A biological sound came through the fracture before it reached the air, low and pressurized, rising from within in a repeated pulse, each one a little nearer than the last.
Beorn noticed that in the half-second before he finished realizing that the crack above the table had widened to sixteen inches.
He stood. The head wound made itself know as blood rushed back under the weight of standing, and the stone floor went briefly unsteady beneath him. He held the wall for two seconds, then let go.
"Where's my pistol?" he said.
Aestrith had already found it. She held it out without speaking.
He took it and moved for the passage entrance, and she waited for him to go through first. He was still checking the far wall of the room.
Near the floor, behind where the hostile Sinbound had stood through the whole confrontation, there was a hole in the stone. Old dressed stone around it, cut and fitted as the rest of the room's construction. Low enough that a person would have to crawl.
