Elvenborn

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 reluc­ tantly.

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!