closing behind them, yet they still couldn’t see an end to the hall of stone statues. Jaymes turned and retraced a few steps, warily scrutinizing the motionless shapes. He had seen a hundred or more already and had stopped counting.
The threat, when it first came, was not seen, but heard-a simple sound, at first, like the scraping of one piece of stone against another. It rasped from the unseen darkness behind them and off to the side and almost immediately was augmented by similar sounds. Hoarse and sibilant at the same time, the noise swelled to encompass them. With a chill, Jaymes pictured a host of massive snakes, scratching and slithering along the stone floor.
He wished it were snakes, but the truth, he felt certain, was going to be something even stranger and nastier. He strained to see something, hardly reassured by the fact all the statues within his view remained utterly still. Finally he detected the source of the sounds, his worst imagining ever since they had entered this place. Almost imperceptibly, one of the guardians at the far limit of his vision behind them turned and slowly, stiffly, stepped down off the low disk of rock that had been its post for the gods only knew how long. The one right beside this guardian, closer to the two intruders, then did the same. Then the next and the next, and soon enough a whole rank of them had stepped down in echelon, joining together in a rippling march that moved closer to the two intruders.
“I don’t think they want us here,” Moptop noted.
“Then let’s get out of here-run!” barked Jaymes.
“Which way?” yelped the kender.
The man’s answer was to sprint down the hall, with Moptop racing right beside him. The two ran past more statutes, boots scuffing along the floor, shadows dancing and flaring around them as the torch and the sword burned fitfully from the speed of their gait. The stone warriors didn’t pick up the pace of their measured march, but they continued steadily. And with every step through the hall more of them sprang to life.
“There’s the far end!” Jaymes called, finally discerning a high, smooth wall rising up in front of them. He looked at the base of that wall, desperately hoping to see a continuation of the cavern there, a passage that would lead them out of this place.
Then he saw it: a looming black hole high enough for a giant to march through. But before he could even register this hopeful development, a phalanx of stone guardians swung around to block their path. The ancient warriors were standing shoulder to shoulder, the stony points of their weapons extended, shields held aggressively forward.
“Well,” Moptop admitted, skidding to a halt before he impaled himself on the spear tips lowered to block their path. “Looks like we might be trapped.”
“We’ll have to fight our way through!” Jaymes declared. Flames sparkled and surged along Giantsmiter’s blade as he lifted the great sword over his head. “This will cut them down to size! Stand back-but follow me as soon as I break through their midst.”
“Wait!” yelped Moptop. “Maybe we should try talking to them or something. I mean, there are lots of them, and only one of you. I’m sure you could smash them up pretty good with your sword and all. Maybe break ten or twenty or, gosh, a hundred of them. But still-”
Jaymes hesitated, eyes narrowed. His aggressive advance had provoked no response. The spears remained pointed, rank after rank of them, at least a dozen deep standing before them. But once again, the guardians had stopped moving.
“Try talking, then,” the marshal growled. “See what happens.”
“Hey!” Moptop said cheerfully, stepping in front of one swordsman, fixing a beaming smile upon the stony countenances of the warriors. He spun on his heel, cheerfully making eye contact around the whole ring of them, those in front and those who had closed in from behind. “You guys must be really patient. I mean, to stand here all this time waiting for something. Were you really waiting for us? Because we didn’t even know we were coming here, ourselves, really. Of course, I am a professional guide and pathfinder extraordinaire, but-here’s a little secret-I was just a teensy bit lost, myself.”
He glanced sheepishly over his shoulder at Jaymes, who held his sword at the ready but made no move to attack. In his own way, the man was as impassive and unreadable as the rocky guardians. The kender seemed to feel the burden of being the only truly animated person in this place, and he resumed his pleasant chatter with a gesture that conspiratorially encompassed all the surrounding guardians.
“Well, geez. Can you guys back there even hear me? I mean, maybe you could back up just a little bit. Someone is going to get hurt on those pointy spears.” He touched one of the weapons and gingerly tried to push it aside. There was no movement.
With a sigh, Moptop looked around again, his shoulders slumping. Finally he turned back to Jaymes. “I give up. They don’t seem to want to talk. Makes me wonder what they’re thinking, looking at those rock faces. Are they afraid? Do they want to kill us? They were moving and marching just a little while ago, and now they might as well be statues again.”
“Could they be afraid?” Jaymes had been only vaguely paying attention to the kender’s prattle, but that phrase tickled his mind, wiggling around and churning up another conversation. “You’ll at least get a sense of its intentions, its fears.” Coryn had said to him, explaining the power of his sword, the power of mind reading!
Slowly, gradually, he raised Giantsmiter and pointed the blade, aligning the weapon with the face-with the blank, stony eyes-of one of the statue legion.
The first sensation was a warmth that was not uncomfortable, but almost immediately Jaymes began to hear murmurs. They were strange and muted, like hearing a crowd of people conversing some distance away-too far to make out individual words. The kender’s chirping background presence was also there, curious and bubbling. As if sensing the intrusion, Moptop glanced over his shoulder, his eyes meeting Jaymes’s for a moment-and the kender’s thoughts were suddenly articulated in the marshal’s mind.
… Goofy sword… kinda funny looking, even… but these guys aren’t the humorous sort… sort of thought he might try to do something useful instead…
Jaymes looked back at the statues and mercifully, the kender’s blathering ceased. The man looked directly into the face of the nearest statue, focusing on the stony warrior’s blank eyes. And as he did so, he heard a swelling of sound, and felt another creature’s feelings twisting around inside his own skin. He strained to make out the noises and couldn’t suppress a shiver as a powerful, raw emotion swept through him.
Fear!
He was sensing the thoughts and emotions of these guardians, Jaymes knew, and they were afraid-indeed, terrified of the menace that had woke them from their centuries-long slumber.
“Why do you fear us?” he said softly. “We mean you no harm.”
The answer did not come in words, but in pictures inside his mind. He experienced a torrent of images, felt a sense of horror and mystery. He perceived the image of a great, fiery giant and sensed that the guardians were most afraid of that extraordinary being. Feeling their terror, Jaymes wanted to look away but forced himself to hold firm, to continue to learn, to understand. He felt the statues accuse him, felt a swelling compulsion to harm him and the kender, a hostility coming from all directions.
They blamed Jaymes and Moptop for something, but for what?
He suddenly felt a strong sense of self within one of the statue creatures; this one spoke for the others. Adamites. The word came to him, whispered in his mind.
“They’re called adamites,” he said. Then he felt the accusation and understood the fear.
“They think that it is we who have freed the elemental king!” the marshal exclaimed. “They’re his jailers, and they failed to keep him secure. They blame us.”
“Hey, it wasn’t us that let him loose!” Moptop proclaimed in a wounded tone. “Why, we’re trying to stop him. Jaymes here-that is, my friend the Lord Marshal-is going to personally kill him, or put out his fire, or something.”
More jumbles of pictures swirled through the swordsman’s mind, and he realized that the creatures had actually understood the kender’s speech. Now their thoughts were questioning, demanding.
“The king was taken by my enemy,” Jaymes explained. “I am on a quest to stop him. I only seek to reach Solanthus. That’s where he’s gone-where he’s proving a danger to the whole world.”
Now a vivid image appeared in his mind, the Cleft Spires-the rocky landmark that dominated the besieged city. “Yes!” he cried. “That’s the place-that is where we are going, where we must go to find the elemental
