The Hidden City Read Online Free Page A

our people if Stragen hadn’t killed theirs first.’
    That’s very shaky moral ground, Kalten,’ Bevier said disapprovingly.
    â€˜I know,’ Kalten admitted. That’s why you have to run across the top of it so fast.’
    The sky was cloudy the following morning, thick roiling clouds that streamed in from the west, all seethe and confusion. Because it was late autumn and they were far to the north, it seemed almost that the sun was rising in the south, turning the sky above Bhelliom’s escarpment a fiery orange and reaching feebly out with ruddy, low-lying light to paint the surging underbellies of the swift-scudding cloud with a brush of flame.
    The campfires seemed wan and weak and very tiny against the overpowering chill here on the roof of the world, and the knights and their friends all wore fur cloaks and huddled close to the fires.
    There were low rumbles off to the south, and flickers of pale, ghastly light.
    Thunder?’ Kalten asked Ulath incredulously. ‘Isn’t it the wrong time of year for thunderstorms?’
    â€˜It happens,’ Ulath shrugged. I was in a thunderstorm north of Heid once that touched off a blizzard. That’s a very unusual sort of experience.’
    â€˜Whose turn is it to do the cooking?’ Kalten asked him absently.
    â€˜Yours,’ Ulath replied promptly.
    â€˜You’re not paying attention, Kalten,’ Tynian laughed. ‘You know better than to ask that question.’
    Kalten grumbled and started to stir up the fire.
    â€˜I think we’d better get back to the coast today, sparhawk,’ Vanion said gravely. The weather’s held off so far, but I don’t think we’ll be able to count on that much longer.’
    Sparhawk nodded.
    The thunder grew louder, and the fire-red clouds overhead blanched with shuddering flickers of lightning.
    Then there was a sudden, rhythmic booming sound.
    â€˜Is it another earthquake?’ Kring cried out in alarm.
    â€˜No,’ Khalad replied. ‘It’s too regular. It sounds almost like somebody beating a very big drum.’ He stared at the top of Bhelliom’s wall. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing.
    It was like a hilltop rearing up out of the forest beyond the knife-like edge of the top of the cliff – very much like a hilltop, except that it was moving.
    The sun was behind it, so they could not see any details, but as it rose higher and higher they could make out the fact that it was a kind of flattened dome with two pointed protuberances flaring out from either side like huge wings. And still it swelled upward. As they could see more of it, they realized that it was not a dome. It seemed to be some enormous, inverted triangle instead, wide at the top, pointed at the bottom and with those odd winglike protuberances jutting out from its sides. The pointed bottom seemed to be set in some massive column. Since the light was behind it, it was as black as night, and it rose and swelled like some vast darkness.
    Then it stopped.
    And then its eyes opened.
    Like two thin, fiery gashes at first, the blazing eyes opened wider and wider, cruelly slanted like cats’ eyes and all ablaze with fire more incandescent than the sun itself. The imagination shuddered back from the realization of the enormity of the thing. What had appeared to be huge wings were the creature’s ears.
    And then it opened its mouth and roared, and theyknew that what they had heard before had not been thunder.
    It roared again, and its fangs were flickers of lightning that dripped flame like blood.
    â€˜Klæl!’ Aphrael shrieked.
    And then, like two rounded, bulky mountains, the shoulders rose above the sharp line of the cliff, and, fanning out from the shoulders like black sails, two jointed, batlike wings.
    â€˜What is it?’ Talen cried.
    â€˜It’s Klæl!’ Aphrael shrieked again.
    â€˜What’s a Klæl?’
    â€˜Not
what,
you