slowly.
Hytanthas spotted Faeterus. The mage now stood on a veranda high on the side of the ruined villa. The basket of pigeons sat beside him. His face showed no excitement, merely calm curiosity. Apparently he wanted to see how his monstrous pet dealt with an armed and agile intruder.
Hytanthas cut at the manticore’s eyes. The creature stood its ground, batting the tip away with one paw. Hytanthas reversed his motion and thrust at the paw. His keen point pierced it from furred top to padded sole. Dark blood flowed. The beast howled, opening its mouth so wide the elf feared its head would break at the hinge and fall off. Its voice was high and piping.
The manticore attacked again. Hytanthas pirouetted aside, but the beast’s claws caught his Khurish robe. He was dragged down, landing on his back atop broken masonry, and the sword flew from his hand. The monster’s claws slashed across his chest. The mail shirt he wore beneath his robe saved him from being gutted like a fish, but the blow still knocked the wind from his chest.
Furious at its failure to draw blood, the manticore swatted the elf like a housecat toying with a mouse. The blow sent Hytanthas rolling across the weedy ground until he fetched up against a sizable date palm. Shedding sun hat and shredded robe, the elf hefted several fist-sized stones and hurled them at the creature. They thumped against its chest, eliciting grunts, but barely slowed the manticore. Hytanthas turned and ran, Khurish sandals flapping.
He vaulted nimbly over ruined fences and broken walls, but was forced to detour around larger obstacles. His adversary simply bulled straight through everything in its path, thereby gaining steadily on him. As he leapt for the top of a stout pile of stone masonry, the creature was so close behind he felt the rush of air as it swiped at his legs. He hauled himself up and over the pile.
The manticore crashed into the pile, but the masonry was too thick for it to break through. With a human- sounding scream of frustration, the monster reared up, rested its paws atop the pile, and looked over. Frustration turned to unholy triumph, and it grinned. Its quarry was trapped!
Hytanthas stood with his back against the estate’s outer wall, designed to enclose the villa like a miniature fortress. Whole sections had been toppled, but it was his misfortune that this portion, a good twenty yards long, was intact. Fifteen feet high, its surface was smoothly plastered, allowing for no handholds, even for a nimble and highly motivated elf.
With evident relish and terrifying slowness, the manticore scaled the masonry pile. Its pale blue eyes never left Hytanthas’s face, and the elf stared back, afraid if he looked away it would pounce.
Suddenly, the manticore froze, right foreleg in the air. Hytanthas hadn’t heard or felt anything, but the creature obviously had. It waited several long seconds, tail twitching, gaze flickering upward, then resumed its advance.
On the veranda, Faeterus felt something, too. He released the pigeon he’d been stroking, moved to the edge of the gallery, and stared out into the night.
A deep vibration suddenly shook ground and air. Gradually Hytanthas discerned a new sound: heavy footfalls, and the noise of something weighty being dragged. It was coming from his right, a part of the estate he hadn’t explored.
As he tried to make sense of the noises, the manticore began behaving oddly. Attention fixed in the direction of the approaching footsteps, it shrank down, belly against the rubble pile, as if trying to make itself small. Its thin lips parted and it hissed like a frightened cat. The hair along its back stood up.
The heavy footfalls and dragging sound drew nearer, bringing with them the metallic reek of blood. The warm wind carried the stench of putrefaction, as of a large wound gone black with gangrene. The manticore howled loudly then rushed away, keeping itself close to the ground.
Cautiously, Hytanthas followed. He’d spotted his sword, glittering faintly in the rubble. It was a long way away and the manticore, departing or not, was between the weapon and him.
He was sizing up his chance of reaching it when something loomed up out of the darkness. At first he thought it was the manticore, but the sheer bulk of the thing was too great, at least three times the size of Faeterus’s deadly pet. He made out a pair of green eyes, each at least ten inches across, with large vertical black pupils, and a huge face ringed by horns. Hytanthas screamed.
His cries were answered. Faeterus tossed a small globe into the air. It exploded, flooding the scene with brilliant white light. The light was painful to Hytanthas, but bearable. By its illumination, he finally realized what it was he faced, though he could hardly credit his eyes.
During his exile in Khur, the young elf had tried to learn all he could about the dangers his people might face here.
Never had he thought to see a sand beast. Especially not in the middle of a city.
Fortunately, the creature did not seem overly interested in him. Head lowered against the glare, the sand beast continued its advance toward the ruined villa. Someone had hurt it. It hauled itself forward by its forelimbs, its hindquarters dragging lifelessly behind. Where left hind leg joined sloping back, a great festering wound spread.
The elf never considered running away. His mission was to bring Faeterus before the Speaker; he could hardly do that if he left the mage at the mercy of this monster. Faeterus, hampered by his bulky disguise, was descending the stone steps from the veranda.
“Talon!” the sorcerer panted. “Attack!”
The manticore came galloping over the debris-strewn ground, its earlier fear of the sand beast overcome by the will of its master. In the last few yards its strides stretched to great bounds, and on the third leap it threw itself on the sand beast’s back, wrapping its legs around the scaly hide. The greenish-gold scales covering the sand beast’s throat resisted the manticore’s teeth, but the mage’s pet kept trying.
The sand beast shook its horned head from side to side, hoping to dislodge its attacker. The manticore climbed up and hooked its foreclaws on the beast’s lower jaw. Mouth opening wide, the manticore worried the beast’s throat. The sand beast gave up trying to remove its tormenter. Lowering its head, it ran itself against the nearest standing wall. Blocks burst apart, and the manticore finally was knocked loose. It rolled, got its feet beneath it, and sprang again. With lightning precision, the sand beast’s head came around, its jaws opened, and it caught the manticore in mid-leap. The manticore yowled in high-pitched rage, but only for a moment. The sand beast’s jaws closed on its neck. A sickening snap, and the human- looking head dropped to the ground.
Faeterus had reached the arena of battle. The mage extended his left hand toward the furious sand beast and uttered a string of mysterious syllables. An invisible concussion drove the beast backward a few feet, but that was all. Metallic lids narrowed over its eyes, a throaty growl rose from its throat, and the beast advanced again.
“You’re only making it angry!” Hytanthas yelled. “Keep it busy, and I’ll help you fight it!”
The mage’s hooded head turned toward him. “Yes, perhaps you can be a help, at that.”
Faeterus spoke a word, and the globe of light overhead went out. Hytanthas, his attention focused on getting to his sword, was suddenly astonished to find himself not only plunged into darkness, but dragged backward as if in the grip of an invisible band. He protested, flailing futilely against the force that held him. Faeterus waited until he was nearly in range of the sand beast’s claws, then released him. With the beast thus distracted, the mage made his escape. He vanished into the outer darkness.
Hytanthas wasted no time. As soon as the magical force let him go, he hurled himself to one side, rolled, and came up running. Clad only in mail shirt, leggings, and sandals, he was unarmed and helpless. Once determined to take Faeterus back to the Speaker, he would have to settle for bringing word of the mage’s whereabouts. If he survived!
Behind him, he could hear the creature’s advance. Chunks of masonry flew, date palms snapped, and broken walls burst apart as the sand beast kept coming. Its aim was uncanny. Either it could see very well in the dark or it had some other way of sensing Hytanthas’s whereabouts.
The elf turned to see where it was. In that brief pause, the sand beast jumped at him.
Hampered by injury, the creature came up short, but one foreclaw swiped across his mail shirt. Once more his armor saved Hytanthas from death, but even the glancing touch of the metallic claws was enough to tear through the mail as though it was linen.
The sand beast was thrown off balance. It crashed to the ground and rolled down a short slope.
While the monster floundered in a rocky, weed-choked area that once had been a stone-lined pond,
