The scene shifted again and Kormak felt as if he was on the verge of witnessing some new momentous change, but then the whole city began to shake once more as if in the grip of an earthquake. In the distance he could hear the sound of a great heartbeat, shaking the entire world so violently that it threatened to tumble apart. The vibration was so great that it swept him from side to side as he fell, battering him off the walls as he tumbled.
Mighty winds roared in his ears. They buffeted him relentlessly. The wind howled louder than any wolf and he realised at last that it was howling his name.
“Kormak,” it said as he slammed against a wall and burning lava rose to greet him.
“Kormak,” it said as a stone floor gave way beneath him, sending a sulphurous cloud up to greet him.
“Kormak,” it said. He looked up into the face of Karnea as he came awake.
“What is it?” Kormak swallowed. His mouth felt dry. His limbs felt weak. His neck felt tense. He rose, realising that he still clutched the blade in his hand.
“You were talking in your sleep,” she said. “In the Old Tongue.”
“What was I saying?”
“You talked about Graghur and menials and war.”
“I was dreaming,” he said, and told her what he had seen.
She tilted her head and looked at him oddly. “Have you had such dreams before?
“Yes. In the past. In other places. Why?”
“Where you have dreamed of things that happened in the deep past?”
“This was just a nightmare. Brought on by this place.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe you are a sensitive. One of those who soaks up the events in a place.”
“I am no sorcerer, no diviner either.”
“It’s a gift some have,” Karnea said. “It’s not like casting a spell. Sometimes it only works when the conscious mind is at rest. Tell me honestly, do you think what you witnessed in your dream happened?”
He considered denying it. “It might have.”
She smiled at his surly tone. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it was just a dream.”
A sound came through the open doorway, a sort of heavy slithering.
“Perhaps you should have paid more attention to our surroundings and less to what I was saying,” Kormak said. “You were on watch.”
Karnea looked guilty and moved over to Boreas to wake him.
Kormak rose and stalked to the entrance and looked out. Something massive moved by in the gloom. A long snake-like torso was visible on the street outside. A mouldy stink filled the air. He slid forward into the open shopfront, sword held ready.
He looked out and saw an immense serpent. Where the head would have been on a snake there was what, at first, looked like a human torso. It might have belonged to a muscular giant of a man, except that the head was the wrong shape. It had the huge bat-like ears of a goblin and the shimmering scaly skin. It was an unholy combination of goblin and devil python and something else, a Shadow demon perhaps.
Behind it was a trail of foul-smelling slime. Its head turned and it looked back and Kormak ducked out of its line of sight. He had a brief glimpse of whitish blind-seeming eyes.
The snake thing halted. Kormak wondered whether he had been seen. His one consolation was that if he had been, the monster would have great difficulty finding its way into this cramped space. Not that it needed to, he realised. It could simply wait for them to emerge or die of starvation. Clearly this was something the goblins feared and it must be even more formidable than it looked to have frightened them.
Kormak pressed his back against the wall of the shop front and held very still. He could hear only distant beating of goblin drums. Was the creature waiting to see what he was doing or was it, even now, gliding silently closer?
He fought down the near-suicidal urge to stick his head out and take a look. Long minutes dragged by. Boreas emerged from the inner chamber and looked at Kormak enquiringly. Kormak gestured a warning for him to stay where he was and not make any noise.
He waited a while longer and remained still. The slithering started once more and slowly receded into the distance. Boreas emerged from the inner chamber. Sasha followed him.
“What was that thing?” Boreas asked.
“I don’t know,” Kormak said. “I’ve not see its like before.”
“How did it not notice us,” Sasha said. She gestured back to the doorway. The light of the everglow lantern was faint but in the dark it might as well have been a beacon.
“Sometimes the Old Ones and their creatures do not see as we do. Perhaps it was blind to ordinary light.”
“It’s very possible,” said Karnea emerging from the chamber. “After all, what use do creatures who dwell in darkness have for eyes?”