Elvenborn hc-3

by Andre Nolton

  At least, that was her initial reaction. As she teetered on the edge and her eyes adjusted, it became clear that the drop-off was not nearly as far as panic had made her think. She might have broken an ankle had she gone over, all unwarned, but no worse than that—the illusion of a sheer precipice was just that, illusion. After the initial drop, a steep slope slanted away from them to the floor of this new cave. It was what bulked here in ordered rows, off in the distance, that drew the eye and confused the mind.

  Objects. No. Constructs. Things of metal, gears, wheels, things that might be arms or legs or neither. Big as a house, some of them. Row upon row of them, three abreast, leading back to the biggest construct of all, a huge arch of some dull green stuff that looked deader than the bones they passed but felt alive and full of brooding menace.

  Over everything lay, not merely a film, but a thick shroud of dust, obscuring the shine of metal, softening angles into curves. Thick as a blanket in some places; so thick that sections had actually broken off and fallen from the sides.

  "What—are—those?" Shana asked, her voice high and strained.

  Kyrtian only shook his head. "I don't know. There isn't anyone alive who could tell you. Oh, I know what they are collectively, they're things the Ancestors made to serve them in all the ways that slaves do now. Magic is what made them work, but once the Portal closed, they wouldn't work anymore and they were abandoned. As to why they wouldn't work, I can't say."

  "Serve them?" Lynder said, puzzlement in his voice.

  Kyrtian's tone was as dry as the dust lying over everything. "Of course. You don't think our Ancestors ever put hand to tool themselves, do you? They created these things—to plow and dig, build and tear down—"

  "And make war?" Keman asked, harshly.

  Kyrtian glanced at him, mouth set in a thin line. But his tone was mild. "Make war?" he replied, softly. "Oh yes. That, certainly. Above all other things. The Ancestors made war among themselves, war of a sort that makes everything we did to the Wizards seem the merest game."

  Shana looked away from Kyrtian's face back to the rank upon rank of constructions, and shuddered. Under the dust, metal gleamed with cruel efficiency. Were those blades? Was that a reaper of corn—or of lives? A digger of ditches—or of graves?

  She decided not to ask a question to which she did not want to know the answer.

  But Kyrtian made a strangled little sound, and abruptly jumped down from the edge of the cave-mouth, landing in a crouch only to sprint off to one side of the huge cavern, where there were a few of the mechanisms that were not in such ordered rows. With a muffled oath, Lynder followed, then the rest of them, trailing along behind.

  Aelmarkin cursed the men who lowered him down every time he collided with another rock, lashing them through their collars with the punishment of pain. It was not enough to satisfy him, but he dared to do no more; too much and they only became clumsier. He'd assumed—foolishly, in retrospect—that they could simply lower him down comfortably to the bottom of the place. Instead, he was having to practically walk down the tumbled slope of rocks that was the mirror of the pile outside; just as difficult as being hauled up that slope, but more painful, since the idiots above kept dislodging rocks that fell on his head and they kept lowering him in a series of jerks. Each one endfcd in a collision with more rocks since each time he was caught off-guard and off-balance.

  Idiots! He would certainly leave some of them behind as bait for the monsters in this benighted place, and at that it was better than they deserved. He'd suspect they were doing this on purpose except that his punishments were worse than anything he was enduring.

  When he finally bumped down with a painful thud onto the floor of the cave, he gave them all a final reminder of his power over them that made them yelp. The echoes of four howls of pain reverberated long enough to give him a fleeting moment of satisfaction. He picked himself up out of the dust and kicked the trash he'd fallen on out of his way angrily before sending his mage-light up to illuminate more of the area.

  No point in looking up to glare at them. They were gone, of course, Scuttling back to the shelter of their tents and their fire, where they would stay, probably lazing about and trying to find non-existent supplies of wine among his belongings. He knew they wouldn't leave the camp; they were more afraid of the forest than they were of him. Foresters they might be, but this wasn't their forest, and they were superstitiously terrified not only of the very real monsters among the trees, but the spirits they swore they'd heard in the night. They'd be waiting for him when he returned, all right... not knowing that if his hopes were fulfilled, he wouldn't need them. He'd have power enough to blast this place open or create a Gate home. Or fly, if he chose. That would be novel; there were old legends of how the Ancestors flew, on the backs of metal-beaked birds with razor-tipped wings and scythes for talons, how they would duel in the air until blood fell like warm rain on the faces of those below. Perhaps there were constructs like that waiting here....

  Well! He wasn't finding them standing about and kicking trash. Nor was he discovering just what Kyrtian was up to if it wasn 't hunting relics of the Ancestors or the Wizards he was supposed to be pursuing.

  He turned. It was clear enough where Kyrtian had gone, the path through the debris was plain enough for a woman to pick out. It was also clear that this cave wasn't littered with just the trash that the wind had blown in. So—Kyrtian had found the place where the Great Portal had made an entrance into this world!

  "By the Ancestors!" Aelmarkin said aloud, and his own voice repeated his astonishment in echoes that whispered in the cave as if a crowd mimicked his surprise. A skull—an Elven skull, by the high-arched forehead and the narrow jaw—lay directly in his path, glaring at him, as if daring him to pass.

  Aelmarkin sneered at it. What matter a few bones? Bones were nothing. Those of the Ancestors that died here weren't Ancestors at all, were they? They hadn't gotten their bloodlines any deeper in this world than the floor of the cave. What matter that Aelmarkin's path led over those bones? That way lay his fortune, and he wasn't going to let the bones of a few dead fools stop him.

  "You," he told the skull, contemptuously, "are a nothing. A dead-end. You can't even manage to block my way."

  He brought his booted foot down on the skull deliberately, smashing it. It broke with no more effort than destroying an egg. His next step took him past the fragile fragments, and he didn't look back.

  The demi-barricade at the tunnel's mouth didn't stop him, either; in fact; he took a great deal of grim pleasure in bullying past it, kicking at the carts and the bones of the legendary dray-lanthans and seeing them disintegrate. Not as much pleasure as he might have, since the wreckage pretty much fell to bits at a touch, but enough.

  Some fools might find all this horrifying. All he felt was more contempt for the weaklings who had been so afraid of pursuit—for of course, it could only have been pursuit that they feared—that they allowed their panic to turn what could have been an orderly procession into a rout. And for what?

  So their bones could rot on the floor of a cave before they even saw the light of their new world, that's what.

  He wondered, as he penetrated further into the cave-complex, if all of the legends of harmony and cooperation were so much rot after all. It was obvious from this decayed chaos that there had been panic, fighting, but there was no sign of whatever was the cause. Unless, of course, the Ancestors had brought the cause with them....

  What if they'd begun fighting amongst each other for ascendancy as soon as they got safely to the other side?

  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 reluctantly.

  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!

  But it was Kyrtian himself who finally did so, and with utterly unexpected words.

  "Light the lanterns," he said, the words emerging as a strangled croak, but clear enough for all that.

  "M-m-my lord?" Lynder stammered, without comprehension.

  "Light the lanterns. I'm going to kill the mage-lights. Something's feeding on them and I don't want to give it anything more—"

  He didn't finish the sentence, but with that in front of them, he didn't have to. Lynder and the other hastened to obey his order, breaking out the candles, the oil, and the lanterns, and the moment that the first wick was kindled, Kyrtian extinguished his mage-lights completely.

  This, of course, left them huddling around a lantern that in no way gave a fraction of the light that the mage-lights had, while the others hastened to light the rest of the wicks with a spill kindled on the first. Shana was just glad that Kyrtian had had the foresight to order lanterns brought in the first place—and that even in the midst of a grief she couldn't even begin to understand, he hadn't lost himself to mourning, madness, or both.

  She hurried forward to help the others; the lamps were kept dry until needed, so she filled them while the others lit them and set the transparent chimneys in place to protect them from drafts. When she looked over at him, Kyrtian still hadn't moved, except to place one hand on the breast of that terrible figure in the wall.

  She still couldn't see his face. She still didn't want to. But she wished with all her soul that he would weep.

  Triana was surprised when the glow of mage-lights ahead of her winked out.

  She dimmed her own light in automatic response, lest it be noticed. Now there was barely enough light coming from her little metal cone to let her see her way without stumbling, and she used one hand on the cave wall to steady herself as she crept along. Why had Kyrtian doused his lights?

  Then, as a faint yellow glow came from the opening ahead of her, she understood that although he had doused his lights, he wasn't i
n darkness. The light coming from ahead was poor and weak, and she wondered if some disaster had befallen Kyrtian, or his men, to make him lose control of his mage-lights.

  The feeling of unfocused horror that had stalked her from the moment that she entered this place washed over her in redoubled strength. It was only by stopping long enough to take a few deep breaths and swallow a sip of water from a flask at her belt to ease her fear-dried mouth that she forced herself to go on. Whatever was out there hadn't devoured Kyrtian yet, or where would the light be coming from?

  As her pulse pounded in her temples and her hands grew cold, she reached the mouth of the next cave, and as she extinguished her own mage-light lest it betray her, at last she heard voices. One of them was Kyrtian's, with a harsh, grating tone to it she'd never heard before, but the low tone and the echoes made it impossible to understand what he and the others with him were saying. Still, he was talking, and he wouldn't be doing that if something had attacked him. She wondered wildly for a moment if he was talking to something that belonged here—

  But no. That didn't make any sense. There had been no signs of life here at all, not even bats, so what could such a thing live on? And there were no tracks in the dust except Kyrtian's people, so nothing was going into or out of this cave-complex.

  In the flickering and uncertain light she barely made out the bulky shapes of huge objects the size of garden sheds and larger ranged in utterly still and silent ranks in front of her. Great hulking shapes—-frozen into immobility now, but somehow not dead; they crouched, waiting, watching. And at the edge of her vision, the arch of the Great Portal—for that was all that the soaring arc of greenish-black at the rear of the cave could be—brooding over them all. Moving shadows of men performed an incomprehensible pantomime against the right-hand wall, where lanterns must be. There was a whisper of acrid scent to the air here, a faint taste of metal and the flavor of lightning.