The goblins and hobgoblins who had scattered in flight stopped running and turned to stare, bolstered by the priest’s magic. Some shook their heads as if they’d been awakened from a bad dream. Spikehollow was among that group, and he blinked furiously and vomited from the stench of the burning tylor.
Above, the priest mouthed a prayer to Zeboim and tried once more to pull himself out of Direfang’s grip, that time successfully.
“Sea Mother,” Horace blurted, “give them strength and courage.” There were other words he might utter, but they were much softer and not meant for the hobgoblin’s ears. Then his voice rose again. “Fill their hearts with courage, their blood with ire. Help them … by the goddess!”
Below, the beast shimmered; then suddenly it vanished. A heartbeat later it reappeared a hundred or so feet to the west. It whirled to face the goblins that immediately charged toward it again. Then it raised its head and locked eyes with the priest on the ridge.
Horace trembled. “I told you, Foreman, it is a creature of magic, that tylor. Smart, too, and far more than your little friends can deal with. It could-”
The tylor roared and iridescent waves rolled out of its maw, striking the ridge and shattering it where Direfang, Graytoes, and the Dark Knights stood. Horace and Grallik dropped with the collapsing rise. Direfang, Graytoes, and the rest of the goblins fell at the same time, choking dust billowing everywhere.
Fist-sized rocks pounded the wizard and the priest as they tried to scramble to their feet. Grallik could find no purchase and clumsily somersaulted down to the bottom, cutting himself on jagged shards and opening the gash on his arm even wider. A coughing fit struck him as his shoulders slammed against the ground, and he sucked in a mouthful of dirt and stone dust.
Suddenly hands pulled him up, and more slapped at his back. Direfang and another hobgoblin had come to his aid, the latter chattering at him in the ugly, clacking language of goblinkind.
“Breathe, wizard,” Direfang growled.
When Grallik was able to do just that, Direfang grabbed his shoulders and whirled him around to face the tylor, which, down below, was busy ripping through one goblin after the next.
“Fire magic, wizard. Use it now!”
Something raspy and unintelligible came out of Grallik’s mouth. He spat, tasting only dirt and blood, his tongue flailing around amid broken teeth. The wizard’s head pounded, and the right side of his face felt warm and wet; his blond hair was matted with blood and sweat on his forehead, hanging down in his eyes. He tried to look around to see what had happened to Horace, but Direfang forced him to return his gaze to the tylor.
“Now!” Direfang growled louder. “Now or die!”
It wasn’t that the hobgoblin would kill him, Grallik realized, as he called up one of his more familiar fire spells. It was that if he didn’t act, the tylor would kill them all.
Concentrating, he sent a thin column of flame lashing down on the beast’s back. Not enough to penetrate its scaly hide and hurt it very much, but enough to distract it from its goblin feast. Direfang’s army took advantage of Grallik’s spell and swarmed in tighter, stabbing fast and furious, desperately.
A dozen feet behind the wizard, Horace was struggling to pick himself up. The priest’s bare chest and arms were covered with welts and cuts from his plunge down the shattered ridge. One eye was swelling shut, and a few ribs were broken, making it painful to breathe.
“Zeboim, mother goddess, save us,” he whispered. He held his right arm in close, clutching his broken ribs, while he gingerly sucked the dust-choked air into his lungs and began a spell.
Around the priest young goblins were picking themselves up, some crying, the rest too frightened to make a sound. One who looked barely old enough to walk hung tightly to Horace’s leg. A few could not raise themselves up because they were dead or dying, and their fellows stared around sadly at them.
“Tottle is not moving,” one goblin said.
“Tottle will never move again,” another said sadly.
“Three-toes is dying, and Drak and Bosky too,” a slight female wailed.
“Mother goddess,” Horace croaked, trying futilely to speak louder than the goblins milling around him. “She who is called the Darkling Sea, the Maelstrom, Rann … turn the ground beneath the tylor’s feet to blessed, thick mud.”
Sweat beaded thick on the priest’s face as he forced all of his energy into the enchantment. A moment later the glow ran from him like melting butter, settling in a spreading pool around his feet.
At the same time, the earth softened beneath the massive claws of the tylor, and slowly the creature began to sink.
“Zeboim, mother goddess, she who is called Zebir Jotun, Zura the Maelstrom, and Zyr, now turn the ground beneath its feet to stone.” The glow around Horace’s feet brightened, scattering the young goblins who were able to move. “Mother goddess, stone, I pray!” He sank to his knees, spent, and pitched forward, his face buried in the dirt and scree. The glow faded, and the young goblins carefully returned, poking and prodding the priest, one beckoning an elder goblin to come close.
At the same time, the hobgoblin took a step toward the tylor. “The skull man’s magic!” Direfang yelled. “Take advantage! Slay the monster while it cannot move!”
Behind Direfang, Grallik struggled to his feet. “I’ve nothing left,” he said to himself. Despite that, he started gesturing feebly at the beast, desperately trying to summon more magic.
The tylor had dropped into the soft earth, covering up the first joints on its legs. Several goblins were caught in its sinking, and their shrill screams sliced through the air, suddenly, as the ground turned as hard as granite and trapped them as surely as the tylor. The beast screamed its rage, and tried to shimmer as it had before, when it moved itself magically.
But the huge beast went nowhere; it was trapped by the priest’s spell. It struggled to pull itself free of the stone. Its thrashing head bludgeoned those goblins closest to it, snapping backs and necks. Then cracks appeared in the stone at its front feet, and a great ball of flame engulfed it, the whooshing noise drowning out the tylor’s bellows and the surrounding goblins’ screams.
The stench of burning flesh became unbearable as the fire died out almost as quickly as it had materialized. The goblins trapped in stone around the tylor had been incinerated, their smoldering corpses competing with the reek from the tylor’s singed hide.
Still, the beast was not dead.
“More fire, wizard!” Direfang barked.
Another hobgoblin slapped Grallik on the back for emphasis. “Do what Direfang says.”
“More fire now!” Direfang looked to the ground at his feet, where Graytoes lay whimpering. Abruptly he vaulted over her and drew his sword, one he’d taken from a Dark Knight he’d slain in the mining camp. He raced forward, roaring a battle cry, leaping over rubble and broken and dead goblins, hollering for his surviving kinsmen to join him.
“I’ve no fire left to give,” Grallik muttered. But somehow the wizard was able to stand erect, focus his energy, and hurl another fiery lance, aimed straight at the tylor’s open mouth. He had strength left for one more lance, which missed the mark and instead struck the beast’s jaw. Then Grallik sagged back against a lean hobgoblin.
Grallik coughed deeper, the hacking spasm painful, and he looked around, again searching for the priest. Grallik wanted Horace to tend to him, but he saw the priest was lying on his stomach, young goblins hovering nearby and jabbing at him. “Dead?”
The wizard glanced up to what was left of the ridge, seeing more goblins streaming down, including Mudwort and the one he thought was named Boliver. The two had been watching from a high perch, out of reach of the tylor’s rock-shattering breath.
A sharp intake of air drew Grallik’s attention back to the tylor. It was ready to loose another one of those earth-rending breaths, and the wizard flattened himself against the ground in preparation for the blast. But the tylor angled its head down, sending the shimmering waves to break apart the stone that gripped it.