Thomdor’s satisfaction was short-lived, however, for the beast’s great, doleful eyes were settled on him, staring steadily into the baron’s own hot gaze. The steam from the bull’s maw wreathed its face, and Thomdor smelled a bitter, acrid odor, like burnt oranges.
The smell was strong and pungent, seeming somehow oily in his mouth, and the baron stumbled back a few paces, wondering if this could be some transformed, renegade mage with a grudge against the crown.
Aunadar took advantage of the bull’s menacing advance on the baron to launch his own attack. Charging forward, he repeated the mistake the royal cousins had made earlier, trying to drive his sword into the beast’s flank. The tip of the blade skittered across the bright scales, leaving only a thin scratch. The bull thrashed its head, and young Bleth sprang back, lost his footing, and sprawled backward into the trampled ferns.
Bhereu and the king were both closing in on the beast now. Thomdor inwardly cursed Azoun for risking himself, but the king had always been like that, even as a lad. To ask him to stay out of a battle while others fought was unthinkable. The baron set his jaw, strode forward, and took another hack at a leg joint. His aim was true, but the blade dug less deeply than before.
Something was terribly wrong. The air around Thomdor felt stifling, the thick oiliness was curling and moving in his throat, and the forest seemed to close in on all sides.
The baron snarled a curse and staggered backward. His vision was collapsing into a small tunnel around the massive, steaming golden beast. Once more the creature’s doleful eyes stared tirelessly into his, and Thomdor could feel sweat pouring out of his body. He was starting to tremble and feel numb all over. This was more than the ravages of too many years spent gorging at the board, this was magic… deadly magic.
Thomdor looked at Bhereu. His brother’s face looked like a death mask and wore a look of grim realization that must mirror his own. The duke nodded in unspoken answer to Thomdor’s look as he came around the bull, hacking at its legs as vigorously as Azoun was doing on the beast’s other flank, then opened his mouth to speak.
What came out was a weak cough, and Bhereu’s eyes turned an odd green color. Then the beast lunged in their direction, and the world became a place of stabbing horns, hacking blades, and desperate dives for safety clear of plunging hooves. Both royal cousins fell and roiled, then rose to topple backward again. Thomdor struck the ground hard more than once, but the pain felt distant, as if the world were slipping away into numbing mists.
The tunnel that the world had become heaved and rolled, and Thomdor knew he was rising very slowly, pushing at the stubborn ground with his hands. Beside him, Bhereu rolled over, but did not try to rise. Somewhere the bull roared again as the Warden of the Eastern Marches staggered over to his brother, using his sword to support himself.
The duke was laboring to breathe, his face taut with pain, his eyes bright and wide.
“Poison!” Bhereu gasped. He was shaking under Thomdor’s hands, his burly body streaming with sweat. He tried to rise once, scrambling to gather himself in the baron’s firm grasp, and then collapsed, head lolling and limbs jouncing loosely.
Thomdor laid him back down. Poison, not magic. Yes, that would make sense, particularly with a clockwork creation. To have any hope of surviving, he and Bhereu would both have to get back to the Royal Chirurgeons in Suzail as soon as the battle was over.
Aye, the battle. Where was that bull, anyway?
Head buzzing from the effects of the poison, Thomdor looked around, the tunnel shifting and flowing crazily until he spotted a golden flash.
Aunadar was up and hacking ineffectually again, but the beast seemed intent on slaying Azoun, trying to smash the ever-dodging king down with its golden hooves. As Thomdor watched, Azoun danced away from a lashing hoof and struck out backhanded with his blade, sweeping his sword’s tip neatly into the beast’s right eye. There was a flash of spraying sparks, and the eyeball-a faceted gemstone!-bounced to the ground.
The bull stiffened and let out a tremendous roar. Internal bellows whined, and the burnt-orange smoke billowed from the monster’s maw and empty eye socket with renewed vigor.
Poison, Thomdor reminded himself grimly as he lumbered forward on rubbery legs. Horns slashed, but he drove them aside with his battered blade and then lifted it and drove it weakly into the gaping eye socket amid the flowing smoke.
The bull shook its head, and Thomdor’s blade was wrenched from his grasp. He stumbled again, the tunnel before him becoming smaller, the beast receding in the distance.
Azoun struck at the monster’s other eye, and the clockwork golden head swung around again. The bull stamped once and then charged, trying to impale the king on its wicked horns. Its maw was open, and the acrid smoke wreathed its head, trailing behind it in oily wisps.
To dodge left or right was to be gored on those glittering horns. Azoun dropped to one knee, raising his blade in front of him. As the creature bore down on him, the king made a desperate lunge, striking into the bull’s open maw, driving his blade in to the hilt.
Sparks sprayed and metal skirled as the blade bounced from one unseen innard to another. There was a metallic singing and snapping, and the blade burst out the back of the bull’s skull, spraying a thick purple-black fluid.
The clockwork beast hung motionless for a moment, pinioned on the blade, its horns inches from the king’s face. Then it slowly, almost gracefully, dropped in its tracks. Whirring noises rose and clattered briefly from its collapsing form, only to die away once more.
Silence descended immediately on a battlefield wreathed in acrid-smelling fog. The king let go his blade and stood up unsteadily, shoulders trembling. Aunadar, the only man still holding a sword, poked at the glittering body a few times.
It lay still, but Thomdor could barely see it through the swimming tunnel. He staggered forward. He had to tell Azoun to summon aid for Bhereu.
The baron stopped short at the sight of His Majesty. The king’s flesh was bone-white and drawn as tightly over his skull as that of any mummy in a tomb. The royal eyes were wide, almost panicked, and Azoun’s brow and beard were beaded with dripping sweat.
The king mouthed a few words Thomdor could not catch, then collapsed in front of the golden bull’s horns.
Thomdor stared down at him, feeling his own knees going weak, but Aunadar was at his elbow in an instant, holding him up, voice shrill with fear. “What happened? What’s wrong with the king-and the duke? Are they ill? The bull didn’t strike him. What’s wrong?”
The tunnel of his vision was growing smaller, Thomdor sagged against an arm that seemed afraid to hold him. He had to get this boy to summon help, or House Obarskyr was lost.
“Right… boot,” the baron gasped. The words felt like acid in his throat, he could barely speak. “King’s right boot,” he rasped. “Wand.”
Aunadar looked at him blankly for a moment, as if trying to translate Thomdor’s wheezing words, then knelt down beside the king and peered into his right boot. His fingers closed on something, and he looked questioningly back at Thomdor as he drew it forth: a slender ivory wand, sheathed just inside the royal boot top.
Thomdor set his teeth and managed a nod, mentally snarling at the young man to get on with it. The tunnel had closed almost to nothing, and the darkness around it was crawling with dark, monstrous serpents and spiders, waiting for the Warden of the Eastern Marches to falter so they could claim all three of the royals.
Aunadar turned to the baron with the wand flat across his palms. There was a shocked, questioning look on his young face.