Owlknight

but the scenery blurred past and the line of sight was gone. He wasn’t alone; all of the dyhelis were stampeding back down the path, with Karles and Shandi in the lead. He shook off his pain and hung on like a leech as his mount lurched down the slope just a breath away from a disastrous stumble.

That was a cold-drake. Oh, gods, that was a cold-drake! Now that he wasn’t under the creature’s spell, he knew the danger of what it was, and could put a name on it. He knew what must have saved them, too - Neta, out there free and not under the cold-drake’s mesmerizing gaze. She had exercised her own Gift and had taken over the minds of every other dyheli and probably Karles, too. Then she had made them all stampede away from the danger zone; the cold-drake wasn’t swift enough to keep up with them.

The dyheli traveled across the forest floor in huge bounds, snapping Darian’s head back and forth until he got into the same rhythm as his mount. The dyheli didn’t usually break into this “stampede gait” when mounted, and he could only thank his luck that there was a saddle between him and that knobby dyheli backbone. As it was, his neck muscles hurt, and so did his head.

As abruptly as they began their run, they ended it, bouncing in three or four steps to a halt a safe distance down the pass. The others came to a stop beside him, with the dyhelis shaking their heads so hard their ears flapped as Neta let their minds loose. Last to stop was Karles, and it seemed to Darian that as the Companion walked toward them, his expression was decidedly sheepish.

Now it hit him - how close they had all been to a distinctly unpleasant death - and he began to shake with reaction, the sour taste of fear in his mouth. One more heartbeat, and we’d all have been dinner. Oh, gods.

Keisha looked puzzled; Shandi still confused. “We lost - we lost Gacher. What happened?” Keisha blurted. “What was that? Why did the dyheli all run?”

:Gacher has died. The herd ran because I made them,: came Neta’s mind-voice. :As for what that was, I do not know; only that it was dangerous. It had you all spell-trapped with its eyes and mind.:

“It’s a cold-drake,” Steelmind said flatly. “Thank you, Neta; that was precisely the right thing to have done. You saved us all - except for poor Gacher. I hope his death was a swift one.”

:It was,: Neta confirmed.

“I don’t understand. I’ve studied all the weirdlings we were likely to find up here. Cold-drakes are normally dormant in the summer,” Steelmind continued as he wiped his hair back from his face. “I wonder what woke this one up?”

“What’s a cold-drake?” Keisha wanted to know.

Kel interrupted the conversation, coming in beside them for a noisy landing, his beak agape with agitation. He swung his head around, counting them silently, and heaved an enormous sigh of relief to see the humans all present. “I sssaw the drrrake!” he said, “But you all rrrran beforrre I completed a ssstoop.”

“It’s just as well that you didn’t connect with it, Kel,” Darian told him, dismounting and clasping Kel’s neck - even though his own legs were still shaky. “One gryphon is no match for a cold-drake.”

“Will someone please tell me, what’s a cold-drake?” Keisha repeated insistently. “And why couldn’t I move or think?”

Darian and Steelmind exchanged a look, and Darian answered. “A cold-drake is a magical construct, like a gryphon; they were created during the Mage-Wars as offensive weapons, but the problem was that they couldn’t be controlled, and turned on their own side as often as not. They’re eating machines.”

“But they use mind-magic,” Steelmind continued. “They freeze their prey in place, then move in and strike, or dine at their leisure depending upon their mood. That thing caught all of us, every one that could see its eyes. If Neta hadn’t done what she did, we’d be sliding down its throat right now.”

Karles hung his head, as if he was ashamed that he had not somehow resisted the cold-drake’s gaze. Steelmind noticed, and turned toward the Companion. “No one is immune from a cold-drake,” he said, for Karles’ benefit. “I don’t care who or what you are. When you’re in front of a cold-drake, you belong to the cold-drake.”

Shandi patted Karles’ neck sympathetically. The Companion didn’t say anything that Darian could hear, but he understood the Companion’s chagrin; he shared it.

You’d think I would be able to shake that damned thing off. . . . How had he managed to get so completely under the monster’s power in so short a time?

I didn’t even get a good look at it before it had me!

It took one look at Hywel to realize that he did not have the worst of it. Darian was, by comparison, a war- hardened general compared to the young Ghost Cat warrior. In his past he’d been routed, ambushed, beaten up, surprised, attacked, and scared out of his wits before. It was Hywel’s first time for being totally, utterly helpless, face-to-face with death when there was nothing he could do about it. Hywel looked just as white as the Ghost Cat