left all their ropes behind, ready to climb out when they returned, so at least she had had the comfort of knowing her lifeline was tested and tried.

Ah, but Kyrtian had never been taught the subtle art of Elven female magic, and if he came back he'd have the benefit of her passage. She'd had no notion she could make a rope stronger— or herself briefly stronger as well. By the time her feet touched the floor of the cave, she had imparted the transitory strength of one of her foresters to her arms and legs—and she could have used the rope she dangled from to lower a horse and wagon without worrying about it snapping.

So at a guess, she ought to be able to get herself back up the tumble of rock without mishap and no assistance; it was admittedly easier to climb when one had magic to help.

It was tempting to think about blasting her way out with levin-bolts, though; she'd been practicing for years now in secret and she was getting quite proficient. It would mean less exertion. However, there were drawbacks as well—in the glimpses she'd gotten of the ceiling, she wasn't altogether sure of how stable it was, and it wouldn't do her a great deal of good to bring the ceiling down on herself instead of blasting her way out.

Not subtle, my dear. Not your style.

Besides, unless Kyrtian came to grief in there, she didn't intend to leave any trace of her own passing, so she would probably have to get out the hard way.

Meanwhile, in the gleam of her mage-light, the only sign that Kyrtian had been here was a dead campfire and a cleared circle among the rubbish littering the floor. He must have gone off long before she even woke, and had gotten a good deal ahead of her. So if she was to discover what he was up to, she had better get moving.

She paused long enough to recover her breath and her power—she'd been hot and sweaty as well, but in the cold, dank cave-air she'd cooled down quickly and was glad of the cloak she'd brought with her, tied in a bundle about her waist.

Now for a little magic. She smiled to herself as she wove

power around her; this was subtle, and not something a mere male would ever appreciate. The illusion she cast upon herself was a rather clever one; it wasn't precisely invisibility, since that wasn't strictly possible. Instead, she cloaked herself in the image of what was behind her, so that anyone looking at her would see only what her body ordinarily would have obscured—a kind of reflection, but not exactly. The illusion wasn't perfect; it couldn't be. Anyone looking closely might well see a faint outline of her body, or notice her shadow on the floor. That was why she wore a light cloak that covered her from head to toe, for a bulky irregular outline against the rough rock of the cave was less likely to be noticed than one with arms, legs, and a head.

She had a rather clever device with her as well, a cone of mirror-finished metal with a handle at its point. She brought her mage-light down and coaxed it into the cone. Now she could direct all of the light where she chose without half-blinding herself, or setting the stupid thing to hover above her head. She cast the beam of light reflected out of the cone around herself, and used it to pick a path across the debris to an opening at the rear of this enormous cavern.

She began to wish that the light wasn't showing her way quite so clearly. As the light picked out this or that object amidst the sticks and leaves and trash, she'd have had to have been blind not to spot the bits of armor—and the bones.

Bones which were not all the bones of animals, nor of human slaves, even if the armor could have been mistaken for anything but elven-made.

Her skin crawled as the empty eye-sockets of an elven skull glared at her on the edge of her circle of light. She had already known that something terrible had happened here, but it was one thing to know that intellectually, and quite another to be confronted with the evidence of utter disaster.

A chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of this place settled over her, and she resisted the urge to flee back up that rope into the open'. Whatever had happened here had occurred a very long time ago, even by the standards of the

Elvenlords, and nothing, not even ghosts, could linger for that long. But she fancied she caught a whiff of ancient death, of bone-dust and terror, and she couldn't keep her imagination from painting scenes that were not at all comfortable.

Nevertheless, as she picked her way across the floor, she avoided looking too closely at anything large enough and white enough to be bone.

Were there whispers, out there in the dark? Was that a movement, not in the shadow, but of the shadow? She told herself resolutely that she wasn't afraid, that only stupid slaves believed in spirits, but—

There were sounds out there in the darkness, sounds that could be echoes, but could be something else as well. She couldn't even imagine what could have killed so many Elves, so quickly—and the slaves said that the spirits of those who died violently lingered, hungering after the life they'd lost and eager to avenge their deaths on anything living.

She found herself starting at every unexpected sound, and longed for the moment when she reached the far wall and the entrance deeper into the caves.

She had assumed that once she got to the entrance into the next cave she would find her path clear. In fact, she found nothing of the kind.

What had been litter on the floor of the cave was a tangled blockage here; someone, Kyrtian and his people, she assumed, had cleared a pathway through, but if the artifacts there had not already been ready to fall apart at a touch, it couldn't have been done in less than a week. Here the carts of the refugees had jammed at the entrance, and there were many, many more bones, enough so that it was no longer in her imagination that they imparted their own dry hint of ancestral corruption to the air. Big bones, these, the bones of dray-animals long since forgotten, for they had perished along with their masters, tangled in the shafts of disintegrating carts in attitudes that suggested a tide of unreasoning panic had washed over them and sent them scattering before it.

And more elven bones, this time ones without armor. Women? Old men?

A disintegrating wagon that had been laden with small, slender creatures—it took her a moment to get past the disbelief to understand that this had been a wagon full of children.

It was hard to imagine. One seldom saw elven children; they were usually kept in nurseries until they were considered old enough to mingle with the rest of society. She could hardly imagine so many in one place. What sort of spirit would a child leave behind? Something wispy and melancholy—or feral and vicious?

Whatever had sent the Elvenlords into flight had terrified their beasts as well. Triana began to feel a certain relief that the few scraps of information she'd gleaned had not been more specific, that legend now painted the Crossing as a matter of triumph rather than the tragedy it had so clearly been. She didn't want to know the details now; there were already too many details writ large in the bones of those who had not survived to become her ancestors.

She reached out her hand to steady herself, and wood went to dust at her touch, enlarging the passage that Kyrtian's people had already made. Her very skin flinched away from that dust, but it rose in clouds about her and dried her mouth and throat, as if the dead themselves rose to make claims on her....

Don't be such a superstitious idiot! she scolded herself, but without effect. Her pounding heart, the blood rushing in her ears, her very skin were rebels to her reason.

But she forced herself past, and once out of the jam-up, the way suddenly cleared. No more bones; or at least, none that flashed whitely at her in the circle of her light. Just—things. Belongings, discarded, unidentifiable. She could cope with things. Especially things that went to atoms at a touch, collapsing in on themselves and leaving nothing behind that called up uncomfortably familiar images in the mind.

The path that Kyrtian's underlings took was plainly scribed in that litter, a trail where only bits of metal shone dully in the

dust. She paused a moment to listen, and thought she caught the faintest of murmurs from somewhere far ahead; covered her light, but saw no glimmers in the distance. Wherever he was, if that was, indeed, the sound of him and his people, it was far ahead of her. She hurried on, suddenly hungry for the sight of something living, even if it was an enemy. A living enemy right now was preferable to the whispers in the dark.

"This place makes my skin crawl," Lynder muttered to Shana. "I don't see how he can stand it." He was pale, freckles she hadn't noticed before standing out clearly across his cheeks. She also hadn't noticed how young he was before this; all of Kyrtian's people were so competent and confident that she'd taken them all for mature adults. Now she saw Lynder for the beardless boy he actually was, newly jumped-up from a page, perhaps. Well, fear did that to people.

Shana didn't see how their leader could seem so unaffected by the place, either. Kyrtian had mage-lights floating silently over their heads, set to avoid collision with the ceiling but otherwise lighting up this series of smaller caves with pitiless clarity. The tangle of carts and beasts at the mouth of this complex had been the worst, of course; Shana had been so tempted to flee screaming away and swarm right back up the rope into the clean rain outside.

And the cart full of what had been children! No matter what the Elves had done to her, to the Wizards, and especially to their slaves—the thought of that cartload of children dying tangled up together in the dark—

It had made her throat close and her eyes sting, and she didn't care that it had happened hundreds of years ago.

They think I'm fearless, she had told herself. And that had made her clench her teeth, thrust out her chin, and pretend that her whole body wasn't flinching away from the wreckage, the bones. She squared her shoulders, and tensed to keep herself from shivering. These were men she had to impress; they weren't Wizards, they weren't slaves. She was a legend to them, and if they lost faith in the legend—they would lose faith in the cause. She needed them; more, probably, than

they needed her. If all it took to keep their faith was to pretend to be utterly fearless, it was a small price to pay for that faith.

But Kyrtian had only directed the enlargement of a passage already there ... a passage showing the imprint of a single pair of narrow feet in the dust.

His father made it; he must have. Kyrtian knows thai. This is what he's been looking for, and all he can see is those footprints leading us deeper.

Kyrtian had spent a long moment studying those prints ... then he had taken the lead, face immobile and expressionless, as the rest had to stretch to keep up with him.

"I've never seen him like this before," Lynder continued, wiping sweat from his face with his sleeve, leaving behind a smudge of the dust of the dead obscuring the freckles scattered across his cheeks. He shuddered.

"He's not thinking about you—or about anyone," Keman said slowly. "He's completely inside his own head."

The three of them exchanged glances; she read in Lynder's face that he at least would rather not be privy to what was in Kyrtian's head just now. She rather agreed with him.

It was bad enough being out here. The deeper into this string of caves they got, the more the feeling of doom—whether lingering or impending she couldn't say—increased. She'd never been claustrophobic before, but she felt the walls of these little caves closing in on her—or was it that they seemed to pulse and heave, slowly, as if they all traveled down the gullet of some impossibly huge, sleeping monster? If the walls clearly hadn 't been rock, the floor clearly the same, it would have been all too easy to succumb to the illusion.

"Do you feel it?" Keman murmured, for her ears only. "That kind of drone in the back of your brain? Like there's something just barely awake out there and we're touching the edge of its dreams? Or there's something singing a nasty dirge in its sleep?"

She nodded. She did; had, in fact, since they'd been here. It wasn't getting any stronger, and if Keman hadn't said anything, she'd have put it down to nerves—but it was there, a sound so

deep it could only be felt. She wondered what else Keman heard; he had the benefit of senses that could be enhanced without any immediate limit.

"There's nothing alive down here, either," Keman continued, and shivered. "Not even slime."

Nothing alive. Unheard of. Caves always had their own little community of creatures: insects, bats, mice, and the fungi that the littlest fed on before they in turn became the prey of the biggest. Where were they all?

And what drove them away?

She couldn't see Kyrtian's face from her place at the rear of the group, but Lynder's was bleached as white as the bones they'd left back there, and she fancied her own was, as well. Life leached out of them with every step they took deeper into the maw of the mountain.

Shana suddenly felt that they would never leave this place; that they would continue to stumble along in Kyrtian's wake until they dropped in their tracks and died. That this was what had happened to Kyrtian's father—no accident, but the mountain sucking the life out of him as he plodded deeper into its depths, lured by its promise and threat until he stumbled and could not rise again.

Then, without warning, Kyrtian stopped.

The mage-lights under Kyrtian's control shot past them out into some vast space ahead, and they kept from blundering into him only by swerving to his right or left. Which brought all of them to stand next to him at the edge of an abrupt drop-off, staring out into a cavern that could have swallowed any cave Shana had ever seen without a trace. Her pulse racketed in her throat: how nearly she had gone over the edge!

At least, that was her initial reaction. As she teetered on the edge and her eyes adjusted, it became clear that the drop-off was not nearly as far as panic had made her think. She might have broken an ankle had she gone over, all unwarned, but no worse than that—the illusion of a sheer precipice was just that, illusion. After the initial drop, a steep slope slanted away from them to the floor of this new cave. It was what bulked here in

ordered rows, off in the distance, that drew the eye and confused the mind.

Objects. No. Constructs. Things of metal, gears, wheels, things that might be arms or legs or neither. Big as a house, some of them. Row upon row of them, three abreast, leading back to the biggest construct of all, a huge arch of some dull green stuff that looked deader than the bones they passed but felt alive and full of brooding menace.

Over everything lay, not merely a film, but a thick shroud of dust, obscuring the shine of metal, softening angles into curves. Thick as a blanket in some places; so thick that sections had actually broken off and fallen from the sides.

"What—are—those?" Shana asked, her voice high and strained.

Kyrtian only shook his head. "I don't know. There isn't anyone alive who could tell you. Oh, I know what they are collectively, they're things the Ancestors made to serve them in all the ways that slaves do now. Magic is what made them work, but once the Portal closed, they wouldn't work anymore and they were abandoned. As to why they wouldn't work, I can't say."

"Serve them?" Lynder said, puzzlement in his voice.

Kyrtian's tone was as dry as the dust lying over everything. "Of course. You don't think our Ancestors ever put hand to tool themselves, do you? They created these things—to plow and dig, build and tear down—"

"And make war?" Keman asked, harshly.

Kyrtian glanced at him, mouth set in a thin line. But his tone was mild. "Make war?" he replied, softly. "Oh yes. That, certainly. Above all other things. The Ancestors made war among themselves, war of a sort that makes everything we did to the Wizards seem the merest game."

Shana looked away from Kyrtian's face back to the rank upon rank of constructions, and shuddered. Under the dust, metal gleamed with cruel efficiency. Were those blades? Was that a reaper of corn—or of lives? A digger of ditches—or of graves?

She decided not to ask a question to which she did not want to know the answer.

But Kyrtian made a strangled little sound, and abruptly jumped down from the edge of the cave-mouth, landing in a crouch only to sprint off to one side of the huge cavern, where there were a few of the mechanisms that were not in such ordered rows. With a muffled oath, Lynder followed, then the rest of them, trailing along behind.

Aelmarkin cursed the men who lowered him down every time he collided with another rock, lashing them through their collars with the punishment of pain. It was not enough to satisfy him, but he dared to do no more; too much and they only became clumsier. He'd assumed—foolishly, in retrospect—that they could simply lower him down comfortably to the bottom of the place. Instead, he was having to practically walk down the tumbled slope of rocks that was the mirror of the pile outside; just as difficult as being hauled up that slope, but more painful, since the idiots above kept dislodging rocks that fell on his head and they kept lowering him in a series of jerks. Each one endfcd in a collision with more rocks since each time he was caught off-guard and off-balance.

Idiots! He would certainly leave some of them behind as bait for the monsters in this benighted place, and at that it was better than they deserved. He'd suspect they were doing this on purpose except that his punishments were worse than anything he was enduring.

When he finally bumped down with a painful thud onto the floor of the cave, he gave them all a final reminder of his power over them that made them yelp. The echoes of four howls of pain reverberated long enough to give him a fleeting moment of satisfaction. He picked himself up out of the dust and kicked the trash he'd fallen on out of his way angrily before sending his mage-light up to illuminate more of the area.

No point in looking up to glare at them. They were gone, of course, Scuttling back to the shelter of their tents and their fire, where they would stay, probably lazing about and trying to find

non-existent supplies of wine among his belongings. He knew they wouldn't leave the camp; they were more afraid of the forest than they were of him. Foresters they might be, but this wasn't their forest, and they were superstitiously terrified not only of the very real monsters among the trees, but the spirits they swore they'd heard in the night. They'd be waiting for him when he returned, all right... not knowing that if his hopes were fulfilled, he wouldn't need them. He'd have power enough to blast this place open or create a Gate home. Or fly, if he chose. That would be novel; there were old legends of how the Ancestors flew, on the backs of metal-beaked birds with razor-tipped wings and scythes for talons, how they would duel in the air until blood fell like warm rain on the faces of those below. Perhaps there were constructs like that waiting here....

Well! He wasn't finding them standing about and kicking trash. Nor was he discovering just what Kyrtian was up to if it wasn 't hunting relics of the Ancestors or the Wizards he was supposed to be pursuing.

He turned. It was clear enough where Kyrtian had gone, the path through the debris was plain enough for a woman to pick out. It was also clear that this cave wasn't littered with just the trash that the wind had blown in. So—Kyrtian had found the place where the Great Portal had made an entrance into this world!

"By the Ancestors!" Aelmarkin said aloud, and his own voice repeated his astonishment in echoes that whispered in the cave as if a crowd mimicked his surprise.

A skull—an Elven skull, by the high-arched forehead and the narrow jaw—lay directly in his path, glaring at him, as if daring him to pass.

Aelmarkin sneered at it. What matter a few bones? Bones were nothing. Those of the Ancestors that died here weren't Ancestors at all, were they? They hadn't gotten their bloodlines any deeper in this world than the floor of the cave. What matter that Aelmarkin's path led over those bones? That way lay his fortune, and he wasn't going to let the bones of a few dead fools stop him.

"You," he told the skull, contemptuously, "are a nothing. A dead-end. You can't even manage to block my way."

He brought his booted foot down on the skull deliberately, smashing it. It broke with no more effort than destroying an egg. His next step took him past the fragile fragments, and he didn't look back.

The demi-barricade at the tunnel's mouth didn't stop him, either; in fact; he took a great deal of grim pleasure in bullying past it, kicking at the carts and the bones of the legendary dray-lanthans and seeing them disintegrate. Not as much pleasure as he might have, since the wreckage pretty much fell to bits at a touch, but enough.

Some fools might find all this horrifying. All he felt was more contempt for the weaklings who had been so afraid of pursuit—for of course, it could only have been pursuit that they feared—that they allowed their panic to turn what could have been an orderly procession into a rout. And for what?

So their bones could rot on the floor of a cave before they even saw the light of their new world, that's what.

He wondered, as he penetrated further into the cave-complex, if all of the legends of harmony and cooperation were so much rot after all. It was obvious from this decayed chaos that there had been panic, fighting, but there was no sign of whatever was the cause. Unless, of course, the Ancestors had brought the cause with them....

What if they'd begun fighting amongst each other for ascendancy as soon as they got safely to the other side?

That would certainly explain the rout—

In fact, such an explanation made more sense than the official version of the Crossing.

Suppose, just suppose, that not all of the Ancestors had given everything they had to the creation of the Great Portal? That was what he would have done, come down to it. Now, suppose that faction-within-a-faction had then turned on the rest, when they were out of magic, depleted, vulnerable?

He grinned savagely, kicking a bit of debris out of the way. Of course—that was what must have happened! It explained all

of this, and explained why no one had ever come back here until the secret of just where the Portal was had been lost to memory. After all, those clever bastards who'd won wouldn't want to chance coming upon a survivor amid the wreckage, or chance on someone uncovering the real version of what had happened! And besides, things had been hard enough on those who survived, creating their strongholds, waiting to see what perils lurked in this new world and trying to defend against whatever might come.

Then, of course, the Ancestors had discovered the humans, and realized they didn't need constructs when they could have slaves instead, slaves that didn't need repairs, could breed their own replacements, and could be controlled with a bare minimum of magic.

Proper conservation of resources, that. It spoke well for the cleverness of the Elvenlords who had survived to become his Ancestors. Clever, clever fellows indeed; they would be proud of him now, who had retraced their footsteps to rediscover the secrets of their power and take what rightfully belonged to him.

Of course, that would only be the beginning. Once he had taken Kyrtian's estates, he'd consider his next moves. There were, after all, many possibilities for the future, and everything would depend on just what he learned here. Only one thing was certain; Aelmarkin, and not Kyrtian, would be the one to have the benefit of whatever lay here.

And what was more, Kyrtian wouldn't be coming out of here at all if Aelmarkin had anything to say about it.

At least, not alive.

33

Lynder took off at a run after Kyrtian, his feet slapping on the rock floor of the cave and kicking up puffs of dust, but Shana and Keman hesitated, exchanging first a glance, then a guarded thought.

;I have a feeling that something's about to go horribly wrong,: Shana began, not at all hesitant to look like a fool— if indeed she did—in front of her foster-brother. After all, he'd seen her do and say stupid things plenty of times in the past.

But Keman nodded, confirming her apprehensions—which, of course, only made them worse. :So do I. It's not just that hum. There's something down here, asleep maybe, and I don't want to disturb it.: He paused, and his eyes flicked to one side. :Fire and Rain! Look at the mage-lights!:

Shana bit her lip, when she followed his direction and realized that Kyrtian's mage-lights were slowly pulsing, waxing and waning in strength ever so slightly and very slowly. Had Kyrtian noticed? Would he?

:I think something's draining them a little at a time,: Keman continued. :Then Kyrtian increases the power to them witkcut thinking about it, and it all begins again. And I don't think it would be a good idea to use any stronger magic in here. It might... wake something up.:

Wake something up ... so he felt it too. The sense of presence was stronger now, although the droning in the back of her mind was not. :We 'd better follow Kyrtian, then,: she said reluctantly.

They followed his tracks in the dust across the floor of the cave, passing among the odd and articulated shapes of metal and glass and stranger substances. They loomed, these objects.

They bulked above Shana's head, exuding unsubtle menace. Although how that was possible without possessing eyes or faces...

She felt her skin flinching away from them, noting a few moments later that the constructs were not arranged in quite the orderly fashion that they had first thought.

Nor were they undamaged.

Deep in the middle of the pack, they passed two tangled together, as if they'd blundered into each other. Then came one that had been smashed beneath a massive rock, perhaps detached from the roof of the cavern. Then another, fallen over on its side.

Then one that looked—melted? Yes, all down one side the construct sagged, and there were places along the leading edges where the thing looked like butter that had begun to run, then hardened again.

A low murmur of voices from the other side of the thing gave a clue to Kyrtian's whereabouts, but there was something harsh and desperately unhappy in that murmur that made them both slow their paces and edge, with great care, around the corner of it.

Kyrtian stood facing the rock wall of the cave, every muscle as rigid as the rock he faced, and for a moment, all that Shana could understand was that the rock looked as if it had melted like butter in the sun, just as the metal of the construct had.

Then, slowly, her mind encompassed the shape in the rock. In the rock, like some obscene bas-relief, like a hapless insect coated in wax and preserved for all time, like a fancy pastry enrobed in a thin glazed shell. Like, most horribly of all, like something caught in an ice-storm, preserved perfectly beneath a thin sheath of ice that replicated every detail of the no-longer-living thing.

There was a man, an Elvenlord, embedded in the satiny-smooth, melted and re-solidified rock. Not carved—not unless there had been a sculptor working here who was utterly mad. Not with the expression of utter, blinding terror that she saw on the subject's visage.

Shana could not see Lord Kyrtian's face, and for that, she was profoundly glad. The eloquent line of his backbone told her more than enough—too much, truth be told.

Desperately unhappy? That was too tame. This was a man who should, by all rights, break into a howl of despair at any moment.

This could only be Kyrtian's father. Bad enough to find bones and only wonder at how he had perished—this was infinitely worse, the moment of death caught and held on show for all time.

She didn't know Kyrtian well enough to offer comfort, but he clearly needed it at the moment, and just as clearly would not accept it from anyone standing about him now. She could hardly blame him; if she had been searching for Alara all these years only to find her like this—

All of them stood in awkward silence, a silence that stretched on and on until it became unendurable. Shana's nerves shrieked under the strain of waiting, and longed for someone, anyone, to break it—so long as it wasn't her. Kyrtian could not possibly bear this—no one could!

But it was Kyrtian himself who finally did so, and with utterly unexpected words.

"Light the lanterns," he said, the words emerging as a strangled croak, but clear enough for all that.

"M-m-my lord?" Lynder stammered, without comprehension.

"Light the lanterns. I'm going to kill the mage-lights. Something's feeding on them and I don't want to give it anything more—"

He didn't finish the sentence, but with that in front of them, he didn't have to. Lynder and the other hastened to obey his order, breaking out the candles, the oil, and the lanterns, and the moment that the first wick was kindled, Kyrtian extinguished his mage-lights completely.

This, of course, left them huddling around a lantern that in no way gave a fraction of the light that the mage-lights had, while the others hastened to light the rest of the wicks with a spill kindled on the first. Shana was just glad that Kyrtian had had the foresight to order lanterns brought in the first place—

and that even in the midst of a grief she couldn't even begin to understand, he hadn't lost himself to mourning, madness, or both.

She hurried forward to help the others; the lamps were kept dry until needed, so she filled them while the others lit them and set the transparent chimneys in place to protect them from drafts. When she looked over at him, Kyrtian still hadn't moved, except to place one hand on the breast of that terrible figure in the wall.

She still couldn't see his face. She still didn't want to.

But she wished with all her soul that he would weep.

Triana was surprised when the glow of mage-lights ahead of her winked out.

She dimmed her own light in automatic response, lest it be noticed. Now there was barely enough light coming from her little metal cone to let her see her way without stumbling, and she used one hand on the cave wall to steady herself as she crept along. Why had Kyrtian doused his lights?

Then, as a faint yellow glow came from the opening ahead of her, she understood that although he had doused his lights, he wasn't in darkness. The light coming from ahead was poor and weak, and she wondered if some disaster had befallen Kyrtian, or his men, to make him lose control of his mage-lights.

The feeling of unfocused horror that had stalked her from the moment that she entered this place washed over her in redoubled strength. It was only by stopping long enough to take a few deep breaths and swallow a sip of water from a flask at her belt to ease her fear-dried mouth that she forced herself to go on. Whatever was out there hadn't devoured Kyrtian yet, or where would the light be coming from?

As her pulse pounded in her temples and her hands grew cold, she reached the mouth of the next cave, and as she extinguished her own mage-light lest it betray her, at last she heard voices. One of them was Kyrtian's, with a harsh, grating tone to it she'd never heard before, but the low tone and the echoes made it impossible to understand what he and the others with

him were saying. Still, he was talking, and he wouldn't be doing that if something had attacked him. She wondered wildly for a moment if he was talking to something that belonged here—

But no. That didn't make any sense. There had been no signs of life here at all, not even bats, so what could such a thing live on? And there were no tracks in the dust except Kyrtian's people, so nothing was going into or out of this cave-complex.

In the flickering and uncertain light she barely made out the bulky shapes of huge objects the size of garden sheds and larger ranged in utterly still and silent ranks in front of her. Great hulking shapes—-frozen into immobility now, but somehow not dead; they crouched, waiting, watching. And at the edge of her vision, the arch of the Great Portal—for that was all that the soaring arc of greenish-black at the rear of the cave could be—brooding over them all. Moving shadows of men performed an incomprehensible pantomime against the right-hand wall, where lanterns must be. There was a whisper of acrid scent to the air here, a faint taste of metal and the flavor of lightning.

Everything instinctive in her screamed to go back, forget what she saw and go, flee, now. This was nothing like what she had expected—there was something horribly wrong here, and if she stayed she'd find out what it was. All of those things out there, staring without eyes, waiting for just the right trigger, the right action to set them free....

But... but if she left, she would leave empty-handed. Only Kyrtian would know the secrets that lay here. And that was insupportable.

Will triumphed over instinct, and she forced herself to go on. She decided at that moment to approach the place where Kyrtian and his people were by taking the long way around the edge of the cavern, dropping down from the ledge as silently as possible, then making her way around the cavern with one hand outstretched against the rock wall to guide her. She would pass by the Great Portal, and that alone might hold

some useful information. And she wouldn't have to walk among those—things.

The Great Portal—it had enabled the Ancestors to travel from another world. Perhaps it still held enough magic to take her home—after all, some of the oldest Portals could be used to go anywhere that one held a key, and she had the Prime Key to her own Portal in the form of the signet ring on her right hand. If that was true, then she wasn't trapped here; if anything went wrong, she could escape in a heartbeat!

That thought, when it occurred to her, brought a sudden ease of her fear that almost made her stagger, and she caught herself with one hand on the cavern wall. Relief suffused her, making her a little lightheaded. The hulking shapes of the Ancestors' chattels no longer seemed to stare at her with insensate menace. They were just—things. Old, dead things. No matter what Kyrtian had found, or thought he had found, these relics couldn't threaten anything or anyone—if they ever had. Her imagination had run away with her, and she was as bad as any nursery-bound child in conjuring up nightmares for herself.

Whatever had slaughtered all those people back in the main cave couldn't have come from here, anyway. When the Portal closed, the constructs had all died. Everyone knew that. It was in every version of the Crossing that she had ever read. That was why it had been so important that the Ancestors find or create a source of slave-labor, since they no longer had their constructs to do their work for them.

With renewed confidence, and a purely internal laugh of scorn at her own foolishness, she continued on, feeling for each step as she took it, since she could no longer see where she was going. And all the while, she strained her ears for some hint of what Kyrtian was saying, watching the enormous shadows cast on the opposite wall by the wavering light of his lamps moving in a gigantic puppet-play.

Aelmarkin doused his mage-light with a curse when he realized that the faint glow ahead of him must be caused by Kyrtian's

people in the next cave. He'd finally caught up with them— only to come perilously close to blundering into them. He swore at himself for being so stupid—how could he have let something that simple catch him? He only hoped that none of them were bright enough to have noticed his light behind them.

The rough circle of light ahead seemed awfully dim—and very yellow. Odd, that. Why would Kyrtian go out of his way to create a yellow light when the natural blue-white of mage-lights was so much better and truer?

Then again, it was Kyrtian. It might be firelight; he might have found what he was looking for and decided to camp. It might be lamplight, because he wasn 't as good a mage as Ael-markin had thought and he was running out of energy to keep the mage-lights going. He was perfectly capable of doing without mage-light altogether, for some other peculiar reason of his own.

It was only when Aelmarkin actually reached the mouth of the next cavern and only just saved himself from tumbling over the edge that he understood that the lights were indeed lanterns, and that Kyrtian had elected to use them instead of mage-lights, and he cursed again (but only in his head) when that simple fact came near to undoing him.

It was a very near thing; one moment, he was easing himself along the cavern, and the next, his questing foot met empty air, and unfortunately, he had already trusted some weight to it, not anticipating that there would be a drop-off. Aelmarkin teetered on the brink for a heart-stopping moment before his flailing hand caught the edge of the wall and he was able to steady himself.

He burned the air with a flurry of mental curses before his heart stopped racing and he was able to really look at what lay below him. But then—oh then, his heart raced for an entirely different reason!

There below him, ranked and waiting like so many placid, sleeping bullocks, were the ancient constructs that the Ancestors had brought with them. Row upon row of them, waiting for the proper touch to bring them alive and call them to service.

His touch. Never doubt it. He could hardly wait to get down among them! What need would he have of slaves or gladiators or even armies with these powerful creations at his command?

His mouth gone suddenly dry with anticipation, he ascertained that the drop was nowhere near as long as he'd thought, and eased himself belly-down over the edge. The rock scraped him even through the tough leather of his hunting-tunic, but he hardly felt it in his haste to get down among those things out of another world and time.

Besides, he needed to get under cover, in case one of Kyrt-ian's slaves came snooping. It would be a disaster to come this far and then be tripped up by one of Kyrtian's wretched slaves.

He felt better with the bulk of several of the things between himself and Kyrtian's lamps. Safe enough to kindle a very, very dim hand-light of his own, one which could be hidden in his fist and used only, held close to the metal sides of the constructs, to see if he could decipher any of the ancient script. He hoped to find instructions there—surely not everyone who was asked to control the things in the past actually learned how to do so before attempting to operate them! Failing that, he hoped for labels, or some evocative name that would tell him what the things were used for.

But as he moved silently from one huge bulk to the next, brushing off a literal coat of dust that fell to the ground in a sheet, he was disappointed. Though he looked as high as he could reach, instructions there were none; nor names, either— at least not on the sides that he examined. He didn't dare move to the side facing Kyrtian's lamps; bad enough that he was a moving shadow among unmoving ones! The murmur of voices suggested that all of Kyrtian's people were still with him, but was by no means a trustworthy way of telling for certain.

He cursed the Ancestors now—how stupid could one be, to neglect to leave instructions for the uninitiated? Unless those instructions had been in one of the books back in the main cave, books that crumbled at a touch....

For a moment, he despaired. But then came a stroke of luck so incredible he hardly dared believe it.

As he closed his fist around his hand-light in disappointment at—again—finding nothing, he caught a fugitive hint of glowing green out of the comer of his eye.

He turned, with painful slowness, to his left, and for a moment felt nothing but a wash of disappointment when there didn't seem to be anything there except another construct, and this one utterly without anything like writing on the side. It did have a set of blades and claws that suggested warlike intentions, not that knowing its purpose would do him any good unless he could get it moving, which he obviously couldn 't without instructions. But then as he stared, his eyes adjusted, and he saw it.

A faint glow of green, in the midst of the blank side of the construct, exactly like the glow of an activated Elf-stone.

He sidled up to the thing, staying in the shadows, and quested over it with a finger. Only the glow and a subtle change in texture from metal to stone informed him that the thing was there at all! It had been inset flush with the surface, and in the dim illumination from the hand-light, he wouldn't have seen it except for the glow. It was an Elf-stone, or something very like one. And when he opened his fist to bring his hand-light up to it—the hand-light dimmed, and the green glow brightened.

He could have pummeled himself for stupidity. Of course! Why would you need instructions to manage one of these things? All you needed was the Elf-stone, both to power it and to control it! And, of course, that was why all of the things had collapsed into inertia when the Great Portal closed! The magic powering them that was a part of the Aether of Evelon ran out, and the Elvenlords who'd built and sustained the Portal had nothing left to supply them! Utter simplicity, but, of course, the Lesser Elvenlords who'd held back their own power either hadn't known how the constructs worked, or had been so busy eliminating their dangerous rivals that they hadn't bothered to try to learn to use the things!

Or perhaps they had been so afraid of pursuit that they just abandoned the brutes.

Or—well, it didn't matter. The point was, they had been

abandoned and they were there for the taking and now Ael-markin knew how to take and use them!

It couldn't be any simpler. And it didn't matter what this behemoth was originally intended to do, either. It was big, it had to be brutally strong, and it was certainly brutally heavy. It could kill Kyrtian simply by stepping on him.

Aelmarkin smothered a howl of glee, and placed the hand holding his hand-light against the Elf-stone embedded in the construct's side. It sucked in the power greedily. The hand-light vanished.

And then—Aelmarkin felt it wake and—look for more. And felt its fierce concentration focus on him.

He tried to pull his hand away in a flash of alarm.

But by then, of course, it was already too late.

Kyrtian had finally allowed Lynder and Keman to lead him to a seat on a nearby outcrop of rock. He felt—hollow. And exhausted. As if he had wept for a year, although he was dry-eyed.

At least mother isn 't here. That was all he could think of. At least she can't see—this. I don't think she could bear it. I think she 'd go mad.

"No, don't try to chip—it out," he said with difficulty in answer to Lynder's question. "I don't ever want Lady Lydiell to see him. Not like that, anyway. Maybe we can find a way to cover him over—"

He shuddered, a spasm of a thing that left him sweating and shaking. What must have happened? He must have somehow wakened one of those—things. Maybe it fed off his mage-lights, and he didn 't realize what was happening. He must have been so excited—too excited to think clearly.

He buried his head in his hands, shuddering all over, in spasms he couldn't control. He wanted to howl, to rail at fate, and above all things, to weep. Why couldn't he weep?

Which one of these hulks had done the deed? He wanted to know that, suddenly, with a fierce anger that took him and left him shaking. That, above all, he had to find out! He'd find the thing and take it to bits with his bare hands, and grind the bits to

dust and scatter the dust over the barren desert, by the Ancestors, he would!

He stood up, still shaking, and turned towards them—just in time to see one of them slowly rising up from among its fellows, towering higher and higher, with something doll-like and screaming clenched in one fearsome claw.

₃₄

Fear struck tines of ice deep into his gut, but Kyrtian had not spent all these years training for battle in vain. Before the thing had finished standing, he barked an order, which, if his voice cracked, was nonetheless loud enough and authoritative enough that everyone reacted.

"Take cover!" he shouted, even while he himself was diving for shelter beneath the sloping front of the nearest construct.

Even Lynder and Hobie, though they had not actually fought with Kyrtian's troops against the Young Lords, had trained long and hard with all of Kyrtian's men and reacted immediately to his barked order. By the time the construct had gotten to its full height, Kyrtian, Lynder and Hobie were all out of its field of vision—or so he hoped—under a slope of metal that cast a deep, black shadow.

And I only hope this thing doesn't decide to come alive, too—he thought, squeezing as far out of sight as he could, though his skin shrank from contact with the chill and slightly greasy metal.

When they had all tucked in and gone immobile, he risked a glance at the wall and the half-circle of lanterns. Shana and Ke-man were nowhere in sight, but at least they were nowhere in his line-of-sight. He had to hope that if he couldn't see them, neither could the construct. If it "saw," that is. It might use other senses....

"Now what?" Lynder hissed into Kyrtian's ear. He sounded as desperate as Kyrtian felt.

"I'm thinking!" he hissed back. He wasn't worried about that thing hearing them; the victim it had in its claw was making enough noise to cover just about anything. The screaming was horrible, but worse was the feeling that he knew the tortured voice.

The victim—An Elvenlord; he'd seen enough in that moment of horror to know it wasn't a human. But who? Who could have followed him here, and why? Not any of Lord Kyndreth's people, since none of them knew where he was going, precisely, and surely none of his own.

The victim blubbered between the screams, incoherent in his terror. It was sickening to listen to.

No, none of them would have trailed after me, simply because none of them could have. They 're all totally unsuited to tramping about in the wilderness, thank the Ancestors.

As frightening as the screams was the silence beneath it. The construct made no sound at all.

The only person likely to have followed him, and with the skills to do so, would have been Gel, and it certainly wasn't Gel in that monster's claw!

Yet the voice was familiar.

Who then? He strained to make out anything in the screams and babbling to give him a clue, as his mouth dried with fear and his insides seemed to turn to water. An enemy, then? But what enemy would have followed him on what was supposed to be a fairly dangerous mission to hunt out Wizards? An enemy looking for something to discredit him with—perhaps? An enemy planning to find, or plant, something to Kyrtian's harm. Or even an enemy hoping to arrange an "accident" out here where there would be no witnesses? That was something that Aelmarkin—

Ancestors! he thought, stunned, now hearing what was familiar in those screams and wails echoing across the cavern. It's Aelmarkin!

That Aelmarkin hated him enough to try to discredit or murder him was no surprise, but that he'd actually dare the wilder-

ness to do so was something so out-of-character that he couldn't berate himself for not thinking of it before. His worst enemy—

Who has managed to blunder into this.

Fortunately, he did not have the time to battle his conscience over whether or not to attempt a rescue; there was a whine, and a flash of light sweeping across the cave floor, and the screams cut off with dreadful finality. The three sheltering beneath the still (thankfully!) lifeless construct became very quiet, hardly daring to breathe, as silence descended with leaden suddenness.

Kyrtian fought down the urge to bolt for the mouth of the cave that had brought them here. Who knew what sort of weapons this thing had?

No magic, Kyrtian decided. Especially not levin-bolts. If this monster was what had been feeding on his mage-lights and draining them, what sort of power would a levin-bolt give it? Or worse—what if another of the constructs absorbed the power and came awake? He was fairly certain that this one wasn't the one that had gotten his father—though his father must certainly have awakened one or another of the behemoths, probably by using mage-lights. This one was now a proven killer; they certainly didn't need to awaken a second!

So what could he use against this monster, if not magic?

Not bows and arrows. Not swords. And we 've precious little else.

There was a whir, a creaking of metal, and suddenly something like an enormous upturned bowl attached to three metal struts slammed down onto the stone where he and his men had just been, sending up a cloud of dust. A second followed the first, smashing one of the lanterns.

A moment later, Aelmarkin's limp body dropped down beside the second disk. There was no mistake, now that Kyrtian could see the terror-twisted features. It was Aelmarkin, all right. And there was no doubt in his mind that his cousin was quite, quite dead. Not when his backbone bent that far, or at that angle.

Kyrtian froze; almost directly above them, he heard that peculiar whining again. He couldn't see anything but those two

metal legs, but his imagination painted a picture of the construct somehow turning the top part of itself to peer down at the ground below, searching for them. He felt like a mouse hiding in a log in a field, watching the legs of a cat. Only he had no idea just what arcane senses this monster was using to look for them.

And as if to reinforce that imaginary image, twin beams of light swept over their hiding place and passed over the floor where they had all been standing.

If I knew what its weapons and its abilities were, I might have a better chance of figuring out what to do about it—

A shout broke the ominous silence, making all three of them start and clutch at each other in involuntary reaction.

"Hey!" Shana called from somewhere to the right, her own voice cracking.

The whine became a whir; something clacked angrily overhead—and in mere moments, the thing had taken two earth-shaking strides that got it out of Kyrtian's field of vision. He heard and felt each footstep; it was bipedal, from the sound. And it was definitely after Shana.

Shana! What are you doing?

It wasn't quiet in the cave any longer. The construct must not have been a very graceful thing; it sounded as if it was stumbling into or kicking aside every obstacle in its path in its effort to get to the Elvenbane. Lynder winced with each crash; Hobie just sat as frozen as a frightened sparrow.

Then it stopped. The whining noise began again, and it sounded frustrated. Kyrtian held his breath again, and so did the other two. If it heard them—

"Ho!"

It was Keman's voice this time, from another part of the cave. The construct was away again, blundering its way through the lifeless forms of its fellows. It might be bipedal, but it obviously wasn't unstable; he hadn't heard anything that sounded like a stumble or a misstep yet.

What are they doing? Not knowing what they were up to was maddening! Not being able to see the monster was worse!

"Should we try and get a look?" Lynder whispered in his ear.

"Not yet," he whispered back. Just then the crashing and

thrashing about stopped, and the whining recommenced, sounding more frustrated than before. It couldn't find Keman any more than it had been able to find Shana. If magic feeds it— could I make it go dormant by draining magic power out of it?

It was worth trying. The only trouble was, in order to drain something, he had to actually be in physical contact with it.

And just how am I going to do that without ending up like Aelmarkin? He shuddered, and kept his eyes averted from the remains of his cousin.

"Hey!" That was Shana again, from yet another part of the cave. It sounded as if she and Keman were working together to lure the construct away from where he and Lynder and Ho-bie hid. Was that what they were trying to do? Get the thing away from the cave-mouth so that the three of them could escape?

He couldn't deny that chance to his men. And it would be throwing the blessing back in their face to have them risk so much and not take the opportunity. "Start working your way back to the mouth of the cave," he whispered under cover of the crashes and thuds. "But don't move unless the construct is moving, too. Get out of the caves altogether, then bring back the rest of the men, and any equipment you think might help. I'll stay here and help Shana and Keman distract the thing."

"But—" Lynder began.

"That's an order," he hissed fiercely, and to enforce it, took a chance and scuttled from under their shelter into the space beneath another—heading in the opposite direction of the cave-mouth.

He slid under it just in time; the noise stopped again, and the whining began.

This wasn't where he'd have gone by choice; the thing was wheeled, something like a hay-wain, but the clearance between the cave floor and the thing's bottom wasn't more than half that beneath a real wagon. He had barely enough room to hide, and he couldn't help having nightmare visions of the thing waking up and deciding to squash him by lowering itself down on top

of him. He was sweating and ice-cold at the same time, and fighting a panic that threatened to keep him from thinking at all. If anything, the view from under here was worse than the first shelter, and it seemed to take forever before he heard Keman's echoing "Ho!"

The construct crashed off in pursuit, and Kyrtian scrambled out from under the "wain" to take shelter, not under, but behind yet another behemoth. This time he wanted to see what the thing looked like, what it was doing.

It looked like a box on two legs, with a pair of blunt crab-like pincers on arms attached to either side of the box. It wasn't very fast, and it wasn't at all graceful, but it was powerful. Some of those crashes hadn't been because it was plowing into obstacles, it was because it was picking them up with a pincer and tossing them aside if they were small enough.

Ancestors! I hope those two aren't anywhere under what's being dropped!

Two lights—were they mage-lights?—at the front of the box projected the beams of light that he had seen sweeping the ground looking for them. They swiveled, looking uncannily like eyes, and the resemblance made him shiver. His tunic clung damply to his back and his hands ached where he clutched the sides of his hiding-place.

It stopped and swept the ground around it with those light-beams. So—where were the other two, and why wasn't it able to spot them?

He frowned, thinking; Keman and Shana must be popping up, shouting, and moving off again while it blundered its way towards them, but the thing must not have very good vision, or surely it would see them getting away. That was something to keep in mind.

"Hey!" came the expected cry—and that was when Kyrtian realized that Shana and Keman were being even more clever than he'd thought. They weren't "popping up" where the construct could see them—instead, a piece of debris went flying through the air and landed on top of another construct with a clatter—at some distance from where the shouter was. The construct's light-

beams snapped across the length of the cave and focused on that. And where the junk landed was where the construct headed. No wonder it wasn't able to find what it so fervently hunted!

He dashed out of cover long enough to get a piece of debris himself, laboring under the double handicap of not wanting to distract the thing from its current hunt, and being careful not to go where he might inadvertently cast a shadow or move across the lantern-light. Maybe it didn't have good vision—and maybe it did. This wasn't the time to find out.

He kept one eye on the cave-mouth. I can't start bringing it back over here until Lynder and Hobie are safe through. . . .

"Ho!" A much, much bigger piece of debris went flying. That was Keman, who must be very much stronger than Shana.

Well of course—he's a dragon! Kyrtian thought of the immensely-strong shape Keman had taken to bring Shana and the gear down into the caves. It wasn't much bigger than a human, but no human could have done what Keman had.

The thing fastened its light-beams on the junk while it was still in the air, and started after it.

Kyrtian glanced over at the mouth of the cave, just in time to see twin shadows slip over the ledge and into the dark hole that was the start of their road to safety.

Relief made his mouth dry. At least they were out of this.

That was the good news; the bad news was that the thing was moving faster, and more surely, every time it crossed the floor. Instead of running out of power, it seemed as if movement was permitting it to loosen up joints long held immobile. It was a good thing he had decided to join this little game. It looked as if it was going to need three players.

The construct reached the spot where the debris had landed—but this time it stood as if it was considering something, then slowly moved its lights along the path that the junk Keman had thrown had taken—

Oh, Ancestors. The thing can think. It's finally figured out that the debris isn 't what it wants, and that someone must have thrown it.

He dropped down out of sight, looked hastily around, and picked a place to hide. Far enough away—and near enough to

reach. He hoped. "Ha!" he shouted with all his might, and flung his own piece of junk.

He was already running flat-out for his hiding-place when the piece left his hand. He dove and rolled beneath the construct and lay there with his mouth clamped around his sleeve to muffle his panting as the footsteps crashed nearer and nearer....

"Ha!" Shana heard, and knew immediately that it wasn't Ke-man. So Kyrtian had decided to get into the "game." She spared a moment to "feel" with her mind for Hobie and Lynder, and to her immense relief sensed them in the vicinity of the cave-mouth. And their "presences" were receding. Kyrtian was no fool, though he might be brave to the point of foolhardiness.

Still, she was glad of his aid, and gladder still he'd gotten the two weakest members of the group out of danger.

:Keman—he's sent them for help!:

:Or at least he's sent them away.: Keman replied, as the construct crashed its way across the floor.:I don't know how much help the rest of his men could be ... even if they get here before this thing catches one of us.:

Well, neither did she. But right now, that was second on her list of concerns. The first was how to keep herself, and Keman, and Kyrtian out of the claws of the monster. Fear seemed to sharpen all of her senses, and made her thoughts faster. Once this was over—if she lived through it—she'd collapse. Now she was all calculation.

:What is that thing, anyway?: Maybe the way to figuring out how to get rid of it lay in what it was supposed to do. The Ancestors made the wretched things as slaves—to do all their work for them. Which was why when they found this world full of humans they hadn't needed the things that had gone dead on them and presumably hadn't bothered to retrieve them.

But the monster was silent again, and it was her turn to distract it. She had her piece of trash ready, a nice light piece of something metallic that should make a lot of clatter. "Hey!" she yelped, and tossed it backwards over her head as she sped

off in the opposite direction, scooting under the platform of something that vaguely resembled a hut with a porch.

The Ancestors made them as slaves—What could they possibly have wanted with that thing? Two-legged, piercing through the gloom of the cave with lights, huge pincers—

She cringed back into her shelter as those twin beams of light swept a little too close. The thing was getting faster, and more nimble. That was not good.

And this time it hadn't gone for the place where the trash had landed, but for somewhere nearer the place where she'd been standing when she shouted. That was worse.

"Ho!" shouted Keman, and the thing whirled and lurched off.

What could that monster possibly be good for? She ducked out of her shelter and took a quick look around, just in time to see it pick up another horse-sized construct and toss it aside, for all the world like one of her farmers, tossing aside a stone or a brick that was in the way of the plow.

Her eyes widened involuntarily as she imagined the thing picking up—say—the load on a wagon, and moving it to a barn.

Of course . .. that's what it's for.

:Keman—that monster—it's meant to move things.:

:Well, it's doing a good job of it!: Keman responded acidly. :It almost dropped that last bit it threw away right on top of me!:

:No, no, I'm telling you what it's meant to do! That's the job it's meant for, to move things. That's what the Ancestors made itfor!:

The thing stopped, and started hunting for Keman, sweeping its lights over the increasingly-chaotic and increasingly-tangled ranks of constructs. :So—what does a thing like that need—to do its job?: came Keman's reply.

"Ha!" shouted Kyrtian, and the monster was off again. Shana noticed that Kyrtian hadn't bothered to toss any junk this time. He must have seen that the monster wasn't fooled by it anymore.

:A strong back, strong legs, strong arms. It's got to learn, I suppose,: she ventured.

:Well, this one's learning! It's figuring out it shouldn't chase after the decoys we've been tossing. Don't bother throwing

things. Just yell, and run,: he replied. :What else, do you think?:

:Kyrtian's already figured out we aren't fooling it anymore. Um. It would need good balance. Not easy to tip over, no matter how heavy the thing is it has to pick up—: she suggested.

:So much for my idea of tripping it: The monster was definitely getting more nimble as it moved. There was less blundering into things now, more picking them up and tossing them aside. Why was it chasing them if it was supposed to be a cargo-mover? Could the enemies of the Ancestors have something to do with that, or had the thing just gone—well—crazy in all the centuries of inactivity?

:You likely wouldn't want it to cut things up, so those pincers must be blunt.: She was trying to think of anything useful.

:Yes. It didn't have to cut that Elvenlord in half, only crush him,: came the sardonic reply. .-Whoever he was and whatever his business was.:

.■Following Kyrtian, at a guess. Maybe the Great Lords didn 't trust him as much as he thought they did.: She shook herself to get rid of the distracting speculations. It was her turn. She got out of her shelter, picked up a flat piece of 'glass' and chose another hiding place. Maybe if she threw it in a different way than just tossing it anyhow, it might still distract the monster.

"Hey!" she screamed, sent the thing spinning off like the saucers that the children played with, and dashed for cover.

She reached it just in time, and was alarmed to see that this time the construct aimed for the center of the arc, not the place where the glass landed. Too close!

:Keman! Can that thing reach behind itself, do you think?:

She sensed Keman's head popping up cautiously, and got a brief glimpse of what he saw before he dove back down into hiding. .7 don't think it can!: he replied with excitement. .7 don't think it can see behind it, either!:

So. That was one weakness. No, two!

:Ifyou took dragon-form—: she hardly dared suggest it, and Keman would need time to take the form—but in dragon-form Keman was just as big as the monster was. Could he be a match for it?

.7 could leap onto its back and keep it occupied,: Keman

replied firmly. -.Then you get to Kyrtian, and both of you get into the tunnel. I'll follow once you're gone. I'll be right on your heels.:

.But—: she protested—she hadn't intended that at all!

:You might as well, since I'm going to do what I want to anyway.: And he closed his mind off to her.

Damn him! she thought with a flare of anger—and shook that off, too. No time, there was no time for anything now but action.

She sensed where Kyrtian was, and waited.

"Ha!" the Elvenlord shouted hoarsely, and made his move. She did the same as soon as the monster was out of sight, planning her run to end near his.

The monster came to a halt almost directly between them, and she froze, holding her breath. Light swept over her hiding-place. Once. Twice.

Did it guess? Were dim senses waking up, becoming keener as its movements grew surer? Instinct shrieked at her to shrink back, further into hiding; sense told her to keep absolutely still.

"Ho!" Keman shouted, and the thing lurched off. Before Kyrtian had a chance to move, Shana did, diving under the wheeled vehicle that concealed him.

She found herself nose-to-nose with the Elvenlord, whose white face held an expression of utter shock at seeing her. "We need to get it to turn as soon as it's on top of Keman," she whispered without preamble. "He's going to take dragon-form and jump on it from behind."

"And do what?" Kyrtian asked, aghast.

"How should I know?" she snapped. "He's decided that's what he's going to do so we can get out the way your two men did. He says he's going to follow—"

"Well I think I can drain that thing if he can get it immobilized—" Kyrtian began, and the crashing footsteps stopped.

Before Kyrtian could do anything, Shana rolled out from underneath the construct and stood up."Hey!" she screamed, waving her arms this time. "Hey! Stupid! Over here!"

₃₅

Barking his elbows on the stone floor in his haste to get out, Kyrtian scrambled from under the construct just in time to see the monster turn towards them.

It was not an encouraging sight. And it got rapidly worse.

Shana just stood there, waving her arms at it, and the two bright spots—far too much like glaring, angry eyes—on its square, flat front panned over the space between them and pinned her in a circle of white light.

His mouth went dry, and fear ran down his backbone like a trickle of icy water. The thing emitted an angry whine, and lurched forward.

But before it had taken more than a single step, something moved in the darkness behind it, a shadowy form he barely made out against the glare, that wavered and surged upwards all in an instant—and then lunged.

Keman!

Monster of flesh against monster of metal. The dragon landed squarely on the construct's back, claws shrieking against its sides. The monster's legs buckled beneath the dragon's weight as Kyrtian stared in frozen fascination—

And that was all he had time to see, as Shana grabbed his wrist and wrenched him around, pulling at him. "Run!" she shouted, showing her heels as a good example, and he didn't need a second invitation. The monster might be encumbered, but it certainly wasn't defeated, and behind them the sounds of it thrashing about and Keman's claws scrabbling to take hold were proof enough of that.

Fear gave him a new burst of energy. They sprinted across the cave floor with Shana slightly in the lead—not because Kyrtian was playing the gentleman, either. The girl must have

spent her childhood scrambling across rough ground like this; where he stumbled, she skimmed over obstacles like a frightened deer.

She must have a separate set of eyes in her feet.. . .

Behind them, crashes and earth-shuddering impacts testified that Keman was still in the fight. Ancestors bless you, dragon. But get yourself out of it as soon as we're clear!

She reached the ledge first and vaulted up onto it like an expert acrobat, turning just in time to offer her hand to help him scramble up beside her. Her hand was hard and tough, with surprising strength in it.

Keman— A quick glance over his shoulder showed him that the dragon still clung tenaciously to the back of the construct-monster, and nothing the monster could do was shaking him off.

He grabbed Shana's hand and hauled himself up beside her, turning immediately to face the fight, hoping that Keman had somehow gotten clever enough to outwit the thing.

And his heart leapt. Although the monster's "arms" flailed desperately, it couldn't reach the dragon with them, and those pincers were, next to its feet and weight, its best weapons. Keman had his hind claws lodged firmly all over the thing's back half, and his foreclaws clamped over the front edge. Kyrtian felt a smile as he saw what the dragon had done—wisely, he was not making any further offensive moves. Instead, he was content to let the monster wreak further damage on itself as it blundered about, trying to dislodge him. Keman had his tail curled tightly between his legs and out of harm's way, his wings folded tightly across his back, and his legs all tucked in so that the construct couldn't scrape him off without first scraping protruding sections of itself off as well.

The lights on the front swiveled independently as it tried and failed to illuminate the dragon on its back. It threw itself repeatedly against the walls, and bucked like a green horse, but couldn't get rid of him. It hadn't yet thought to roll over on its back—but maybe it couldn't. Keman was winning just by virtue of sticking on it like a burr.

In fact, it had taken some visible damage, not only from the walls of the cave, but from all of the other constructs it had

blundered into. The right leg had a sort of hitch in its movement, now, and the sides were scarred where it had bashed its skin against the rock. Kyrtian winced as it flung itself intQ the wall of the cave, crashing into another construct in the process, and wondered how Keman managed to stay wedged onto the thing. What made the battle all the more uncanny was that aside from the crash of metal on rock and metal on metal, and an underlying, angry whir or hum, the entire battle was taking place in silence. It felt as if one or both of them ought to be giving tongue to terrible battle-roars.

He felt Shana tense up beside him. Then, suddenly, Keman made a move.

While the monster was still off-balance, he let go with his foreclaws and stabbed them down viciously at the lights. He caught them. With a grinding shriek as if the metal itself screamed, he wrenched first one, then the other, off the front. Metal and wire snapped and tore, and Keman tossed the lights aside, like a cruel boy pulling the legs off a beetle.

If the monster was ever going to display a voice, it should have then—

The lights went out as they fell, leaving only the lanterns he and his men had lit as illumination for the cave, and huge shadows sprang up behind the construct and its draconic burden, writhing and twisting as the thing thrashed and Keman took a new position on its back.

Now what—

"Run!" Shana shouted again, and as he turned to do so, he saw Keman fling himself off the monster's back at last, half running, half flying, straight for the cave-mouth where they stood.

That's what!

He didn't wait to see if the monster was going to follow, or if by taking its lights Keman had also blinded it. He ignored his aching side and put everything he had into a flat-out dash for the main cave. Within moments, they were fleeing through the darkness, with nothing more than the grey light at the end of the series of demi-caves to tell them where their goal was.

A scrabbling noise behind him made the hair on the back of

his neck stand straight up, and somewhere deep inside him he found another burst of speed—

It was inside the tunnel.

It was closing the gap between them!

It was right on top of him!

Something grabbed him, closing around his waist and spinning him over on his side as it carried him forward! Air rushed past him as his captor picked up speed. He flailed at it with fists and heels—

"Shto thai" said a muffled and indignant voice at the back of his neck. "Ish ee!"

Keman ?

Teeth shrank away from him even as he realized they were sticking into him, and as Keman ran, his jaws formed themselves around Kyrtian's body.

Keman made greater speed than any smaller, two-legged creature possibly could; from his inverted position in the darkness, Kyrtian couldn't see much, but when he twisted his head, the dim, round light that represented the place where the last set of small caves met the entrance cave was getting bigger. And it was doing so a lot faster than it had when he was running.

He couldn't tell where Shana was, but Keman wouldn't have left her behind, so she must be with them. Probably she'd been able to catch hold of his neck on the run and vault herself into place like a trick-rider.

Behind—

A metallic crash that deafened him for a moment and shook small rocks loose to rain down onto their heads proved that the monster wasn't blind—and was still coming for them. From behind came the scrape and groan of protesting metal, and more crashes as the monster forced itself into the opening.

Keman found more speed somewhere; hot, metallic breath panted in and out over Kyrtian's body, and Kyrtian pulled in his arms and legs and tucked his head in to keep as much of himself inside Keman's mouth as he could.

"Anks," Keman said shortly.

The noise from behind wasn't falling away. Either the thing was still trying to follow them, or it had succeeded in getting in and was on their heels.

A violent impact—a dust-storm—Keman burst through what was left of the barrier of tangled carts and bones and relics, and out into the main cave—

And suddenly tossed his head up in a slewing, sideways motion, letting go of Kyrtian as he did so.

"Aiiiiiiiii!"

Kyrtian screamed as he flew through the air, and screamed again as something snatched him out of it as easily as a child catches a ball, then slammed him down on a bony, scaly surface that inexplicably had a saddle on it.

He clutched the leather, dazed, and even as his eyes took in the improbable sight of a dragon neck and head stretching away in front of him, strange and skeletal in the dim light, the dragon lurched into a run.

Ancestors! More of them?

Ahead of him—Keman, with Shana clinging to his neck; he must not have paused for a single stride as he tossed his burden of Elvenlord to the other. Keman scrabbled up the rock-pile at the entrance first, with no regard for niceties, dislodging anything that was loose in his haste to get out. As they followed, lurching and slipping while rocks went tumbling beneath and around them, Kyrtian ducked as more rocks showered down on them, and the dragon he rode cupped its wings forward to deflect some of the falling debris from him. His heart pounded, and his fingers were clamped so tightly to the saddle that they hurt, and all the while he heard the screech of protesting metal echoing behind them, coming, coming—

Then they were at the top, miraculously widened—then out—

Kyrtian gasped instead of screamed, as the dragon threw itself into empty space.

It glided heavily down the slope, wings wide-spread around him, and skidded into an abrupt landing at the bottom.

Kyrtian wasn't ready for that. He lost his grip, and tumbled

awkwardly over the dragon's shoulder and down to the ground. The dragon spun around on its hind legs, nimble as a goat, and raced back up the slope to join the others, three of them, who were all clustered around the opening.

Kyrtian looked for Shana—and found her in the embrace of another wizard, shaking like a leaf, and whispering what sounded like a name. The wizard, who looked vaguely familiar, stroked her hair comfortingly, but spoke straight to Kyrtian.

"I hope you don't want to get back in there. Ever. The dragons are sealing the entrance."

Shana relaxed against the support of Lorryn's shoulder and cradled the wineskin in both hands; she didn't usually drink much wine but after today—

If anyone deserves a drink, I do.

She had never been so glad to see anyone in her life as Lor-ryn—in fact, she hadn't realized that the other dragons were there until they were all out of the caves.

Keman, Alara, Dora, and Kalamadea had sealed the entrance past anything other than another dragon getting through. They'd brought down half the mountain, it seemed, then fused the rocks together until they were exhausted and limp, their bright colors gone pale, their scales dull. The work had been urgent enough; they'd only just brought the rocks down when something began attacking the pile from inside the mountain, audible even down below. That was when they'd begun fusing the rocks together, and the moment that the monster contrivance encountered the fused section, the blockage was obvious even to an idiot—or a construct—for it began bashing something—itself? its claws?—against the rock-fall. But if it intended to loosen those rocks, it was going to meet with failure.

The dragons worked the pile from the top down, creating a plug of rock that was not going to move. The only way to get out now was to blow out the top of the mountain, or tunnel out at another place.

There was no way—they hoped—that the construct was going to get at them now.

The sound of battering still came from within the pile, but it was weaker now, and slower. Maybe—hopefully—it was running out of magical energy, and would relapse into its quiescent state.

Whatever; we're not going to wait around here to find out.

She took another pull on the wineskin, and closed her eyes. Lorryn. Oh, thank you, Lorryn. Thank you for thinking, for being here. It was perhaps at that moment that she really, truly realized how much she cared for him.

Lorryn had just finished explaining the situation with Cael-lach Gwain to Lord Kyrtian—who, at this point, was stunned and battered enough to accept just about anything. He just nodded—at all the salient points, so at least he was listening— and took it all in as if the affairs of Wizards were everyday things to him.

Huh. Then again, after the politics of the Great Lords, our little quarrels probably seem small beans.

Kyrtian's men had bandaged their scrapes and bruises, applied remedies inside and out, and supplied all of them with food and drink. Including the dragons. Bless them, they'd gone out and dragged back three dead deer—a small meal by dra-conic standards, after all that exertion, but enough to help revive them. The fire they'd built was immensely comforting, and for once, it wasn't raining.

"... so after we made sure he couldn 't come straight back to the Citadel, we waited. When he didn't come back at all, I finally decided that he'd either followed you, or he'd finally let his arrogance take him into a situation he couldn't get out of," . Lorryn said.

"And good riddance to bad rubbish, if you ask me," Keman grumbled under his breath. He—and the others—were too bone-weary to shift; they'd curled themselves around the entrance to the camp, making a formidable barrier between the camp and anything that might even consider going after what was inside it. Kyrtian's men were still wide-eyed and a little

nervous about being surrounded by dragons, but were handling it all remarkably well. Keman was flank-to-flank with Dora; the sight of two young dragons being as affectionate as any two young lovers seemed to go a long way to reassuring Kyrt-ian's men.

I suppose it makes them seem more human. .. .

"Keman has been talking with me, at night," Dora said, and the bare skin around her eyes and mouth flushed a delicate pink. Shana saw two of Kyrtian's men exchange a knowing look, and hid a smile. When humans who'd never seen dragons before this could recognize a shy blush on the face of one, things would be all right. "We can speak over greater distances, mind-to-mind, than you can. And—we miss each other when we're apart." She eyed Shana with guilt. "I'm sorry Keman didn't mention it before, but—we didn't want you to feel badly because we could talk and you and Lorryn couldn't."

"Of course," Kyrtian said, with a slow smile. "I can certainly understand that." He passed his wineskin to one of his men, and settled back against the bulk of Keman as comfortably as if he used a dragon as a backrest every day.

Dora flushed again. "So I knew where you were, generally. And, of course, Lorryn had already been to the place where Shana and Keman transported to in the first place and he knew how to get there himself."

I should have known the lovebirds were chatting instead of sleeping, she thought—with a little envy. It would have been a lot nicer if she'd been able to do that with Lorryn without the aid of Keman. On the whole though, it was a damned good thing they had been billing and cooing every night. If they hadn't been, she might not be here right now.

"So when Dora told me that you had found the cave and when Caellach Gwain didn't come back, I decided it was more important to get out here and see if we could find him before he found you," Lorryn said with a shrug when Shana tilted her head up to give him a measuring stare.

"You supposed he'd been able to follow us, then?" she asked.

"I couldn't take the chance that he hadn't," Lorryn replied. "I

figured that bringing three dragons along would make certain he didn't try anything if—or when—we caught him."

"I knew they were coming of course," Keman put in. "But all they were supposed to do was to look for the Old Whiner. They weren't going to butt their snouts in on us, why should they? There was no reason to. When we got back, you'd have just found out they'd caught the wretch, so I didn't see any reason to bother you with it."

"You left me in charge to deal with Caellach," Lorryn told Shana, meeting her gaze frankly, and she gave his hand a little squeeze. "Without Caellach, there was no one to organize discontent. Frankly, knowing where he was and keeping him from making conspiracies out of half-truths was more important than my being directly in command for a day or so."

She nodded, and smiled. How could she not agree with him when he was obviously every bit as competent as she was? She left him in charge; that meant to be in charge and make decisions without consulting her if there was no need to. It would be pretty absurd to be angry with him for doing just that.

But she could tell him all that later, when they were alone. For now it was enough to know that she didn't have to be "the Elvenbane" alone anymore....

"We transported in this morning and flew here, but we never, ever expected you to wake up a monster! And let me tell you," Lorryn concluded, "those last few moments when that thing attacked you and we were still in the air were the worst in my life."

"They weren't any joy for us, I can tell you," Keman grumbled.

"So that was why you went ahead and attacked the thing!" Shana exclaimed.

"You surely didn't think I'd be stupid enough to do that without being pretty sure I knew what I was doing, did you?" Keman replied indignantly. "I think I did all right without their help, thank you. We didn't even really need them to get out of the cave, and I know I could have at least blocked the entrance enough by myself to hold that monster, long enough for us all

to transport out of here, anyway! I'll admit I was glad to see them, and it made getting that thing bottled up easier, but we three were perfectly able to deal with it on our own."

"You might have at least told me that there was help coming," Shana pointed out—reasonably, she thought, but Keman only snorted, and for a moment, she was irritated.

"I didn't exactly have time to discuss it with you!" he said, looking just as irritated as she was. "And we weren't in any trouble, anyway!"

She decided not to quarrel with him—but this new attitude on his part was something she hadn't expected. Not from Keman the gentle, Keman her little brother—

Keman the not-so-little-anymore. . . .

She'd have to take that into her calculations from now on. Males, she thought. He was so much more reasonable when he was still a dragonling! It had to be all of the courting and cooing with Dora, she finally decided.

He wasn't a "kid" anymore and it looked as if he was going to be like every other adolescent male and start proving it.

Now he'd behave like most of the other young male dragons she knew. Wizard males and human males, for that matter. Next thing, he'd be flying mock-combats and doing acrobatics for Dora's admiration.

Lorryn must have guessed at her thoughts—or maybe she was thinking them a little too loudly. :No worries,: he said, squeezing her hand. :He'll get over it. And I assure you, I'm past it.:

:Thank the Ancestors!: she replied, her humor coming back. .7 think I'd send you to the Iron People to get it beaten out of you if you weren 't!:

"All I can say is that I'm glad you came," Kyrtian said fervently, with a grateful slap to Keman's flank. "Whatever is in there can remain in there forever, so far as I'm concerned." He shuddered, and said nothing more, but Shana could only wonder if he would feel that way some time in the future. After all, his father—or what was left of his father—was still in there.

Well, it wouldn't be her problem. He was forewarned now, and if he decided he had to go back, he knew he'd better come with plenty of help.

And, being without a lady friend to impress, he just might act in a sensible manner, unlike certain young dragons.

She cocked her ear to listen for a moment to things outside the camp. The sounds from inside the mountain were definitely weaker. "Did you find any sign of Caellach?" she asked, belatedly recalling that this was why their rescuers had come in the first place.

"We found where he'd transported in—so he did manage to learn the spell—and then we found ambush-beast tracks on top of his," Lorryn said grimly. "We didn't bother to follow them back to the den; there was enough blood to pretty much guarantee that Caellach must have been the beast's dinner."

Her mouth formed into a soundless "O" but she couldn't think of what else to say. Lorryn waited for a moment, then continued. "My thought is to just let him vanish. If the other Old Whiners mink he's gone off to the old Citadel or somewhere else to live in luxury with their belongings and with luxury goods lifted from the Elvenlords, they're not going to make a martyr out of him."

"Whereas, if they found out his own stupidity killed him—?" she countered. "Wouldn't that destroy his credit with them?"

"Then someone might try and make it look as if you arranged for his death," Lorryn replied, with a grimace. The fire flared up for a moment and gave them all a look of rapt concentration. "It'd only be our word for what really happened."

"A sufficiently clever fellow could even make him out to be a martyr if they did believe that an ambush beast killed him," Kyrtian said unexpectedly. "After all, he was the last supporter of the Old Ways, and he was trying to get information that would show the others that you and your New Ways were fomenting treachery to your own kind. It wasn't stupidity that killed him, it was a willingness to sacrifice himself to prove the truth."

Shana stared at him for a moment, astonished.

Where did he get that? It's possible—it's even likely—but I wouldn't have thought of it!

Even Lorryn looked surprised. "I'm glad you're on our side," Lorryn managed, after a moment. "If you can think of things like that—"

Kyrtian shrugged, his eyes bleak in the firelight. "I didn't always think this way," he pointed out. "I suppose I can thank my late cousin Aelmarkin for my education—and my loss of innocence." Then he smiled, and he looked more like himself again.

"Well, your cousin got exactly what he deserved," Keman said.

But Kyrtian shrugged. "Much as I'm glad I won't have to worry about him any longer, I wouldn't wish the death he got on anyone."

Shana compressed her lips; she wasn't feeling that generous. Especially when—now that she came to think about it—it was entirely possible that it had been Aelmarkin who woke that blasted construct. "I doubt he would have said the same of you," she said brusquely.

Kyrtian sighed, and looked weary and pensive. "You're probably right. No, you are right. But it would make me more like him to think that way, so I won't." His jaw firmed. "I refuse to descend to his level. So I'll forgive him."

"Now that he isn't here to make any more trouble for you, eh?" Keman said shrewdly.

"His men are shivering with fear in an ill-made camp, out that way," Father Dragon put in, unexpectedly. "Shall we rescue them, do you think?"

"Yes!" said Kyrtian and Lorryn.

"No!" said Shana and Keman at the same moment. All four exchanged glances, and it was Shana who broke the deadlock.

"All right," she said grudgingly. "I suppose we can round them up and take them back to the new Citadel when you've left, Kyrtian. Zed can probably find a use for them."

"We'll leave the way we came," said Kyrtian, with a sigh.

"Having found nothing but empty caves. We have a larger plan to think of."

"Indeed," Kalamadea rumbled, and it seemed to Shana that he spoke for all of them. "And now—rest We have a great deal of work ahead of us."

Indeed we do, she thought, as Lorryn helped her to her feet, and led her to the tent that two of Kyrtian's men had vacated for them.

Kyrtian stretched, feeling every single scrape, bruise, and pulled muscle. But just as much as he longed for home and a hot bath, he dreaded facing his mother with the news he had.

Absently, to distract himself from his own gloomy thoughts, he patted Kemah's side. "I don't suppose I could talk you and your lady-friend into turning up in a few days, could I?" he asked. "I'd love for mother to see you for herself."

And it would do her good to distract her from my—bad news. Oh, of course, she had been assuming all these years that his father was dead—but it was one thing to assume, and another to know. When you assumed, there could always be that little hope lurking in the back of your heart that you couldn't quite give up....

He knew he was never going to actually tell her what he had found. It would be enough to tell her that he'd found his father's remains and not get any more elaborate than that.

And tell her that, yes, he did find the Great Portal just as he 'd always expected, but that he was killed in an accident. That it looked as if he was taken completely by surprise. That would leave her with the comfortable impression that he'd never known what was going to happen to him.

Keman laughed. "Of course you could! In fact, I think I will ask Lorryn and Shana if Dora and I can be the Wizards' liaisons with you. They don't need us particularly to spy on the Great Lords, and the advantage of having us with you rather than Wizards is that we won't disguise our true nature with illusion. We can pose as a Lesser Lord and his Lady. Should you have any more visits from—say—Lord Kyndreth, no matter

how many illusion-dispelling magics he casts, we'll pass his test."

"I hadn't thought of that!" Kyrtian said, in weary surprise, feeling a renewed stirring of pleasure. "Consider the invitation tendered, then. That would solve any number of problems."

Dora nudged him with her snout affectionately. "I think that would be lovely, my Lord," she replied. "I don't suppose you have any caves on your property, do you?"

Kyrtian repressed the automatic shudder; after what he'd just been through, he never, ever wanted to go underground again—

But he looked over at Lynder, who grinned sheepishly, and answered for him. "Quite a few, mi—ah—your—"

"Just Dora," the female dragon said, in a kindly tone of voice.

"Ah." Lynder rubbed the side of his nose with his hand, self-consciously. "Dora, then. Yes, Hobie and I have found quite a few. Limestone caves, water-carved, with lots of formations."

"Lovely!" the female dragon said with enthusiasm. "Lord Kyrtian, you wouldn't mind if we took over one, would you?"

"We," is it? he thought, holding back a chuckle at the way Keman's expression changed from startlement to pleasure. No wonder the young cock is starting to strut! Might be a very good thing for all of them to separate this young fellow from the rest of his peers, so he's less tempted to act—well, like a young cock. With the current state of things ... best to get him settled. The next time there was a situation involving young Keman, the urge to try and prove himself could have some serious consequences.

"I would consider it an honor," he said, to both their satisfaction.

"Shana's so used to depending on me, you know, and I think it would be better for her if she got out of that habit and started—well—depending on Lorryn instead," Keman said in a slightly patronizing undertone, with a glance at the now-

occupied tent. "I practically raised her—with Mother's help, of course, but I did most of it."

That concept made his head swim for a moment! "Ah— really?" he asked.

Keman chuckled. "I had all sorts of pets. So far as the others of our Lair were concerned, she was just one more! Until she started talking and acting like a person, of course."

It made Kyrtian's head swim a little more. "In the very near future—when you're settled on my estate and we have the time—you are going to have to tell me all about that," he said, as firmly as he could.

He was not going to disabuse the young dragon of his notion that Lashana "depended" on him. He did feel a pang of jealousy though, over that young Wizard, Lorryn....

No, he corrected himself. Not jealousy. Envy.

It wasn't that he wanted Shana—she was a handsome young woman, but not, well, not the type he was attracted to, really. Except, perhaps, for those characteristics of mind and spirit that he admired. No, what he wanted was the kind of relationship that she and Lorryn so clearly shared. What his mother and father had once had together.

Ancestors. Won't that be a surprise for Mother. But he didn't think he'd give her free rein to go hunt him up a wife. Not at the moment. There were a lot of difficult days ahead of them; they were all going to have a great many more important things to occupy their time.

Like how to survive, for one thing.

He was under no illusion that with Aelmarkin gone, all of his troubles were about to vanish. Quite the contrary. He was now into the morass of the politics of the Great Lords, he had the Young Lords to worry about and—

And I'm technically a traitor. I'm conspiring with the Wizards to create a slave rebellion.

All that, in addition to trying to keep his own people safe. If he thought about it too long, it seemed impossible, and he began to doubt he'd even manage that last, and in some ways most important task, much less all the rest.

But he wasn't alone in this, now. For once, it didn't all depend on him and his paltry skills. We'll be doing it together, dragons and Elvenlords, Wizards and humans working together. At last.

And with that formidable combination—he had to believe there was no problem that they could not ultimately defeat.

_EPILOGUE

Triana had never been particularly afraid before she'd entered these caves. She'd only thought she'd encountered terror before the construct came alive.

But the moment that the thing arose out of the rest, like some terrifying metal insect with a screaming Aelmarkin in its claws, she knew true and paralyzing horror.

By then she had been beside the Great Portal, and as the thing blundered back and forth across the cave in pursuit of Kyrtian and his people, she shrank into the shelter of one of its curved sides, praying that it wouldn't see her, wouldn't blunder into her. That was all she could manage; her knees scarcely held her up, and she couldn't have run if she wanted to. She was drenched in a cold, cold sweat; every time the thing came anywhere near she held her breath until she nearly passed out, lest it hear her breathing.

She was sure she was going to die. For the first time in her life, she stared mortality in the face, and realized that she couldn't bear it....

She couldn't bear it. In a moment, she was going to faint, or scream and betray herself. She trembled and sweated, and clenched her fists until her long nails bit into her palms and made them bleed.

One moment, there was the metal monster. Then the metal one—was attacked by a dragon.

It was impossible. It was too much. She clutched at the Portal side, and turned her face into it and refused to look. It didn't matter which one of them won—the survivor would find her and kill her—she'd die like Aelmarkin, screaming in terror and pain; she didn't stand a chance—

She fought down the scream that threatened to escape—tears

scorched her face and her throat ached with the need to shriek and shriek, but if she did, she'd die then and there, and she wanted to live....

Something snapped inside her. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out. She felt herself start to collapse, then blackness swooped down on her like a dragon, and took her senses.

When she woke, the cave was quiet, and she lay sprawled at the foot of the Great Portal. The cave was still illuminated by the uncertain yellow light of Kyrtian's lanterns, or what was left of them.

Suddenly, she did not want to know if Kyrtian had met the same fate as Aelmarkin. It was one thing to see mere human slaves die; it was another thing entirely to know, to see the hand of death cut down another Elvenlord.

No. The caves were not entirely quiet... in the far, far distance, out in the entrance cave, perhaps, something battered monotonously at the stone. Since the "something" sounded like metal, it must have been the metal monster that survived.

So it was between her and the only way out.

For a moment, she thought she was going to faint again, but as her hands closed convulsively and her nails bit into her palm, so did the band of the heavy signet ring she wore—

The ring. The ring! It was her Portal key—and she lay in the biggest Portal of them all!

Shaking in every limb, she got to her feet somehow, and dismissed the illusion she wore. If this was going to work, she would need every morsel of power.

She faced the Great Portal, closed her eyes, and slowly, carefully, began to weave the lines of energy that would open a long-dormant Portal like this one. It was going to take a lot— this one had been made by the concerted effort of dozens of mages, and she was only one.

But she also didn't have any choice if she wanted to live.

Bit by bit, sluggishly, the Portal began to respond. The lines of power oozed into place rather than snapping crisply into their positions. The patterns formed, but oh! so slowly!

And then, with no warning at all—the Portal snapped to full and vibrant life!

Startled, Triana opened her eyes.

The shimmering curtain of power within the glowing green arch shivered.

Parted.

And an entirely new horror stepped through.

Like some unsanctified melding of Elf and reptile, the thing stood twice as tall as she. It was long-limbed, sexless, and entirely naked, covered in its own blue-green scales. It had a tail that lashed back and forth restlessly, a hairless head, legs that bent the wrong way at the knees, a lipless mouth full of pointed teeth, and—most horrible of all—eyes she would have recognized on any Elvenlord. And it saw her the instant it walked through the Portal.

Before she could move, it had cleared the distance between them in a single leap, and seized her.

Its strong, scaled fingers closed around her waist, in a grip unbreakable as metal cables. Now she screamed, shrieked and fought, but she might as well have been fighting the metal monster. It had no expression whatsoever on the flat plate that was its face.

It even smelled like a snake, musty and green, and the smell made her even more frantic, somehow, triggering fears so atavistic that she tore off nails and bit like an animal trying to get free of it. Her entire body felt afire; nothing existed for her but the overpowering need to escape—

All for naught. The thing never even winced. It was impossibly strong and utterly implacable; the moment that she tired, it flung her over its shoulder.

Reduced now to mindless panic, she renewed her fight, but her shrieks made no impression on it, and she might as well have been fighting with the stone of the cave.

It carried her to the Portal, which shimmered with activity. She screamed as they approached the shivering curtain of light.

They touched it. And passed through it.

And the Portal closed behind them again.

Lord Kyndreth steepled his fingers together and stared at his son Gildor, who had just brought him news that was—well— peculiar. He wasn't certain what to make of it. He was even less certain what to do about it.

He had young Kyrtian's report on his desk, a written copy of what Kyrtian had told him via the teleson, and although he could find no fault in it, it had left him feeling vaguely unsatisfied. Granted, everyone knew what the forest bordering Chey-nar's estate was dangerous, full of alicorns and the Ancestors only knew what sorts of worse things. And there was no real reason why Kyrtian should have actually found the purported den of halfbloods in there. After all, they'd been hiding for centuries with no one suspecting their presence, so why should one young Elvenlord find them now?

But—the report felt incomplete. As if Kyrtian was hiding something from him, although he could not even begin to guess what that "something" was.

And now—Gildor, poor dullard that he was, walked into the study with the astonishing news that Lady Triana and Ael-markin were missing. That they had left their estates with camping gear and a train of slaves that included (in Triana's case, at least) slaves trained as foresters. And now, both were missing, their estates in confused disarray, their slaves left with no orders, uncertain of what they should do now. Gildor and his friends had turned up at Aelmarkin's estate for a planned event—one at which Lady Triana was also supposed to appear— to find that both were gone, vanished.

"Thank you, Gildor," Kyndreth told his son, with the gravity due to a major piece of intelligence. "Thank you very much. Would you care to invite all of those friends of yours who were disappointed of their amusement here? I will be happy to entertain them for a week, if you like."

As he'd expected, Gildor's dull face brightened at the prospect; Kyndreth summoned his steward and sent his son off with the lesser Lord to organize the entertainment. That is, Lord Belath would organize the entertainment, and Gildor would summon his friends ... it would be a great disruption to Kyn-dreth's work, in fact, he might have to retire to the hunting-lodge or the old Dowager-House while the young roisterers romped through his halls. But that would be a small price to pay if Gildor continued to bring him tidbits like this one.

Was this what Kyrtian was hiding?

That didn't fit with his reading of the young Lord. Kyrtian was not likely to conceal the fact that his cousin had come to grief, and even less likely to have murdered Aelmarkin himself. Kyndreth could readily see why Aelmarkin would follow Kyrtian into the wilderness—Aelmarkin would be perfectly happy to engineer an "accident" out there. But if, in the course of trying to set up such an accident, it was Aelmarkin who perished, and Kyrtian found out about it, why would Kyrtian hide it?

Why would he want to? If Aelmarkin were hoist upon his own petard of treachery, Kyrtian should be only too pleased to trumpet the fact to all the world.

And as for Triana vanishing at the same time—well, the only thing that Lord Kyndreth could imagine was that for some reason she had gone chasing after Kyrtian as well. Although he could not imagine why.

Kyndreth ground his teeth, feeling frustration well up inside him. This was an entirely new experience for him—and he didn't like it. Always, always, from the time he first came to power and took his Council seat, he had known who was doing what, and why. Especially why. And now things were happening that he had not been told of, had not anticipated, and worst of all, he had no real notion of the motivations that lay behind these incidents.

Motivations—what in the world could have brought Aelmarkin out into the wilderness besides hatred for Kyrtian? Or, for that matter, Lady Triana? What could the two possibly have in common?

He closed his eyes for a moment, emptied his mind, and violently suppressed the emotions that came welling up in the wake of that frustration. Emotion was not useful. He needed logic and reason—and above all, planning.

And once he cleared his mind of emotion, something else occurred to him at long last. The one thing that Triana and Aelmarkin did have in common was the group that they associated with socially—the younger sons, and some few younger daughters. Until the Young Lords' Revolt, that had included—the rebellious Young Lords.

What if, rather than trailing after Kyrtian, Aelmarkin and Tri-ana had gone—quite coincidentally—into the same area, intending to meet with the fugitives?

What if Aelmarkin and Triana had been the spies within the ranks of the Old Lords for the youngsters?

If that was the case—no wonder Aelmarkin had been so intent on fostering the impression his cousin Kyrtian was dotty! And no wonder he'd been so disgruntled when Kyrtian was placed in charge of the army!

It was only a theory—could by no means be proved—but it wouldn't hurt to keep the theory in reserve. It might be useful.

Meanwhile, he should be the one to spread the news to the rest of the Council, if at all possible. How many other Council members had offspring likely to be invited to that aborted party? Not many—and none were likely to have mentioned the disappearances yet.

Good. He might be swimming in a sea of uncertainties, but he could make something out of this yet.

He straightened his back, called for strong wine, and began to plan what he would tell the Council. And as he did so, he felt a faint smile cross his lips.

At the very least, he would gain something. Triana had some ancient cousin or other who would swiftly claim her estate, but Aelmarkin's nearest relation was Kyrtian ... and Kyrtian was unlikely to want Aelmarkin's tiny holding or his business of breeding pleasure-slaves. When an estate went unclaimed, it traditionally went to the Head of the Council.

Which was, of course, Lord Kyndreth.

And if there was any question of whether or not it should be confiscated, well, Kyndreth could bring up that theory, branding Aelmarkin as a traitor, and overturning all possible objections to confiscating the property.

Kyndreth nodded to himself, feeling firm ground beneath his feet again. Good enough. He knew where he was now. He would call the Council Meeting, announce the disappearances, and see who reacted, and how. That would tell him a great deal—and in the meantime, he would send his stewards in to take control of Aelmarkin's possessions.

He took a long breath, and keyed the teleson. Shake the tree, and see what fruit fell—and how far.

And whatever happened, to make certain that it profited him.

"Well, Anster," he began, when Lord Anster's servant had summoned him to the teleson-screen, "it seems we have a mystery on our hands...."