The adviser paused, his mottled brown mount tossing its head and dancing sideways in agitation. Tanis frowned. "Something's wrong," he said. "Look at the horse. Image isn't normally nervous."
The day had begun to turn dark, and an eerie, premature twilight was descending upon the forest. The surrounding woods were nearly impenetrable to the eye. No breeze moved the leaves in the aspens. The squirrels, the chipmunks had vanished; only moments before, they had been skittering through the underbrush and darting playfully along the trails that bordered the ravine.
"Flint…"
The dwarf already had his battle-axe at the ready. "I know, lad. No birds. No animal noises. As though…" He scanned their surroundings and waved at Xenoth to return.
Tanis finished the sentence for him. "As though the animals had all gone aground."
A low booming echoed upon the air. Flint and Tanis exchanged glances. "Thunder?" Tanis asked.
"I hope so," Flint replied.
The storm hit when Xenoth was halfway back, with thirty or forty paces separating them.
But the storm took the form of a tylor.
"Reorx!" thundered the dwarf. The bushes to the left of Xenoth shuddered, and then, with a force that sent stray leaves and twigs fluttering upon the air, a gray-green blur burst from the undergrowth. The adviser shrieked, and Image crumpled beneath the ferocious beast, the mount's neck broken with one snap of the gaping maw. The adviser, thrown clear, landed hard on his back. He rolled over slowly, pain on his face, as the monster busied itself by tearing at the dead horse. A look of horror froze on Xenoth's face when he saw what the tylor was doing to the animal. He lunged to his feet and ran frantically to one side, away from Flint and Tanis, and into the underbrush.
"Xenoth!" Tanis cried. He jumped off Belthar's back, and Flint slid off Fleetfoot. The two mounts pounded down one of the paths, the mule leading the way by several lengths.
"Xenoth is safer there, lad," Flint hollered, pulling Tanis behind the moldering trunk of a fallen oak. There was a scant six feet between the tree and the edge of the ravine.
The tylor dragged its horned body fully into the clearing, lifted its plated, pointed head, and roared a challenge. The animal then took a stance on the rocky earth, opened its mouth, and began to chant words of magic. Chief among the words was the name "Xenoth."
"By the gods!" The half-elf fell back against Flint. "What is it doing?"
Flint didn't answer the question, but merely muttered, "It's an intelligent creature."
"Can we… Can we reason with it?"
Flint grabbed his arm. "I wouldn't recommend that just now, lad."
The creature roared again and continued chanting. "Xenothi tibi, Xenothi duodonem, Xenothi viviarandi, toth," it called, again and again.
"Flint, we've got to alert the others," the half-elf said.
"I think the beast's already done that for us," the dwarf commented, and he pointed back toward the other side of the ravine. Tyresian, Miral, and Litanas were clustered at the edge, seemingly at a loss about what to do. Jumping a horses across the gap would land mount and rider only ten feet from the monster, well within the range of its whipping, deadly tail. Already, the creature's nervous twitching had shredded the underbrush in a crescent behind the animal.
The three-foot horns on the creature's head were sharp and wicked-looking. Its eyes, half-shut, showed yellow as it chanted, "Xenothi morandibi, Xenothi darme a te vide, toth." Its clawed front legs stamped on the rocky ground, sending sprays of pebbles flying into the underbrush.
"Reorx!" the dwarf exclaimed again.
Xenoth, his gray eyes terrified and glassy, stepped out of the underbrush into the clearing. He approached the monster, seemingly unable to resist the creature's call. The chanting intensified. One of the nobles on the far side of the ravine cried out with the horror. Tanis stood. "Xenoth!"
Tyresian shouted from across the ravine, "Half-elf! Stay where you are!" But Tanis leaped over the log and nocked an arrow as he ran. Flint followed, swinging his battle-axe.
The creature, from its tail to its beaklike snout, was nearly sixty feet long, with scaly armor. Tanis kneeled within the huge curve of the beast's body, aiming for the tylor's head, off to the half-elf's right. He released the arrow just as the creature's thirty-foot tail whistled through the air, to Tanis's far left. The razor-sharp appendage slashed through an aspen sapling, then slammed into the adviser. Xenoth's scream died in a gurgle.
The words "Tanis, don't move!" came crying from the opposite side of the ravine. The half-elf remained where he was but sent another arrow arcing toward the tylor.
Suddenly, hoofbeats crashed on the mud-splattered rocks near Tanis. Miral, crimson tunic vivid against his white and gray mare, hurtled toward the tylor, chanting as he rode. Lightning burst from his fingers and rocketed toward the animal even as the tylor began a new chant.
The ensuing explosion rocked the clearing, knocking Tanis and Flint into a heap. Dazed, they watched the rest of the hunters pour over the ravine and into the clearing.
The tylor's screams rent the clearing as its claws dug gashes in the rock-hard earth. It struggled to crawl into the underbrush, away from the arrows that now poured toward it from the phalanx of elven nobles. Tanis and Flint could only sit and watch.
Finally, the tylor was dead, scorch marks visible all along one side, arrows cutting into its hide and another arrow protruding from an eye. It lay on its side. Just ten feet away, Miral was raising himself on bent elbows, his face blackened with ash. One hand was bleeding.
Xenoth lay dead, face down on the muddy, rocky ground of the clearing, a crimson stain soaking his silver robe and seeping into the earth. The tylor's thrashing tail had crushed his chest. Litanas, Xenoth's assistant, kneeled beside him, shouting something incoherent.
Then suddenly it seemed as though all the elves were staring at Tanis. Even Flint was looking at him with a disbelieving expression. "What is it?" the half-elf asked.
Litanas moved aside, and Tanis saw.
Protruding from Xenoth's heart was the half-elf's arrow.
Chapter 18
Tanis looked from face to face, each showing the same accusing stare. Only Flint looked anything but convinced that the half-elf had slain the adviser.
"You saw!" Tanis cried. "You all saw! I shot to the right, toward the body of the beast. Xenoth was to my left when the creature's tail hit him. How could my arrow have struck him?"
"Yet it did strike him, Tanis," Porthios said quietly.
Tyresian gestured, and several of the elves moved forward as if to restrain the half-elf. With a bound, Flint, still clutching his battle-axe, thrust himself between Tanis and the approaching captors. He raised the weapon, glared fiercely at the advancing elves, and shouted, "Stop!" Obviously taken aback by the sight of a dwarf outfitted for battle and ready to fight, the nobles stopped.
"We volunteered for this expedition knowing that it could bring our death," Flint said angrily. "Isn't that true?"
Ulthen, who with Litanas had been kneeling by Xenoth, stood, his cape splashed with blood. "But we expected the death to come at the jaws of the tylor, Master Fireforge, not by one of our fellow hunters."
The elves muttered and growled. The adviser had been disliked by many of the courtiers, so there seemed to be little real sadness at his demise, merely shock that it appeared to have come at the hand of another elf.