Darkwell - Douglas Niles [135]
Its eyes blazed a savage yellow, gleaming starkly against the midnight black of the creature's coat. Its long fangs drooled, and the two tentacles writhing from its shoulders reached like hungry snakes for the halfling's face. In that second, Tristan knew that this was the beast that had slain Daryth.
Pawldo swiveled, his skis swinging through a broad arc. The wooden boards passed right through the form of the drooling monster, but then they smashed into something solid, yet invisible, beyond the beast. The force of the blow knocked the halfling sideways, pushing him away from the snapping clamp of those horrid jaws.
Then Pawldo's body whipped into the air, and the king imagined him seized by one of those tentacles. With a dull thud, the halfling slammed back to earth and lay, utterly silent and motionless, beside the monster.
The creature crouched again, and this time Tristan sprang. He swung his sword through a vicious horizontal slash and felt it bite into flesh – but not where the monster appeared to be! Then he, too, stumbled backward, struck by an invisible tentacle that hurtled him to the ground. Once again his father's armor had saved him from a deep and slashing wound.
Tavish the bard stood entranced as the fight raged. The battlesong of the harpist was upon her, and her fingers flew across the strings. The words of an unknown song filled her heart, and though the lyrics made little sense as a story, they lifted the spirits of the Ffolk and urged them onward into battle.
Tavish watched the monsters attack, strumming with a fantastic intensity a tune and a rhythm born in her mind only as it was played. She felt the words erupt within her, whirling through her mind, and suddenly she sang. Her voice was a challenge to all the evil and blackness in the world, but especially to the dark power lurking before them, as she sang her message of hope and prayer for herself and her companions.
The lyrics of her song were incomplete, but now a tale began to take shape. She had no ending, for the song was a ballad, and the tale it told had not yet seen its conclusion. But Tavish felt herself swept along by the music, felt it raise the spirits of her companions, and so she challenged the darkness with growing courage and strength.
The deathbirds swirled in confused savagery, and several of them dove toward the bard. Tavish, caught in the rapture of her music, failed to see them coming.
But Robyn did. The druid let go of the scroll and momentarily attacked as a warrior, raising her scimitar into the air and slicing a wing from the leading deathbird. The monster's body crashed into the bard, knocking her to the ground, as Robyn whirled and cut another of the creatures from the sky before it could attack.
The lute fell from Tavish's hands and a black silence again settled over the clearing. The bard sat up awkwardly and saw the black panther-beast strike down Tristan as the king's weapon again struck at the empty air.
Not knowing why she did so, Tavish pulled forth the broken spectacles from the firbolg lair and fumbled to place them on her nose. She squinted toward the battle and immediately saw the beast in its true position, several feet to the side of the illusionary appearance.
Standing again, lifting her lute, Tavish cried out to the king. "There! To your left! There it is!" But then another of the deathbirds smashed into her face. A cruel antler tore at her cheek, and the glasses flew across the muddy ground, Tavish fell backward heavily, gasping for air and seeing the shadow of horned death looming over her.
Brigit and Maura nocked and fired their arrows with mechanical precision, while Colleen drew her sword and raced to Tristan's defense. One by one the silver missiles found targets in the flying creatures.
Brigit felt a great emptiness rise within her as the music ceased. She suddenly realized that, for a brief moment, the music had recalled memories of pristine Synnoria. The sister knight turned and saw Tavish