Thirty paces out onto the submerged causeway, the slate slab carrying the black-stone cage scraped across a raised limestone joint.
Inside the bars, the heavy bronze clapper swung against its iron link and rang out a low, brazen note that made the ankle-deep water around their boots leap into tiny, square-patterned standing waves. Six paces ahead, Pip stumbled on its thin front leg as its lattice antlers began to hum in sympathy.
“Opening the interval,” Ashaun said.
She stepped up beside the moving slate slab, wedged her pale stone left forearm under the wooden guide bar to hold her position, and pressed the flat of the narrow bell dagger firmly into the notched damping groove on the cage’s upper iron collar.
For everyone else on the causeway, the ringing bronze note vanished as if a heavy wool door had been slammed shut. Pip’s antlers stopped shaking immediately, and the square ripples in the water flattened out.
For Ashaun, eleven bound years came back through the iron hilt in the space of three minutes.
What poured up her right wrist was not simple terror; if it had only been horror, she could have braced her teeth against it the way a soldier braces for a lance impact. The terrible thing about Azhrak’s battalion mind was that the first rush was pure, intoxicating relief.
