Excerpt from The Gate to the Abyss
Luthiya fell against the battlement
door, shoved it open, and stumbled outside. Then she scrambled back and heaved the
door closed. It slammed into the door frame like thunder. A towering chunk of rib
bone leaned against the wall. She jumped, grabbed the top of it, and tugged it
down in front of the door. Then she put her back against it and dug her feet
into the rough floor.
The first wight struck the door
like an earthquake. Luthiya shrieked and pushed herself back up, giving herself
as much leverage as she could. They hammered again and again. Her teeth cracked
against each other. The massive bone fragment budged half a centimeter with
each strike. I can't do this, she thought. Please, Khapah, get
everyone out before it's too late.
"The water wasn't enough for
them, was it?"
Luthiya jumped; the voice seemed to
come from the sky itself. She looked all around until she saw Ama standing on
the other side of the parapet.
Luthiya gasped. "How did you
get here?"
"All the water in the world
wouldn't be enough for them." Ama held one hand out, palm up, with the
urlimnion floating above it. The small orb glowed as brightly as the wights did
now, almost frantic in its back-and-forth rotations. "Even your kin aren't
enough." Ama crossed her other arm over her chest, looking down to the
bottom of the tower. "They want you."
"Why?!" It had bothered
Luthiya since she'd first seen the wights. The monsters would occasionally notice
the water or Khapah or Jio, but they always, always returned to watch her.
Ama rose up into the air. She was
standing on the shield she'd taken from the chantry, some kind of levitation
device. "I don't know." She glowered. "Water is for them like it
is for our bodies: necessary, but insufficient for real strength. They crave
meat. Life. But why yours specifically? I cannot imagine."
The wights continued battering at
the door. The bone fragment scraped forward two more centimeters. Luthiya's
feet scrabbled over the petrified floor as she tried, desperately, to push it
back.
"Your people are fleeing.
West, toward the Charred Pass."
A surge of hope swelled in
Luthiya's chest. It had worked. The wights wouldn't leave Ossiphagan. The Shue
were free.
Ama's lip curled up in a quiet
snarl.
She doesn't want us to survive. Luthiya
shoved the fragment back against the door. Her legs grew weaker with each
strike. It wouldn't be long before the wights broke through. "Why do you
hate us?" she asked.
"Ha! I don't hate you. What a
waste of effort that would be, like hating salamanders or a flea."
"Then let them go! The wights
will have me. That's what they want. You said it yourself."
"I worry it won't be
enough." Ama sighed deeply. "I suppose I could lead some other group
here, now that I know of the wights." She touched her forehead and
muttered to herself, "But would that count as betrayal? Greater good,
perhaps? Gods, this tide is abstruse."
Luthiya growled. "What's
not enough? What could be more important than saving people's lives?"
"This," she said, lifting
the urlimnion as though it were obvious. Then she laughed. "Of course you
can't understand. Like my body, the urlimnion is tuned to acts of charity and
compassion. Helping your people wasn't enough—I suspect because the Shue are
beyond help. But the moment I gave that boy to the wights, the urlimnion
awoke."
"You gave him?" A
sickening pit grew in Luthiya's stomach.
Ama murmured to herself again,
"That betrayal didn't count. Perhaps I could—"
"You gave Jio?"
Luthiya shouted, rage bubbling up from the pit of her stomach.
Ama stopped, looking at Luthiya in surprise
that shifted quickly into something like pity.
The tears forced their way out,
then. Luthiya's breaths became heavy, uncontrollable. The bone fragment slipped
ten centimeters at once, a yellow glow spilling out of the doorway. And Luthiya
realized something else: Jio was an accident. She meant to give them me.
"I think I will spare
you," Ama said. "Let's see what effect that has."
"No." Luthiya shook her
head. "Sparing" would only mean death for the others. "Let them
take me. Leave the Shue alone."
"Actually, I must spare
you, otherwise this life will have been wasted." She casually traced a
pattern in the air with her free hand, a faint light trailing from her fingers.
When she finished, the pounding behind Luthiya stopped; the glow from the door
was gone. "Unless consuming all the Shue isn't enough, of course. Then
I'll have to let them take you as well, just to be sure." She gave Luthiya
a wan smile, then turned on her floating shield and began descending toward the
earth.
