Elvenborn

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