Chapter Seven Tazkar, of Stone and Earth #2
Then it met Lythlet’s gaze, its blue eyes piercing her. Something unnatural speared her mind, and she choked, lungs seizing as frost spread through her skull like dye diffusing into water.
Fangs revealed at last, the beast trundled forward toward her.
Lythlet was pinned to her spot, ice searing her with pain so acute she couldn’t move. Closer and closer, the strikingly blue eyes came.
“Run!” Desil cried, alarmed by her lack of reaction. He grabbed her by the arm, jerking her backward, and she tumbled to the ground, catching herself halfway—she could move again, the ice retracting its frigid claws from her skull.
Desil dragged her to her feet. “Quickly, before it comes!”
The audience was noisier than usual; excited cries rang out, outraged shouts amidst them.
“Yes, spectacular spectators,” Master Dothilos’s cloying voice echoed around the ring, chasing Lythlet as she kept a wide berth from the monster, “as the more seasoned amongst you may recognize, this is no easy fiend, especially not for mere second-rounders! Four years have passed since last this mighty beast served as a conquessor’s foe, and we could not resist bringing it back for one more match!
Will they have better luck than the previous conquessors?
That is in their power to determine, under the guidance of Tazkar divine!
Now for front-row spectators, I can see you fidgeting.
Only the mildest of caution is necessary, my good gentlemen and gentleladies: no flame could possibly reach us at this height. ”
Flame?
As if in answer, the beast-head with bulging black eyes spread its jaws wide in their direction, and a volley of fire spiraled out toward them.
Lythlet screamed as she ducked to one side, Desil rolling to the other. A blast of solar orange consumed her vision, separating them. The heat singed her, but she had dodged in time to avoid the worst of it.
The fire died as the beast turned away to hack a glob of molten spit onto the sand.
On the other side, Desil was furiously patting sand onto his sleeve, which had caught fire. She took one step toward him, but fell backward, gasping as the heated sand nearly burned her foot through the flimsy soles of her worn-out boots.
The baltascar pendant pressed cool against her chest, and the temptation to forfeit rose.
But she pushed the thought out of her head. Not yet . We may yet have a chance.
“Desil,” Lythlet hollered. She couldn’t reach him, not with the burning sand dividing them.
He held up the blackened tatters of his sleeve in answer. “All’s well.”
No time to even breathe a sigh of relief, she said, “The other head, the calmer one with blue eyes, does something when you look into its eyes. Frost in your skull. I don’t know what it is, but avoid its gaze.”
“Oh-ho!” the match-master’s amused voice rang through the arena.
“Any sharp-eared spectator catch that? The ugly lass just shared a clever tidbit: never look into the eyes of the Sentinel. It normally takes a while for conquessors to suss out the source of the frost-burn in their heads. Much like the mind-melders amongst our Anvari ancestors who knew how to navigate the psychescape, the Sentinel knows how to pierce one’s mind and maim from a distance. ”
“Sentinel,” Lythlet repeated under her breath. Is that what the beast is named?
She kept her distance from Desil, gesturing at him to do the same. The burning sands between them threatened to melt the soles off their boots, and if fire were to be unleashed, the two of them clinging together in close quarters seemed decidedly unwise.
As if enjoying the scenery, the frost-burner’s gaze slowly roved around the arena.
Meanwhile, its wild fire-spitting brother was taking a break, drooling slavishly at empty air while twitching its head around every so often.
Its gaze met hers, bulging black eyes threatening to pop free of their sockets, and she raised her spear in apprehension.
Yet it made no move toward her, no attempt to burn her where she stood.
Lythlet frowned. She struggled to understand the beast, its lapse in ferocity, its dumb stillness. Unlike the sentari of last month, which had ripped around the arena unceasingly, this new monster was staying put where it stood.
It seems to be a beast of no brain, not even one between the two of them . And for that, she could not detect any patterns to decode.
As she studied the twain-beast, the slow, tedious swerves of the blue-eyed head finally narrowed onto Desil. Her mouth opened to issue a warning, but she shut it; he was already carefully avoiding its frost-burn gaze.
But then the beast galloped forth, suddenly awakened from its stupor, its long, skinny legs kicking up dust. Rather than the agony of frost unseen, the singe of fire was upon Desil as the manic head reared back and spat a flare at him.
He dashed away frantically, and the beast chased after him, lightning-quick, closing in on him until he swung himself up a bamboo ledge, climbing out of reach and continuing his escape along the ledges. Thankfully, the platforms were made of fire-resistant minstra bamboo.
How are we to kill a beast whose one head unleashes fire while the other drills ice into our skulls?
She furrowed her eyebrows, mind pacing through an avalanche of thoughts, trying to deduce a pattern. It had looked at her, yet it hadn’t attacked—the fire-spitting one, at least. On the other hand, the frost-burner had been immediate in its pursuit once its eyes rested upon Desil.
Her eyes widened. The more she let her thoughts unravel, the more sense it made.
“The fire-breather is blind,” she shouted. “Only the frost-burner sees, and it tells its brother what to do. Stay out of the frost-burner’s sight. Two ledges above you will get you beyond its vision where it stands, so long as you squat low and press yourself against the wall.”
Desil obeyed, leaping up a nearby ledge and jumping across to a higher one. From her end of the arena, she ran forward to make her own ascent, climbing the first platform off the ground, then haphazardly leaping to others as the frost-burner’s gaze approached her, it having given up on Desil.
She crept from ledge to ledge, flattening herself whenever those blue eyes lingered near her. At last, she met Desil at one end of the wall, their ledges a mere arm-span apart.
“Now what? We know one’s blind, the other not. But that’s not enough to put out fires and melt ice-burn.” Desil’s words were broken up by panting, exhaustion from dodging and running creeping up on him.
“There’s something else,” she said. “It can’t hear, neither of them. I was shouting at you, and not once did it react.”
Desil considered that, slowly nodding. “You’re right. We ought to pity the tragic beast. A single pair of seeing eyes, no working ears.”
“It must rely on other senses then. It can’t survive if it hasn’t other things to compensate. Smell—no, not that I’ve noticed. Touch—touch?” She dragged her finger through the air, retracing her earlier route. “It paid me no mind until I started running for the ledges.”
“You think it hunts its prey through vibrations in the ground? It must be very sensitive to detect that—we’re not quite galumphing beasts.”
She nodded. “That’s why we’ve been up here for a minute and it hasn’t moved a bit.
It can’t see us anymore, not from this angle, and we haven’t been thumping our feet against the ground for it to follow.
” Her forehead creased. “But what can we do now, knowing all this? If we leave the ledges to fight it, it’ll know where we are, and we’re roasted on the spot.
It’s not possible to sneak up behind it. ”
“The yutrela,” Desil suggested, nodding at the massive bamboo poles. “Channel the cosmoscape once again.”
She calculated the possibilities. “No, the roots make the ground tremble when they sway. The beast will know something’s happening around there.
Master Dothilos mentioned they lack the fire resistance of minstra poles, so I’d rather not be stuck climbing one when the fire-breather unleashes a blast at it. ”
She buried her head in her hands, trying to steady her thoughts. A surefire way to victory was still beyond her, but she could feel it close, her fingertips scrabbling against a slippery edge. Nothing riled her up more than being so close to success and not claiming it.
Her head shot up, an idea taking hold.
“What is it?” The excitement in Desil’s voice was palpable.
“That bag of slingstones you were playing with earlier in the armory. Did you take it?”
He withdrew the pouch from his pocket, lumps of jagged rocks outlined against the cloth.
“Lure the beast in,” she commanded. She pointed at the stones tumbling out as he loosened the string choking the bag’s neck. “One by one.”
His expression wavered in confusion for a moment, but a smile brightened his face as he caught on. His large hand wrapped around one heavy rock, and he flung it to the ground. It skipped twice before coming to a stop.
The beast responded immediately, darting forth toward them blindly.
Desil flung another stone down, and the beast scrambled closer.
Another, and closer.
One more. And then—
Without a word, Lythlet jumped off the ledge, polearm pointed earthward. It rammed into the beast from above, her weight driving her spear deep, crushing bone and tearing flesh, a gush of blood spraying over her.
The beast lurched downwards, but she remained straddled on its broad back.
Fire erupted as she wrenched the spear out only to plunge it in once more.
It reared its head back at her, the heat coming dangerously close.
She jerked aside, missing the flame by inches, strands of her hair singeing with a sour smell.