The House of Yeel - By Michael McCloskey Page 0,22
grass strip, watching the statues as they passed. Other than the soft rustling of plants in the breeze, Jymoor couldn’t see anything moving. They passed several more stone victims. Jymoor saw a petrified man in a robe, bowing low as if in worship.
They came to a circular clearing in the flowers, with a ring of six or seven statues arrayed along its perimeter. Suddenly Jymoor noticed a giant black reptile head peering at them from a bed of flowering plants. The eyes held the vertical black slit pupils of a venomous serpent. The jaws of the creature looked wide enough to engulf a man.
“Beware! I see it!” Jymoor yelped. Yeel and Avorn spun to look at her, so Jymoor just pointed. The other two turned and saw the thing as it reared up on strong, black coils to regard them from above like a giant cobra.
The twisting ebony serpent locked its eyes onto Jymoor and it spat forth a long acid syllable.
“Yaaaaaag.”
The word struck Jymoor like a wave. She felt her skin crackle and harden. For a moment she felt despair. Had she become a statue? Then the attack passed and she exhaled spasmodically, twitching in fear.
Avorn charged toward the monster, sword held high. He slashed and then thrust at the trunk of the serpent but it retreated out of range. The knight advanced again, but the serpent’s tail whipped around and struck him in the leg. The Crescent Knight faltered beneath the onslaught, falling to one side. His assailant bunched up over him and opened its jaws as if to consume the knight.
Jymoor could hardly bear to watch. She loathed her helplessness, but she carried no weapons. She hugged the stone next to her. How could she help?
The stone shifted and she realized she had disturbed another denizen of the awful garden.
“Your friends may prevail,” a rough voice came from above. Jymoor looked up at the being she had awakened, a stout woodsman with a red beard and axe in hand. Then Jymoor looked back to where the knight had fallen. A huge red-scaled thing towered next to the serpent and the knight. Jymoor struggled with the appearance of something so large seemingly from thin air. Spines erupted from most of its back. The monster had two long front legs with three enormous claws extending half the height of a man. It supported itself on three broad back legs and a long, muscular tail covered in more thorny extensions. Its thick, muscular neck flattened into a wide head that was mostly mouth, like a giant toothed clam. Jymoor couldn’t see any eyes on the creature but that didn’t comfort her in the slightest.
“Where did that come from?” she cried. “Where’s Yeel?”
“Take my axe,” the burly man-statue said, and handed Jymoor the weapon. Jymoor grabbed the weapon with one hand without removing her gaze from the towering beast that had appeared to battle Slevander.
“What can I—” Jymoor stammered, but then she saw that the man next to her had already returned to an inanimate state. The huge tail of the red monster swept toward Jymoor, a giant scaly juggernaut covered in sharp spines.
Jymoor scrabbled back to avoid being crushed by the tail. Her foot caught in a vine, and she fell back with a shriek into darkness.
***
Yeel swung his malinthander again and bellowed in the manner of a beast. Slevander dodged out of the way with uncanny agility. The serpent retreated, fooled by Yeel’s new disguise. He had planted the suggestion of a terrible foe into the minds of all those around him, in order to gain the initiative in the combat.
He projected the concept of the malinthander as being the huge paw of the monster he had become. His natural height aided the illusion, since he already stood taller than humans from foot to highest tentacle. He swept it toward Slevander again, just to keep the serpent at bay.
The pace catalyst that Yeel had employed to immunize himself and his Companions had met with some measure of success; even though Slevander had tried to reduce them to statues, he still moved and fought.
In order to keep from giving his opponent time to think, Yeel wailed again and lumbered forward. He sent tentacles ahead, transmitting the concept of the huge beast seeking its prey with its long, clawed hands.
Once again the creature slid away, keeping most of its body under the heavy growth of a patch of beautiful plants. Yeel worried about keeping track of the head and those dangerous