Temur’s throat closed on his breath.
“Gut-worm,” he whispered soundlessly. Gut-worm, because it looked like an enormous intestine spilled on the floor. At least until it reared up on its viscous-looking rear end and clicked its sharp-tipped legs together.
A chill of terror numbed Temur’s limbs. It was one thing to face an armed man or a hungry beast of prey. Another to face a beast whose touch could melt flesh, that was reputed to carry the spark of lightning in its skin.
You do not die this way, he thought, and tightened his fingers around the shard of obsidian. Blood flowed fresh again, and the worm’s head—black, glossy, ridiculously tiny on the bloated shape of its body—swung too and fro. You do not die this way.
Hadn’t Nilufer’s witch said that Tzitzik’s ancestors had something to teach him?
No. He would not die here.
He lacerated his fingers again turning the lance-head, and did worse sawing away at the ropes. Each strand parted easily, but there were multiple wraps to cut through.
And as soon as he started sawing, the gut-worm stopped swaying side to side like a casting dog and humped its bloated body toward him. It did not move quickly. Each jerk of its form took two motions—the lunge forward of the upper parts, then the heave up of the hindquarters. Slap, then scrape.
As a method of locomotion, it would have been hideously fascinating if Temur had not been experiencing it from eye level and the perspective of a target. His hands free, he gathered himself. They could spit acid, it was said, as well as hurl miniature lightning. He would have to move fast.
And his ankles were still bound, but no time for that now.
It reared up one last time, towering an arm span over the floor where Temur lay. He saw its body swell.
He heaved himself up and dove behind the nearest bier, trying to roll as he fell, trying to keep his grip on the dull end of the lance head. A pool of glowing yellow bile splattered where he had lain, smoking on the stone floor. A brief sharp crack, thunder’s little brother, followed.
Clay pots rocked and shattered as Temur kicked through them. He slashed his ankles free—an easier task than the hands. The stench of the gut-worm’s poison vomit brought water to his eyes and stung his skin. More tamed lightning crackled around it. He could not get close to that thing. And yet here he was without bow, without arrows, in a tomb full of crumbling weapons and dead men’s bones.
Meanwhile, the gut-worm turned to seek him again. It dropped down and dragged its front another span. Temur stole a glimpse across the top of the bier and cursed as the thing spit again. Acid splashed against the crumbling armor of the warrior laid out there, eating into what remained of his bones.
Can’t touch it, Temur thought. Can’t let it see me. Have to kill it somehow.
There was the lance head, but no shaft. There was the scrap of sacking still stuck in the ropes around his neck.
There were the stoppered clay pots of grave goods he crouched among.
He tucked the lance head into his loincloth and hefted a pot the size of his head. Heavy. Heavy and full of something that rattled. The clay stopper was sealed in with pitch.
He stood fluidly, sidearmed the pot, and hurled. The worm clicked furiously and whipped its upper body aside, but Temur had been aiming for the fat, half-fluid body it dragged behind. The pot shattered, spilling coins that might have been gold this way and that. The worm shrieked, its body splashing away from the point of impact in visible waves.
Temur winced and ducked again. That had hurt it, but not enough. How many pots of coins were available?
Not, he suspected, enough.
There had to be a better way. He slung another coin pot and dodged from the closer bier behind the farther, taller one, nearly knocking himself prone on a support column along the way.
Support column. Carefully, he peered over the edge of the bier, hoping the worm’s eyesight was not good enough to notice eyes peeking through a headless dead man’s dusty ribcage. And yes, there were more columns, scattered here and there throughout the room. Which had to be maintained, because if the wood of the lance shafts had crumbled to dust, would not the wooden columns that bore the very weight of the earth piled overhead do the same?
The only problem with his plan was that he’d have to close with the worm to put it into practice.
There were more coin pots here. He snatched one up and hurled it, sidestepping as he did. This time he did not throw it at the worm, but rather at the wall behind the worm.
As he had hoped, the worm jerked at his motion. Then it whipped around, wasting its venom on the empty space where the jar had shattered. Temur vaulted the bier, scattering dry bones, and dodged around luminescent venom. He ran not for the worm but past it, closer to the wall where the sealed-up entrance lay, and struck the wooden column there with all the strength of his shoulder.