Prophet of Moonshae - Douglas Niles [46]
Desperately Alicia looked toward Keane. He gazed at the monstrosity in stupefied horror, his mouth open. The woman felt for her sword. She had left it beside the saddle up at the camp. She almost laughed aloud at the picture in her mind-her small form bashing the steel blade against this unfeeling colossus until the edge was dented and dull. Suddenly giddy, the princess knew that it was fear that consumed her, threatening to overcome her capacity for reason. The giant loomed overhead, sightless eyes staring past her. She saw the gaping slash of its mouth, the dull red of some internal heat reflecting there.
Alicia felt Keane's hand on her arm. The man had recovered his wits, and now he pulled her from the rock where they had been sitting. The princess stumbled and felt his fingers digging into her flesh, lifting her and pulling her. "Ouch!" she shouted, suddenly furious with him. Moments later, a nearby rock exploded, crushed to gravel by the thing's powerful kick. Stinging shards bit into Alicia's back.
"Run! By the goddess, run!" Keane gasped, propelling her forward, placing himself protectively behind her.
Run she did, blindly scrambling away from the horror. She stumbled and cracked her knee against a rock, she twisted an ankle when she fell a second time, but still she desperately fled, racing away from the well toward the place where they had spread their bedrolls.
For a moment, she remembered Tavish, still sleeping there. The crunching footsteps pursued, slowly but inevitably. She couldn't lead the thing to the bard!
"Tavish!" she shouted, darting to the side, following along the shore of the Moonwell. "Be silent, but flee!"
Alicia spun, seeking Keane against the silhouetting effects of the magical illumination. Surely he could do something!
Her heart churned in deep panic. She couldn't see Keane anywhere in the small, bowl-shaped vale.
"Precantos-nimbus. Tu-arlist!"
There! Suddenly she saw his tall figure, standing like a tree some distance away, shouting strange sounds. Alicia realized, with sharp guilt, that Keane had turned to face the colossal attacker at the same time as she had veered away from the camp, and she hadn't noticed until now that he did not follow her!
The illumination of the light spell still flared, casting its glare across the sloping ground between the iron creature and Keane, uphill slightly from the colossus. The earth there, as everywhere in this little vale, was a mass of jutting boulders and cracked stone.
Keane's magic struck the stones, not with the sudden violence of explosive force but with the slow power of fundamental transformation. The solid nature of the boulders was seized by magic, distorted and adjusted into something much softer, even liquid.
Alicia stared, amazed, as she saw the rocks begin to change shape, oozing flat as if they were soft, doughy mounds, flowing like thick sludge. The rocks melted away, running downhill as thick, brown goop, viscous and soupy. In moments, the area between Keane and the iron beast had become a gooey morass. The tutor's presence taunted the monster, drawing it deeper into the mud.
The sticky stuff flowed around the iron beast's legs, and Alicia saw the gigantic form sink slowly to its waist. It struggled forward, flailing with its powerful arms, splashing gouts of mud with fists that were greater than monstrous hammers. All around them, the rockfield seethed and bubbled, a quagmire. The mud sucked greedily, smacking around the torso and then the shoulders of the animated metal thing.
Finally Alicia saw only its horrible head, capped with the wide, horned helm, and the upward-reaching arms. Then, despite the beast's frantic grasping and thrashing, even these disappeared. Only a thick, bubbling swirl in the sticky surface remained to mark the place where the golem had disappeared.
"Keane!" the princess shouted, stunned and disbelieving. She sobbed and laughed at the same time. "How did you-?"
"Quiet!" he snapped, his tone harsher than she had ever heard. She froze, watching as he pointed