granite. Nothing.
The unnatural silence allowed other sounds to come forth. These grew louder as he concentrated. They were the voices of his people in camp. By facing slightly left or right he could make the voices louder or softer. He shifted an inch here, an inch there, until the voices were gone, then drew a breath and spoke the name closest to his heart.
“Kerian.”
His ravaged lungs permitted no loud cry. He spoke in a normal tone. In the noiseless void, his voice rang like a high, clear bell. “Kerian, this is Gil. I pray you can hear me. I’m waiting for you. Don’t give up!”
Water dripped from his face as he lowered his head to gather his composure. When he could trust his voice again, he called to the lost explorers. “Hamaramis, this is the Speaker. Come back if you can. We need you. Everyone is needed. Come back.”
A beam of sunlight swept across the stone disk. It passed over him like a seashore beacon.
“Come home, everyone. I need you. I need you all.”
With that his store of strength was done. His knees buckled, and he collapsed onto the rain-washed stone.
Hunched low over Eagle Eye’s neck, Kerian shook her head. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Sa’ida asked.
“That buzzing sound.”
Sa’ida did not. She suggested Kerian’s ears were congested from flying. Her own had popped painfully several times as Eagle Eye climbed higher in the sky.
“It sounds like music or a voice.”
“None could reach us up here, could they?”
That was true enough, ordinarily. But Kerian recalled how far her voice had carried when she stood on the huge stone platform in the center of Inath-Wakenti. She described the great disk to Sa’ida and explained how it brought voices to her ears from a great distance and likewise projected her own voice over several miles. Perhaps what she’d heard was another such distant call.
If so, Sa’ida reasoned, then why hadn’t she heard it too?
They had no answers, and Kerian felt a growing sense of urgency. Beneath them the untamed desert flowed by. The view was unutterably dull to the Lioness and her impatience rendered the endless vista even more unbearable.
For her part Sa’ida never tired of the view. The blank sands were broken now and then by a narrow circle of green grown up around a well or spring. Nomads in sand-colored
Once they plunged into a bank of clouds, a very unusual occurrence over the desert. Warm mist flowed around them. A dark shape loomed out of the murk on their right. Kerian immediately turned Eagle Eye away, banking sharply left.
“What-?” Sa’ida swallowed her question as the dark shape grew more distinct. Long and gray, it resembled a ship’s slender hull, bare of masts or sails. Glass portholes dotted its curved side. Lights gleamed within. White steam billowed from a pipe at its stern. The steam was feeding the cloud, thickening it. Mist closed in behind the machine, and as silently as it had appeared, the strange device was gone.
Astonishment kept them silent for a time. Kerian shook her head, saying, “Must be the work of gnomes. I’ve heard they build strange things.”
Sa’ida had heard the stories too, but the device seemed so elegant and purposeful, she could hardly credit it as a creation of that erratic race.
They burst abruptly into sunshine. Kerian exclaimed in surprise. During their passage through the cloud, they had inexplicably climbed several thousand feet. The air temperature had fallen greatly. Their garments, dampened by the heavy mist, chilled them to the bone.
“Look!” Kerian pointed ahead. The blue-gray slopes of the Khalkist Mountains filled the view from horizon to horizon, most prominent among them, the three snow-capped peaks that marked the entrance to the valley. Sa’ida was amazed. She’d never been more than twenty miles from Khuri-Khan in her life. She asked Kerian about the white stain atop the three peaks.
“Is it truly snow?” Kerian nodded. After a pause, Sa’ida asked, “What is snow?”
The Lioness cast about for a reply. She’d never tried to define snow for someone to whom it was utterly alien.
“It’s like rain, only much colder. When the air is cold enough, rain hardens and becomes snow.”
The priestess was as delighted as a child by this discovery. Although a wise and long-lived woman, her education had been devoted entirely to healing and the doctrines of her goddess. She pulled her heavy cloak closer around herself and enjoyed the adventure, marveling even at how very cold her nose was.
Despite Sa’ida’s pleasure in the trip, she was shivering, and Kerian thought better of continuing at this height. It would be easier if they entered Inath-Wakenti at a lower level. To their left, northwest, a square notch in the rugged range beckoned. Green with trees, its slopes were several thousand feet lower than the mountaintops directly ahead. Eagle Eye shifted course and they descended. The temperature warmed.
“Better?” Kerian asked over one shoulder, and the priestess patted her shoulder in reply.
The warmth was welcome but could not dispel Kerian’s worries. Eagle Eye had performed heroically, making such a long flight with very little rest between the journey out and the return, but she wished he could fly faster. She couldn’t escape the feeling that the strange noise she’d heard was somehow a call for help.
Trying to find the promised rescue party was no simple task for Hytanthas. Fit as any warrior, he set a rapid pace and tried to maintain it, but hunger and thirst weighed his limbs. Once his torch was exhausted, blindness only added to the strain. Still, his sovereign had promised rescue, and Hytanthas would do his utmost to seek the elves searching for him.
Trailing the fingertips of his right hand along the tunnel wall, he negotiated the featureless dark. One factor worked to his advantage. The tunnel floor was clear of debris. Beneath his feet was only hard, clean stone. He’d come across no more bodies for quite a long time. He was thankful for that mercy. The dead could tell him nothing. They only reminded him of the fate that awaited him should he not find help or an exit from the subterranean maze.
The air shivered as if from a light breeze and a voice said, “Kerian.”
Hytanthas halted.
“Kerian, this is Gil. I pray you can hear me. I’m waiting for you. Don’t give up!”
The voice belonged to the Speaker.
Hytanthas marshaled his scattered thoughts. The Speaker had told him the Lioness was away on a mission, flying to Khuri-Khan to bring back the priestess Sa’ida.
The Speaker continued, calling to Hamaramis to return. The general of the Speaker’s own household guard was away too?
Hytanthas shouted, “Sire, I’m coming!” He strained to hear the reply.
“Come home, everyone. I need you. I need you all.”
With that, the peculiar resonance was gone from the air. The Speaker’s pleas were at an end. Hytanthas drove a fist into his palm. His sovereign needed him, and he was blundering around in the dark. He fell to berating himself out loud, but broke off abruptly when he detected more voices. Hytanthas held his breath and listened.
He could hear quite clearly the voices and footfalls of five or six people. One tread was heavier than the rest, and the voice associated with it was lower, rougher-a human. How had a human gotten down here?
Hytanthas called to the unknown party, giving his name and identifying himself as a friend. Drained by hunger
