Elves clambered up to their comrades’ shoulders to get at the leaning stone. With groans, grunts, and more than a few curses, they shoved the monolith. At its base, the turquoise soil began to bulge and rise. The monument was breaking loose.
“Get back! Get back!”
Elves on foot and horseback scattered. Suddenly freed of the annoying rain of arrows, the sand beast lashed out with a foreclaw. With its double burden, the Lioness’s horse lagged behind the rest. Iron claws snared the animal’s flanks. Horse and riders went down in a heap.
The great stone continued its inexorable fall. The sand beast sensed the danger, but too late. The tapered spire crashed down on its hips, smashing it to the ground and pinning it beneath tons of stone. The beast let out a high-pitched howl.
Elves scrambled up the monolith, adding their weight to the burden on the creature’s legs. As it roared and clawed at the stone, they stabbed furiously at the softer skin under its legs. Some swords snapped, but enough penetrated to make blood flow. Stirred by an agony it had never known, the sand beast arched its back with a mighty effort, shifting pillar and elves, and freeing itself. Crushed hindquarters dragging, it fled, mighty foreclaws propelling it several yards at a time. The lust to kill elves was subsumed beneath a more primal need-to live.
Her warriors found the Lioness, groggy but uninjured. Atop her sprawled Favaronas; the archivist was senseless.
“We beat it, General! It’s running away!” they shouted, moving Favaronas aside and pulling her to her feet.
The words penetrated the fog in her battered brain. “What? Go after it! Don’t let it escape!”
Mounted elves spurred away. Kerian called for a new horse. While one was being brought, she knelt by Favaronas. Blood trickled from his nose, but his eyes had opened. With her help, he sat up, holding his head in both hands.
“We aren’t dead?” he muttered.
She grinned. “Didn’t I tell you I’d protect you? I even let you land on me!”
The sour look froze on his face as his gaze went beyond her. “Look there!”
Issuing from the deep hole left by the uprooted monolith was a swarm of tiny lights. They drifted and darted in the night air: blue, white, red, and a smoky orange. The blue lights rose more quickly than the rest, and winked out one by one. White and red lights drifted to the ground and died like embers falling on wet grass. Only the orange wisps remained, circling and rising.
The Lioness had taken a few steps toward the lights, but Favaronas warned, “Stay back! Don’t touch them!”
“What are they?”
“I don’t know, but they were imprisoned by the standing pillar. They weren’t meant to roam free!”
A horse arrived for Kerian. Wincing from her accumulated hurts, she swung onto its back, telling Favaronas, “Watch those things. Tell me what happens.” She spurted hard after the sand beast.
The orbiting orange lights peeled off in groups of two and three, and followed her. Favaronas and the foot-bound warriors shouted warnings, but she was already too far away to hear.
Fiery pain kept the sand beast to a speed little better than a horse’s best gallop. The bones broken in its left hip grated against each other. Sword cuts in the tender junction of its left hind leg burned.
Great as its agony was, even stronger was the fury blazing in its breast. The need for vengeance pushed it onward. It would visit this pain a hundredfold on the one who had sent it here. If necessary, it would cross the entire world to slay the one responsible for this agony.
Something snagged its right rear foot. Brought up short, the monster toppled forward, burying its chin in the turf. Before it could get up, more ropes whistled in, snagging its horned head and front limbs. Each loop drew tight, the one encircling its neck cinching so hard it couldn’t draw breath. Then the creature found itself pulled in four directions at once.
Kerian galloped into the fantastic scene. The sand beast was down, thrashing against its bonds. Wounded and confused, it couldn’t break the ropes holding it before more arrived. Its gyrations tore up clods of blue-green soil and widened its wounds. Blood flowed freely. Additional loops cinched its neck. Its eyes bulged as the pressure on its throat grew and grew.
As her horse skidded to a halt, she was amazed to see the orange lights sweep past her. They never paused, but flowed toward the tormented beast. They held off a few feet, sparkling like quartz in firelight, until all their number was gathered, then in unison they dropped. When they touched the sand beast’s hard flesh the area was bathed in a silent flash of white light. A gust of cold wind stole Kerian’s breath. The ropes abruptly went slack, causing the straining horses to surge forward and nearly unseating their riders.
To the amazement of all, the sand beast was gone.
Wapah halted at the flap of Adala’s tent. “Weyadan, I have food for you.”
“Enter, cousin.”
