Realms of the Arcane - Brian M. Thomsen [79]
Her leg came free, dowsed with the beast's hot yellow blood, and she saw it come down toward her. She rolled out of the way fast enough not to be trapped completely under it, but it fell most of the way along her left side. Her right hand hit the floor, and the whip-rapier bounced loose, clattering on the burned wood floorboards.
The weight of the thing was painful enough, but when one of its mouths found her left hip and bit in, she screamed and forced her left hand farther under the writhing, heavy mass. In panic, pain, and desperation, she rolled to her left and forced her hand into the slimy corner of the mouth. She looked up and saw another mouth falling at her from above. It meant to bite her head off. With a grunt, she pulled-ripped, really-her left leg out of the first mouth and kicked up with it. The pain helped her get out from under the thing.
She rolled, leaving a wide trail of her own blood on the floor as she went for her rapier. A hand came under her arm, and she let Shadow pull her up and away from the green thing, which was already drawing itself up and advancing on them again.
"This way," Shadow breathed heavily.
Alashar remembered the secret door.
* * * * *
With frail, liver-spotted hands, Grenway clutched the sides of the palantir. His back jerked with the little coughs that had come to replace his cold, cackling laugh.
Alashar, his paid assassin, his unwitting decoy, had done her job well. She had infiltrated Shadow's inner sanctum, foiled some still unknown rival's own assassination attempt by killing the naga, destroyed the damnable simulacrum that had confused his informants in Karsus for so long, and even seemed to have built some sort of strange bond with the archwizard. She and her victim had become partners of a sort now, and she seemed strangely determined not to let Shadow out of her sight. Since her sight was also Grenway's, things were working well.
The mutant that he'd sent as the real assassin had no ability to think for itself. It had to be guided, and so he had sent Alashar in first. Grenway coughed out a chuckle at the thought that Alashar probably still expected to kill Shadow and collect Grenway's price.
His victory was at hand, and Grenway closed his eyes and prepared his final spell.
* * * * *
The thing barely fit into the snug passageway, but it came at them fast just the same. It was spitting some viscous liquid from dozens of mouths. The spittle let it slide through. Neither Alashar nor Shadow could see past it. Its tentacles seemed to lengthen.
"The lab," Shadow panted.
He was still too weak to really run. He hadn't cast a single spell, and Alashar knew he was completely exhausted. If he had any tricks up his sleeve, he was playing it dangerously close.
The huge bleeding bite in Alashar's left thigh slowed her down, too, and her joints were popping from the cold weakness of the shadow world. She wanted to tell him they wouldn't make it to the lab and opened her mouth to do just that when a sound came from the thing now only a few paces behind them. It sounded like a cough.
Alashar stopped and looked back at it. Shadow stumbled to a stop just behind her and followed her gaze to the front of the mass of green tentacles. Though it hadn't been there only seconds before, the creature now had a face.
"Grenway," Alashar said.
The green, mucous-covered face smiled, and its features stretched like rubber and twitched. The mutant's body was obviously not used to the experience, and if it was capable of not liking something, it was obvious it didn't like the sensation. The face was Grenway's, but even uglier.
"Aaaaaah, Alashar," Grenway's