Beyond The Shadows by Brent Weeks

speaking to Halfman. Halfman flinched as a slave would. “Khali, you stink! Which way is
     it to the kitchens?”
    Halfman reluctantly pointed back the way the aethelings had come.
    Rivik laughed. Tavi cursed. “How far?” Tavi asked.
    Halfman would have found some other way to answer, but Dorian couldn’t help himself. “About ten minutes.”
    Rivik laughed again, louder.
    Tavi backhanded Dorian. “What’s your name, halfman?”
    “Milord, this slave is called Halfman.”
    “Ooh hoo!” Rivik hooted. “We got a live one here!”
    “Not for long,” Tavi said.
    “If you kill him, I’ll tell,” Rivik said.
    “You’ll tell?” The disdain and disbelief on Tavi’s face told Halfman that Rivik’s days as a sidekick were numbered.
    “He made me laugh,” Rivik said. “Come on. We’re already late for lecture, you know how Draef will try to turn that on us.”
    “Fine, just a second.” The vir rose to Tavi’s skin and he began chanting.
    “Tavi . . .”
    “It won’t kill him.”
    The magic was a slight concussion inches from Halfman’s chest. It threw him back into the wall like a rag doll. The wicker
     splintered and the clay pot shattered, geysering human waste over Halfman and the wall behind him.
    Rivik laughed louder. “We’ve gotta remember this next time we’re bored. Khali’s tits, it reeks! Imagine if we could break
     one of those pots in Draef’s room.”
    The aethelings left Halfman gasping on the floor, wiping ooze from his face. It was five minutes before he stood up, but when
     he did, it was with alacrity. In the fear and in the miming of fear, he had almost missed it. The newest concubine could only
     be one woman. His future wife was at the top of Bertold’s Tower, and she was in danger.
    9
    The pit wyrm tore through the hole in reality and went for Kylar. The great wyrm was tubular, at least ten feet in diameter,
     its skin cracked and blackened, fire showing through the gaps. When it lunged, its great bulk heaved forward and its entire
     eyeless front opened as it vomited its cone-like mouth. Kylar leapt as each concentric ring snapped out. Each ring was circled
     with teeth, and when the third ring caught a tree, teeth the size of Kylar’s forearm whipped around into the wood. The pit
     wyrm sucked itself forward, its lamprey-like mouth inverting as the rings bit into the wood in turn, shearing a ten-foot section
     out of the tree trunk before Kylar landed.
    Instantly, the pit wyrm lunged again. It had no visible means of propelling so great a mass. It didn’t gather itself to strike
     like a serpent, but moved instead as if this were but one head or arm attached to a much larger creature crouched on the other
     side of that hole. Again, it went for Kylar.
    He flipped through the air as the tree the pit wyrm had cut fell, crashing to the ground, throwing up dust in the misty morning
     light. Kylar grabbed a tree and spun, the ka’kari giving him claws enough to sink into the bark and throw him back over the
     pit wyrm’s back. His sword flashed as he flew over the pit wyrm, but the blade bounced off the armored skin.
    There was something white in the corner of Kylar’s eye. He dropped to the forest floor and saw it: a tiny white homunculus
     with wings and the Vürdmeister’s face, grinning at Kylar under an enormous nose. It clawed at Kylar’s face.
    Kylar blocked. The homunculus’s talons sank smoothly into Kylar’s sword.
    The pit wyrm lunged again even as Feir hammered its side, his sword ringing in the mists but doing no damage, not even slowing
     the wyrm. The pit wyrm couldn’t be distracted, wouldn’t stop until it reached its target.
    Its target wasn’t Kylar. It was the homunculus.
    Kylar dropped the sword and flipped once more. He landed on the side of a tree, thirty feet up, fingers and toes sinking into
     the wood. The pit wyrm slammed into Kylar’s sword on the ground, the cone of teeth slapping around the homunculus, digging
     deep into the soil as