Darkwell - Douglas Niles [65]
They saw that the firbolg had somehow embedded both feet, to midcalf, in the edge of the tar pit. He had managed to fall backward onto solid ground, but his feet were firmly anchored and he could not break free. Instead, he snarled and snapped at them, then jabbered something in his crude, brutish tongue.
"I feel sorry for the poor thing," said Robyn. Tristan, to his great surprise, found himself in full agreement – perhaps only because the firbolg represented a familiar thing. Though an enemy, the firbolg was a natural element of the vale, the first such they had encountered in this bleak place.
He leaned forward to get a closer look at the firbolg's plight, and was rewarded with a swinging club of a fist that would have crushed his skull had he not skipped out of the way. "I'd be inclined to help him," he declared ruefully, "but I don't think he'll let us."
"Maybe I can help." In a swift motion, the bard lifted her lute from her shoulder and strummed a pleasant chord. She followed it with a trill of light notes, then several more rich and gentle chords. Tristan saw the firbolg look at her in amazement, and the belligerent look on his face faded to an almost trancelike glaze.
The king moved closer, and the creature started to turn toward him, but Tavish strummed vigorously and the firbolg turned back to the music. "We'll have to use one of the horses to get him out," whispered Tristan.
He whistled to Avalon. The firbolg turned suddenly at the note of dissonance, but the thing had been pacified again by the time the stallion trotted over. Tristan unwound coils of his long rope and approached the giant, while Robyn lashed the other end to his saddle.
Keep playing! Tristan thought, concentrating on the music as he reached around the waist of the monster and looped the rope as far up on his chest as he could. The firbolg remained entranced by the music, a look of utter placidness on his face, as the king backed away and fastened the other end of the rope to the stallion.
"We're taking an awful chance," whispered the concerned halfling, a nervous observer of the preparations. "What if he gets free and suddenly changes his taste in music!"
Smiling with more confidence than he felt, Tristan turned to the stallion. "Go!" he cried, slapping the steed on the rump. In an instant, Avalon sprang forward, the rope came taut around the firbolg, and the monster gave a thunderous bellow of surprise. Scarcely pausing, the stallion lunged farther, and the giant toppled to the ground. With an additional grunt, Avalon pulled him free of the clutching tar.
The monster leaped to his feet with an even louder bellow and turned toward Tavish, the nearest of the companions. The bard smiled broadly and stroked the lute, a softer, slower rhythm than she had played before.
The rage fell from the creature's face as the music again held him in thrall. The firbolg cocked his head to the side, as if to hear better. When Tavish stepped away from the tar pit, the firbolg followed mutely. "What do I do now?" asked the bard, slowly growing concerned.
And then the horror exploded from the woods.
* * * * *
Kamerynn loped tirelessly along the spoor of evil that lay like a broad stripe across the land. He followed it for a day and a night, never resting.
A sense of urgency gripped him, as if he knew that here, among all the evil and corruption around him, was the focus for his vengeance. Here was an enemy he could fight.
The unicorn came upon a scene of battle, where the beast had attacked a man. Kamerynn paused in surprise, for the spoor of the man was unusual in the dead vale. He saw that the man had been driven to a cliff by the approach of the monster, and that he had suffered a bloody wound as he had climbed away from the danger.
Then the unicorn followed the spoor once more, to where the creature had raced along the base of the cliff to a gap where the slope was more gradual. Here it had bounded easily to the top, though the climb was still precipitous. It was only with great difficulty that Kamerynn struggled