Song of the Saurials - Kate Novak [109]
"Silence!" Xaran shouted, hovering nearer to the bard. Three of his eyes had been crushed in the cave-in, but tendrils tipped with tanged maws slithered from the damaged eye stalks. The mouths waved in Finder's face, hissing like snakes.
"How you resisted the seeds of possession I will never know," the beholder said to Finder, "but you will not resist them a second time. If it weren't for the master's interest in you, bard, you'd be a dead man. Still, there is no reason you should not suffer as I have suffered."
The bard gasped as Xaran focused his wound-giving eye on the bard's right hand.
Instantly an ugly gash appeared across the back of the bard's hand and thumb, cutting through the flesh and muscles down to the bones. Blood oozed from the veins and dripped to the floor. The pain in his hand traveled up his arm like a fire through dry undergrowth, but Finder gritted his teeth and said nothing. He wrapped his hand in the hem of his cloak.
"You endure pain easily," Xaran said. "How else can I make you suffer, bard?
Hmm? Shall we see if your singer is as brave as you are?" The beholder turned slightly and focused its wounding eye on Alias. A long gash quickly spread along her sternum, and blood dripped into her chain mail shirt. She drew in a sharp breath, but she made no other noise.
"Leave her be, you fiend!" Finder shouted. "I'll… I'll do what you want."
"That's better. Now tell the halfling to come down," the beholder ordered.
"It won't do any good," Finder said. "She has a mind of her own. She won't obey me."
That's for sure, Olive thought vehemently.
"Then I'll have to go up and get her," the beholder said. "She can have a taste of pain as well."
Olive tightened her grip on her dagger. The moment she saw Xaran hovering beneath the hole, she leaped down on top of the monster. She grabbed hold of an eyestalk and used it as a handle so she could remain perched on the beholder's head. Xaran sank the mouths at the end of its tendrils into the arm Olive was using to hold onto its eyestalk.
The halfling screamed and slashed through one of the tendrils where it emerged from the eye stalk. The mouth at the end of the severed tendril released its grip on her flesh and dropped to the floor. Olive stabbed the eye at the end of the eyestalk she was using to hold onto the beholder.
Xaran shrieked with its own mouth and the two tendril mouths biting the halfling.
Alarmed by the noise made by the beholder, one of the orcs released Alias's legs and aimed a crossbow at the halfling.
With her one free leg. Alias kicked savagely at the orc's face and sent him sprawling backward. Using her other leg to gain leverage, the swordswoman pushed herself into a backward somersault and twisted her arms free from the grips of the other two orcs.
Finder grabbed Olive's sword from the ground and ran to help Alias. He slammed into one of the orcs and stabbed at it furiously while the swordswoman fought with the other two.
Loaded down with the extra weight of the halfling, the beholder began sinking toward the ground. It retracted its tendril mouths from Olive's arm and focused its eye of levitation on her. Olive felt herself slowly begin to float upward, but she kept her grip on Xaran's eye stalk. "I'm not going anywhere without you, Xaran!" she snarled.
"Release me or I will use my death ray," the beholder threatened her.
"I'm betting it was crushed in the cave-in," Olive said, "or you would have used it by now."
"There is something I have yet to use on you, halfling," Xaran whined. The beholder's tongue rolled out of its mouth and flipped a chestnut seed burr at the halfling. The burr stuck to Olive's cloak.
Olive gave a shriek, dropped her dagger, and released the be holder's eye stalk as she frantically groped at the strings of her cloak. Xaran turned its eye of levitation on the halfling and levitated her rapidly away from itself until she slammed against the ceiling.
Olive flung her cloak down on top of beholder's