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. None of the bodies, some mouldering still,
some whitened skeletons bleached by time's passage, showed the
marks of a fight: no broken bones, no shattered skulls. Not one of
them had battled his way to death.
They littered the corridor like discarded toys, used, broken, and
cast aside.
Steeling himself to find what he knew he would not be able to
bear to see, Flint moved carefully among them, searching. His
blood pounded painfully in his head, his breathing was ragged,
whispered fragments of prayers to gods few people acknowledge.
Slowly, almost gently at times, he toed over one corpse after
another, his hands locked in a death-hold on his axe. But none of
the bodies was Tanis, and the most recently dead were still too
long gone to have been either Karel or Daryn.
Breathing hard with his relief, he went back to Riana, took her
hands in his own, and led her past the dead.
"No, there is no use struggling. You cannot move." Despite his
own warning, Karel instinctively tried to reach a hand to the
stranger. He grimaced and whispered again, "Don't try, you'll
waste your strength. And you'll need it."
The words echoed in Tanis's head, bounding and leaping so that
he could barely make sense of them. Where was he? He
remembered, with heart-stopping clarity, the touch of hard, cold
fingers on his wrist, the grip of a skeletal hand, and a groaning,
beckoning voice urging him to follow
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