Swiftly he angled upward, his two companions following the way he had found. Once he ran into a section of intact wall and was forced to turn back, and Ylda swung upward along a new series of crevices, leading the way. Hardan now brought up the rear instead of Kern Rensom.
The vurth ended, and even as they saw that less than twenty feet lay between them and the wall's top, a hideous gagging squelching sound, like a mud-wallowing drunkard venting his addled rage, sounded from below.
Hardan turned to look down, his sword in his right hand and his feet jammed in a shallow crack.
A vast bulk, indistinct in the failing light of the vanished sun, and rendered yet more vague by the aerophytic sea that washed around its lower body, reared there. Hardan sensed that the greasily smooth hide, wet and slime-covered, was slate-gray, liberally splotched with patches of ghastly pale yellow. He saw an inner gaping maw, its huge inner jaws covered with bony serrated ridges, and in a deadly fringe about this mouth a score or more of specialized tentacles stretched like multi-jointed arms upward.
"Climb swiftly!" roared Hardan, "while I hold it back."
The tentacles slithered nearer, their gray snaky flesh ending at the tips in sucker-like yellow-tinged discs. Hardan swung his weapon down at the nearest and from the severed tentacle tip a steaming purplish ichor spurted. And with its wound the burbling mouthings from below redoubled.
The Wetlander sprang upward, a questing tentacle brushing his heel as he found a new vantage point several feet higher, and then he sliced through this leathery appendage's tip as well.
But now three of the tentacles wormed together at him, and though his blade slashed off two of them, the third found his naked flesh and the suction discs ripped at him. He clung to the wall, his discarded sword clattering downward, but relentlessly the monster was dragging him from his precarious perch.
He heard a sob at his side and his other sword was drawn from its sheath even as his left hand lost its grip. Then he was released, the tentacle tip yet clinging to his flesh, and he found Ylda tugging at his arm. The Aarthman lowered his bow and Hardan pushed the trembling girl up to him.
A moment later they were all three safe a scant four feet above those questing hungry ropes of flesh, and Ylda was in his arms....