Parts of the wall that she was facing began to dissolve into dust as a raggedy-eared, nasty-looking, blind head came pushing through the newly formed hole, a head that was nothing more than an enormous open circle of mouth. There were no teeth, no eyes, and mere breathing slits where the nose should be, with no sort of bone structure to its face that could be bashed with a well-aimed blow. The only large feature on the head, besides the wide-open maw, were the ears. They were shaped a bit like winter-dead tree leaves, folding into three sections with deep indentations and sharp points all around their edges. Each ear twitched wildly in opposite directions.
A second head shoved into the hole above the first one, and a third popped up through a newly formed crack in the floor.
The first beast clawed at its own ears as Ivy continued to bellow. The echoes in the chamber made it sound like more than a dozen singers were caterwauling in different corners of the room, all completely out of tune, and a beat or two behind each other. The creatures butted and banged against each other as they squeezed into the room.
The destrachans had found her, and they seemed killing mad about her singing, as Mumchance had predicted.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
As the destrachans came shrieking into the room, the river continued to rise. Each creature was anyone's worst nightmare, almost as large as the hen house at the farm. Worse still were the weird reverberating screams being given by the monsters-howls so ugly that each cry echoed in Ivy's head, making her back teeth ache.
The lead monster moved in a crouch, its back legs bent, and its front legs reaching out. Muscles rippled from its jaw to its humped back and down past the powerful haunches to its heavy pointed tail. Its thick hide looked waterproof, and Ivy wondered again if destrachans could swim. Or float. That would mess up her plans rather badly. The creature's talons curved out from its feet like blades. That it was blind in no way lessened its powers, and there was no way at all of knowing how sensitive it was to movement. Certainly it was aware of her singing, turning its blind head from side to side as it tried to pinpoint where she was standing. Luckily, its fellows kept bumping into it, and it would break off from its hunting to swipe a talon or tail at the other two.
Obviously, Ivy thought, there was some disagreement going on about who would get to eat her first.
Above her, Gunderal's chanting was adding to the confusion. Her light, high song of the river overlaid Ivy's deeper rough voice booming out her ribald love song. With all that sound swirling through the room and the destrachans' own cries adding to the confusion, the monsters tucked down their flapped ears, flat against their heads, rather like a man might squeeze his eyelids closed against a too-bright light. The beasts fanned out, wildly swinging their talons in the space around Ivy and screeching in a way that made her eardrums ache. Bits of stone shattered as the destrachans' oscillating cries nearly deafened Ivy and the watchers on the stairs above.
At least Archlis had been truthful about the creatures' senses. It seemed that they were primarily limited to using their hearing to locate her. If the breathing slits gave them an ability to smell, Gunderal's spell should hide her from that betrayal of her location. Now, if only the river would rise faster. The water was barely up to the small of the creatures' backs.
"Come on," Ivy sang, weaving her worries into the lyrics of her song, "if you find me too quickly, that won't be any fun for you. And ladies of Procampur know blue-roof sailor boys want to roll, roll, roll with the tide!"
The tower was small with three destrachans crashing around its base. Ivy hopped up a few stairs to avoid the heavy bodies blundering in the center. When the destrachans collided with each other, little shrieks would come out of their mouths. The biggest one shrieked loudest, and the other two would back off for a bit, and then start hunting for her again. One of the beasts stumbled into the fountain and got its big foot stuck in the basin. It pointed its mouth toward the marble and let out a moaning cry. As the stone turned to dust, a wider hole formed where the fountain had been, and the river rushed faster into the room.
"Ready?" Zuzzara called down to her.
"Let the water rise a bit," Ivy called, staggering as a wave caused by a destrachan's thrashing tail rushed past her. Gasping, Ivy spit water out of her mouth, blinked, and tried to push her wet hair out of her eyes. It stuck to the dust and mud that already caked her face. "I don't want them to turn back and escape."
One of the ears twitched on the nearest destrachans, and it swung its head up, pointing toward Zuzzara. Ivy immediately broke into a new song, an old favorite of her mother. "In this world is naught but trouble and sorrow, but why walk in shadow, why run in the night, when you can fly, fly, fly away!"
"Ivy, what do you want me to do?" Zuzzara called.
"Time to fly, time to fly away, time to soar," she bellowed in reply, keeping to the rhythm of the song. Gods knew her singing was awful, but it did seem to keep the destrachans from hunting the others. Ivy grasped the winged serpent belt buckle beneath her fingers. "Pull the wings open three times and then shut," Kid had said, and she did. Nothing happened. "There's nothing but trouble, trouble and sorrow," she sang as she grappled with the belt, "when magic belts won't save you."
"Hey," yelled Zuzzara from above. "That doesn't sound right. I think you have the words wrong."
The beasts circled Ivy, bouncing their cries off the crumbling walls of the chamber, tilting their ears to catch the echoes. Now they were circling together around the base of the tower, each step bringing them closer to where Ivy stood on the first step of the stone staircase. A taloned foot shot out, flashing in front of Ivy's eyes. Its claw was so close to her that she felt the movement of air against her face. She clamped her mouth shut, hoping the sudden silence would confuse the creatures.
The three mud-colored destrachans prowled, then stopped and raised their wide mouths toward the ceiling of the chamber. Even their ears became motionless. Were they sensing her movements? Could they feel her breathe?
Suddenly all the ears twitched at the same time, and the creatures tilted their heads toward Gunderal, high above them-a frail figure, but calm and concentrated. The creatures let out a hideous howl. Gunderal gracefully placed her fingers in her ears and continued to chant.
"Run with me, sad screamers, walk in shadow, run in sorrow," Ivy sang, and her voice echoed from all the walls. Ivy opened her mouth to sing another verse, and her mind went blank. The words of all the hundreds of songs that she knew tangled in her head and bottled up in her throat. But it was enough. The destrachans had turned toward her again and away from her friends. And the river was over the first step of the stair and rising rapidly. She backed up the spiral a little higher.
"Pull the wings open three times and then shut," she howled at the beasts sloshing toward her, their talons extended like cats looking to play with mice. Her fingers plucked again at the silver buckle. "One, two, three, shut! Surprise! The magic is busted!"
Even where she stood on the staircase, the water was up to her waist and sloshing now around the shoulders of the destrachans. She thought about yelling at Zuzzara to haul her up, but being dragged on a rope against the rough stones would hurt. Instead she began to move more quickly up the stairs, her boots echoing on the stone steps.
One of the destrachans stretched out its neck and directed a wave of sound from its tubular mouth. Behind her, the lower stairs began to crumble. Ivy looked back and saw the smooth slabs of stone treads crash into the water, leaving jagged mounds. Waves shot up beside her, sloshing on the outer side of the stairs and breaking over her legs.
"Run!" Mumchance shouted from above.