Dust rained from the crotches of every hanging seam, every granite joist. The ancient Wracu hoisted its head, exposed its segmented throat in absolute confidence of its invulnerability. In an absurd instant, Achamian grasped the reason why the ancient Kuniuri called them Suthaugi…
Worms.
"The world yet lives," Cleric called into the gloom. "In the South, where snow falls as rain."
Wisps of fire. Exhalations mighty enough to throw ships from their courses. The thing's head lowered in their direction, at last fully revealed in Cleric's light.
Achamian did not so much will himself to move as will himself to will. So much is forgotten in the flush of abject terror-from a man's bowel to his breathing.
"The beast is dead," Cleric murmured. "Dead and blind."
The old Wizard struggled to peer through his terror, to study the great head beyond the jaws, to see more than the predatory malevolence in its lines. It differed from the ancient Dragons of his Dreams-no surprise given the florid diversity characteristic of the species. Its head was more aquiline, as if built to root out prey hidden in burrows. And a mane of black iron tusks flared from its brows, bloomed into chattering skirts along the back of the beast's skull. But where smaller horns serrated the line of the beast's left brow, only stumps and savaged tissue adorned the right. The eye beneath, he could see, had rotted away long, long ago…
"What do you mean?" the old Wizard muttered in reply. "It breathes
…"
But Men's eyes, once attuned to a possibility, scavenge evidence of their own volition: suddenly the old Wizard saw the bronze hide sagging like a hauberk, as if detached from the greased flesh beneath. The shrunken gums. The second eye socket, rotted as hollow as the first…
"I BREATHE…" the yawing, croaking voice boomed through the underworld spaces. "IT IS MY CURSE TO BREATHE, SO LONG AS THE WORLD