Read Online Star of Cursrah by Clayton Emery - Free Book Online Page B

Please deliver him!”
    There. Something moved. Praying it wasn’t a monster, Amber wriggled her fingers like thunderherder teeth, snagged something soft and pulled, slowly and steadily lest her hand slip. Shifting onto her knees, bracing against her staff pressed flat on the earth, she hauled. Sand bubbled and churned, a thousand shades of tan, before Amber saw the black skin of Hakiim’s hand.
    A sputtering Hakiim burst free, spitting sand and sobbing for air. Amber dug past his head, grabbed his sash, and dragged him into the sunlight.
    “J-Jewels of Jergal,” Hakiim gagged, “I thought—”
    “Never mind!” Certain that he was free, Amber let go and whirled to dash down the slope. “Reiver rolled down… all tangled up with more of those monstrosities,” she said.
    Jogging, taking long, dangerous skips and praying to avoid holes that might snap an ankle or knee, Amber raced downhill. Setting sun glared in her eyes. Her shadow flew alongside her like an eagle, disorienting and dizzying. Her capture noose whipped and snapped and threatened to unbalance her, yet she saw the wiry thief hop in circles like a kangaroo rat at the bottom of the slope. Why?
    Then Amber saw that Reiver hopped because the floor of the trough collapsed wherever he landed. No sooner did his foot touch down than sand puckered and disappeared to reveal a gaping hole ringed with grasping teeth. Five or six holes dotted the trough, and even as Amber watched, Reiver jumped to avoid having his feet nipped off. He hunched like a rat, one hand wide to slow a fall into a hole, the other driving the dagger like a spitting cobra. Reiver’s blade and wrist were white with frothy paste, Amber saw, so he must have at least pinked the monsters, but he couldn’t hop forever.
    Neither could she, Amber realized suddenly, and she’d reach the bottom in a few more long leaps. “Reiver,” she called. “I’ll snag—whoa!—with my noose!”
    “Stay up high!” The thief didn’t look up but watched and felt the ground as he said, “They strike at vibrations—”
    Too late, Amber flopped backward and skittered to a stop, panting. Twirling her capture staff, she loosed the line and enlarged the noose. Like a pike bursting from a pool, a thunderherder exploded from the sandy bottom and lunged for Amber’s foot. Quicker than thought, the slave handler whipped the staff, flipped the noose over the monster’s round head, and yanked the rope’s end with her left hand. The noose snapped shut around the tubular body, bit into the leathery hide, and sank out of sight.
    Amber had snagged a thunderherder, but it felt like a whale bucking a fishing line. She chirped aloud, “Now what?”
    “Hold—it!” A snuffling, flopping figure stampeded to a stop beside Amber. Hakiim was sandy from head to toe, his clothes and rucksack skewed awry and spilling sand. He’d lost his shield but drawn his scimitar. Hoisting the blade in two hands, the rug merchant’s son gasped as he struck with all his might. The curved blade, wider and heavier at the nose, chopped through the writhing body as if slicing a sausage.
    “Watch the tail,” Reiver yelled. “The stinger’s poisonous!”
    “Good work, Hak!” Half a dying sandborer writhed in Amber’s capture noose, and its thrashing weight threatened to rip the staff away. She slacked off to loose the beast.
    “We should get to solid rock as fast as we can,” Hakiim said, shaking his frothy scimitar at the horizon. “It’s just ahead of us!”
    “It’s a mile or more,” Amber said as she gauged how to reach Reiver, who was still dancing around holes in the trough. “We’d never make it.”
    “We’ve run halfway there already,” Hakiim returned. An exaggeration, but Amber remembered seeing rocks to the south, stark gray against the gray-yellow sand.
    “We surely can’t stay here,” Amber agreed, then took a chance and vaulted a hole and jumped again to land near Reiver. The thief flounced around the hole, his