The black-glass chair teeth ground against Noll Vey’s basalt forearms with the shriek of diamond saws biting granite.
Blue claim-light sprayed from the hairline fractures opening across his stone chest, splashing cold, eerie shadows across the limestone walls of the lower gallery. Noll planted his stone boots against the floor flags, locking his knees, his jaw set as he heaved upward against the converging threshold frame with every ounce of physical leverage his host body possessed.
“Sella! The shield!” Noll shouted, his voice cracking like dry timber under a snow load.
Sella Rusk did not waste a breath on words.
She dropped to her knees on the bloody, dust-slick flagstones, unstrapped the heavy iron-faced oak shield from her left arm, and drove the reinforced steel rim straight into the narrowing gap between the two central chair backs. She struck the top of the boss with the heel of her hand, wedging the three-ply ash frame four inches into the closing maw.
THUNK-CRACK.
The black glass bit two inches into the seasoned oak face, iron studs shearing away with sharp metallic pings, but the shield held. It bought them three inches of open space—and four seconds of time.
“Now, Tessa!” Sella yelled, her face scarlet with effort as she locked both hands around the shield’s leather grip to keep it from twisting out of the jamb. “Haul on the scruff! Don’t let him go into the teeth!”
