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naiads! Strike, will you! Stop me from having my mud bath, will you? By
Kronos, Nid, Ymir and Loki, you'll have cause to regret this! Yahi" he
finished, inarticulate with fury.
"Quick!" Crockett whispered to Cm and Brocide Buhn. "Get between him and the
door, so he can't get hold of the Cockatrice Eggs."
"They're not in the throne room," Cm Magru explained unhelpfully. "Podrang
just grabs them out of the air."
"Oh!" the harassed Crockett groaned. At that strategic moment Brockle Buhn's
worst instincts overcame her. With a loud shriek of delight she knocked
Crockett down, kicked him twice and sprang for the Emperor.
She got in one good blow before Podrang hammered her atop the head with one
gnarled fist, and instantly her turnip-shaped skull seemed to prolapse into
her torso. The Emperor, bright purple with fury, reached out-and a yellow
crystal appeared in his hand.
It was one of the Cockatrice Eggs.
Bellowing like a musth elephant, Podrang hurled it. A circle of twenty feet
was instantly deared among the massed gnomes. But it wasn't vacant. Dozens of
bats rose and fluttered about, adding to the confusion.
Confusion became chaos. With yells of delighted fury, the gnomes rolled
forward toward their ruler. "Fight!" the cry thundered out, reverberating from
the roof. "Fight!"
Podrang snatched another crystal from nothingness-a green one, this time.
Thirty-seven gnomes were instantly transformed into earthworms, and were
trampled. The Emperor went down under an avalanche of attackers, who abruptly
disappeared, turned into mice by another of the Cockatrice Eggs.
Crockett saw one of the crystals sailing toward him, and ran like hell. He
found a hiding place behind a stalagmite, and from there watched the carnage.
It was definitely a sight worth seeing, though it could not be recommended to
a nervous man.
The Cockatrice Eggs exploded in an incessant stream. Whenever that happened,
the spell spread out for twenty feet or more before losing its efficacy. Those
caught on the fringes of the circle were only partially transformed. Crockett
saw one gnome with a mole's head. Another was a worm from the waist down.
Another was-rclp! Some of the spell patterns were not, apparently, drawn even
from known mythology.
The fury of noise that filled the cavern brought stalactites crashing down
incessantly from the roof. Every so often Pocirang's battered head would
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reappear, only to go down again as more gnomes sprang to the attack-to be
enchanted. Mice, moles, bats and other things filled the Council
Chamber. Crockett shut his eyes and prayed.
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He opened them in time to see Podrang snatch a red crystal out of the air,
pause and then deposit it gently behind him. A purple Cockatrice Egg came
next. This crashed against the floor, and thirty gnomes turned into tree
toads.
Apparently only Podrang was immune to his own magic. The thousands who had
filled the cavern were rapidly thinning, for the Cockatrice Eggs seemed to
come from an inexhaustible source of supply.
How long would it be before Crockett's own turn came? He couldn't hide here
forever.
His gaze riveted to the red crystal Podrang had so carefully put down. He was
remembering something-the Cockatrice Egg that would transform gnomes into
human beings. Of course! Podrang wouldn't use that, since the very sight of
men was so distressing to gnomes. If Crockett could get his hands on that red
crystal .
He tried it, sneaking through the confusion, sticking close to the wall of the
cavern, till he neared Podrang. The Emperor was swept away by another onrush
of gnomes, who abruptly changed into dormice, and Crockett got the red jewel.
It felt abnormally cold.
He almost broke it at his feet before a thought stopped and chilled him. He
was far under Dornsef
Mountain, in a labyrinth of caverns. No human being could find his way out.
But a gnome could, with the aid of his strange tropism to daylight.
A bat flew against Crockett's face. He was almost certain it squeaked, 'What a
fight!" in a parody of Brockle Buhn's voice, but he couldn't be sure. He cast
one glance over the cavern before turning to flee.
It was a complete and utter chaos. Bats, moles, worms, ducks, eels and a dozen
other species crawled, flew, ran, bit, shrieked, snarled, grunted, whooped and
croaked all over the place. From all directions the remaining gnomes-only
about a thousand now-were converging on a surging mound of gnomes that marked
where the Emperor was. As Crockett stared the mound dissolved, and a number of
gecko lizards ran to safety.
"Strike, will you!" Podrang bellowed. "I'll show you!"
Crockett turned and fled. The throne room was deserted, and he ducked into the
first tunnel.
There, he concentrated on thinking of daylight. His left ear felt compressed.
He sped on till he saw a side passage on the left, slanting up, and turned
into it at top speed. The muffled noise of combat died behind him.
He clutched the red Cockatrice Egg tightly. What had gone wrong? Podrang
should have stopped to parley. Only-only he hadn't. A singularly bad-tempered
and short-sighted gnome. He probably wouldn't stop till he'd depopulated his
entire kingdom. At the thought Crockett hurried along faster.
The tropism guided him. Sometimes he took the wrong tunnel, but always,
whenever he thought of daylight, he would feel the nearest daylight pressing
against him. His short, bowed legs were surprisingly hardy.
Then he heard someone running after him.
He didn't turn. The sizzling blast of profanity that curled his ears told him [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]