The Hidden City

a sudden, rhythmic booming sound.
    ‘Is it another earthquake?’ Kring cried out in alarm.
    ‘No,’ Khalad replied. ‘It’s too regular. It sounds almost like somebody beating a very big drum.’ He stared at the top of Bhelliom’s wall. ‘What’s that?’ he asked pointing.
    It was like a hilltop rearing up out of the forest beyond the knife-like edge of the top of the cliff—very much like a hilltop, except that it was moving.
    The sun was behind it, so they could not see any details, but as it rose higher and higher they could make out the fact that it was a kind of flattened dome with two pointed protuberances flaring out from either side like huge wings. And still it swelled upward. As they could see more of it, they realized that it was not a dome. It seemed to be some enormous, inverted triangle instead, wide at the top, pointed at the bottom and with those odd winglike protuberances jutting out from its sides. The pointed bottom seemed to be set in some massive column. Since the light was behind it, it was as black as night, and it rose and swelled like some vast darkness.
    Then it stopped.
    And then its eyes opened.
    Like two thin, fiery gashes at first, the blazing eyes opened wider and wider, cruelly slanted like cats’ eyes and all ablaze with fire more incandescent than the sun itself. The imagination shuddered back from the realization of the enormity of the thing. What had appeared to be huge wings were the creature’s ears.
    And then it opened its mouth and roared, and they knew that what they had heard before had not been thunder. It roared again, and its fangs were flickers of lightning that dripped flame like blood.
    ‘Klael!’ Aphrael shrieked.
    And then, like two rounded, bulky mountains, the shoulders rose above the sharp line of the cliff, and, fanning out from the shoulders like black sails, two jointed, batlike wings.
    ‘What is it?’ Talen cried.
    ‘It’s Klael!’ Aphrael shrieked again.
    ‘What’s a Klael?’
    ‘Not what, you dolt! Who. Azash and the other Elder Gods cast him out. Some idiot has returned him!’
    The enormity atop the escarpment continued to rise, revealing vast arms with many-fingered hands. The trunk was huge, and flashes of lightning seethed beneath its skin, illuminating ghastly details with their surgng flickers. And then that monstrous presence rose to its full height, towering eighty, a hundred feet above the top of the escarpment.
    Sparhawk’s spirit shrivelled. How could they possibly—?
    ‘Blue Rose,’ he said sharply. ‘Do something!’
    ‘There is no need, Anakha.’ Vanion’s usurped voice was very calm as Bhelliom once again spoke through his lips. ‘Klael hath but momentarily escaped Cyrgon’s grasp. Cyrgon will not risk his creature in a direct confrontation with me.’
    ‘That thing belongs to Cyrgon?’
    ‘For the moment. In time that will change, and Cyrgon will belong to Klael.’
    ‘What is it doing?’ Betuana cried.
    The monstrosity atop the cliff had raised one huge fist and was striking at the ground with incandescent fire, hammering at the earth with lightning. The face of the escarpment shuddered and began to crack away, falling, tumbling, roaring down to smash into the forest at the foot of the cliff. More and more of the sheer face crumbled and sheared away and fell in a huge thundering landslide.
    ‘Klael was ever uncertain of the strength of his wings,’ Bhelliom observed calmly. ‘He would come to join battle with me, but he fears the height of the wall. Thus he prepares a stair for himself.’
    Then with a booming like that of the earthquake which had spawned it, a mile or more of the escarpment toppled ponderously outward and crashed into the forest, piling rubble higher and higher against the foot of the cliff.
    The enormous being continued to savage the top of the cliff, spilling more and more rubble down to form a steep causeway reaching up and up to the top of the wall.
    And then the thing called Klael vanished, and a shrieking wind swept the face of the escarpment, whipping away the boiling clouds of dust the landslide had raised.
    There was another sound as well. Sparhawk turned quickly. The Trolls had fallen to their faces, moaning in terror.
    ‘We’ve always known about him,’ Aphrael said pensively. ‘We used to frighten ourselves by telling stories about him. There’s a certain perverse pleasure in making one’s own flesh crawl. I don’t think I ever really admitted to myself that he