Penelope Firenze's Arc

Chapter 6 of 3

The temple's people held the walls, but Penelope saw what the blade's light had done. Beyond the hunters, small groups moved across the open sand. Her father's warriors. They had answered her signal. They came in scattered bands, exposed, with no way to know where to run. The hunters would cut them down before they reached the gate. "They're dying out there," Penelope said. She gripped the golden scimitar. Its glow marked her, but it could not guide her people through the dark sand below. Brother Oberius Tyndall climbed the steps behind her. The temple's scribe walked slow, his forked grey beard swinging, one emerald eye catching the blade's light. He carried the great sigil-bound book against his chest. "You summoned them," he said. "Now you must bring them in. Light draws the eye. But the ground answers older things." "Speak plainly," Penelope said. He opened the book on the parapet. His finger traced a ring of sigils. "Your beast lies bound outside the wall. It feels the faithful walking the sand. Their steps ring through it. Release the mask on your bond and the wyrm will call to your blood. Your warriors carry your father's mark. It will know them. Guide them by the beast, not by the flame." Penelope understood. The wyrm was hers by blood. If she woke the bond, it would sense her loyal warriors moving above it and drive them toward her, away from the hunters' blades. "It will hunger," Oberius warned. "Wake the bond and you wake its rage. Once it starts, you cannot stop it until it feeds." She looked at the warriors dying in the open. "Then it feeds on hunters." Penelope pressed her palm to the scimitar's edge. Blood welled. She spoke the binding word the scribe read from the page. Below the wall, the sand shuddered. The silver wyrm burst upward, scales flashing, its head turning toward her blood. Then it turned again, toward the scattered bands on the sand. It felt them. It drove between the hunters like a plow, scattering the enemy, herding her warriors toward the gate. The first wave of hunters fell back before the beast. Penelope's warriors ran the cleared path. They reached the base of the wall and the gate swung open for them. Dark-tattooed fighters poured in, her father's own. But the wyrm's rage did not stop. It coiled and struck at the sand near the wall, hungry and blind. And as the loyal warriors filled the courtyard, Penelope saw a second group slip through the open gate behind them. Not hers. Hunters, faces hidden, moving with the crowd into the temple. She raised the blazing scimitar high. "To me!" she cried. Her warriors turned at the light and the voice and formed around her. The gate was hers. Her father's fighters stood within the walls at last. But the enemy was inside now too, and the wyrm below still hunted.