Stone of Tears Read Free

and ran.
    The screeling bounded out of the garden of life and into the hall. Its body was hardly more than a squat skeleton covered in a veneer of dry, crispy, blackened skin. Like a corpse that had dried in the sun for years. White bone stuck out in places where the skin, hanging in flaps here and there, had been torn in the fight, but it didn’t seem to bother the creature; it was a thing of the underworld, and not hindered by all the frailties of life. There was no blood.
    If it could be torn up enough, or hacked apart, maybe it could be stopped, but it was awfully quick. And magic certainly wasn’t doing it much harm. It was a creature of Subtractive Magic; Additive Magic was just being absorbed into it like a sponge.
    Maybe it could be harmed with Subtractive Magic, but Zedd had nothing of that half of the gift. No wizard in the last few thousand years did. Some may have had the calling for the Subtractive, Darken Rahl was proof of that, but none had had the gift for it.
    No, his magic wasn’t going to stop this thing. At least, the wizard thought, not directly. But maybe indirectly?
    Zedd walked backwards as the screeling watched with blinking, bewildered eyes. Now , he thought, while it’s standing still.
    Concentrating, Zedd gathered the air, making it dense, dense enough to lift the heavy door. He was tired; it took an effort. He pushed the air with a mental grunt, crashing the door onto the back of the screeling. Dust rolled up and across the hall as the door slammed the creature to the ground. It howled. Zedd wondered if it was howling in pain, or anger.
    The door lifted, stone chips sliding off. The screeling held the heavy steel door up with one clawed hand as it laughed, a woody tendril of the vine he had tried to strangle it with still coiled around its neck.
    “Bags,” Zedd muttered. “Nothing is ever easy.”
    Zedd kept walking backwards. The door crashed to the floor as the screeling stepped out from underneath it and followed after. It was starting to learn that the people who walked were the same ones who ran or stood still. This was an unfamiliar world to it. Zedd had to think of something before it learned any more. If only he wasn’t so tired.
    Chase went down a wide marble stairway. Zedd followed him at a quick walk. If he were sure it wasn’t Chase or Rachel the screeling was after, he would have gone a different way, drawing the danger away from them, but it could just as easily go after them, and he didn’t want to leave Chase to fight it alone.
    A man and a woman, both in white robes, were coming up the stairs. Chase tried to turn them around but they slipped past him.
    “Walk!” Zedd yelled at them. “Don’t run! Go back or you will be killed!” They frowned at him in confusion.
    The screeling was shuffling along toward the stairs, its claws clicking and scraping on the marble floor. Zedd could hear it panting with that nerve jarring near laughter.
    The two people saw the dark thing and froze, their blue eyes going wide. Zedd shoved them, turning them around, and forced them back down the stairs. They both suddenly broke into a run, bounding down the stairs three at a time, their blond hair and white robes flying.
    “Don’t run!” Zedd and Chase yelled at the same time.
    The screeling rose up on its clawed toes, attracted by the sudden movement. It let out a cackling laugh and darted to the stairs. Zedd threw a fist of air, hitting it in the chest, knocking it back a pace. It hardly noticed. It peered over the carved, stone railing at the top and saw the people running.
    With a cackling laugh, it grasped the railing and leapt over, dropping a good twenty feet to the two running, white-robed figures. Chase immediately put Rachel’s face to his shoulder and reversed direction, coming back up the stairs. He knew what was going to happen, and there was nothing he could do about it.
    Zedd waited at the top. “Hurry, while it’s distracted.”
    There was a very brief struggle, and