"Idiot," he spat through clenched teeth, and he flung
the stone at Dhorn with the all the force of his petulant temper. Slow as
Dhorn's intellect was, it didn't apply to his body or reflexes. He ducked
nimbly aside and the stone sailed past him. They both watched it arc across the
small courtyard they were standing in, watched it hit the ground, bounce, roll,
and then come to rest at the feet of… something.
It stood at the edge of the courtyard, not more than twenty
five yards from them, squinting and blinking at the light although the day was
still dark and overcast. It stood about four feet tall with long pale limbs
that had an unpleasant rubberiness about them, as though they were
underdeveloped in some way. It had a shock of white hair on top of its head
that splayed in all directions, and it was dressed in soiled off-white rags. It
peered at them with black and sunken eyes, in stark contrast to its puffy,
loathsomely shiny white face.
All this they saw in a moment; then it was gone, as it leapt with simian agility through a dark hole in the decrepit stone structure beside it.
