Free The House of Yeel by Michael McCloskey

slashed and then thrust at the trunk
of the serpent but it retreated out of range. The knight advanced
again, but the serpent’s tail whipped around and struck him in the
leg. The Crescent Knight faltered beneath the onslaught, falling to
one side. His assailant bunched up over him and opened its jaws as
if to consume the knight.
    Jymoor could hardly bear to watch. She
loathed her helplessness, but she carried no weapons. She hugged
the stone next to her. How could she help?
    The stone shifted and she realized she had
disturbed another denizen of the awful garden.
    “Your friends may prevail,”
a rough voice came from above. Jymoor looked up at the being she
had awakened, a stout woodsman with a red beard and axe in hand.
Then Jymoor looked back to where the knight had fallen. A huge
red-scaled thing towered next to the serpent and the knight. Jymoor
struggled with the appearance of something so large seemingly from
thin air. Spines erupted from most of its back. The monster had two
long front legs with three enormous claws extending half the height
of a man. It supported itself on three broad back legs and a long,
muscular tail covered in more thorny extensions. Its thick,
muscular neck flattened into a wide head that was mostly mouth,
like a giant toothed clam. Jymoor couldn’t see any eyes on the
creature but that didn’t comfort her in the slightest.
    “Where did that come from?”
she cried. “Where’s Yeel?”
    “Take my axe,” the burly man-statue said, and
handed Jymoor the weapon. Jymoor grabbed the weapon with one hand
without removing her gaze from the towering beast that had appeared
to battle Slevander.
    “What can I—” Jymoor
stammered, but then she saw that the man next to her had already
returned to an inanimate state. The huge tail of the red monster
swept toward Jymoor, a giant scaly juggernaut covered in sharp
spines.
    Jymoor scrabbled back to avoid being crushed
by the tail. Her foot caught in a vine, and she fell back with a
shriek into darkness.
     
    ***
     
    Yeel swung his malinthander
again and bellowed in the manner of a beast. Slevander dodged out
of the way with uncanny agility. The serpent retreated, fooled by
Yeel’s new disguise. He had planted the suggestion of a terrible
foe into the minds of all those around him, in order to gain the
initiative in the combat.
    He projected the concept of
the malinthander as being the huge paw of the monster he had
become. His natural height aided the illusion, since he already
stood taller than humans from foot to highest tentacle. He swept it
toward Slevander again, just to keep the serpent at bay.
    The pace catalyst that Yeel
had employed to immunize himself and his Companions had met with
some measure of success; even though Slevander had tried to reduce
them to statues, he still moved and fought.
    In order to keep from giving
his opponent time to think, Yeel wailed again and lumbered forward.
He sent tentacles ahead, transmitting the concept of the huge beast
seeking its prey with its long, clawed hands.
    Once again the creature slid away, keeping
most of its body under the heavy growth of a patch of beautiful
plants. Yeel worried about keeping track of the head and those
dangerous fangs. But the mouth might be as dangerous from the
spells it could utter as the poison it might impart.
    The head appeared on Yeel’s
left flank, curling around the leg of a petrified human. It feinted
forward, testing Yeel’s defenses. Yeel bellowed and charged
sluggishly. He realized he didn’t have long. The snake mage would
be more confident with his next attack.
    The alchemist’s other
tentacles had not been idle. Yeel produced a vivid blue sphere with
a small hole drilled into it and a thin shaft of reddish metal. He
slid the cylinder into the sphere and fused it shut, setting into
motion an inevitable reaction that would serve to obliterate the
sphere and anything near it.
    Yeel had only seconds to act. The reaction
took place even as he stood trying to