Taking of the Eye
Chapter Eight
"Damn it, girl, you said he was asleep!" Eldin accused in a loud whisper. "He's the liveliest sleepwalker I've ever seen!"
"He must have been eager to start," Aminza answered in his ear, her voice a mere breath. "Certainly he was asleep when I left my bed. Something may have woken him up."
"Perhaps he sensed your game," said Hero, "and discovered your absence."
"No, no," she replied. "For I made up my bed to appear as I were in it. Besides, he would have come for me and called me out."
The three of them were crouched in the shadows at the gate of the tunnel that led back to their prison cavelet. In the main cave, through the bars of the gate and by the light of flambeaux, Thinistor Udd could be seen to be engaged in magic. His back was turned to them where he stood half-hidden by a stalagmite before Yibb-Tstll's idol. His arms were stretched high and wide over his head and in one hand he held his knobbed wand.
His voice crackled like subdued lightning in the confines of the cave, and as he chanted his alien discords so. occasionally, he would strike the stony gaunts where they clung beneath the folds of Yibb-Tstll's cloak. Whenever he did this bursts of brilliant white fire would go slanting off, dying before they could strike either ceiling or walls.
"What's he doing?" asked Eldin.
"He draws strength from the idol," Aminza answered. "See how he swells up when his wand strikes fire? Also, he is waking the gaunts. He always wakes them before- before ..." She stared at the dreamers, eyes wide in a death-white face.
"Before he drains someone?" asked Hero.
She nodded. "The gaunts go out to guard the plateau and the mouth of the cave, making sure there are no intruders and that Thinistor will not be disturbed."
Even as she spoke a fantastic thing began to happen. The god's stone cloak grew blurred in appearance, as if viewed through smoke, and its central parting seemed for all the world to widen, wholly revealing the gaunts where they now writhed fitfully as they clung to the god's monstrous body. Then, one by one-stone things no longer but rubbery creatures from the mind of a madman-they fell from the idol like strangely ripened fruit, opening their wings and speeding in a flock round and about the cave's walls and ceiling. A moment more of this wild circling until, as at a signal, they made for the exit tunnel and disappeared into it in a great flapping of leathery wings.
"We must act now!" Aminza hissed. "A moment more and he will be too strong for you. Look-ah!-too late!"
For Thinistor had turned from the idol's uncertainly wavering figure, had seen the three where they crouched at the barred gate, and his yellow eyes were tinged red with fires of hell. He pointed his wand ...
"Now!" cried Eldin and Hero together, stepping back a pace before slamming their massive frames against the metal bars of the gate. The bars bent from their combined weight-chains snapped and hinges sheared-and the gate went down in a cloud of dust and stony debris. The dreamers fell with the gate as Thinistor's bolt passed harmlessly over their heads. It missed Aminza by the breadth of a hot kiss and exploded in white fury in the depths of the prison.
"If a bolt strikes you," the girl screamed, "it will not kill you outright but suck you dry, carrying your strength back to Thinistor!"
Hearing her, Hero rolled to one side as a second bolt seared the air scant inches away, spending itself in a blazing ball of white sparks against me draped wall of the cave. Eldin was springing forward, last dregs of strength powering him, carrying a long metal stave snatched up from the debris of the gate. Aminza, too, played her part, sprinting for the shelter of a knobby stalagmite, distracting the enraged wizard.
And indeed Thinistor, no longer shrunken but swelled out with sorcerous power, was enraged-and confused. His passion saved the three, for in its throes his bolts flew wide and scored no hits. Then, too late, the wizard saw the iron stave where it flew at him from the hand of the older dreamer. He saw it, shrank back, hurled one last, useless bolt, and screamed one shrill scream as the spiked head of the stave impaled him and threw him down. He fell, clutching the iron where it entered the center of his body,