“Yeah.” She pressed her hand to her stomach. “That was … weird.” She looked up at him and swallowed. “Thanks. You could have let him leave me.”

“Partners, right?”

“Right.” Kit grinned. “Nearly there, he said?”

“Let’s hope.”

This valley was much like the other, scrub grass and small trees, but there was no sign of any goats or rabbits, no animals larger than an insect. That was hardly a mystery, though, given the plaguespawn. The ground sloped steadily upward, sometimes in rocky patches they had to scramble past, which the ghoul constructs handled with surprising agility.

They skirted an outcrop of boulders, where the valley’s little stream burbled into a broad pool, and found themselves looking at a flat wall of rock, perhaps a half kilometer off across a stretch of scrub grass. Above it, a mountain rose steeply to a jagged, snowcapped peak.

“There it is.” Even distorted by his construct, Gyre could hear the satisfaction in Naumoriel’s voice. “At last.”

“It, um. Doesn’t look like much,” Kit said.

“There is a door into the mountain,” Naumoriel said. “I will open it.”

“I think you should hurry,” Gyre said, looking over his shoulder.

Plaguespawn crowded the valley behind them. There were dozens, hundreds of the twisted things, in every possible size and shape, bones and muscles and eyes combined at the whim of a mad sculptor and brought to horrifying, shuddering life. The largest of the beasts glided through the swarm, the others parting around them like a silent wake. Gyre counted two—three—five of them, each the size of Naumoriel’s war-construct, walking on multiple legs with long, twisted arms wrapped in skeins of bone armor.

“We can’t fight that,” Gyre said.

“We do not have to,” Naumoriel said. He still sounded calm. “We only have to reach the door. Now, run.”

Gyre met Kit’s eyes, and they ran.

The war-construct was slow to accelerate, but it gradually picked up speed, legs moving in a blur as it stomped through the grass. Gyre put his head down, arms pumping, but he felt the upward slope cutting into his pace. Kit darted ahead of him, lighter on her feet. The remaining constructs brought up the rear.

The plaguespawn came after them like a horde of locusts. The fastest took the lead, bounding like wolves. Teeth clattered and gnashed, and claws of splintered bone unfolded. Four of Naumoriel’s constructs peeled off and threw themselves in the path of the leading monsters, smashing the lightly built plaguespawn to bits, but the lead wave simply parted around them to continue the pursuit. A few moments later, one of the giants arrived, its huge claws cracking rock and metal to tear the constructs asunder.