Night Rune (Prof Croft Book 8) by Brad Magnarella (best e reader for academics txt) 📕

“Panpipe. It’s an enchanted instrument, and you’re falling under its charm.”

The word panpipe, especially in Bree-yark’s gruff voice, was suddenly the most hilarious thing I’d ever heard. Laughter seized me, and I doubled over. When I struggled to inhale, the ridiculous word floated through my head again, plunging me into another fit of hysterics.

This is serious, I thought distantly. I’m losing all control.

“Say it again,” I managed, my voice a high whine. “Say p-p-pan…”

But the word was buried beneath another eruption of laughing. Could you die from mirth? I didn’t know, but white spots were beginning to float around my tear-blurred vision, while a goring pain took hold in my lungs. I clamped my knees, vaguely aware I was no longer holding the potions.

When I tried to bring my hands to my ears, my arms felt like a pair of soggy noodles. They wouldn’t obey. I concentrated toward my casting prism—I needed to invoke shields over my ears. But the image of myself in little magical earmuffs was too much, and I lost it even more. No air was coming in now.

Oh, God. This could actually kill me.

In the next moment, Bree-yark jammed his thick fingers into my ears. Through my tears, he looked like a shapeless blob. The image was comical, but not in the sidesplitting way it would have been just a moment before. With the song blocked, my laughter idled back down to gasps and gurgles, and I could breathe again.

“Thank God you clipped your talons,” I managed.

I wiped my eyes and searched around for my fallen potions. I spotted them off to the right. Concentrating into the closest neutralizing potion, I uttered, “Attivare.”

Tiny gems flashed inside, transforming the liquid into an active potion, one that would cancel the effects of the cursed song. Bree-yark, being a creature of Faerie, must have had some inbuilt immunity. He was singing a song of his own, I realized, drowning out any enchanted music that might be slipping past his fingers.

“Row, row, row your boat,” he barked. “Gently down the stream…”

That got me chortling, but I nodded for him to continue as I reached for the potion. I had the warm tube in my grasp when, in a savage battering of dark wings, something collided against Bree-yark.

He fell away, his song breaking off mid “merrily.” His fingers uncorked from my ears. The music of the panpipe rushed in, more charming than ever. I popped the cap from the potion and brought it toward my lips, but my body was convulsing with giggles again. The potion went everywhere except inside my mouth.

Out in front of me, Bree-yark was rolling across the cavern with whatever had attacked him. It wasn’t until they came to a stop, Bree-yark on top, that I could make out the part-man, part-crow. A tengu.

Bree-yark pummeled its face with his fists, sending the creature’s thick beak canting one way and then the other.

“Knock him out,” I gasped between laughing fits.

“You screwed with the wrong goblin,” Bree-yark grunted.

He seized the creature by its throat and drew his blade, but more tengu were gliding down from recesses in the cavern above. They landed in a flapping of winged arms and surrounded Bree-yark. I felt a faraway urge to help him, to blast them off, but I was shrieking laughter now. The spectacle of a gang of birdmen in ragged loincloths raining blows on my teammate was the funniest thing I’d ever seen.

Wait, we might have a new contender…

I choked back my laughter long enough to take in the new creature entering the cavern.

He was a small man with a ginger beard and an impressive set of ram’s horns that curled around his pointed ears. An instrument of eight or so slender wooden flutes moved beneath his pursed lips. And he was skipping, his furry brown goat legs kicking a little jig in time to his song. I didn’t know if it was the dancing or his bright red vest and leather loincloth, or the whole package, but I was suddenly back to dying. I struggled upright and tried to mimic him, but I could only stagger deliriously.

The satyr winked at me above his panpipe. His bright blue eyes cut from my spilled potions to the tengu standing over Bree-yark. My teammate was out cold, and they were picking through his pouch. I looked around for Dropsy—I wanted to get her in on the dancing—but the lantern must have slipped off somewhere.

When one of the tengu stalked toward me, the satyr shook his head as though to say not yet. He hadn’t stopped kicking his feet, and I hadn’t stopped kicking mine, or trying to.

“Hey,” I managed between spurts of laughter. “Where can I get a good pair of goat legs?”

The satyr lowered the panpipe from his lips and regarded me with a smile and friendly tilt of his head. “Welcome to Faerie, boyo,” he said in a thick brogue, his music continuing to reverberate from the cavern’s stone walls.

I was gathering my breath to thank him, when he lowered his head and charged. His ram horns plowed into my gut. My air went out in a dull grunt, and something cracked in my right ribcage. But the thought that I’d just been rammed by a satyr beat everything. Even before I landed, I was dry-heaving more laughter.

“Hope ye enjoy your stay.” The satyr was standing over me now, his grin curling into a malicious sneer.

I mouthed more than said, “Think you could teach me how to play—”

His cleft hoof descended toward my head.

“Everson,” Bree-yark called in a husky voice.

My right eye wouldn’t open—it was crusty and swollen—but my left one filled me in. I was suspended, wrists and ankles bound to a pole overhead. A pair of tengu carried one end of the pole at a trotting run, and I imagined another pair behind me. We were outside, the stalks of a sun-drenched field whacking my back and sides.

At the sound of the satyr’s voice, pain