We'll stop back at that stream we crossed, and try following it for a while."

"With any luck, it'll lead us to the caves anyway," Hobie opined.

One by one, they turned their horses and drew the mules behind them, the rearmost first. Shalvan and Noet already had their heavy bows out with arrows nocked to the strings. And as for Kyrtian—

His fingers tingled with power. At any moment, he could, and would, launch a levin-bolt into whatever might emerge.

"It's out there, all right," Shalvan said grimly, as Noet turned his horse and mule. "It's up the trail—off to one side, in the bushes. Every so often the bush shakes, and from the movement, I'd say that it's about the size of a haywain. It's not moving much, though. I don't know if that's because it's not certain of us, or if it's territorial."

He turned his horse as Noet stood guard and they moved at the same leisurely pace they'd maintained all along, back up the way they had come. The back of Kyrtian's neck prickled. What would—whatever it was—think of its prey moving away from it?

"Uh-oh—" That was Resso, now in the lead, and the hair on Kyrtian's head literally stood straight up. Pacing deliberately towards them was—not one—an entire herd of alicorns. Their red eyes flashed, and the black stallion in the lead tossed his head with its wicked, slightly curved, spiral horn.

"Don't move," Halean said in a strangled voice.

Kyrtian had no intention of moving. One alicorn was dangerous; what was a herd? They were trapped, between a very visible menace an invisible one.

The alicorn stallion snorted and moved towards them. Kyrtian wondered what was going on in those narrow heads. Should he fling a levin-bolt at them? But if he did, what would the thing behind them do? And wouldn't their horses spook if he did? None of them were war-trained—

None of them are war-trained. Mules will run until there's no pursuit. The mules are tethered to the horses—and vice versa.

"Give your horses free rein, and hang on," Kyrtian ordered,

feeling that sense of presence and danger at his back increasing, just a little. "And duck your heads on the count of three."

The alicorn-stallion pawed the ground and bared its fangs.

"One. Two. Three!"

On the count of three, Kyrtian fired a kind of levin-bolt— straight up over their heads. It exploded in a blinding flash and a violent boom that actually shattered the nearby limbs of trees. The horses, as Kyrtian had hoped, bolted—and so did the alicorns.

The horses shot forward in the direction they had been facing, along the game trail. The alicorns, foe and prey forgotten, scattered in all directions, some off into the woods to either side of the trail, some turning and fleeing, and three, following the stallion, charging head-down towards them. At the last moment, the alicorns veered a little to the left, and the hysterical horses to the right.

Kyrtian hung onto his mount with every bit of strength that arms and legs possessed, ducking low along its neck to keep from being knocked out of his saddle by low-hanging boughs. Hooves thundered all around him; even if the horses weren't sticking to the game-trail, they were at least staying together. Behind him he heard a roar, and the battle-scream of an al-icorn, but whatever was going on would have to remain a mystery.

His heart raced, his hands and legs ached, and he clenched his teeth; he couldn't see what was happening or where they were going. His mount's mane lashed his face until his eyes watered.

Then, sooner than he'd thought, he felt the horse beginning to slow, felt a weight tugging at the lead-rein fastened to the saddle. The horse didn't like it; he tried to surge forward. The mule wasn't having any.

Gradually, the mule won. The headlong gallop slowed to a canter, a trot, and finally, the horse's sides heaving and sweat pouring from his neck and shoulders, a walk. Kyrtian took up the slack in the reins and brought his mount to a stop, and looked around.

The rain had slackened again, and through the mizzle, he

counted his men scattered among the trees and quickly came up with the right number of riders and pack mules.

"Ancestors!" he breathed, in profoundest relief. The men said nothing; they simply guided their weary beasts back towards him until once again they formed a coherent group.

"Everyone all right?" he asked, as their horses stood with heads hanging, and flanks a-foam with sweat. Only the mules looked unperturbed.

"I've been worse," replied Noet laconically. "Gonna kill whoever designed this saddle with a pommel right where it don't belong, though."

Noet did look a little pale, and in a certain amount of pain. Kyrtian winced, and hastily changed the subject. "Does anyone know where we are?"

"We bolted in the general direction of where we wanted to go," reported Shalvan. "So the stream should still be that way—" he pointed with his chin, rather than his hand. "We might as well get on with it, the horses aren't going to be the better for standing in the cold and rain, and they're going to need water after this."

Once again they formed up, but this time not in single file since they weren't following a trail; Halean rode on the right flank and Resso on the left. And, not too much later, they came to the stream, much to everyone's relief.

There wasn't much time before nightfall, and with the overcast skies and the forest all around, darkness would come soon. They quickly made camp, with Kyrtian tending to the fire-making chores. They pitched their three tents in a triangle, with the fire in the center. Once the tents were pitched and Resso took up the cooking, the rest gathered more firewood while Kyrtian ran a circle of mage-lights around the tents to stand between them and whatever was in the woods or across the stream. As firewood was brought in, he stacked it near enough to the fire that it stood a decent chance of drying out some before it was used.

The last thing he did was to run a string hung with small bells around the trunks of trees beyond the glow of the magelight at

about ankle-height. Anything that brushed against that string would set the bells jingling.

"Do you think we need to worry about something coming in from above?" he asked Noet, with a frown of concern.

Noet glanced up. "Not through branches that thick," he replied. "I wouldn't think, anyway."

Darkness, as Kyrtian had anticipated, came quickly. They tethered the horses—and tethered the mules to the horses— within the circle of magelight. The rain actually stopped once darkness fell, and as they gathered around their fire, Kyrtian felt their mutual fear of what lurked outside that magic circle drawing them all together despite rank and race.

Resso had managed to grill the day's catch tastily, with a minimum of burning, skewered on twigs over the fire. With that and journey-cake, and sweet water from the stream at their backs, they made a satisfying meal. They had thrown the bones into the fire and were ready to divide the night into watches, when a voice from the darkness saluted them.

"Hello the camp!"

Kyrtian knew that voice, and had been hoping to hear it. He stood up eagerly and waved in the direction from which it had come. The Elvenbane walked calmly into the magelight circle without tripping over the line of bells.

"Well met, Lord Kyrtian! Good idea, those bells," she remarked cheerfully, as she joined them beside the fire and offered Kyrtian her hand. Today she was wearing a pair of breeches and a tunic of something glittering and blue, covered with jewel-like scales, a wicked-looking knife strapped over it. Her abundant auburn hair had been bound back at the nape of her neck in a severe knot.

The men were staring at this unexpected visitor with their mouths dropping wide open.

"Gentlemen," Kyrtian said solemnly, firmly repressing the urge to laugh at them as he accepted Lashana's hand. "May I present to you Lashana? Also known as the Elvenbane—"

If he had set off another of those explosive levin-bolts in their midst he couldn't have gotten a more interesting reaction.

Noet practically choked, Hobie and Shalvan let out involuntary whoops of surprise, Resso leapt to his feet wearing an expression of such utter shock that Kyrtian would not have been surprised to see him faint dead away in the next moment. Only Lynder managed to retain his composure. He got to his feet, gathered his young dignity about him, and took the hand that Kyrtian relinquished.

"My lady, this is an honor, and a privilege," he replied, bowing over the hand before releasing it.

"Oh pish," she said, blushing a little, but clearly pleased. "Didn't Lord Kyrtian tell you that I'd be intercepting you out here?"

"Lord Kyrtian didn't know you would, he only hoped you would," Kyrtian replied for himself. "Won't you join us?"

How she had gotten there, how long she had been out in the woods watching them, he didn't know. And, truth to tell, it didn't matter. As his men took their seats again and Lashana settled easily among them, it was very clear why this young lady wizard had become a leader. She drew all eyes towards her in a way that had nothing to do with her looks or her sex.

"Well, here's what I can tell you," she began. "We—the Wizards—have got watchers on your estate, my Lord, and that of Lady Morthena. If anything should threaten them, we'll know, and we'll be able to evacuate as many or as few people need to be gotten out." She dimpled. "And may I say, that is quite a celebration your people are putting on! I'd like to ask your mother if she would organize one for us, some day, when things are—more stable."

Kyrtian felt a great weight lift from his shoulders, but Lashana's next words made him tense again. "A certain Lady Triana—" she arched her brow at him, and he nodded grimly his acknowledgement that he knew the Lady, "—paid another, very short visit to Lady Morthena after you left. She claimed that she wished to consult Lady Morthena's favorite library, and indeed, she left again within a few hours. She arrived and departed by means of a temporary Gate set up just outside the Lady's estate. I don't suppose you can cast any light on what she was looking for?"

Kyrtian shook his head reluctantly. "I haven't a clue. But knowing Triana, it can't be for anyone's good but her own."

Lashana snorted. "Believe me, I know. I've had—some experience of the Lady myself."

"My condolences." That response startled a smile from her.

"The army—minus your contribution of troops—has moved nearer to the trade-city of Prethon, where it's easier to supply. I'm assuming that in the absence of an actual place to put them permanently, that's where they'll stay, camped just outside the city walls." Lashana's green eyes twinkled. "Which is, of course, precisely where we'd like them, as far from our new Citadel as possible, which was why we suggested this place as the location of the imaginary Wizards. Even if they decided you weren't moving fast enough for them, this is miserable country to try and do any hunting of invisible people in, and the place is absolutely hollow with caves. You could spend a century trying to hunt through them all!"

"Actually—I wanted to ask you about that, Lashana," Kyrtian said hesitantly. "Do you have the time to hear some history?"

When she nodded, he launched into the story—as he had puzzled it out—of the Ancestors' arrival in this world, and followed it with the more personal tale of his father's own interest in that arrival and the things that might have been left behind. "So the last place where he was doing research before he disappeared was Lady Moth's library—and that was where I found some personal journals that gave descriptions that sounded like this area—" He waved his hand at the dripping forest beyond the camp. "You must admit that it's pretty distinctive. And the very few passages that described the Crossing made me think that the Ancestors might have come out into a cave, and not aboveground as everyone has always assumed. Then when we staged at Lord Cheynar's," he concluded triumphantly, "Lord Cheynar admitted that my father had gone off into these forests, and that he was probably the last Elvenlord to see my father alive!"

Lashana pursed her lips thoughtfully. "That—that's interesting. You know, I discovered that Wizards, at least, can use gem-stones to help concentrate and amplify their powers. I don't

know if they'll work for Elvenlords that way, but it stands to reason that if our powers can be amplified by something, so can yours."

"I can't see any other way that the Ancestors could have built the things that they did," he admitted. She tilted her head to the side.

"It's a very good thing that I trust you, Lord Kyrtian," she said in a measured tone. "Otherwise I don't think I could allow you to leave these woods alive."

Lynder leapt to his feet, his hand on his dagger-hilt, and the others weren't far behind. Lashana appeared unconcerned.

And she probably has good reason to be. She'd be a fool to have come here alone, and no matter what the Elvenbane is, no one has ever suspected her of being a fool.

"Sit down, all of you," he said mildly. "Don't you realize what a horrible menace would be let loose in the world if someone like Aelmarkin got his hands on a way to make himself as strong as Lord Kyndreth? She's only speaking sense."

She made a little gesture of thanks in his direction. "Now, there's one other thing I'd like to show you, something my people will shortly be handing out to Moth's and yours, among others, then distributing covertly among the field-slaves." She held out a little object, shaped rather like an open clamshell, of a dull grey metal. He started to reach for it, and she hastily pulled it back.

"Don't touch it, Lord Kyrtian!" she warned. "At least, not with your bare hand! That's what you call Death Metal—forged iron."

He hastily drew back his fingers. He'd touched unprotected steel before, in the shape of one of the iron collars that Moth's own slaves wore under their pseudo-slave collars, and it had burned him like acid. He was in no hurry to repeat the experience.

"I brought an active slave-collar with me to show you what it does," she continued. "Watch—with your magic-senses." She took out a leather slave-collar set with a cloudy beryl, which was, indeed, active. She fitted the back half of the clamshell de-

vice behind the beryl, then snapped the top half over it, and nipped a catch to squeeze it closed and lock it.

The Elfstone went dead to his senses. He looked at her hand, with the dull-grey object locked around what had been an active device for the complete control of a slave, dumbfounded. Then he looked up into her knowing eyes.

"Ancestors—" he breathed. "You've done it. You've found a way—snap one of those over a collar-stone, and you can cut the collar right off without hurting the slave!"

"Or leave the collar on, it won't matter, and any magic that an overseer flings at a fleeing slave will simply misfire," she pointed out, barely concealing her glee. "We have the iron, we have the craftsmen, and we have the ways to get these into the hands of the slaves. Within months, your Young Lords and my Wizards will be the last things that the Great Lords will be worrying about!"

"Slave revolts—" murmured Shalvan, wonderingly.

"All over the estates," Lashana agreed. "Which is why I'm here with you. Every moment of time that you can buy us with your wizard-hunting will enable us to make that many more of these devices, and bring the moment of freedom for all humans that much closer."

"At which point, my lord," Lynder pointed out diffidently, "Our people will also be the very last thing that the Great Lords will be worrying about."

"Except that—if you and yours can pull this off, Lashana—" he bared his teeth in a feral grin, the recollection of the stories he'd heard from the mistreated slaves sheltering with Moth fresh in his mind "—you may consider my estate to be the training ground for a new human army!"

He held out his hand; she clasped it joyfully, as his men made the sounds of subdued cheering—even now, they didn't want to arouse the attention of things that might be out there in the darkness.

"Lord Kyrtian—" she seemed to be searching for words, then gave up altogether, and just shook her head, her face radiant with smiles. "Thank you—seems inadequate."

"It's early days yet," he warned, as the men settled down, although he could not help but feel a little intoxicated with the heady intellectual wine she had just poured for him. "We've a long way to go."

"So we have." She sobered as well, and started to stow the iron device and the collar in her belt-pouch, then evidently thought better of it and handed it to Lynder. "Here. If you've got crafters and a source of Death Metal, you might want to start duplicating these yourself."

Lynder nodded, and stowed the device away.

"Now—about the caves and your father—I think I might be able to help narrow your search a little. You see, I've run these hills myself." Lashana then began a tale of her own, about the time when she, a mere child then and not yet the Elvenbane, had rescued a band of human children—with human magic— who were going to be culled by Lord Treves's overseer.

Lord Treves—would that be Lady Viridina's Lord? Moth's friend? What an odd coincidence!

Lashana had helped them escape and flee into these very hills—and, by another odd coincidence, had run into the infamous young Lord Valyn, fleeing with his wizardling half-brother and looking for Wizards to protect them both.

The story was an absorbing one, and Lashana told it well. He could see in his mind's eye the huddle of frightened children, the drenched and miserable young Valyn and the equally miserable Mero. She described the strange monsters they had encountered, one of which sounded eerily familiar.

"I think we nearly ran into one of those—invisible lurking things back there," Noet said thoughtfully, and described being trapped between it and the alicorn herd, and how Kyrtian had solved the situation.

"Which is why he's the general, and we aren't," Lynder put in, as Lashana shook her head in amazed admiration.

"That certainly sounds like one of them—well, as you move deeper into the hills, more or less in that direction—" she pointed "—and don't worry, we can guide you tomorrow—the wierdlings get thicker, and odder. Now, suppose that this Portal of yours isn't entirely closed? I've heard from Sheyrena and

Lorryn that your Ancestors left a pretty nasty place to come here...." She looked at him with speculation.

He nodded. "If the Portal isn't quite closed and shut down, yes, things could slip over, when enough residual power built up to let the Portal open for a moment. And what came over would be very unpleasant."

"And the area nearest where they were coming through?" she prompted.

"Would be the place nearest the Portal, of course." He felt another burst of elation—but then worry. "That would make it that much more dangerous. I'm not sure I should ask you fellows to share in something like this—it's pretty certain that Father is—dead—"

There. He'd said it. It couldn't be unsaid.

"—so looking for what became of him is really only my concern—"

"Balderdash! Begging your pardon, my Lord," Lynder exclaimed. "Your father, and his father, and his father before him, are the ones that allowed us to grow up in freedom. It's as much our concern as yours."

"And my people have—ways of dealing with most of these creatures, or getting you around them," Lashana added. "We've both got magic, you know, and mine's enough different from yours that they'll combine well. I'd be pleased to help you out, here."

"It's settled, then," Shalvan said, as the rest of his men nodded.

Once again, Kyrtian felt a surge of emotions—pride, gratitude, a touch of embarrassment. But most of all, the warmth of knowing that they would support him, and they knew that he would support them, through anything. And a different kind of warmth, of discovering an unexpected friend and comrade in the woman called the Elvenbane, who was so very different, and so very much more, than he had ever imagined her to be.

"Then in the morning—?" he made it a question. She laughed and stood up.

"In the morning you can expect me—and a friend," she promised. "And until then, sleep well. And don't worry, you're being guarded. So get a good night's sleep."

And with that, she walked off into the darkness.

And managed, again, not to trip over the bells.

"My Lord," said Shalvan, looking after her with undisguised admiration, "begging your pardon myself, but that is one fine woman. Not to my taste," he added hastily, "but one fine woman."

"Yes she is," Kyrtian agreed. "And not to my taste, either! But I hope she finds a man who deserves her, assuming that's what she wants! I will make no assumptions about anything the Elvenbane might want!"

That startled a laugh out of them, and on that note, they took to their tents, and to bed, knowing that the morrow would begin an entirely new and stranger quest than they had ever imagined.

28

Triana set her jaw grimly as she paced in and out of the bars of sunlight pouring through the windows of her solar—a traditional part of the bower, where she seldom spent any time. Why bother, when she was the mistress of the entire manse?

It looked as if she was going to have to leave her domain, for a short, but distinctly uncomfortable quest. Of all the things she would have preferred not to do, this was going to be right on the top of the list. She did not enjoy "the outdoors," she loathed having to camp without proper amenities, and she despised rain, damp, drizzle and cold. But she was going to have to endure all of that, because where she was going and what she needed to do required secrecy.

Her skirts swished around her ankles with a hissing sound. She hated this idea. But she couldn't trust Aelmarkin; she couldn't trust him to be any fitter for trailing someone in the savage forest than she, and she was pretty certain he would try

to keep whatever he found all to himself. She had failed in her attempt to subvert his boring cousin for now—she was grateful that she hadn't put any term on the bet with Aelmarkin—but Kyrtian's ongoing success was making Aelmarkin impatient. Not that she cared whether she lost the bet. It wouldn't be all that difficult to train one stupid slave for Aelmarkin's use. No, the thing itself had become a challenge, an obsession. She would not be beaten, not in this, not when it was only her own skill and wit that stood between her and failure. For once, she didn't have to rely on anyone else.

It hadn't taken long in a conversation via teleson with Lord Kyndreth to discover what Kyrtian was up to and where he was going—openly. That was the key; Kyrtian might be pompous, might be deadly dull, but after his decisive victory over the Young Lords no one would ever claim that he was stupid.

She kicked the train of her skirt out of her way impatiently as she turned. No, he wasn't stupid. And just because he was dull, that didn't mean he wasn't capable of keeping some things to himself.

Triana had her own ideas of what else might be going on, when a quick check with Lord Kyndreth confirmed that Kyrtian was planning on a new expedition at the behest of the Council. What hadn't made any sense was why he would have been interested in the caves beneath those hills before that second batch of Wizards made an appearance. Because he had been— she knew it, because she knew some of the questions he'd been asking, and some of the maps and books he'd been requesting, before the two mind-addled captives had appeared in Lord Cheynar's forest.

It hadn't made any sense, that is, until she visited Morthena again, determined what he'd been doing there in the first place, and ferreted out just what books he'd been looking at. The two slaves who had been helping him were no challenge to her; within moments, she had them eagerly pulling volumes down for her perusal.

Now she knew. And she was, perhaps, better than any other Elvenlord, equipped to figure out what Kyrtian's ulterior motives were. There were her own familial traditions of the Cross-

ing, and journals she had idly leafed through in moments of boredom. Putting Kyrtian's sudden fascination with the journals in Morthena's library together with his father's lifelong obsession with finding the Gate, and she knew, she knew, that he expected to find, at long last, some trace of his father.

But as important, given Lord Kyrtian's new-found importance as a military leader to the Great Lords, were the weapons supposedly left behind as useless. With those weapons, Lord Kyrtian would not need an army to impose the will of the Great Lords. With those weapons, he could become a Great Lord himself. Perhaps more than that. Perhaps—their first king?

Perhaps. That dull exterior might conceal a great deal of ambition.

Unless someone else got there at the same time. Someone who could bring accurate information back to—say—Lord Kyndreth.

Or someone who could use that information for herself.

Triana liked to keep her plans fluid. Which was why her slaves were putting together the gear that she and two male slaves—men who knew how to hunt and track—would take through the nearest Gate and on to the thrice-bedamned rain-soaked forest that Lord Cheynar's estate bordered.

Lord Cheynar did not approve of Triana. No matter. She didn't need his approval, and she didn't need his help. She didn't even need to get onto his lands; she had only to journey to his estate and follow the fences and walls around it, entering the forest where she pleased. Her men were good enough to find Kyrtian's track and follow it.

Even if that meant she did have to camp in a wretched forest in the constant rain. Just because Triana loved her comforts, that didn't mean she wasn't perfectly prepared to sacrifice them without hesitation for the right incentive.

Without hesitation.

Not without complaint. She kicked savagely at her train.

Aelmarkin brooded over the injustice of the world from the comfort of a favorite lounge, staring at a delicate stone sculpture of a dancer as if it had offended him personally.

Aelmarkin did not trust his cousin. There was more, much more, to this business of pursuing stupid Wizards in a half-inaccessible forest than appeared on the surface. Kyrtian might be dull, he might be obsessive, but he wasn't stupid.

Aelmarkin traced a circle in the upholstery with his fingernail. Kyrtian was not going on what Aelmarkin would consider a "military expedition." He wasn't taking any other Elvenlords with him, nor was he taking a very large party. In fact, he wasn't taking any slaves other than those from his own household; either he was ridiculously sure of himself, or...

... or he thought there was something in that forest that he could use for himself. What could it be?

There had to be something. There was no reason to take that sort of risk, unless there was a powerful reason for it. Something to do with the Wizards themselves? Aelmarkin hadn't heard anything that made them sound different from the ones that had already been driven out into the wilderness. Quite to the contrary, in fact, it seemed very much as if they were fewer.

Except. . .

Except that they also had that curious ability to nullify magic that the Young Lords had somehow acquired!

Aelmarkin slapped the arm of his lounge with a feeling of angry triumph. Of course that was it! So far, no one had managed to catch any of the ringleaders, so no one knew just what the trick was—but if Kyrtian could capture a Wizard and get the answer that way, he'd be in a position to demand, and get, anything he wanted from the Council, including a Council seat even if there were no vacancies!

And if that happened—Aelmarkin's chances of getting the estate dropped to less than zero. For all their bickering, no Council member had ever been known to back a move to oust another Council member from his lands, position, or seat, and not just because it "wasn't done." They guarded their primacy jealously, and when an outsider threatened one, he threatened all, and they closed ranks against him.

For a moment, Aelmarkin despaired, and began pounding the arm of his lounge with frustrated fury. He broke the underlying

wooden frame with a crack, but his anger didn't ease until the arm of the lounge sagged, its structure reduced to fragments.

Finally his temper wore out, and he was able to think clearly. He left his study and went out into his gardens to continue thinking. The sky was overcast, but the pall over his spirit was darker than the grey sky.

He had to think ... as he paced, his feet making no noise on the velvety sod of the paths, he ignored the murmur of fountains and artificial waterfalls he passed.

First, this all might come to nothing, but he didn't dare to take that chance. Kyrtian was too good at finding what he wanted to find. Persistent—obstinately persistent.

Second, it was just barely possible that Kyrtian would fail; either he wouldn't find a wizard or he wouldn't be able to take one captive. Aelmarkin thought sourly that this was not something he should count on; Kyrtian's luck had been disgustingly good. Persistence and good luck. It was damnably unfair.

Third-Third ...

It hit him, blinding as a ray of sun lancing through the clouds. He hadn't ever expected duplicity out of Kyrtian—but he hadn't expected brilliance, either. What if all of this was a double-game ?

What if Kyrtian planned, not to capture a Wizard, but to treat with them? What if he intended to ally with them?

Ridiculous thought, of course but—it stopped him in his tracks. Both because of the audacity of it, and the possibilities the mere idea opened up.

If the Great Lords thought that was what Kyrtian had in mind, their support of him would not only collapse, they'd turn on him. Rightly so, of course; treason didn't even begin to cover it.

Well, there was only one way to find out, and that was to follow Kyrtian himself. Even if Kyrtian didn't mean treason, perhaps the appearance of treason could be manufactured.

For the first time in many days, Aelmarkin's spirits rose.

He even laughed out loud at the thought, his mind working busily. The first thing, of course, would be to follow Kyrtian

and see if, against all probability, Kyrtian really was a traitor. It would be best not to have to manufacture anything out of whole cloth. If he could find even the appearance of duplicity, he could build on that. This, of course, meant that he could not trust this to anyone else.

Least of all Lady Triana.

He curled his lip in contempt, trying to imagine Lady Triana actually exerting herself enough to follow Kyrtian as far as Cheynar's, much less entrust herself to the privations of rough camping. She couldn't be bothered to visit her own gardens without a dozen slaves, a pavilion and cushions.

No matter. This wasn't something to be shared with anyone. And the saying was, after all, that if you wanted to be sure of something, you had better see to it yourself.

Besides, there was one last possibility, one that he doubted even Triana, as ruthless as she was, would think of. He could arrange a little "accident" to befall Kyrtian, especially if he had left that bodyguard of his behind.

Oh yes. Now he had it. Kyrtian would not leave that forest as he had entered it. When he came out, it would either be as a prisoner, or in a shroud.

For the first time that day, he smiled, and the slave walking patiently and invisibly behind him to supply whatever the master needed shuddered at the sight of that smile.

Caellach Gwain paced the uneven stone floor of his miserable excuse for a room, brow furrowed, a banked fire of anger in his gut that hadn't diminished in the least in the time since that wretched girl had debated him in front of the entire population of the Citadel. How had he let himself get drawn into that? A disaster, a total disaster; and he still couldn't see where it had all gone so horribly wrong. He'd only told everyone exactly the truth!

At the time, it had seemed like a stroke of the purest luck; the brat had no experience at making speeches, and she didn't know how to exude the confident authority that he certainly could. And over and above all of that, he had been the one in the right! Miserable creature! How had she managed it? How,

when he had spoken nothing that was not true, had she managed to turn virtually everyone in the Citadel against him? By the time he realized that every word he spoke was turning more people away from him, it had been too late.

He kicked a shoe out of his path with a savage wish that it was the rear end of one of his so-called "friends" who had deserted him like the cowards that they were. As a consequence of that debate, he had been left utterly, completely without servants. No one would lift a finger to so much as keep him from tripping over an obstacle.

Even the humans, even the human children, ignored any command he gave them. If he wanted to eat, rather than enjoying a meal in quiet dignity in his room alone, he had to trudge up to the cavern used as a common dining hall, sit down at one of the common benches wherever he could find a place, and serve himself from a common pot. There could not possibly be anything more degrading than that—a regular punishment, thrice daily. How he hated it! He didn't know what was worse; having to starve himself until the last moment and content himself with whatever the rest had left him so that he could sit at a bench alone, or braving the crowd to get something edible, but having to bear the snickers and the way people ostentatiously spread themselves out so as to leave no room at their tables for him. At least they were still permitting him to eat. There were a growing number of loud remarks every time he appeared that there should be a rule in the new Citadel about having to do some work if you wanted to eat.

Ingrates! He'd show them! If they forbade him meals, he'd go back to the old ways, and steal his own food by magic from the Elvenlords' stores, and to the Netherworld with Lashana's stupid treaty! That would show them!

At least he'd have something decent then; real cheese, real bread, ham and sausage. Hah. If he even filched food from the kitchens, he could have anything he liked!

He thought sourly of his last meal; harshly-flavored goat-cheese, stringy mutton and not much of it, some nasty mess of wild greens, and bread made with coarsely-ground flour, heavy and dark. If they wanted him "punished," die quality of the food

around here was punishment enough. How he longed for the good things filched from the Elvenlords, the delicately-smoked meats, the fine cheeses, sweet butter and clotted cream, the cakes made with proper flour and sweetened with white sugar! His mouth watered at the mere thought of them.

He glared at the fire in his "fireplace"—fortunately for him, he had secured this room before his current disgrace, so at least it had a fireplace: If you wanted to call a mere alcove in the rock wall with an open-topped shaft punched up to the surface with draconic rock-magic a "fireplace." When it rained up above, water dripped down into the fire, and when the wind blew wrong, it drove the smoke back down into his room. Right now it was raining, and drops sizzled and spat in the flames, threatening to put them out. If he wanted a fire, he now had to gather the wood himself, and if he didn't want the plaguey thing clogged with ash, he had to sweep it out and dispose of the ashes himself.

At least he was putting some things over on them all. He knew very well when firewood was delivered to other rooms; he just helped himself when the occupants were out. And as for the ashes, well, he didn't sweep them any farther away than the hall, and serve them all right. They could either sweep them up themselves or trample them everywhere; he didn't care.

It had finally come down to this; a job he'd spent most of the day on until the anger in his heart started to interfere with his scrying spell. Spying with his own magic on the Wizardling children teaching his former cronies the magics that they used to transport themselves without harm and magnify their own powers, so that he could learn to use those magics without having to humiliate himself further. And he had to have those lessons, because he had no choice; if he wanted something, he had to obtain it himself, and he didn't have the power he needed, alone.

And every day, new humiliations were piled atop the old. No one appeared to clean his quarters, and he, he, had to either do it himself, or find something one of the wretched children wanted and use it to bribe the little beast to do the work! And, of course, what they wanted was never some useless trinket of

his own or something he could just go and appropriate from the stores, oh no—it was always something difficult, and usually something he had to use his own powers to fetch from the old Citadel! It made him so angry he could hardly think for hours afterwards. He longed for the days when he could drop something on the floor in the supreme confidence that whatever it was would be whisked off immediately to be discarded, put away, or cleaned as the case might be.

And it was all the fault of that overweening female.

She was up to something, too. No good, of course; that went without saying. He could tell that there was something in the air, something clandestine going on; from the way she acted, from the way that lover of hers acted. He'd felt the transportation spell being triggered more times than it should have been of late, now that he knew how to recognize it. A noisy magic, that; nothing subtle about it, and oh so typical of a female, to use something that only drew attention to the caster. He knew how to use it himself now, of course, no thanks to anyone's effort but his own. He'd gone back to the Old Citadel in person, to rummage through not only his own quarters, but the rooms of as many other people as he could before he grew too tired and hungry to stay there any longer. After all, if you didn't know or remember what was in a particular place, you couldn't bring it back by magic unless you did some fairly painstaking scrying. He'd piled what he wanted in his room when he could, and he'd made plenty of notes on what he couldn't pick up that he wanted in other rooms. He was getting more possessions together now, besides the armload of things he'd brought back with him.

So he knew quite enough about the transportation spell to recognize it, and there was no doubt in his mind that it was being used a great deal by Lashana herself of late. And for what? There was no need to use it to bring living things here anymore, now that they had flocks of sheep and goats and even cattle— you could bring anything you wanted here quietly, with the old magics that the Wizards had always used before, to steal what they wanted right out from beneath the noses of the Elvenlords.

In fact—that peculiar discordant feeling in the back of his

skull signaled that someone within the Citadel had used that particular magic again. It had to be Lashana. And in no way could it be for anyone's good except that selfish brat's.

But no one, no one would believe a single word he said against her. Not their dear Elvenbane, the person who had brought them the dragons (treacherous, sneaky beasts, whose minds could shift as easily as their shapes), the Trader clans (untrustworthy, wild human barbarians), and the Iron People (folly to put faith in any people who were not only wild human barbarians, but who had their own defenses against the Elven-lords and didn't need allies). Everyone so easily forgot that it was because of Lashana that they had needed those "allies," and needed to leave their comfortable, easy life in the old Citadel in the first place!

She was up to something; he knew it, he could taste it! She was up to something, and it could only mean new trouble for everyone else!

If only he could find out about it before everything fell apart—if he could catch her at some folly and prove she was up to something that would only drag everyone here into some new danger, they'd all believe him again!

That was it—that was it!

He kicked another shoe from his path, but this time with a triumphant cackle of laughter. That would serve the brat her just desserts! He'd use her own fancy magics to spy on her and find out exactly where she was going—then he'd use more of them to find out what she was doing! He'd catch her red-handed, and then he'd haul her back to the Citadel and make her confess in front of everyone! Oh, it would serve her right for her own magic to be used against her!

He turned abruptly and rummaged through the litter on his desk for the piece of smoke-quartz that served him for a magnifier of his power, then cleared a space and concentrated on the scrying spell. Lashana didn't discover everything about magic, after all! She hadn't been the one to learn that in scrying, you didn't have to look for a place you knew, or even a person—just a particular object or kind of object. That was how they filched provisions from the Elvenlords, back in the good old days....

So rather than look for Lashana—because she might be alerted if she sensed someone scrying for her—he looked for an object. Something she always wore. A dragon-skin belt, made from the shed hide of her so-called "foster brother" and unique in that it had been dulled with dye so that it didn't catch the eye the way the brilliantly colored skin normally did.

When he found it, he would find her—then he would study where she was carefully—very carefully.

Then the next time she left, he would follow, a little behind. He'd find out where she was going, and what she was doing.

And the moment that he found out her secret—

He closed his hand into a fist, and smiled.

₂₉

Triana lay on her stomach on the cold, hard ground beneath a bush, peering down at an encampment in the tiny valley below her. Water dripped down on the hood of her cloak from the branches above her, and although the cloak itself was waterproof, mist permeated even the cleverly-magicked fabric somewhat. It was not a comfortable position, but her sheer astonishment at the sight that lay beneath her allowed her to ignore her discomfort.

There was a campsite down there in the mizzle, with six or eight standing figures, putting the place to rights, and one sitting figure. It was the seated one that had her attention.

"You see, my lady?" murmured the human tracker in Tri-ana's ear. "It is as I told you. There is the Elvenlord you wished to find."

Well, it was an Elvenlord, all right, but it was not the one she had intended to find. Not that the tracker could be blamed in this case. He didn't know what Lord Kyrtian looked like, especially at a distance. He couldn't know that Kyrtian, the fool,

would never have sat back and watched while his slaves put up a camp. But what in the name of all the Ancestors had gotten Aelmarkin to stir his lazy behind and come out to this howling wilderness?

She was rather pleased to see that he didn't look very happy. Hunched over, elbows on knees, even from here she could see his frown. Ancestors! She could feel his frown. His slaves were trying to light a fire and not having a lot of success with the wet wood; he slumped on a stool beneath the shelter of his tent, watching them. She couldn't tell what he was thinking from here, but a moment later, he pointed his finger at the pile of wood and it roared up, causing his slaves to leap back lest they be scorched.

Could it be that he, too, was following Kyrtian? And without ever bothering to inform her?

She ground her teeth in a sudden flare of temper. The nerve of him! How dare he—

But just as quickly the temper subsided, because she couldn't honestly sustain it. Hadn't she expected this? And had she bothered to tell him what she was planning? Of course not, so why be angry with him when she was doing the same thing? And although to her this was just a wager, to him it was a great deal more than that. Enough to force him into a place that was as alien and uncomfortable to him as it was to her.

Well, if he was following Kyrtian, she would just follow him! It would save her a great deal of work, for he was by no means as woods-wise as his cousin, nor were his men. Only if he began to flounder would she have her men strike out on their own.

Meanwhile, Kyrtian was bound to go underground eventually; he had to look for Wizards, and he wanted to look for the Great Portal, and both would be in caves. If the caves were as extensive as rumor painted them, it would be child's play to get ahead of Aelmarkin.

"You've done well," she whispered back to the slave, who beamed at her, the smile of pride transforming an otherwise unhandsome face. "Watch them. I will send Kartar to you. When they leave, you both follow. Send Kartar back to fetch us to where they camp next."

"My lady," the slave bowed. He was a hard man, as were the others she had with her; forest-trackers all, they were used to the roughest of conditions. He was outfitted for the forest, in tough canvas, sturdy boots and a waterproof, hooded tunic. She wore the same, with modifications-—an additional waterproof cloak, and her clothing made of materials that were just as tough, but softer to the skin. From the look of it, Aelmarkin had taken no such precautions, and she smiled grimly as she eased her way out from under the cover of the bush and back down the other side of the hill, where another of her slaves awaited her.

He led her silently down a tangle of deer-trails; only the Ancestors knew how he was finding his way, and she didn't worry about it. That was his job, and he'd been trained very, very well for it. She did wish, however, that the need for stealth had not required the horses be tied up quite so far from Aelmarkin's camp. The thing about deer-trails was that the deer didn't care a bit if there were branches stretched across the path, or roots to trip up the unwary.

It was dusk by the time she and her escort rode into a camp that was, thanks to her good sense in picking the right sort of slaves for this job, in much better state than Aelmarkin's. There was a very small fire burning beneath a clever shelter of branches that not only shielded it from most of the omnipresent rain but dissipated the smoke rising from it so there would be no plume above the trees to betray their presence.

Good men. She was glad that she had bought them from Lord Kyndreth, once she'd learned they were not only foresters, but had been trained to serve as war-scouts. They were efficient, unobtrusive, quiet—they already knew how to work together as a team, and they didn't need constant supervision.

And they already knew their reward could be very great indeed if they served her well. She'd given them a taste of it. There was a time for the lash, and a time for the velvet glove, and when you needed someone's utmost effort in a skill, the velvet glove was the only sensible choice.

Besides, they weren't bad looking, any of them, although they were craggy and rough-hewn—and they were a pleasant change from her usual pretty toys.

So despite being chilled and damp, she bestowed praise all around and made sure Kartar was well-provisioned as well as well-fed before he set off to join his fellow tracker to keep watch over Aelmarkin's camp. Dusk lingered for a long time out here, and Kartar had a clear trail to follow. He'd be in place by dark.

In spite of her dislike for this whole situation, things were becoming interesting. Definitely interesting. She smiled again as she accepted a plate of slightly-charred meat from one of the slaves and retired with it into the privacy of her tiny tent. She might never forgive Kyrtian if it turned out he had led her out here on some idiotic wild-goose chase, but if he hadn't—

If he hadn't, this might prove to be the best opportunity for upsetting the balance of power among the Great Lords that had come along in a while.

And there was always one other possibility she could pursue—one which, given the circumstances, could provide a lot of satisfaction even if this was a wild-goose chase.

If Aelmarkin hadn't told her where he was going and what he was up to, he probably hadn't told anyone else. Except possibly Cheynar, and then it wouldn't have been much. Everyone knew these were dangerous forests. Her forest-trackers had been trained for war. His hadn't. And no one knew that she was in these hills as well.

So if he and his men just—disappeared—no one would be surprised, nor was it likely that anyone would come looking for him once Cheynar reported where he'd gone.

She wouldn't win her bet—but she wouldn't lose it, either. And it just might be worth violating every law and compact the Great Lords had sworn just to see his face when she slit his throat.

This was the darkest forest Kyrtian had ever had the misfortune of camping in. He found himself wondering as he kept half of his concentration on the conversation around the fire, and the other half on the sounds out in the woods beyond the camp, if the overcast skies here ever lifted. Surely they had to at some point... it couldn't rain all the time. Could it?

And yet, there hadn't been so much as an hour since they'd entered the place when it hadn't at least misted. And it was a good thing that he and his men weren't depending on that old saw of finding north by looking for moss on a tree trunk, because moss grew everywhere, thick as a carpet in most places. If ever there was a spot meant by nature for ambushes, this was it. So far they'd managed to avoid any more of those invisible whatever-they-weres, but the very nature of the gloom-laden landscape had his whole group edgy.

The snap of a twig brought Kyrtian and everyone in his camp to instant alertness. The whistle of a skylark came out of the darkness, and they all relaxed again. A moment later, Shana and a young male wizard walked into the circle of light cast by the fire, the omnipresent mist sparkling like gems on the edges of their hoods.

"I don't know how you do that—getting past my sentries," Kyrtian complained good-naturedly. "I hope no one else can."

"Only humans that have their special magic, dragons, and Wizards," Shana told him, grinning, as she settled down on a bit of log that one of the men rolled to the fire for her. "Speaking of which—this is my foster-brother, Keman."

"I am pleased to make your acquaintance," Kyrtian said politely, but warily. "So, you're another wizard, then—"

"Ah, actually, I'm not," the young man said diffidently, with a glance at the Elvenbane. "Shana thinks it's time you were— ah—"

"If you're going to trust us, we have to give you a reason," Shana said briskly. "I've already talked this over with the other leaders, and they think it's time for you to be entrusted with the biggest secret we have."

"Which—would be what, exactly?" Kyrtian replied, wishing she would just get straight to whatever she was going to say.

"First, just indulge me and do whatever it is that you normally do to dispel an illusion or a glamor. Keman isn't exactly what he seems," Shana said, and there was a certain—tone in her voice that made him look at her with suspicion for a moment. Just what was she up to, anyway? Was this "foster brother" of hers fully Elven—or perhaps human? No, if he was

human, there would be no need for all this secrecy and fiddling about.

But it was obvious that he wasn't going to get any further information out of the woman unless he did as she asked, so, with a sigh, he gathered threads of magic and wove them into a net, casting it over the two of them, just for good measure. He might as well see if the Elvenbane herself was under a glamor.

Nothing happened. The two of them remained exactly as they had been when they walked into the firelight.

Now Kyrtian was puzzled. Had the magic been countered? It couldn't have been deflected; he'd have seen that. Could they have absorbed it, then negated it? But how? "Are you carrying something new that works like iron?" he asked. "Or have you—"

He never got a chance to finish his question, because in the next moment, the young man who had been standing at the fireside, looking altogether as normal as it was possible for a wizard to look, suddenly began to ... change. He didn't writhe, exactly, but he blurred and twisted in a way that induced a really violent case of dizziness and nausea. It felt as if something was wrenching Kyrtian's eyes out of their sockets and stirring up his guts at the same time, and Kyrtian clapped his hand over his mouth and turned away. He wasn't alone; the rest of his men were doing the same thing, their complexions in varying shades of green.

What in the name of—

As soon as he turned his eyes away his symptoms subsided, and he looked up, glaring at Lashana, angry accusations on his lips.

Which died, as he continued to look up—and up—and up— into the jewel-like and surprisingly mild eyes of a very large, sapphire-blue dragon.

At least, he thought it was a dragon. He couldn't think of anything else it could be. It was huge, scaled, winged, fanged and taloned. There weren't many other creatures that fit that description.

As he stared, he heard the men behind him reacting to the presence of the creature. One was praying in the ancient language of the humans, one was cursing with remarkable fluency,

and he distinctly heard the thud of a third dropping to the ground, presumably having fainted dead away.

Not that Kyrtian blamed him in the least.

"You can cast all the illusion-breaking spells you like, but dragons can look like anything they care to and you won't know it. The dragons are shape-changers, you see," he heard the Elvenbane say, quite cheerfully, but it was as if he heard her in the far distance. His mind was still too involved with the impossibility of what he had just witnessed, and the sheer presence of the dragon itself. "That's our biggest secret, and that gives us undetectable spies among you Elvenlords. The dragons can go anywhere and be anything or anybody, and you can never tell that they're there, because they're not taking on illusions, they're taking on the real form of whatever they imitate. They've been spying on your people—oh, forever. From the moment the Elvenlords arrived here, the Eldest say."

"Oh," Kyrtian said, faintly. "I suppose—dragons must have been in my camp, then?"

Lashana let out a peal of laughter. "My good Lord Kyrtian, dragons were guarding your tent. And neither you nor your good Sargeant Gel had any notion!"

"Actually," the dragon said, with a note of apology in his deep voice, "I was one of them. Sorry. Hate to eavesdrop and all that, but we really didn't have much choice. We had to know what you were, you understand. Suddenly you were doing all sorts of efficient things against the Young Lords, and we calculated that you'd be coming after us, next."

Kyrtian wasn't entirely certain how the dragon was speaking; the voice seemed to rumble up out of the depths of that massive torso, and the mouth opened and closed, but the dragon didn't have anything like lips, and he couldn't figure out how it could shape words with that mouth....

"At any rate, this is our biggest secret, and now you know it," Lashana continued. "So—well, you can see that we trust you."

"Ah ... yes." Carefully, very carefully, Kyrtian felt blindly for the piece of log he'd been sitting on and lowered himself down onto it. "I... can see that."

The dragon lowered his head until his eyes were level with

Kyrtian's face. "You can do us as much harm, knowing this, as we could ever do to you, you know," the creature said, quietly.

"Forgive me," Kyrtian managed, finally gathering some of his wits about him, "If at this moment—with a mouth big enough to swallow me whole not an arm's-length away from me—I find that a little difficult to believe."

The dragon suddenly reared up, and for a moment, Kyrtian was certain that they were all going to be swallowed up—

But then an enormous, rumbling laugh started somewhere deep inside the dragon, bubbled up through the long, long throat, and emerged from the upturned snout as a trumpeting hoot.

It should have terrified him—and his men—further still. It was a completely alien sound, something that could have meant the thing was about to attack them. But somehow, it wasn't frightening at all, somehow, in the depths of Kyrtian's mind where the basest of instincts gibbered in terror and tried to crouch as small as possible so as not to be noticed by this monster, it translated as exactly what it was—the laughter of a fellow creature who meant no harm at all. And that primitive part of him stopped gibbering, and relaxed....

"Look aside, Lord Kyrtian," the dragon said, when he'd finally done laughing. "I think I'd best come—back down to your level."

He didn't need urging, not after his previous experience.

When Keman looked again like an ordinary wizard, poor Resso had been revived, and they were all seated around the fire, Kyrtian contemplated the wizard-dragon from across the flames as Lashana and the foresters discussed which of several possible caves they ought to penetrate first. He couldn't help himself; he couldn't reconcile the apparent size of the wizard with the obvious size of the dragon he'd become. The puzzle ate at him; he couldn't explain it, couldn't rationalize it, and when he couldn't find an explanation for something, he had the bad habit (and he knew it was a bad habit) of worrying at it to the exclusion of everything else.

Finally the dragon himself leveled a stare across the flames and said, "What, exactly, is bothering you, Lord Kyrtian?" in a tone of irritation mixed with amusement.

"Where did it come from?" Kyrtian blurted, as conversation ceased among the others. "I mean, you're no larger than Resso right now, and you're not exactly having that log splitting under you from your weight—but when you were—" he waved his hands wildly "—that wasn't air, that was mass—well, look at the imprints you left! So where did it come from? And where did it go?"

Keman shrugged. "Elsewhere, Kyrtian," he said. "That's all I can tell you. We call it, 'shifting into the Out.' We move the real bulk of ourselves to and from the Out, but—well, we don't know what the Out is. It's here, but it's somewhere else—"

"But when you know what to look for, a dragon casts a sort of—shadow—when he's in another form," Lashana put in. "It's not the kind of shadow you get from light falling on you, but it's there, and when you've learned how to see it and look for it, you can always tell whether something is a dragon or not."

Kyrtian could only shake his head, more puzzled by the explanation than by not having one. But at least that obsessive part of his mind had it to turn inside out and examine while he set most of his attention to work on more important things. "Never mind," he said, after a moment. "What in the name of the Ancestors are those—invisible horrors that lie in wait for you on deer trails? And what can we do about them?"

Lashana and Keman exchanged a look and a nod, and the planning moved into more practical spheres.

Caellach Gwain was beside himself with rage.

He'd followed Lashana to this benighted forest once he'd scryed out her location and once she'd abandoned it, trusting to distance and preoccupation to keep her from noticing the "noise" of his arrival. Of course, just as he apported into the spot, the wretched trees delivered a load of water from their disturbed branches, creating the effect of a localized downpour for a moment or two, which was certainly enough to drench him from head to toe. Since he hadn't taken the precaution of wearing a waterproof cape, never thinking that Lashana would drop herself into the middle of a rainstorm, he was hardly prepared for such a reception.

His temper wasn't improved when he followed the clear trail that she and whoever she'd brought with her had left. It led through underbrush just thick enough to be a nuisance, catching in his soggy robes and snarling his hair. And it was dark, plague take it all! If he hadn't kindled a mage-light, he wouldn't be able to see where he was going!

Fortunately, he'd been on the alert for the thoughts of others, because he managed to detect the sentries before they got a glimpse of his light, and douse it. And he was able to avoid them the same way, though his command of thought-sensing wasn't the equal of someone who'd wasted his time honing it to a fine pitch. Still—he knew human thoughts when he sensed them. So what was Lashana up to? Had she found yet another group of wild humans to bring to the new Citadel, using up more precious resources that should have gone to support Wizards and not useless mouths?

He spotted a fire, then, and belatedly caution took over. He would far rather have scryed out what was going on, but that would have required light—so instead, he crept on hands and knees, with every bone creaking in protest, until he was close enough to see most of the figures there, if not hear what they were saying.

Sure enough, it looked like another plaguey lot of mere humans!

But then, the one that had his back to Caellach turned his head, and Caellach froze.

An Elvenlord!

And there, chatting away with him, just as bold as could be—Lashana and Keman.

He very nearly rushed out from beneath his covering bush and accosted them then and there. As it was, sheer rage held him frozen in place.

How dare she! Traitor! Unnatural, ungrateful wretched girl!

He wanted to throttle her, there and then. He wanted to blast her into a hundred thousand bits. After everything she had done to the Wizards, who had taken her in, taught her, sheltered her—

He just sat and shook for a long time, while she, oblivious, chattered on as if she was old friends with them all.

He didn't know how long it was that he sat, encompassed by anger so hot it burned away every vestige of thought. But finally, it ebbed, and when it did—

Unholy glee flooded in, replacing the anger with savage joy.

He had her now. Finally, finally, he had her! Let her try to deny this! When the others heard about it, they'd throw her into a prison she could never escape from!

He had to get back, though, before he could lay any charges. And to do that, he had to get far enough away from here that the noise of the transportation spell wouldn't be noticed.

And he mustn't get caught. Not now, not when victory was so close he could taste it.

He opened his mind as he never had before, paying obsessive attention to the whereabouts of all of the sentry-slaves. When he moved, he did so only when he knew that they were nowhere near, and the sounds of his movement would not reach them. He literally felt his way along the path that had brought him here, moving loose twigs out of the way so that he wouldn't step on them and betray himself. At least now the sodden nature of this forest worked for him rather than against him; thick moss apparently covered every surface, and the fallen leaves he encountered were too wet to crackle.

When he was finally far enough away that he felt safe in doing so, he kindled a mage-light once again, got to his feet, and shoved his way along the first clear path he spotted. He didn't particularly care where he was going—and it really didn't matter. He could get back to the Citadel from practically anywhere; what really mattered now was that he get away from here.

The further he got, the brighter he made his light; at first, as the light itself frightened nocturnal animals out of his path, he was afraid that the disturbances they made would betray him, or draw in something like an alicorn that could be a real danger to him. But the further away he got, the less wildlife he saw, until at last there didn't seem to be anything at all along the path but himself.

They must have hunted it all out on the way here, he thought vaguely, most of his attention on what he was going to say when he got back to the Citadel. He recalled some vague admo-

nitions by the stupid dragons that one shouldn't hunt an area out, but apparently that Elvenlord paid as little heed to such things as he would have. And now that the trail was wide and beautifully clear, he was going to get to a point where he could transport himself back in a matter of moments, now—just as soon as he got past that cluster of bushes—

The violent shaking of the bushes was the only warning he got. Then he was engulfed in something horrid, and slimy, and his mage-light went out. There was a moment of absolute surprise, followed by an eternity of hellish pain, and in the end, only ... nothingness.

And then there was no sound at all on the trail, except the noises of something feeding in the dark.

₃₀

Keman and Shana elected to remain with Kyrtian and his men, but only after modifying their appearance to that of ordinary humans. That was a precautionary measure, easy to maintain, but vital just in case someone came looking for Kyrtian—or decided to scry for him.

Besides, as Keman pointed out, they'd been in these woods before. They'd helped rescue a pen full of slaves from Lord Cheynar by taking them into this forest, and even if they didn't exactly know every trail and rock, at least they knew enough about the dangers to keep Kyrtian's people from walking into trouble. Or rather, more trouble. Kyrtian had already had one narrow escape from the ambush beasts.

And they were both rather good at finding things, Keman in particular. When Kyrtian explained in detail what he thought he was looking for—the place where his father had gone hunting ancient artifacts, probably within a cave-complex—and the details he'd gleaned from the ancient journals, they both volun-

teered their services. Shana went with Kyrtian and his people, to act as a lookout for alicorns, ambush beasts, and other un-pleasantries, while Keman went off on his own.

It didn't take Keman very long at all to come haring back to the main party with a find in his hands and a grin on his face.

"Where did you find that?" Kyrtian exclaimed, seizing the oddly-shaped chunk of metal that Keman had found as if it were made of begemmed gold. It had probably been flat, once, with rolled edges on two sides. Now it was twisted and crumpled, like a piece of paper that had been wadded up, then smoothed out again.

"Up that way—" Keman pointed. "You know dragons can tell where caves are—"

He could tell immediately by Kyrtian's expression that, no, he didn 't know that, but he continued with the explanation anyway.

"—I've just been cruising at treetop level, probing for caverns. I found a place where there had been a big entrance that led into a huge complex, but there'd been a rock-fall that blocked the entrance, and when I landed to look it over, I found that this was caught in the rocks." He tilted his head to the side with curiosity. "What is it, anyway?"

"I haven't the vaguest clue," Kyrtian replied, turning it over in his hands with every evidence of fascination. "But feel it! Feel how light it is? Is it any metal that you recognize?"

"Well, no," Keman admitted. The lightness, and the lack of corrosion, had been what attracted him in the first place. The dull grey bit of debris, twisted and distorted, had blended very well into the fallen rocks, and only a dragon would have been able to spot it at once, by the different "feel" associated with it.

"And look at this—" Kyrtian pointed to a tiny line of engraved figures, incised deeply enough that not even the mist collecting on the surface obscured them. "You see? That's ancient script—Elven script!"

Keman peered at it. "What does it say?" he asked, dubiously. He couldn't begin to guess what an Elvenlord would choose to engrave on a piece of—something that looked like nothing

more than a bit of shelf, but probably wasn't. It could be anything. A bit of a poem ? "Touch this who dares ? "

Kyrtian chuckled. "It says, 'Keep this edge up.' Not what you expected, is it?" But his eyes were afire with excitement. "Ke-man, this is—must be—a piece of one of the artifacts from the Crossing! We've found the Great Portal!"

"We have?" Keman replied with surprise. He shook water off his hood with a gesture of impatience. "I didn't know we were looking for it. I thought we were looking for your father."

"My father was looking for the Great Portal, and I'm sure he found it—but something must have happened and he couldn't get back to us." The Elvenlord's expression suddenly darkened. Kyrtian didn't say what he thought the "something" was, and Keman decided that he wasn't going to ask. "How recent was that rock-fall?"

"There have been several, I think." Now Keman was on firmer ground; if there was one thing that a dragon knew, it was rocks and caves. "I managed to get this bit out from under the bottom layer, but it looks to me as if there was one large fall quite some time ago, and several since then. There's still an opening big enough for a person to squeeze inside, but the opening used to be—well—big enough for my mother, much less me! I didn't find anything like—well, bones," he added hastily, realizing only then that he might well be describing the place where Kyrtian's father had died. His addition didn't reassure Kyrtian in the least; Kyrtian's expression darkened further.

Kyrtian handed the artifact to Shana, who examined it curiously, but paid more attention to the Elvenlord than to the piece of metal. It suddenly seemed very quiet, in their little camp under the trees. Quiet enough to hear water dripping everywhere, to hear the far off calls of bell-birds. His face shadowed now, all excitement gone, the Elvenlord stared off into the trees for a moment. "How far is this? Can we get there soon?"

"Two days, I think, over the trails," Keman told him, after a moment to try and gauge distances. "I could fly you there, one at a time—"

But both Shana and Kyrtian shook their heads. "I don't want

to divide the party," Kyrtian said first. "And Lashana, I know that you can use magic to bring us there, but—"

"But I'll fall on my nose afterwards," Shana said bluntly. "And if you need me, I won't be able to do anything. No, overland it is." She sighed, then smiled, and tried to make light of the situation. "Ah well. I haven't gotten nearly enough hard exercise lately, and you do have horses to help. Keman and I will be the only ones who have to walk—"

Keman burst into laughter, as she hit her head with the heel of her palm.

"I don't think you'll be walking, Shana," Keman told her. "If you'll just give me a chance to 'change' into something more suitable—"

Kyrtian got the hint immediately. It was only a moment of work—as Kyrtian hastily averted his eyes—and an "extra" horse stared at Shana mockingly.

"What color would you like, foster-sister?" he asked shaping the mouth and larynx a bit off the horse-form, so he could talk properly. "Roan? Bay? Black?" With each suggestion, he changed his color to match. "How about a nice buckskin? Or spots? Stripes? Checks?" The changes flashed across his hide in bewildering succession.

"Ew!" Shana wrinkled her nose at the last. "Brown. Please. Brown will do very nicely."

"Not even alicorn-white with pretty blue eyes?" he teased, fading out the checks into a uniform brown. And, for good measure, making the hair much better at shedding water. By this point he had concluded that he should have taken to the guise of a horse a lot sooner—no need for rain-capes and, in fact, the rain felt rather good! It certainly kept the biting flies away.

Their exchange had lightened Kyrtian's mood a little, but it was very clear as he gave his men their new orders to move out that he was tense. Keman didn't have to ask why; it had been clear when he'd told them of his missing father that he didn't expect to find his parent alive. After the initial burst of excitement faded, how could you possibly look forward to finding a body—or what was left of one?

He hurried them all into packing up the camp; it was inter-

esting to Keman that even under the press of urgency, Kyrtian's people worked efficiently and without fumbling. In far less time than Keman would have thought possible given his experience even with the Iron People, everything was packed properly, stowed on the horses, and they were ready to leave.

The others looked to Kyrtian for orders; he gestured to Keman, who obviously was the only one who knew where they were going, and Keman and Shana took the lead. Kyrtian rode behind them, and everyone in his party gave him a respectful distance. With a stony expression, and his mouth set in a grim line, it was pretty clear that he didn't want to talk to anyone, and it seemed best to leave him alone.

It was a very, very quiet ride. None of the men wanted to break the silence, and even Shana didn't talk. The rain started up again shortly after they took to the trail, obscuring the distance behind a veil of grey, but Keman wasn't worried. Dragons couldn't get lost; he knew where he was, exactly in relationship to where their goal was. The only thing standing between them and that rock-covered cave entrance was the trifling matter of several leagues.

It would have been funny, if it hadn't been so important that Triana keep the presence of her party secret, not only from Ael-markin, but from Kyrtian as well. As it was, when everyone else suddenly packed up for no apparent reason and began to move, Triana's group had to scramble to clean out their camp and move deeper into the forest.

It was a near thing. Kyrtian's party didn't ride in on top of where Triana's camp had been, but they came closer than Triana liked, and Aelmarkin's bunch did just blunder on through. If his foresters had been half as good as Triana's slaves, they'd have spotted the signs of recent occupation for certain.

But after that, it was a simple enough matter to trail behind Aelmarkin. He was leaving a trail as broad as a highway and making no effort to hide it—but interestingly enough, Kyrtian wasn't going to any effort to conceal his trail either.

He must have found something. That was the only possible explanation. Triana wished she knew what it was.

Only when they pushed on past dark was she certain that it couldn't be Wizards—because Kyrtian kindled mage-lights and sent them up above their heads to illuminate the trail. Her own scouts reported it—and when her group was on the top of a hill, she could often catch a glimpse of the lights flitting among the branches of a valley below, like impossibly huge fireflies in the distance.

He wouldn't have betrayed his presence this way if he thought he'd found signs of the Wizards he was supposed to be looking for. At least, she didn't think he would.

The trouble was, he could use lights, but neither she nor Ael-markin dared.

That had her gritting her teeth in frustration, until it occurred to her that there was one thing, at least, that she could do. She could make mage-lights of a different sort. Not powerful enough to light their path, but tiny things that would mark where Kyrtian's horses, and Aelmarkin's, had gone by following the scent in the air. If the others saw them, they'd either assume they were ordinary fireflies or were some bizarre creature native to these forests.

It took her the better part of an hour to get the magic right, but in the end it was worth it; the trick was to set the spell to seek "horse," but with the specific exclusions of the horses she and her group rode—otherwise, all the little motes did was cluster around her. So even if they were stumbling down the path in the darkness now, they had something to follow. What a miserable experience, though—wet, cold, the endless mizzle in the face, and it seemed as if there were entire trees just waiting until they passed beneath to drop a load of water on their heads. They didn't have to worry about moving quietly, though—there were so many frogs calling in a dozen different tones throughout the woods that they could have blundered about thrashing through the bushes and never been heard.

Presumably Aelmarkin came up with something that worked equally well, since they didn't run right into the back of his group. Triana was dreadfully afraid for some time that Kyrtian was going to ride all night, for he showed no signs of wanting

to halt. The rain poured on past dusk, and only slackened to the usual mist long after dark, but still Kyrtian road on.

By this time she was convinced that Kyrtian had gone quite mad, but her best forester assured her that no, not even someone as driven as Kyrtian was going to be foolish enough to press himself and his men that hard. And the slave was proved right; after what seemed like half the night, her foremost scout came back with the intelligence that both Kyrtian and Ael-markin were settling in for the night, and with the profoundest relief, Triana directed her own men to do the same.

But the moment that the first thin light showed among the trees, the scouts who watched the camps came back and roused them, and they were out of bedrolls that had just gotten comfortable and off again into the fog of pre-dawn. Kyrtian was pushing hard, and Triana needed to make a decision. She called her best man to ride alongside her.

"Can we outflank my cousin—get ahead of him without him realizing that we're out here?" she asked. Not for the first time, she was glad she had bought these men from Lord Kyndreth. Whoever had trained them had done such a good job that she didn't have to give them exact instructions—she had only to ask for what she wanted done, and they worked out a way to accomplish it if they had the skills. Unfortunately there was one thing that they did not have the skills for. They weren't very good cooks. They didn't seem to mind eating squirrel and hare that was half raw and half burned, but she had begun eating the leathery journey-bread in preference to the game they provided.

The slave pondered her question, then nodded. "I believe so, my lady, but—" he looked uneasy, and wiped a film of moisture from his forehead that wasn't from the mist. "—it isn't the forest that's the problem. It's what's in the forest. We know of al-icorn herds at the very least, and the outriders have seen signs of other things. Worse things, my Lady, than alicorn stallions."

"Worse things?" She wrinkled her brow. "What sorts of signs?"

"One of them came across signs that something had killed

and eaten several alicorns in the past week or so." He grimaced. "I would not care to encounter anything that could do that."

"And I suppose he didn't see it? Had no clue as to what it was?" If she knew what they needed to guard against, she could perform some specific magics—magic that would either repulse the creatures or at least give warning of their presence. But without knowing what it was she was trying to ward off— she could waste her energy and skill shooing away spiders, only to have a giant slug descend on them.

"Nothing we've ever seen or heard of, my lady—the scout didn't get near; he said the place looked like an ambush in the making. From what he told me, the alicorns were torn in pieces, and I wouldn't even expect one of those dragons we've heard about to do that." She gave him a suspicious glance, but he didn't look as if he was exaggerating.

Well, that did fit in with what she'd been warned about this place. Kyndreth himself had been none-too-eager to go looking for purported Wizards in these hills, and had jumped to accept Kyrtian's offer to track them down. She'd probably lose some men in this. Now she was glad she'd bought them outright from Kyndreth instead of borrowing them. When an accident happened to a borrowed slave, it was amazing how the value of that slave suddenly increased....

"Do it," she ordered him. "Send the outriders ahead, find us a clear path so we can get around Aelmarkin and run alongside Kyrtian. You're supposed to be Lord Kyndreth's best, aren't you?"

He bowed. "Yes, my lady," he said. No hesitation, no excuses, no objections. Just obedience. Exactly what she had paid for.

Well, not all that she had paid for. She'd also invested in excellence; so far, these slaves had been most satisfactory, but now they had better well prove that they could go beyond "satisfactory."

Or when she got back, she'd be having some words with Lord Kyndreth.

But right now, she had better keep her own mind on the job at hand. If these slaves couldn't rise to the challenge, she might

have to abandon them to their fate and narrow her goal to getting her own self out intact.

They'd just paused long enough to pass around rations for lunch, eating in the saddle, before the afternoon downpour arrived on schedule. By nightfall, they should be at Keman's cave-complex. As rain drummed on the hood of her cape and a few cold drops slipped around the collar and got down her neck, Shana was grateful that her "mount" was Keman, and not a real horse. She couldn't have fallen off if she'd wanted to, not even on the steep trails he was taking, and at the moment, she needed to be able to concentrate on holding the mental line of communication with Lorryn as tightly as possible. There was a lot of distance between them—and something unexpected had happened, something that made all the discomfort she felt completely irrelevant.

Caellach Gwain had vanished from the Citadel.

:... so when he didn 't turn up for breakfast, either, Hala thought it was more than odd,: Lorryn told her. :He's pulled sulks before, usually when he's managed to squirrel away food in his room, but missing three meals in a row was exceptional. The door was bolted from the inside; it wasn't hard to get it open, not with a half dozen Wizards working on it—but he wasn 't there when we opened it.:

Caellach Gwain gone! It was so tempting to allow herself to wallow in sheer relief, but—Caellach Gwain vanished out of his own room was a puzzle that only promised more trouble.

She wiped rain from her face and closed her eyes, concentrating. :You don't suppose he's learned the transportation magic, do you?: she asked, apprehensively.

-.That's exactly what I'm afraid has happened,: was the grim reply.

Well, that made perfect sense. You didn't have to attend lessons to get the advantage of them. The miserable old toad could simply have sat in his room with a scrying glass and learned everything any of the other Old Whiners was learning.

:You've got a good reason, I'll bet.:

She felt Lorryn's nod. :His room was full of things from the old Citadel—a good many of them not his property, so many of the Old Ones tell me. By the way, that's put him beyond the pale, if that's any comfort to you. Even the Old Whiners who were his most vocal supporters were wild with rage when they found their property in his room. There's no way he could have known where some of those things were without going back in person, because there were a lot of small, valuable trinkets that were hidden away in drawers and chests he 'd never seen the inside of:

Her heart sank. :So he could be anywhere.: If he knew the transportation spell, all he had to do was be familiar with a place to go there. She supposed it was even possible to become that familiar using simple scrying.

:The old Citadel, some new hideaway of his own, even out spying on you,: Lorryn replied, and there was apprehension in his thoughts. :You know what would happen if people found out where you are right now, what you were doing, and who you were doing it with.:

Never mind that Lady Moth was clearly the Wizards' friend, that Lorryn's own mother and sister were fullbloods. This was different. This was consorting with the Great Lords' chosen general. She could try to explain until her face was blue, but if Caellach Gwain broke the news at an inopportune time, well—

:That's my worst fear, because there are some of the youngsters who think that there was a second burst of transportation noise right after you and Keman left.: She sensed Lorryn's worry, and she more than agreed with it.

:Fire and Rain!: she swore angrily. :That would be just like him, wouldn 't it!: Even through her anger, she tried to think if she'd detected anything since she'd arrived. :He might be here. He might not. If he came in far enough from us, I wouldn't have heard the arrival. :

:Look, I'm going to do two things, and the first is that I'm going to turn his room into an iron cage,: Lorryn told her. :And when he tries to transport back in—he'll get a shock. Zed tried

it with a rock, and what happens is that you bounce back to where you came from.:

:With a demon of a headache, I can only hope,: she said sourly. :He'll try to go to another part of the Citadel, of course—:

-.Maybe, maybe not. Because the next thing I'm going to do is start planting iron wedges all over the Citadel except in designated 'magic rooms,' and those will be brand new ones that Father Dragon is going to carve out for us.: He sounded—well, rather pleased with himself for coming up with a plan so quickly, and she didn't blame him.

:Zed can pour simple wedges for us easily enough, can't he?: she asked.

:With no problem at all; he's already pouring them, the children are planting them, and Father Dragon has the first magic room carved out. I've been wanting to do this for a while, anyway. It's one more defense against the Elvenlords, even if it is a nuisance for us to confine doing magic to those special rooms.: He sighed. :Still, it'll be worth it, and we can have the whole Citadel protected by tomorrow. Caellach Gwain will have no way of knowing where the safe rooms to transport to are or what they look like. So to get back here, he 'II have to apport to somewhere he knows.:

Her anger faded as she considered that. .7 don't think he's set foot outside the caves more than a dozen times since we arrived. There can't be that many places where he can apport back.:

-.And I can have all of them watched by people we trust. That leaves only the old Citadel for him.: Lorryn sounded absolutely smug when he said that, and she didn't blame him.

:He can go live there and rot for all I care,: she said maliciously. Maybe the Great Lords will decide that our fictitious Wizards live there. That would serve him right, if they find him sitting there like an old toad in a hole.:

.-Well, just keep alert for any sign of him, love,: Lorryn cautioned. :He's a twisty old beast. I'm not sure I can think of every way he could think of to cause us harm.:

.7 will,: she promised, and gave him a wordless, loving farewell that she hoped remained untainted with her anger at Caellach Gwain.

"Well, that's not good," Keman muttered up at her, shaking the rain from his mane. He had, of course, been listening in.

"No, it's not. Should we tell Kyrtian?" She was of two minds on the subject. It wasn't as if Kyrtian didn't already have enough on his hands—and it wasn't as if his men weren't perfectly capable of catching one old man who was anything but woods-wise if he was spying on them.

Unless, of course, he was using the transportation spell to get him away each time it looked as if he was going to get caught.

But she hadn't heard the distinctive "noise" associated with that spell!

"I wouldn't," Keman replied after a moment. "It's not his business. It's wizard business. Let Lorryn take care of things at the Citadel; you and I will just have to be very vigilant from now on."

"I hope an ambush beast gets him," she grumbled.

Keman shook his head. "I wouldn't wish that fate even on Caellach Gwain. And you shouldn't, either."

"Well—maybe not an ambush beast. But I wouldn't mind seeing him treed by an alicorn," she relented.

"Nor would I, foster sister," Keman replied. "Maybe we'll have the privilege. And maybe he'll just get into trouble he can't get out of, all on his own, without our ill-wishing him. That would be best of all."

"I suppose it would," she sighed, and left it at that.

³¹

Dusk—and Shana looked up through the gloom and the drizzle at the mountain of rubble marking the site that Keman swore hid a major cave-complex.

Well, if it did, the original cave-mouth must have been bigger than anything Shana had ever imagined, much less seen. It looked from this perspective as if half the side of the mountain had come down over the years, and it wasn't a small mountain. Steep, though; very steep, covered with trees and brush that clung to the slope with vegetative stubbornness, and probably kept the rest of the mountain from losing its outer skin.

The most recent fall had been quite recent indeed, and had added bulk to the pile on the left-hand side. There were trees, large trees, crushed under all that rock, with the remains of dead leaves still clinging to the branches.

Mage-lights hovered over the pile as Kyrtian's men looked on apprehensively. Keman—back to human-form—and Kyrt-ian climbed the rock-pile to the single opening that Keman had discovered near the top of the mound.

"Is he going to be safe?" one of the men asked dubiously, as Keman offered Kyrtian a hand-up over a tricky bit. Shana was dead-certain that he wasn't worried about Keman.

"Keman's a dragon," she reminded him. "They don't know rock, they live rock. Keman feels where each pebble is rubbing and might be loose. He'll know if something is going to slip before the rock knows."

"You'd better be right," Lynder muttered darkly. "I climb—I explore caves all the time—and I wouldn't go up there without spending weeks checking my path."

"You're not a dragon," she retorted, and turned her own at-

tention to the base of the pile. There, in a place where rock had been melted and reformed to stabilize the area (the indisputable mark of dragon stone-shaping), was where Keman had found the strange piece of metal. Shana examined the spot on her hands and knees with her own little mage-light, and in a few moments, there was no doubt in her mind that what he had found was not a random bit of something that might have been dropped by a curious Elvenlord long ago. There was more of the stuff under that original rock-fall. As she brought her pinpoint light in close to the ground, she saw a thin edge of something squashed along the boundary of rock-pile and dirt that didn't look anything like the fractured edge of a rock. What it did look like was another sheet of metal.

Just what was under that pile of rock?

Just what is inside this cave? That's what I should be asking....

She looked back up again. At that moment, Keman turned and waved back down at her. They must have found the entrance. A mage-light left the formation and swung purposefully towards the two figures up on the pile, then vanished, seemingly into the rocks. There was some activity up there, as the two bent over something. A moment later, the first figure followed the light into the tumbled rocks. Keman remained bent over while Kyrtian's men fidgeted restlessly, then eventually started back down the pile. Clearly Kyrtian had gone down inside the cave by rope, and Keman had remained just long enough to see that he was safely down.

"Now what's Kyrtian thinking?" the man beside Shana murmured, fretfully. "We ought to be making camp, not climbing around in caves."

"Kyrtian's probably seeing if we can camp in the cave," one of his fellows pointed out. "It would be a lot drier, and we wouldn't have to worry about—Things."

"Unless, of course, those Things have been coming out of the cave," Shana warned, darkly. The more Kyrtian had explained what he hoped to find, the less she'd liked the idea of crawling around in there. So far, every sign had pointed to the conclusion that Kyrtian was right, and this was the site of his race's entry

into this world. What if that Great Portal hadn't quite been closed—or had been reopened? From what Lorryn had told her, Evelon was hellish at best; there was no telling what kind of horrors lived back there. The ambush beasts and the other weird things in this forest could be coming out of Evelon—or been sent by the Elvenlords' enemies, the ones they had fled here to escape.

Fire and Rain! If they were the losers in their fight, I don't want to meet what the Elvenlords we know thought was so bad they would risk running into an unknown world rather than face it or surrender to it.

Kyrtian's men didn't look very happy with her observation, so she didn't share any more of her thoughts. Forewarned was forearmed, but no point in making them too nervous.

Keman came down the slide a great deal faster than he had gone up; more sure-footed than any goat, since he needn't trouble himself about the stability of the surface he trod on. He looked as gleeful as only a dragon could, with the prospect of a new set of caves to explore. "The outermost cavern has a lot of things in it, but they all look like personal belongings that people dropped while they were running away. Kyrtian wants to camp in there," he told them, as he leapt down from the last boulder. "Right now, we need some ropes to get down inside."

"And just how are we going to get the horses up that mess?" one of the men demanded. "They won't go, and I don't blame them."

"Oh." Keman clearly hadn't thought of that, and obviously, neither had Kyrtian. "I could stabilize it, but that would take time—"

"And then what are you going to do? Lower them on a rope? Hobie and Lynder can go with my lord, and the rest of us will stay out here," the man replied firmly. "They're the ones that go mucking about in holes, not us. You just put some of those magics on our camp to keep the horrors away, and we'll be fine waiting in the open."

Keman looked at Shana, who just shrugged. These weren't

her men to command. "Go see what Lord Kyrtian has to say about that," was her only advice.

So back up the pile went Keman, and back down again, just as quickly. "He says it's all right, but camp away from the rock-fall area," he called as he leapt from rock to rock. "So we need to scout a secure area—Hobie and Lynder, though, he wants you to bring up the climbing gear he asked for."

"What about the camping stuff?" Lynder asked immediately. "How are we going to get that down?"

Keman just laughed.

"Leave that to Shana and me," he said; so the two men Kyrtian called for gathered up a pack apiece, and several coils of rope, and began the climb while Shana and Keman and the rest went to look for a good place for the others to set up.

They found it soon enough, an indentation in the side of the hill, too small to be called a valley, too large for a ravine. More of a pocket in the hillside that Shana could fence off with magic for them to keep the horses confined and screen the camp from view.

That was easy enough for her to do; an illusion of solid hillside and vegetation, layered onto a barrier that would only let people pass. She kept the mage-lights going while they set up camp, then once they had a fire and their own lanterns going, dismissed all but one of her lights. Then she and Keman collected all of the gear they were going to need inside the cave. He had taken the form of something rather grel-like, with a broad, flat back to carry a great many packs, and four strong, limber legs ending in claws.

It was a very good thing that he had taken all the gear, because Shana had a hard enough time getting herself up that slope. It was as much of a scramble as a climb, testing each foothold only to find her feet skidding as loose scree dislodged, grabbing desperately for a handhold until she could get her feet firmly planted again. Fortunately, once they reached the top, Hobie and Lynder were waiting with ropes set up to bring down everything a bit at a time. Keman himself carried Shana, pick-a-back, with her arms wrapped around his neck, legs wedged

under the muscles where wings met shoulder. He was in his own shape, of course, climbing down with the agility of a fly on a wall, disdaining the use of rope. She kept her eyes shut; if anything, it was a lot farther to the floor of the cave than it had been to the ground outside, and the rock-fall had piled up into a much nastier barrier on this side.

Once they were down on firm soil, though, she opened her eyes to take her first look around.

Mage-lights up near the vaulted top of the cave imparted a soft glow that was as good as daylight. There was rubbish everywhere, about half of it being wood, leaves, branches, and other detritus that had blown in or washed in before the cave was so totally sealed up. But the other half of the litter wasn't. It looked, just as Keman's brief description had suggested, as if a great many people had come through here laden down with personal belongings, and for one reason or another, had simply dropped them or left them here.

Quite clearly, the mess had been poked at, dug through, and nested in by all manner of animals over the course of several centuries. Anything of fabric or leather had long since gotten so close to the point of disintegration that all you had to do was poke it and it fell apart, leaving only bits of metal and less-identifiable substances that had been used as ornamentation or fastenings. Some of it was armor; recognizable breastplates and greaves, helms and vambraces poked up here and there among the wreckage. There were boxes that fell to bits at a touch, revealing a tantalizing glimpse of what their contents might have been before those, too, fell into piles of dust and fragmented flakes. There were swords and knives and axes, but also less recognizable objects and some that Shana couldn't make out at all.

It wasn't so much the metal objects themselves that were fascinating, it was the metals that they were made of. Living among the Elvenlords as she had, Shana was familiar with the ways in which they made bronze, brass, copper, silver, and gold serve any number of purposes—but the objects she found weren't made of any of those metals. Most were constructed of

the dull grey stuff that Keman had found, very light and strong, but clearly nothing familiar. Other objects were made of something equally light and thin, and looked like ceramic or glass, but whatever it had been it was brittle and shattered when flexed. It couldn't always have been that brittle; presumably age had rendered it friable.

This sad litter lay among the leaves and sticks that had blown or been carried in over the years, the mounds of dirt, of dust and cobwebs, the bones of little animals who had lived and died here or had been brought in and eaten.

But there were other bones here as well that were not of animals—and when Shana accidentally kicked a helmet and it rolled and disgorged a skull, she decided that she'd had enough of exploring and hurried back to the spot that Hobie and Lynder had cleared of debris and were making into a camp. Kyrtian had already gathered a small pile of things there, and was going through them while the other two put together a fire and the makings of a hot meal. There was certainly no shortage of fuel for the fire, anyway.

"It's a pity nothing of the books survived," Kyrtian said, looking up, as she approached the friendly warmth of the fire. "They've all gone utterly to bits that not even Moth could reconstruct."

"I don't think it's a pity at all," she retorted. "Kyrtian, it looks as if these people were running for their lives, and something made sure that not all of them got out of here. That Evelon of your ancestors must have been worse than even you thought, and I'd rather not know anything about it."

"They're your ancestors, too, Lashana," Kyrtian pointed out with surprising gentleness. "Many of them were arrogant and selfish creatures who, as soon as they got away from those who were exploiting them, turned about and oppressed others—but some were like me, like my father, and like your friend Valyn. And they knew a very great deal that we would find useful, if we could rediscover it."

"All that great learning doesn't seem to have done them much good here," Lynder observed, looking around the cave,

and shuddering. "Do Elvenlords leave ghosts behind when they die?"

Shana knew exactly how he was feeling. She had spent a great deal of her life in caves, and normally she felt quite comfortable in them, but this one had an atmosphere that she could only describe as "haunted." Every word they spoke whispered and echoed in a way that was quite unnerving, with bits of their own conversation lingering long past the time when Shana would have expected the sounds to die away.

And now that they were all gathered in around the fire, Kyrt-ian had thriftily canceled his mage-lights. She was used to the way that a fire made moving shadows on cave-walls, but here were shadows that moved within the shadows, and places where blots of darkness were there when she looked, but gone when she looked again. As for the smell—under the usual damp "cave" scent, there was a hint of something metallic and harsh.

It was only the first in a series of caves, as Keman had described, for in the wall opposite the rock-fall, a dark maw of a further entrance gaped. She guessed that this cavern had been water-carved at some point, but where the water had gone was anyone's guess. Perhaps it had sunk further into the depths of the hills, and they would encounter it as they got deeper into the caves. It was a half-dome now, the rock-fall covering what had been a vast entrance; the "ceiling" was a good three or four stories above their heads. Under all the debris, the floor was of sand, which at least had the virtue of being dry and softer than rock.

But this cave was not what Kyrtian had come to hunt, not really. The relics here were nothing more than the sign that this place was what Kyrtian's father had been looking for. There was no sign of the Elvenlord himself—unless some of those bones—

No, he would have found something to recognize his father by, I should think.

There was also no sign of his "Great Portal," or anything like it; no sign of the complex devices Kyrtian had described when he'd told Shana what he was looking for. How long before

Kyrtian decreed that it was time to move deeper into the complex? The only concession to "making camp" so far was the fire and a few rocks as seats around it.

Kyrtian saw her glancing reluctantly towards the open entrance at the rear, and caught her eye. "Whatever is in there has waited for decades," he said—sadly, she thought. "It can wait another night. We rode like fools to get here, we're tired and wet and cold. We'd be further fools to go climbing around in an unknown cave in this state. People get themselves killed doing stupid things like that."

Lynder let out his breath; clearly he'd been holding it the moment Kyrtian began to speak, dreading being told they were going to have to gather their strength and be off again once they'd eaten. "Thank you for that, my Lord," he said stoutly. "You've prevented me from having to say the same thing. I was afraid if I did, you'd be angry, and if I didn't, Sargeant Gel would have the hide off me when we got back."

"I would hope I would never be the kind of leader to put you in that sort of untenable position, Lynder," Kyrtian replied, but a weary sparkle came back into his eyes, at least for a moment. "Food and sleep, my lads—and my lady—" he added, bowing to Shana. "That's what's called for here. And perhaps a little narrative from your friend on what it was like to eavesdrop outside my tent. I am curious to hear about that."

Keman bowed in his turn. "The only difference between us and your usual guards, Lord Kyrtian, was that we have much sharper hearing—and one of us was a lady herself."

"Oh really?" Kyrtian leaned forward. "Please go on...."

Hours later, the fire died down to coals. Keman had gone out to catch himself something of an appropriate size for a dragon's dinner. Before he left, Shana and Kyrtian had both taken the time—comparing notes the while—to fence in their little camp with protective magic. Interestingly enough, neither of them had chosen to use magic-shields. Instead, they had both opted for something that would trigger an alarm if crossed, clearing a circle that Keman could easily see so that he wouldn't trigger the alarm by tripping it when he returned. After all, he could

simply shapeshift into a boulder, and nothing would disturb his rest; he didn't need alarms to warn him of danger, since danger would pass by without noticing him.

Despite those precautions, despite being weary, Shana was having a hard time getting to sleep. If conversations had echoed uncannily around the walls, the little sounds the others made as they moved or sighed or mumbled in their sleep were worse. Someone would cough a little, or turn over—moments later the sound came back, much distorted, into something that sounded like a footstep, or a whispered word. Sometimes multiple echoes came back, a breath, a murmur of not-quite-intelligible conversation.

She didn't actually fall asleep until after Keman finally returned. He entered as a dragon—a thin, snake-like dragon, the only way he could fit himself in through that tiny opening. He remained as a dragon, curled up just outside the boundary. His solid presence, bulking large so close at hand, finally made her feel safe. And in that moment, sleep came.

Triana's people had pitched a secluded camp at a discreet distance from the site that was evidently Kyrtian's goal. Rain dripped steadily on the canvas of her tent as she plied the forester with questions, a soft glow from a mage-light suspended above them shining down on his face and highlighting rough-hewn features that Triana had begun to take a liking to. The rugged looks of all of these men were beginning to grow on her; by comparison, her carefully-sculpted and trained slave-toys, though more defined and muscular, actually seemed rather boyish and immature.

"So, five of them entered, and the rest are—where?" Triana asked her scout.

"Gracious Lady, I couldn't find them." He didn't shrug, but she wondered what his impassive expression hid. Probably nervousness, fear of her anger; he was definitely sweating, just at his hairline. "I stayed to watch, then remained once they had been inside for some time and darkness had fallen. I climbed to the entrance to make certain that Lord Kyrtian and the four who

accompanied him intended to set up camp there; they had gear down there enough to do so, and such seemed to be their intentions. When I went to look for the others, however, they could not be found."

"I can't believe he would have sent them back," she mused aloud. "No, I'm sure he must have created an illusion to cloak their camp—it is what I would have done in his place. Or else they themselves are taking no chances on the creatures lurking in this forest, and have hidden their camp...."

"It was quite dark by that time, my lady," he said diffidently.

"And you correctly remembered your orders to keep track of Kyrtian, not his slaves." She nodded. "Did you make any effort to see what was within the cave itself?"

He shook his head. "Lord Kyrtian had mage-lights all through the place, but it is very large, and a hard climb down. The floor is littered with debris, but I could not tell you what it was at that distance. The usual trash one finds in a cave, I suppose."

So he had come straight back here; that showed a fine balance between obedience and good sense. She smiled at him, and thought that his nervousness ebbed, a little. "You've done well; I would rather that you came back here to tell me what happened than waste time in trying to discover the whereabouts of a lot of men who will probably do nothing until their master returns." She laughed, then, and her man relaxed a little further. "As I have said before, what Kyrtian can do, I can do. I have no need of you men inside that cave; I have no intention of confronting Lord Kyrtian, I only wish to discover what he is up to. I can do that being careful and using my own powers of illusion to cloak my presence once one of you has helped me climb down. You, meanwhile, have managed to outflank Aelmarkin and get us here only a little behind Lord Kyrtian's men. I believe you deserve a bit of a holiday."

Now the slave unbent entirely. "Thank you, my lady," was all he said, but she saw the expression in his eyes change to one of wary gratitude, rather like a somber, alert coursing-hound offered an unexpected treat. She offered him a cup of her wine; he accepted it with a profound bow and drank it off at a gulp. A

pity; it was a good vintage, but likely he wouldn't know good from bad. Perhaps she would educate him.

"I will go into the cave tomorrow to follow Kyrtian. Before I do, I would like you to find a good, out-of-the-way place to camp that is unlikely to be stumbled across by Aelmarkin's men. I'll cloak it with illusion and you all can disport yourselves as you will until I return." His eyes absolutely lit, and she laughed. "And yes, this means you may help yourselves to any of the provisions, the wine included. I don't expect to have to spend much time in that hole, and when I return, our business will be to make all speed back. Too many provisions will only slow us down."

She would take the precaution of changing the wine so that it made anyone who drank it tranquil rather than rowdy. She could always change it back when she returned. Better that they laze a little while she was gone; it would ruin her plans entirely for Aelmarkin's people to discover hers because they were carousing and singing or fighting behind her cloak of illusion.

If something else came across them and they were incapacitated, well—there were other ways she could get home. If they didn't take the precaution of setting a sober sentry, they weren't worth the money she'd paid for them.

"Have another cup," she said, with a dazzling smile, refilling his goblet. "Then go and tell the others what I just told you. I'll want climbing gear ready for me first thing when I wake; you can see me safely down, then return here to the others to wait for my return."

A few hours past dawn, Aelmarkin stood looking up at a vast pile of tumbled rocks; the trail apparently ended there, according to his forester. As usual, the skies dripped. He shook rain out of his eyes with irritation; was there never a break from the wretched stuff here?

And Kyrtian, Ancestors curse him, had found a way out of the wretched stuff. "A cave?" Aelmarkin said incredulously. "There's a cave up there? And Kyrtian crawled in there?"

"Yes, my Lord," the forester said into the ground at Ael-

markin's feet. "It is a very, very large cave; the opening is near to the top of it. I could not tell how many of his men went in with him, but the main trail ends here, and I can clearly see where a number of people went up that slope and entered into a gap at the top. Without light I cannot see what is inside, but if they were still immediately inside it, I must suppose they'd have lights of their own, so I presume they've gone in deeper."

"By the Ancestors." Aelmarkin began to chuckle. "Well, it's pretty clear that, whatever is here, it's not Wizards. Unless this is some forgotten entrance into their lair."

"Forgotten, my lord, or no longer in use because of the rock-fall," the scout said, head still bent. "But I dropped a torch within, when I could see no signs of Lord Kyrtian or his men down below, and before it guttered out all I saw was litter. It appears that if this place was ever in use as an entrance, it has not been used so for a very long time."

"That's good enough for me!" Aelmarkin replied. He considered the situation. "I'll take you with me; the rest can camp here. We'll see if we can't discover what Kyrtian thinks he's up to."

"It will be very difficult to conceal ourselves in a cave, my lord," the man began.

Aelmarkin cut him off with a gesture; the water from Ael-markin's sodden sleeve spattered him from head to toe, and Aelmarkin felt a bit of sour pleasure as the slave winced. "Not for a mage, you fool! Get whatever gear we'll need—we're already hours behind him." He looked around at the rest of his slaves. "And you! Put up a proper camp this time! When I get back, I expect to see something other than a half-pitched tent and a fire that won't start! And get moving!"

He put a sting of warning in his voice to remind them of the sting of his punishments, punishments that he had inflicted frequently through their collars each time they bumbled a task. It got them going, although sluggishly.

Well, no matter. In a few moments, he was going to be inside a dry cave. If they couldn't manage to put a camp together

properly by the time he got back, on the way home he'd start crippling them and leaving them behind on the trail to attract the horrors that seemed to stalk these forests. That would give his dear cousin something to have to deal with on his way back to civilization. At the least, Kyrtian would be delayed in returning to his patron, Lord Kyndreth.

And at the most—Aelmarkin would no longer have anything standing between himself and everything he wanted.

This must be that fabled Portal to Evelon, with all of the things that had been left behind scattered about. The Wizards, if they existed at all, certainly weren't here. Opportunity waited and Fate smiled on Aelmarkin at last. And depending on what he found in that cave—well, by the time he returned home, Aelmarkin might even be able to give Lord Kyndreth himself a little healthy competition for ascendancy on the Great Council.

₃₂

Triana looked up at the dim, uneven oval of grey light that marked the opening to the outer world, and absently kicked something dry and crackling from beneath her feet. There was no sign of her slave, but she hadn't expected him to linger once she was safely down. She wondered if she had surprised her forester by getting down into the cave rather handily with nothing more in the way of help than one of the ropes that Kyrtian's people had left behind; she certainly surprised herself.

Then again, it was very interesting what sorts of things one could do with magic when one was terrified out of one's wits. It had been a very long way down to the floor of the cave from that tiny entrance above; fortunately Kyrtian's own people had