Beyond the Moons Read Free Page A

crackling screech as the monstrous, dark underbelly scraped across the field. The beast smashed into the ground, not slowing in the least for its landing. The great bulk plowed through the melons, throwing up dirt like a plow cutting a furrow. Vines and fruit were gouged away. Under its driving landing, the earth shuddered, as if the soil were struck by Reorx’s hammer itself.
    The shock wave blasted Teldin with a hail of pebbles and dust. The earth heaved under his feet, throwing him head over heels. The farmer crashed backward down the stream bank until he was slammed onto his chest and sprawled headfirst down the opposite bank. The wind was driven from his gut. The hoe ricocheted out of his grasp, and his arm was numb where it had struck a stone. Gasping, Teldin sucked in half a lungful of mud and water and succeeded only in choking himself worse. Forcing himself onto his elbows, it was all he could do to weakly lift his face, gasping and spitting, out of the muck.
    In the field above, the thing from the Abyss rebounded from its initial impact until it was almost airborne again. Melon vines hung from the splintered underbelly, the plants’ roots desperately clutching to the earth as if they were trying to entwine the charging beast in their grasp. The creature’s broad beak tore through the slender trees in front of the house, shattering the trunks in grinding howls that ended in cracking explosions. As one of the flaming wings passed overhead, an arc of sparks cascaded down, and hot embers singed Teldin’s back through his wet shirt. Other coals extinguished themselves with a quick hiss in the muddied stream.
    From where he lay sprawled, it looked to Teldin as if the thing, beast or whatever, might get itself airborne once more. The shape’s ponderous bulk hovered over the farmhouse’s shingled roof, struggling to break the bonds of gravity.
    The illusion was shattered by a rippling series of explosions, like a giant striking stones together, from somewhere deep within the thing. The great curved shape trembled. There was another single roar, and the side burst open in a gout of flame, blasting shards across the farmyard. In the brief moment that the conflagration illuminated the sky, Teldin had the image of a great ship, some winged ocean vessel, its planking shattered and broken, hovering in the air over his house. In that same second, the burning tongue flared toward him, washing his face in roasting heat. Jagged wooden splinters lanced the bank around Teldin while flaming embers once again rained from above.
    Mindful of injury, Teldin pressed back into the stream, the warm mud squeezing up around his chest, the water running over his back. Above he could hear a wood-shearing roar as the ship lurched downward, crushing the roof of his house. The fieldstone chimney, built by his father, collapsed as the old rafters gave way without a fight. Only Grandfather’s strong log walls resisted, for a moment supporting the great weight pressing down on them. From where he lay, Teldin heard a groan of wood followed by a popping crack, the way trees sometimes froze in the worst winters. After a series of thunderous booms, a relative silence – broken only by the crash of an occasional piece of debris – was all that sounded.
    Though trembling and shaken by this unexpected attack, Teldin peered over the bank, his blue eyes quickly going hard as he looked at the destruction of his home. The ship, if it was one, had finally settled to a stop, crushing the house’s entire western wall. The stone-and-mortar chimney had fallen over on the chicken coop, caving in the flimsy roof. The whitewashed logs were thrust out at terrible angles and the porch he had built was buried under the remains. Teldin could barely hear the squawks of hens, now somewhere far off in the darkness. Fires swirled and crackled through the gaping holes in the hull, like beacons set to highlight the ghastly scene.
    Finally, Teldin warily raised himself