In fact…” He felt the ground shaking again. “Maldred, ask the crystal ball…”
The ogre-mage was startled. Dhamon hadn’t called him by his real name since they’d been transported from the Nostar cell to the shadow dragon’s cave.
“Ask the crystal ball if a cure is still within my reach.” Dhamon ran his hands across his stomach, feeling all the scales beneath the ragged robe. He touched the left side of his face to make sure there was still flesh there, and he waited impatiently while Maldred talked to Sabar. Dhamon visibly relaxed and breathed a great sigh of relief as he heard Sabar answer yes.
“But Sabar says you don’t have much time left in which to find a cure,” Maldred explained. “You have to find the shadow dragon soon.”
“Aye, Mal. I am well aware of that.” The fever had suddenly returned, and the skin on his cheek was drenched with sweat, despite the chill of the fall night. His stomach felt was if it were on fire. Dhamon turned abruptly away, walking toward the brook. “Why don’t you look in on your damnable dry mountains of Blöde while you’re at it? Check in on your dear father.”
Ragh snatched up the crystal ball. “You already did that, didn’t you?” The draconian returned the ball to the pouch, trying it to his makeshift belt. “You don’t need to use this anymore.”
Dhamon shed his tattered robe, hearing more oohs and ahhs from the goblins following him as they admired his scales. He waded into the water, hoping its coolness would chase away his fever and put out the fire raging in his stomach. He left the glaive on the bank and growled when a goblin ventured close to touch the weapon.
“Get back!”
The creature didn’t need a translation. The meaning in Dhamon’s eyes was clear. The goblin scampered away to join his fellows, eight of them sitting high on the bank at a respectful distance. They all watched intently Dhamon’s every move. When the ground trembled again, stronger than it had before, Dhamon saw the look on the goblins’ crushed faces turn to horror. The trembling persisted and became more intense. Pebbles rolled down the bank and into the stream.
Dhamon jumped up, nearly losing his balance as the earth rumbled. Spears in hand, the goblins were chattering in fright, forming small groups and shouting.
“They’re scared!” the draconian called to Dhamon.
“I don’t need to speak their language to know that.”
“They await our orders.”
Dhamon shrugged on his robes and snatched up the glaive. He watched Fiona stumble as she tried to get up. “Cut her loose, Ragh. It’ll help her keep her balance.”
Ragh started to argue but thought better of it when the tremors became more pronounced. As the draconian headed toward the Solamnic Knight, a fissure appeared behind him and a half-dozen goblins were instantly swallowed by it. Before their hysterical fellows could attempt to rescue them, the ground beneath the sweet apple tree erupted in a geyser of dirt and rocks, sending the tree toppling down the bank and half the remaining goblins running in all directions.
Something began to rise from the ground where the tree had been.
“By my father!” Maldred cursed. “What in all the levels of the Abyss is that?”
The ogre-mage hadn’t expected an answer, but he got one from the draconian.
“It’s an umberhulk,” Ragh groaned.
“A what?” Dhamon and Maldred asked practically in unison.
“A monster,” Fiona hissed.
Climbing from an ever-bulging hole was a hideous creature, easily eight feet tall and nearly that wide around. It looked like a cross between a great ape and a crustacean, with long crablike pincers at the end of massive arms clacking loudly. It was the color of wet earth, of which it strongly smelled. A pair of jagged mandibles on either side of its cavernous mouth were dark as midnight. Its eyes—four in all, two pairs of them—were darker.
Legs as thick as tree trunks bent as the strange creature shook itself, scattering a shower of dirt. The umberhulk stamped with its great clawed feet, and the ground was set to trembling again.
The creature swiveled its head, mandibles moving, pincers clacking. Its mouth opened slowly, revealing an intense blackness. Teeth that looked like jagged roots were also blackest black, yet they gleamed weirdly. When the creature roared, it sounded like a dozen angry lions, an explosion of noise that filled the night and brought tears to the goblins’ eyes.
“The eyes!” Ragh shouted. “Don’t look at the umber-hulk’s eyes! There’s magic in them!” The draconian repeated this order in the goblins’ tongue. His eyes averted, he stumbled forward, leading with the long sword, but in a second the Solamnic Knight stepped in front of the draconian, cut him off and snatched the sword from his outstretched claws. Ignoring his exclamation, Fiona advanced on the beast, her blade gleaming in the light of the full moon.
The umberhulk held its arms out to its sides in a macabre, triumphant pose, then roared even louder and stamped forward to meet the female Knight.
“It was hunting the goblins,” Maldred said in a low voice. The ogre-mage was sneaking looks at the umberhulk without meeting its gaze. “The vibrations in the earth mark its passing. It was burrowing like a gopher.” The ogre-mage had his hands in the air, fingers splayed, and his palms were glowing with enchantment.
Dhamon hadn’t given Maldred permission to cast any spell, but now was not the time to argue. He dashed forward, trying to reach the umberhulk before Fiona.
Fiona got there first, staring up into the umberhulk’s four dizzying eyes. “Madness,” she pronounced, as she blinked and shook her head. “Beautiful eyes.” Then for a moment she stood as though paralyzed, weaving back and forth as the umberhulk roared. “Madness,” she repeated, somehow rallying her senses.
Nearly all of the goblins who had not fled either stood spellbound or were wandering aimlessly along the edge of the brook, as if they were caught in some mind-clouding magical spell. One wandered too close to the beast, too dazed to see a pincer-arm shoot out, too numb to feel the pincer close about its waist.
The umberhulk held the goblin high, then squeezed the little creature, nearly slicing it in two. Then the creature tossed back its head, opened its mouth, and swallowed it in one motion. The umberhulk reached to snatch another one.
“Monster!” Fiona howled, sounding like the Fiona of old, momentarily. As she drew back on her sword and brought it down hard, the blade bit into the chitinous shell of the thing’s pincer-arm but did no significant damage. The female Knight, as if possessed, struck at the massive creature again and again.
Ragh managed to maneuver behind them and join in, clawing at the umberhulk’s back while kicking dazed goblins out of the creature’s reach.
Another goblin dropped into the umberhulk’s maw.
“We’ll be at this all night!” Dhamon shouted, noting that neither Fiona nor the sivak seemed able to cause the umberhulk any real harm. “Its skin is as tough as plate armor!” He edged closer, narrowly avoiding a pincer and knocking it away with the butt of his glaive. With Ragh and Fiona so near, Dhamon couldn’t risk sweeping the glaive in a wide arc. Instead, he raised it above his head and brought it down in a powerful chopping motion. He felt strangely eager for a good fight.
As the blade of the glaive sliced into the umberhulk’s shoulder, its thick, green blood fountained into the air and rained down on them.
“It bleeds!” Fiona shouted. “If it can bleed, it can die!” She accelerated her efforts, some blows bouncing off the thing’s armored hide, a few miraculously cutting into its arm just above the pincer. The runes along her blade glowed brightly blue, and its sharp edge sparkled in the moonlight. “I can kill it with this sword!”