Dissonance, he thought suddenly. That might work even better; two pure tones out of tune with each other.
He'd done this before as a kind of game, when he was just learning very fine control. He'd gotten good enough that he had been able to produce recognizable voices out of the air. Producing pure tones wasn't all that hard, it just took a lot of energy.
He started near the top of the human-audible scale, figuring to go up if he had to. It took him a moment to recall the trick of it, but when he got it, Snowstar jumped as a nerve-shattering squeal rang out from the basilisk's lair. The young scout clapped both hands over his ears, his expression pained. Darkwind wished he had that luxury. He had to listen to his creation in order to control it.
When he glanced out of the corner of his eye at Elspeth, he saw she had blocked both her ears with her fingers, and her brow was creased with concentration.
His sounds didn't seem to be having any effect, although already he noticed the basilisk shifting her weight, as if she found her position uncomfortable. He raised the notes another half step and waited to see the effect.
Another increment followed that, until he had gone up a full octave, and still he was not getting the reaction he wanted, although the monster turned occasionally to snap at the empty air, as if trying to rid her lair of its noisy visitor.
Finally, he took the sounds up past the range where even he could hear it, and he had one of the longest ranges in the Clan. Elspeth had taken her fingers out of her ears two steps earlier, and Snowstar had taken his hands down before that, with an expression of deep gratitude.
This was the range that animals other than man could hear; he wasn't about to give up this plan until he'd passed the sounds that bats used.
And from the look on Elspeth's face, she wasn't going to give in until she had produced rocks the size of small ponies.
Neither of them had to go that far, although whether it was Darkwind's dissonant howls or Elspeth's stones that finally tipped the balance~, he couldn't tell. The basilisk had been snapping and shifting uncomfortably for some time when he changed the tone again, and the basilisk came pouring out of her lair, burbling with anger and frustration.
She stood there for a moment, wavering between the discomfort of the lair, and the exposure of the outdoors. If she dove back in again, they might never get her out.
Before Darkwind could say anything, Elspeth solved the problem for him. He sensed her grabbing the underlying web of earth-energies at the mouth of the half-dug lair and yanking.
The lair collapsed in on itself, leaving the basilisk nowhere to go.
The monster rumbled deep in her chest, and turned, heading downstream and away from them, into the darkness. 'That will do for a few furlongs, but then we're going to have to turn her out of this stream when it forks,' Snowstar said, as the basilisk plodded out of the range of his torch and Darkwind's mage-light.
'Don't worry, I think we can deal with it,' he said, breaking into a trot along the graveled streamside, sending his mage-light winging on ahead until it illuminated the unlovely rump of the basilisk. She was moving at a pretty fair pace; he'd had no idea they could move that fast.
In fact-was he going to be able to keep up with her?
Elspeth supplied his answer, as she and the Companion trotted up alongside and she offered him a hand up. 'Gwena can carry two for a while,' she said. He took her at her word and got himself up behind her. 'Are you going to use that sound of yours to drive that thing?' she asked once he was settled and Gwena was bounding after the tail of the monster.
'Yes,' he said-shortly, as it was difficult to speak when bouncing along on the rump of a trotting mount. 'That-was-the-idea-'
'I have another idea,' Elspeth said by Mindspeech. 'It's a reptile, which means it can probably sense heat very well. Let's create a ball of warmth about her size, and lure her along with it. Keep it a couple of lengths ahead of her until she's where we want her, then dissipate it. What do you think?' He switched to Mindspeech as well. 'That is an excellent idea. This is going to be great news when we get back to the Vale,' he told her, and smiled at the glow of well-earned self-congratulation that met his words.
'You've helped uncover something entirely new, and very useful to us. The other forms of driving these monsters have all been much riskier. You are going to make your Clansibs quite happy with this news.' For that matter, she was making him quite happy. The basilisk responded to guidance-by-noise and the heat lure beautifully. They were going to be returning to the Vale much sooner than he had thought.
Much sooner, and flushed with success. Not a bad combination.
Not a bad combination at all.
Everyone wanted to hear about the basilisk drive. This was the first time that a basilisk had been moved with fewer than a dozen people and with no injuries. Small wonder that the Vale had been astir when they returned, and that the mages had all wanted to hear the story in detail.
It seemed that if he and Elspeth hadn't used unorthodox tactics because there had only been two of them, they would never have budged the thing. And if Snowstar hadn't been so inexperienced in the ways of basilisks, he'd never have called for just a pair of mages.
'You weren't lucky,' Iceshadow finally said. 'Snowstar was relatively lucky because he got you. But you two- you were quite clever. Or am I being overly optimistic?' Darkwind laughed tiredly, and drank another full beaker of cold waterthe aftereffect of all that basilisk stench was incredible dehydration.
He and Elspeth together had drained a small lake, it seemed, and they were still thirsty.
'No, we were bright enough that if we hadn't been able to budge the old girl with methods that wouldn't enrage her, we would have called for help,' he assured the Adept. 'I pledge you that. I don't trust anything that can entrance you to the point that you let yourself be swallowed whole.' When the others finally left them in peace, Darkwind realized that he was much too keyed up to sleep, at least not without a long soak in hot water to relax him.
