would have collapsed to the floor if not for his two bodyguards. They kept him on his feet until he had recovered his wits, then pushed him forward, always staying close behind.
In the same manner as they had inspected the first room, the party went through the next dozen. If anything, they were more disappointing than the first. More than one turned out to be nothing but a pile of mortar and rock, the ceilings having collapsed long ago. A few of those chambers that were still whole held nothing but generation upon generation of dust. If the occupants had died here, it had been so long ago that their corpses, even their skeletons, had faded away with time.
They found no trace of the other intruders, although, with the jagged and rocky surfaces they clambered over, it would have been near impossible to find any sort of tracks. Dru suffered over the worst of the treks, his bound arms making it impossible for him to protect his face when he slipped forward. Concerned with their own footing, his two guards often could do nothing for him. By the time they had explored the first floor, the Vraad’s face and body were one mass of bruises and cuts. Given the opportunity, he could have easily repaired the damage, but his health was low on his captors’ priorities. Dru wondered why they had bothered to even keep him alive, so unconcerned did they seem.
The sun moved ever closer to its daily death. The Seekers’ leader grew more and more frustrated and his emotions were echoed by the others. Dru was beyond caring; the sorcerer only wanted to lie down, go to sleep, and wake up in his castle of pearl. He wanted to never have found the tear, the hole between this place and Nimth, even though that meant bowing to Barakas and his clan.
At what had once been the stairway leading to the upper floors but was now a jumble of rock, the Seekers finally lost their last reserves of patience. A look from the leader sent four of them leaping into the air. Dru stirred briefly from his worn musings to watch them fly through the hole where the upper portion of the steps had once led. Although it was a dangerous move, considering there still might be foes lurking somewhere nearby, the avians had chosen to split their numbers in order to facilitate their mad search.
Dragging the harried sorcerer with them, the seven remaining creatures continued their scouring of the main floor. They had come to such a point of desperation that they began to sift through the wreckage of each chamber the instant they entered. Under the watchful, one-eyed gaze of the leader, who held Dru while the search progressed, the avians picked at whatever seemed out of the ordinary among the chunks of ceiling and wall. A few items that they unearthed encouraged them and stirred Dru’s curiosity. One or two artifacts that the birds seemed to puzzle over, he recognized but was careful to pretend otherwise. Slowly, some of the ancient race’s prowess was revealed to the sorcerer. They knew much about crystal magic, that he could tell from the glittering fragments that the avians shoved rudely aside in their quest. What the Seekers sought, however, evidently had nothing to do with that; they seemed far more interested in objects that represented forms, such as dragons, animals, and things that might have been, in a vague way, referred to as human.
The leader, who still held him by the arm, suddenly cocked his head to one side, as if listening to something outside. Dru strained, but heard nothing but the clatter of rubble as the avians tossed bits of ceiling away in order to burrow deeper into the wreckage. A breath later, the rest had paused in their work, also listening.
Dru heard nothing save the beat of his own heart… until he realized that the clap-clap pattern could hardly be coming from him if the others heard it. No, the sounds issued from an unknown location near the main hall, and were getting closer by the second.
Rising, the Seekers looked to their leader. He eyed Dru, then tugged the spellcaster around him and tossed him toward the doorway. Stumbling, Dru stepped out into the corridor. The unsettling clap-clap sounds continued to rise in volume, in some way as familiar to the sorcerer as the icons had been earlier. He tried to recall what made that sort of sound, but his attempt to harness his scattered thoughts into something functional was cut off by a harsh shove from the Seekers’ leader. Lacking any choice in the matter-and that was becoming too common a way for one who had grown knowing there was little he could not have-Dru walked slowly down the corridor in the direction of the noise’s source. The avians followed, spreading out as they moved. Two took to the air, hovering near the ceiling.
The sounds echoed continuously throughout the vast structure, almost to the point where it grew difficult for the hapless sorcerer to estimate where he had to turn. He turned back, and as if knowing his confusion, the leader pointed ahead.
“Thank you,” Dru whispered in bitter tones. There was no hope of avoiding a confrontation with whatever sought out the party. It did not sound like the massive creatures who burrowed beneath the earth-the Vraad would have expected their footfalls to be near silent, considering that blood enemies lurked somewhere within the edifice-and neither did he think it was the elves, whom he had still not seen. They, too, would have taken more caution.
What then lurked in the main hall and had the effrontery to move without care of detection into a place of possible danger?
He was so near now that the clap-clap sounds made it impossible to wonder further. The avian leader put a taloned hand around his neck, essentially turning the Vraad into a living shield. The two of them, with the others following as if all were puppets commanded by the same strings, stepped into the main hall and, all too soon, the confrontation.
Behind him, the avian started, almost losing his grip on the human. Dru could in no way blame him.
It was a stallion of the deepest ebony, an impossible and grand creature more massive than any the sorcerer had ever seen. As it slowed to a halt, the clap-clap noise, the sound of its hooves striking the hard surface of the floor, died. The steed stood taller than either the human or the avian. The animal shook its head, sending the wild mane fluttering. It looked at the two tiny figures before it as if they were specks of dust needing to be swept away and began pawing at the rock-hard floor.
Dru tried to step back, but the leader’s stiff form prevented him from doing so. Before the eyes of the party, the stallion continued to paw at the floor with its hoof… and was quickly succeeding in gouging a crevice in it!
The steed lifted its head high and, instead of a loud neigh, laughed at their dismay.
X
Lochivan ceased screaming the moment he felt the hands upon him, knowing that he had already shamed himself before his clan. The raging wind and the stormy heavens could not take his mind from that fact.
“Have no fear concerning your reaction to the cross-over,” he heard Esad, his brother, whisper. “Most of us screamed and the rest have all felt the pain. No one will speak of it when Father arrives.”
The newly arrived Vraad gazed down at his naked form, at last feeling the effects of the storm. “My clothing-” He looked up at Esad, who was clad in armor identical to that which they had been forced to abandon back in Nimth… along with their old bodies. The armor and the rest had been conjured, no doubt, but then why could Lochivan not emulate his brother’s work? Why did the magic resist him?
“The first arrivals clothed me,” the other Tezerenee said, reading Lochivan’s mind. “It takes great effort and often more than one person to push the spell to completion.” Even with the helm covering much of his features, it was obvious that Esad was under tremendous strain.
As Lochivan stood and shook his head, causing several locks of brown and gray hair to obscure his vision, he found himself clad once more in the comfortable feel of cloth and dragon scale. The Tezerenee nodded his gratitude to those of his kin who had aided him. “Have we all made it across so far?”
“Yes.”
Something in Esad’s tone encouraged his brother to survey the others assembled. There were ten, so far, including himself, and he could see that each and every one was there. Still, something was amiss. There was no mistaking the worry in Esad’s voice, and Lochivan knew it was not for him. “Tell me what is wrong, brother?”
“A number of the golems are missing.”
“Missing?” The Vraad whirled about until he caught sight of the still forms. Seeing them even now made his stomach turn, though he would not admit that to the others. That the body he wore had once been as these…
It took him a moment to estimate their numbers and then he saw that what Esad said was true; there were perhaps a hundred of the flesh-and-blood golems remaining where Esad had reported two hundred or more. “The dragons!” Lochivan snarled, recalling the beasts that the golems had been formed from. “Ephraim will pay dearly for
