As Snowstar explained this to Elspeth, Darkwind created a heatless mage-light and sent it into the basilisk's shelter, so he could get a better idea of how big it was. Elspeth shuddered in revulsion as the light revealed just how phenomenally hideous the creature was.
'Are we going to kill it now?' she asked; Darkwind had the feeling that she wanted to get this over with quickly. Well, he didn't blame her.
Being downwind of a basilisk was a lot like being downwind of a charnel pit.
Snowstar answered for him. 'Gods of our fathers, no!' he exclaimed.
'If you think it stinks now, you don't want to be within two days' ride of a dead one! That's assuming we could kill it. It has three hearts, that warty skin is tougher than twenty layers of boiled hide, and it can live for a long time with what we'd consider a fatal wound. It can live without two legs, both eyes, and half its face. Altogether. Assuming you could get near enough to it to take out an eye. Personally, I'd rather not try.' Elspeth shook her head, not in disbelief, but in amazement. 'What about magic?'
'Magic doesn't work on them,' Darkwind told her, as he reckoned up the length of the beast and judged it to be about the size of three horses, not counting the tail. 'It just passes around them and goes straight into the ground. We should have shields like that! An amazing animal.'
'You sound like you admire it,' Elspeth replied in surprise.
He shrugged, and walked around a little, to see if the basilisk noticed him, or if it had gone completely torpid. 'In a way I do,' he said, noting with satisfaction that the creature's eyes tracked on him. 'It is said that they were created by one of the Great Mages, not as a weapon.
but as a way of disposing of the carcasses of those creatures that were weapons, that even dead were too dangerous to touch and too deadly to leave about. Nothing else will eat a dead cold-drake, for instance.' His brief survey complete, he returned to Elspeth's side. 'They weren't supposed to be able to breed, but neither were a lot of other creatures.
Most of their eggs are infertile, but there are one or two that are viable now and again.' He turned to Snowstar. The scout wiped the back of his hand across his watering eyes, and stood a little straighter. Snowstar was one of the youngest of the scouts; Darkwind was grateful that he had known enough to send for help and not attempt to move the basilisk himself It could be done without magic, but the odds of success, especially in the uncertain weather of fall or spring, were not good. 'Have you found any place for us to put her?' he asked.
'Yes, but it's not as secure as I'd like,' the scout replied, wiping his eyes again. The wind had turned, and the fumes were-potent. Darkwind's eyes had started to burn a few moments ago, and Snowstar had been here for some time. Small wonder he had watering eyes. 'I've got a rock-bottomed gully along this stream; the sides are too steep to climb and there's always lots of things falling into it to die. The only problem is that the mouth of the valley is open to the stream, and I couldn't see a way to close it off.'
'Isn't there a swamp somewhere off that way?' Darkwind asked, waving vaguely in the direction where he thought he sensed water.
'Can you get the thing that far?' Snowstar asked, incredulously. 'If you can, that would be perfect. There's plenty for it to eat, no hertasi like it because it's full of sulfur springs, and the sulfur's enough to make sure any eggs it lays won't hatch.'
'If we can get it moving, we can get it that far,' Darkwind told him.
'The problem is going to be getting it moving without getting it worked up enough to think about being angry or frightened. If it's either, it'll start trying to fascinate everything within line of sight.'
'Right.' Snowstar spread his hands. 'I'll leave that up to you. Get it moving and I'll guide you to the nearest finger of the swamp and make sure nothing interferes with you on the way.'
' That will do.' Darkwind studied the hideous beast, trying to determine whether it was better to lure it out of its rudimentary den, or force it out.
Force it out, he decided at last. He didn't think that the beast was going to take any kind of bait at the moment.
'Here's what we're going to do,' he said, turning to Elspeth, who still watched the basilisk with a kind of repulsed fascination. 'It's comfortable and it feels secure in that den. You and I are going to have to make it feel uncomfortable and insecure, and make it come out. Once it's out, it will try to go back in again; we'll have to prevent that. Then we'll have to herd it in the direction we want it to go.' Elspeth licked her lips and nodded, slowly. 'We use magic, I presume?'
' That, or mind-magic, or a combination of the two,' he told her. He yawned as he finished the sentence, and hoped he wasn't going to be too fuddled from lack of sleep to carry this off. Elspeth looked as if she felt about the same. 'Got any ideas about what might drive it out?' She leaned back against a tree trunk and frowned at the beast. 'Well, what would drive you or me out of bed? Noise?' Interesting idea. 'That's one nobody I know of has tried.' He thought for a moment. 'If it were warmer, we could lure her out with an illusion of food, but she isn't hungry in the semi-hibernation she's in right now.
Heat and cold in her cave-no, too hot and she'll just wake up more, and we don't want that. Too cold and she'll go torpid.'
'How about rocks in her bed?' Elspeth hazarded. 'Sharp, pointy ones. Maybe combine it with noise.'
'Good. Good, I like that plan. It should irritate her without making her angry, and if we make her uncomfortable she won't want to go back in there.' He scratched his head. 'Now, which do you want? Rocks or noise.
'Rocks,' she said, surprising him. 'I've got an idea.' Since he already had a notion about the noises that might irritate the basilisk, that suited him very well. He had been afraid that Elspeth wouldn't think herself capable of manifesting good-sized stones. but evidently she already had a solution in mind.
'Do it, then,' he said, shortly, and concentrated all his attention on a ~ just behind the basilisk's body. The one thing he didn't want to do was frighten her-just make her leave her lair. If he frightened her, she might be aroused enough to set all her abilities working, and that would do them no good at all.
Fine thing if I met my end as a late-night snack for a foul-breathed, incredibly stupid monster.
He already knew how some pure, high-pitched sounds irritated wolves and birds; he reasoned the same might well be true of this beast. It just had to be loud enough and annoying enough.
