The acid silt bit through the outer layer of Pip’s shell and touched the raw, living fold beneath.
At the same time, the terrified deer lunged backward, threatening to tear Rethi off the willow root and drag both of them down into the boiling gray sink before Ysabet’s rope could reach them.
Inside Pip’s chest, where the compressed organ of Azhrak’s surviving seed beat behind its breastbone, a door swung open.
It did not feel like cruelty. That was the terrible thing about the old treasury when it offered a tool in the middle of a crisis: it felt like common sense. A child was slipping into acid mud; a young animal was kicking itself to death because fear would not let its legs obey; Pip’s own shell was melting away second by second. Why waste time pleading with two separate, panicked minds when a single steady hand could hold their knees and lift them across together?
Forty-three years ago, when a baggage mule bolted on a burning trestle above the Red Gorge, Azhrak had simply reached down the battalion line, linked the driver and the mule into his own stride, and walked them both across the flames without a stumble.
