“The high augurs won’t let us just leave,” Dar said.
“The high augurs are distracted right now,” Raia told him. She leaned forward and asked the kehok. “Please take us away from here.”
It was a vague order—the kind that no ordinary kehok could obey—but the lion leaped forward, kicking the downed guard with his hind paws, and raced through the corridors. He ran as if he knew the way, which was either due to Raia’s knowledge of the temple layout or whatever he remembered from his life as Emperor Zarin.
As they neared the front of the temple, Raia heard noises. Crashing. The walls were crumbling up ahead. A pillar had fallen. Dust choked the air. She saw people, augurs, running from the building, where they were herded by kehoks, who kept them pinned nearby.
The lion didn’t slow, even when Dar called out to him.
Trainer Verlas will take care of it, Raia thought. Her trainer often talked about how she was too old, that now was the time for the young. But Raia didn’t want anything to do with this. She’d happily leave it to Trainer Verlas to finish what she’d come here to do. Raia had one goal: escape to safety with Prince Dar. That was enough for her.
She’d face tomorrow when it came. For now . . . safety was all she wanted.
And safety meant running.
They ran through the streets of the city, toward the palace, and then beyond it. The racetrack loomed ahead of them, but the lion didn’t slow. He kept running, carrying them out into the desert. As the chaos of the city faded behind them, Raia felt she was back to doing what she did best: running away. Except this time, she wasn’t alone.
“Find Shalla.”
Tamra planted the image of her daughter into the mind of the nearest dozen kehoks, and she sent them plunging into the temple. “Save her.”
She mounted the silver jaguar and ran with them. Ahead of her, clearing the way, the kehoks plowed down the guards in their path and tore tapestries off the walls and knocked through pillars.
Not all the kehoks understood the word “save,” but she kept tight control over them, as well as the ones that were holding the augurs who’d spilled out of the building. Killing them wasn’t the goal, and she refused to allow the monsters to turn this into an indiscriminate bloodbath. She wasn’t after ordinary augurs; it was the high augurs she wanted. And she’d seen none of them.
The temple was a warren of countless corridors filled with exquisite tapestries and ancient mosaics. But Tamra wasn’t interested in the architecture or its history. This is too slow, she thought. “Topple it.”
She reached to the kehoks outside, and they began to wreck the temple around them—slamming into pillars, clawing apart the walls, puncturing the roofs. If the high augurs were here, this would flush them out.
But she heard only crashing. There were no human voices. The high augurs were hiding her somewhere. She had to be close!
“Stop,” she ordered them. “Keep searching.”
Deeper inside the temple, she heard the howl of jackals. An archway of darkness lay in front of them. She knew this . . . she’d heard legends about the labyrinth in the heart of the temple, where the high augurs met in secret. This is where they are, she decided.
She slowed the kehoks and stared at the opening. Two jackals were chained on opposite sides of the doorway. They cowered in the face of her monsters. She’d heard the walls were coated in poison, and the darkness was absolute. She had no torch. If she proceeded, she would have to wander through a poisonous maze in the dark in hopes that luck led her to her daughter.
Screw that, she thought. I’m done playing by their rules.
“Break the walls,” Tamra ordered.
The kehoks hurled themselves at the stone. Again and again, until the ancient stone began to crack. Fissures ran through the stone, and along the ceiling,