Dragonspell - Donita K. Paul [34]
She ran her finger across the crackled surface of her egg and realized the shell felt more like leather now than rock. Out of the corner of her left eye, she saw movement. Dar had gone down to the marsh level on her right. Why would he be coming up a different way?
She turned her head and saw only a dark shadow across the leaves. It rippled some, much like the other patches of dark and light cast by the sun and branches above. A shiver of fear ran down her spine. The shadow moved toward her emerlindian friend.
“Leetu!” Kale screamed.
Leetu sprang to her feet, a long-bladed dagger in her hand. The shadow rose up and formed a hideous monster. Tall and massive, the black shape seemed to fill up the small bower. Now that it stood upright, Kale could see arms reaching toward Leetu, a bloblike head silently wagging back and forth. He stood on two thick legs. A thin tail disappeared through the leaf floor at the spot where the shadow had first appeared.
Mordakleep!
Still clutching the precious egg, Kale looked around for some kind of weapon. Dar’s sword lay in its scabbard across his packs. She leapt to grab it. For a few costly seconds, she struggled to release the blade from its sheath. When she turned with the sword in her hand, she saw that two more mordakleeps had oozed up through the floor and were taking shape around Leetu. The mordakleeps made no noise but plodded purposefully. Their grotesque mouths chomped, lips slapping against each other, teeth showing sharp and yellow. They looked eager to take a bite out of anything in their way.
Swinging the sword wildly before her, she charged the monsters attacking Leetu. Her blade cut through the nearest mordakleep. Black goo spurted, then splattered the front of her cape, her arms, and her boots. The liquid sizzled as it hit the moonbeam material and evaporated in a noxious fume. The globs of black drops pooled and skittered away like mercury.
The monster whirled around and clipped her chin with a backhanded swing of one of his massive arms. Kale flew backward and landed against a cygnot trunk. She gasped for breath and then shrieked again as she saw the mordakleep bend over and scoop up the egg she’d dropped from her hand.
Cold terror and then a sick emptiness seized her heart. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she stood to face the monster advancing toward her. Now she could see the features of his face, the gray hollows from which small red eyes glared, the wide mouth with a green tongue flicking over thin lips.
He silently lurched over the intertwined limbs, his great weight making the whole floor undulate like waves on an ocean. Clenching Dar’s sword around the hilt with both hands, Kale waited for the monster to lumber close enough for her to hit. She saw the flurry of activity beyond. Leetu battled three creatures. Two more mordakleeps emerged from the cygnot floor. Dar had reappeared to help in the fight. But Kale’s attention focused on the ugly mass of black slime menacing her.
“Dar, it has my egg!” she cried, and then the creature made a lunge for her throat. Instead of swinging the sword, she ducked and rolled to one side.
“Cut off its tail,” Dar yelled. He had a gleaming dagger in each hand and rushed the monsters attacking Leetu.
Kale tried to work her way around to its back, but the mordakleep, in spite of its size, twisted and turned cleverly. Dar stood behind a monster hovering over Leetu. He swung his dagger down in a wide arc and sliced off its long black tail. Without waiting to see the body of the creature dissolve into a puddle and drip through the leaf floor, he circled around and lopped off the tail of the next mordakleep.
Kale jumped and stabbed at the monster coming toward her, its hands poised to grab and tear her into pieces. More often her blade swiped thin air instead of the flesh of the mordakleep. At last the creature stumbled just as Kale fell to one side. Horrified, she found herself lying on the black beast’s slimy tail. With one whack, she severed the ropelike tail. She rolled