A sound tore across the earth above him.
The corridor torches went flat, flame hammered thin by shock. Dust shook from the arch. The men shouted a kind of prayer that also meant mother. The chain at his left wrist leapt. The one at his right sang. Every sigil in the iron went bright and then went dark and then went bright again.
“Stay down,” the captain yelled. “Do not open the door.”
“It hit the forest,” a guard cried. “I saw light, the trees, ”
“Stay down,” the captain repeated, and his voice had the shape a man’s voice has when he puts himself between other men and a thing with teeth. “Eyes away. Backs to the wall.”
Ryder lifted his head and bared his teeth at the slit.
Every bone in him wanted to run toward the sound. His body was a house built to run toward sounds like that; it
