natural depression.
The minotaur bellowed at her troops, and they gathered in a semblance of order. She did not pause for parting words with the Banites, instead trotting away from the priests, past her followers, and up the shallow western slope of the dell. The other two dozen minotaurs fell in behind their leader, disappearing into the night.
The robed acolytes doused the watchfires, clearing the space, and the remaining priests made no delay in leaving. The tentative song of the insects in the tall grasses above the dell returned. On the westward slope of the dell, where the grass was trampled by the departed minotaurs, there was movement.
A screen woven of weeds and dusted with soil slowly pulled back. First Shan, then Cynda, took long, careful looks at their surroundings.
Cynda’s face bore a grimace, and her sister saw that her left arm hung at a painful angle. In the moonless night, the subtleties of their fingertalk would be unreadable, but it was clear that one of the five-hundred-pound brutes had trod on Cynda’s shoulder as it jogged out of the dell. Shan moved to put her hands against her sister’s shoulder so she could wrench the arm back into place, but Cynda stopped her, pressing a finger to her lips.
It would have to wait. They could not risk the sound of the shoulder popping back into its socket.
There would have been no accompanying gasp of pain to guard against. Even if she’d had a voice to cry out with, Cynda’s discipline was better than that.
Shan placed four fingers on the back of her sister’s bare hand and drummed, creating the familiar beat of a horse at full gallop. They would need to find fast mounts to get ahead of the minotaurs, and use all their trailcraft to find the swiftest route. No road led into the Spires of Mir from the Banite holdings, so the halflings and the minotaurs would be racing across unbroken ground.
Cynda made a careful sweep of their impromptu blind. They would leave no sign they had been there. She moved as quickly as she dared, because the only advantage they possessed was that they, unlike the minotaurs, knew that a race was being run. They knew they must be the first to reach Argentor, the only place the minotaurs could be bound.
Peace is never a simple choice
.
—“Helpful Janna Seeks a Husband”
The Founding Stories of Calimshan
N OW RELEASE!” SHOUTED F LEK .
At the young earthsouled man’s signal, Cephas let go of the energy that rolled in his gut like the fear of falling. He thought of it as a snatch of melody, notes from the unending song of the earth that he gathered inside himself. As Flek and the other genasi of Argentor had taught him, he directed the pulse of force down through the sole of his foot, timing its flow so that it rushed back into the earth just as he brought his foot down in a crashing stomp.
The force flowed through the ground around him like ripples from a stone thrown in water. The earth shook, and the section of rocky wall next to Cephas vibrated as it was undermined by the ground crumbling beneath it. The outcropping seemed about to settle back into immobility, but then a cascade of pulverized stone invisible beneath thesurface—Cephas could
feel
the fine differences of density in the ground he’d struck—flowed deeper, seeking solidity. The section of granite teetered and crashed outward, raining a cloud of dust.
Flek and his two sisters rushed over to Cephas, delighted with his display of skill.
“Look,” said Flek, examining the opening Cephas widened in the base of the granite spire. “That’s a good doorway. You found the internal fissures instinctively. You are a quick study, Cephas.”
Marashan, the younger girl, stuck her head in the shallow cave they had spent the morning excavating, stepping between Cephas and her brother to do so and treading on her sister’s foot as she went. “I told Mother this spire was perfect for a dwelling,” she said. “If we’re careful with our strikes, we can expose
The minotaur bellowed at her troops, and they gathered in a semblance of order. She did not pause for parting words with the Banites, instead trotting away from the priests, past her followers, and up the shallow western slope of the dell. The other two dozen minotaurs fell in behind their leader, disappearing into the night.
The robed acolytes doused the watchfires, clearing the space, and the remaining priests made no delay in leaving. The tentative song of the insects in the tall grasses above the dell returned. On the westward slope of the dell, where the grass was trampled by the departed minotaurs, there was movement.
A screen woven of weeds and dusted with soil slowly pulled back. First Shan, then Cynda, took long, careful looks at their surroundings.
Cynda’s face bore a grimace, and her sister saw that her left arm hung at a painful angle. In the moonless night, the subtleties of their fingertalk would be unreadable, but it was clear that one of the five-hundred-pound brutes had trod on Cynda’s shoulder as it jogged out of the dell. Shan moved to put her hands against her sister’s shoulder so she could wrench the arm back into place, but Cynda stopped her, pressing a finger to her lips.
It would have to wait. They could not risk the sound of the shoulder popping back into its socket.
There would have been no accompanying gasp of pain to guard against. Even if she’d had a voice to cry out with, Cynda’s discipline was better than that.
Shan placed four fingers on the back of her sister’s bare hand and drummed, creating the familiar beat of a horse at full gallop. They would need to find fast mounts to get ahead of the minotaurs, and use all their trailcraft to find the swiftest route. No road led into the Spires of Mir from the Banite holdings, so the halflings and the minotaurs would be racing across unbroken ground.
Cynda made a careful sweep of their impromptu blind. They would leave no sign they had been there. She moved as quickly as she dared, because the only advantage they possessed was that they, unlike the minotaurs, knew that a race was being run. They knew they must be the first to reach Argentor, the only place the minotaurs could be bound.
Peace is never a simple choice
.
—“Helpful Janna Seeks a Husband”
The Founding Stories of Calimshan
N OW RELEASE!” SHOUTED F LEK .
At the young earthsouled man’s signal, Cephas let go of the energy that rolled in his gut like the fear of falling. He thought of it as a snatch of melody, notes from the unending song of the earth that he gathered inside himself. As Flek and the other genasi of Argentor had taught him, he directed the pulse of force down through the sole of his foot, timing its flow so that it rushed back into the earth just as he brought his foot down in a crashing stomp.
The force flowed through the ground around him like ripples from a stone thrown in water. The earth shook, and the section of rocky wall next to Cephas vibrated as it was undermined by the ground crumbling beneath it. The outcropping seemed about to settle back into immobility, but then a cascade of pulverized stone invisible beneath thesurface—Cephas could
feel
the fine differences of density in the ground he’d struck—flowed deeper, seeking solidity. The section of granite teetered and crashed outward, raining a cloud of dust.
Flek and his two sisters rushed over to Cephas, delighted with his display of skill.
“Look,” said Flek, examining the opening Cephas widened in the base of the granite spire. “That’s a good doorway. You found the internal fissures instinctively. You are a quick study, Cephas.”
Marashan, the younger girl, stuck her head in the shallow cave they had spent the morning excavating, stepping between Cephas and her brother to do so and treading on her sister’s foot as she went. “I told Mother this spire was perfect for a dwelling,” she said. “If we’re careful with our strikes, we can expose
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