Elvenborn

34

Fear struck tines of ice deep into his gut, but Kyrtian had not spent all these years training for battle in vain. Before the thing had finished standing, he barked an order, which, if his voice cracked, was nonetheless loud enough and authoritative enough that everyone reacted.

"Take cover!" he shouted, even while he himself was diving for shelter beneath the sloping front of the nearest construct.

Even Lynder and Hobie, though they had not actually fought with Kyrtian's troops against the Young Lords, had trained long and hard with all of Kyrtian's men and reacted immediately to his barked order. By the time the construct had gotten to its full height, Kyrtian, Lynder and Hobie were all out of its field of vision—or so he hoped—under a slope of metal that cast a deep, black shadow.

And I only hope this thing doesn't decide to come alive, too—he thought, squeezing as far out of sight as he could, though his skin shrank from contact with the chill and slightly greasy metal.

When they had all tucked in and gone immobile, he risked a glance at the wall and the half-circle of lanterns. Shana and Ke-man were nowhere in sight, but at least they were nowhere in his line-of-sight. He had to hope that if he couldn't see them, neither could the construct. If it "saw," that is. It might use other senses....

"Now what?" Lynder hissed into Kyrtian's ear. He sounded as desperate as Kyrtian felt.

"I'm thinking!" he hissed back. He wasn't worried about that thing hearing them; the victim it had in its claw was making enough noise to cover just about anything. The screaming was horrible, but worse was the feeling that he knew the tortured voice.

The victim—An Elvenlord; he'd seen enough in that moment of horror to know it wasn't a human. But who? Who could have followed him here, and why? Not any of Lord Kyndreth's people, since none of them knew where he was going, precisely, and surely none of his own.

The victim blubbered between the screams, incoherent in his terror. It was sickening to listen to.

No, none of them would have trailed after me, simply because none of them could have. They 're all totally unsuited to tramping about in the wilderness, thank the Ancestors.

As frightening as the screams was the silence beneath it. The construct made no sound at all.

The only person likely to have followed him, and with the skills to do so, would have been Gel, and it certainly wasn't Gel in that monster's claw!

Yet the voice was familiar.

Who then? He strained to make out anything in the screams and babbling to give him a clue, as his mouth dried with fear and his insides seemed to turn to water. An enemy, then? But what enemy would have followed him on what was supposed to be a fairly dangerous mission to hunt out Wizards? An enemy looking for something to discredit him with—perhaps? An enemy planning to find, or plant, something to Kyrtian's harm. Or even an enemy hoping to arrange an "accident" out here where there would be no witnesses? That was something that Aelmarkin—

Ancestors! he thought, stunned, now hearing what was familiar in those screams and wails echoing across the cavern. It's Aelmarkin!

That Aelmarkin hated him enough to try to discredit or murder him was no surprise, but that he'd actually dare the wilderness to do so was something so out-of-character that he couldn't berate himself for not thinking of it before. His worst enemy—

Who has managed to blunder into this.

Fortunately, he did not have the time to battle his conscience over whether or not to attempt a rescue; there was a whine, and a flash of light sweeping across the cave floor, and the screams cut off with dreadful finality. The three sheltering beneath the still (thankfully!) lifeless construct became very quiet, hardly daring to breathe, as silence descended with leaden suddenness.

Kyrtian fought down the urge to bolt for the mouth of the cave that had brought them here. Who knew what sort of weapons this thing had?

No magic, Kyrtian decided. Especially not levin-bolts. If this monster was what had been feeding on his mage-lights and draining them, what sort of power would a levin-bolt give it? Or worse—what if another of the constructs absorbed the power and came awake? He was fairly certain that this one wasn't the one that had gotten his father—though his father must certainly have awakened one or another of the behemoths, probably by using mage-lights. This one was now a proven killer; they certainly didn't need to awaken a second!

So what could he use against this monster, if not magic?

Not bows and arrows. Not swords. And we 've precious little else.

There was a whir, a creaking of metal, and suddenly something like an enormous upturned bowl attached to three metal struts slammed down onto the stone where he and his men had just been, sending up a cloud of dust. A second followed the first, smashing one of the lanterns.

A moment later, Aelmarkin's limp body dropped down beside the second disk. There was no mistake, now that Kyrtian could see the terror-twisted features. It was Aelmarkin, all right. And there was no doubt in his mind that his cousin was quite, quite dead. Not when his backbone bent that far, or at that angle.

Kyrtian froze; almost directly above them, he heard that peculiar whining again. He couldn't see anything but those two metal legs, but his imagination painted a picture of the construct somehow turning the top part of itself to peer down at the ground below, searching for them. He felt like a mouse hiding in a log in a field, watching the legs of a cat. Only he had no idea just what arcane senses this monster was using to look for them.

And as if to reinforce that imaginary image, twin beams of light swept over their hiding place and passed over the floor where they had all been standing.

If I knew what its weapons and its abilities were, I might have a better chance of figuring out what to do about it—

A shout broke the ominous silence, making all three of them start and clutch at each other in involuntary reaction.

"Hey!" Shana called from somewhere to the right, her own voice cracking.

The whine became a whir; something clacked angrily overhead—and in mere moments, the thing had taken two earth-shaking strides that got it out of Kyrtian's field of vision. He heard and felt each footstep; it was bipedal, from the sound. And it was definitely after Shana.

Shana! What are you doing?

It wasn't quiet in the cave any longer. The construct must not have been a very graceful thing; it sounded as if it was stumbling into or kicking aside every obstacle in its path in its effort to get to the Elvenbane. Lynder winced with each crash; Hobie just sat as frozen as a frightened sparrow.

Then it stopped. The whining noise began again, and it sounded frustrated. Kyrtian held his breath again, and so did the other two. If it heard them—

"Ho!"

It was Keman's voice this time, from another part of the cave. The construct was away again, blundering its way through the lifeless forms of its fellows. It might be bipedal, but it obviously wasn't unstable; he hadn't heard anything that sounded like a stumble or a misstep yet.

What are they doing? Not knowing what they were up to was maddening! Not being able to see the monster was worse!

"Should we try and get a look?" Lynder whispered in his ear. "Not yet," he whispered back. Just then the crashing and thrashing about stopped, and the whining recommenced, sounding more frustrated than before. It couldn't find Keman any more than it had been able to find Shana. If magic feeds it— could I make it go dormant by draining magic power out of it?

It was worth trying. The only trouble was, in order to drain something, he had to actually be in physical contact with it.

And just how am I going to do that without ending up like Aelmarkin? He shuddered, and kept his eyes averted from the remains of his cousin.

"Hey!" That was Shana again, from yet another part of the cave. It sounded as if she and Keman were working together to lure the construct away from where he and Lynder and Ho-bie hid. Was that what they were trying to do? Get the thing away from the cave-mouth so that the three of them could escape?

He couldn't deny that chance to his men. And it would be throwing the blessing back in their face to have them risk so much and not take the opportunity. "Start working your way back to the mouth of the cave," he whispered under cover of the crashes and thuds. "But don't move unless the construct is moving, too. Get out of the caves altogether, then bring back the rest of the men, and any equipment you think might help. I'll stay here and help Shana and Keman distract the thing."

"But—" Lynder began.

"That's an order," he hissed fiercely, and to enforce it, took a chance and scuttled from under their shelter into the space beneath another—heading in the opposite direction of the cave-mouth.

He slid under it just in time; the noise stopped again, and the whining began.

This wasn't where he'd have gone by choice; the thing was wheeled, something like a hay-wain, but the clearance between the cave floor and the thing's bottom wasn't more than half that beneath a real wagon. He had barely enough room to hide, and he couldn't help having nightmare visions of the thing waking up and deciding to squash him by lowering itself down on top of him. He was sweating and ice-cold at the same time, and fighting a panic that threatened to keep him from thinking at all. If anything, the view from under here was worse than the first shelter, and it seemed to take forever before he heard Keman's echoing "Ho!"

The construct crashed off in pursuit, and Kyrtian scrambled out from under the "wain" to take shelter, not under, but behind yet another behemoth. This time he wanted to see what the thing looked like, what it was doing.

It looked like a box on two legs, with a pair of blunt crab-like pincers on arms attached to either side of the box. It wasn't very fast, and it wasn't at all graceful, but it was powerful. Some of those crashes hadn't been because it was plowing into obstacles, it was because it was picking them up with a pincer and tossing them aside if they were small enough.

Ancestors! I hope those two aren't anywhere under what's being dropped!

Two lights—were they mage-lights?—at the front of the box projected the beams of light that he had seen sweeping the ground looking for them. They swiveled, looking uncannily like eyes, and the resemblance made him shiver. His tunic clung damply to his back and his hands ached where he clutched the sides of his hiding-place.

It stopped and swept the ground around it with those light-beams. So—where were the other two, and why wasn't it able to spot them?

He frowned, thinking; Keman and Shana must be popping up, shouting, and moving off again while it blundered its way towards them, but the thing must not have very good vision, or surely it would see them getting away. That was something to keep in mind.

"Hey!" came the expected cry—and that was when Kyrtian realized that Shana and Keman were being even more clever than he'd thought. They weren't "popping up" where the construct could see them—instead, a piece of debris went flying through the air and landed on top of another construct with a clatter—at some distance from where the shouter was. The construct's lightbeams snapped across the length of the cave and focused on that. And where the junk landed was where the construct headed. No wonder it wasn't able to find what it so fervently hunted!

He dashed out of cover long enough to get a piece of debris himself, laboring under the double handicap of not wanting to distract the thing from its current hunt, and being careful not to go where he might inadvertently cast a shadow or move across the lantern-light. Maybe it didn't have good vision—and maybe it did. This wasn't the time to find out.

He kept one eye on the cave-mouth. I can't start bringing it back over here until Lynder and Hobie are safe through. . . .

"Ho!" A much, much bigger piece of debris went flying. That was Keman, who must be very much stronger than Shana.

Well of course—he's a dragon! Kyrtian thought of the immensely-strong shape Keman had taken to bring Shana and the gear down into the caves. It wasn't much bigger than a human, but no human could have done what Keman had.

The thing fastened its light-beams on the junk while it was still in the air, and started after it.

Kyrtian glanced over at the mouth of the cave, just in time to see twin shadows slip over the ledge and into the dark hole that was the start of their road to safety.

Relief made his mouth dry. At least they were out of this.

That was the good news; the bad news was that the thing was moving faster, and more surely, every time it crossed the floor. Instead of running out of power, it seemed as if movement was permitting it to loosen up joints long held immobile. It was a good thing he had decided to join this little game. It looked as if it was going to need three players.

The construct reached the spot where the debris had landed—but this time it stood as if it was considering something, then slowly moved its lights along the path that the junk Keman had thrown had taken—

Oh, Ancestors. The thing can think. It's finally figured out that the debris isn 't what it wants, and that someone must have thrown it.

He dropped down out of sight, looked hastily around, and picked a place to hide. Far enough away—and near enough to reach. He hoped. "Ha!" he shouted with all his might, and flung his own piece of junk.

He was already running flat-out for his hiding-place when the piece left his hand. He dove and rolled beneath the construct and lay there with his mouth clamped around his sleeve to muffle his panting as the footsteps crashed nearer and nearer....

"Ha!" Shana heard, and knew immediately that it wasn't Ke-man. So Kyrtian had decided to get into the "game." She spared a moment to "feel" with her mind for Hobie and Lynder, and to her immense relief sensed them in the vicinity of the cave-mouth. And their "presences" were receding. Kyrtian was no fool, though he might be brave to the point of foolhardiness.

Still, she was glad of his aid, and gladder still he'd gotten the two weakest members of the group out of danger.

:Keman—he's sent them for help!:

:Or at least he's sent them away.: Keman replied, as the construct crashed its way across the floor.:I don't know how much help the rest of his men could be ... even if they get here before this thing catches one of us.:

Well, neither did she. But right now, that was second on her list of concerns. The first was how to keep herself, and Keman, and Kyrtian out of the claws of the monster. Fear seemed to sharpen all of her senses, and made her thoughts faster. Once this was over—if she lived through it—she'd collapse. Now she was all calculation.

:What is that thing, anyway?: Maybe the way to figuring out how to get rid of it lay in what it was supposed to do. The Ancestors made the wretched things as slaves—to do all their work for them. Which was why when they found this world full of humans they hadn't needed the things that had gone dead on them and presumably hadn't bothered to retrieve them.

But the monster was silent again, and it was her turn to distract it. She had her piece of trash ready, a nice light piece of something metallic that should make a lot of clatter. "Hey!" she yelped, and tossed it backwards over her head as she sped off in the opposite direction, scooting under the platform of something that vaguely resembled a hut with a porch.

The Ancestors made them as slaves—What could they possibly have wanted with that thing? Two-legged, piercing through the gloom of the cave with lights, huge pincers—

She cringed back into her shelter as those twin beams of light swept a little too close. The thing was getting faster, and more nimble. That was not good.

And this time it hadn't gone for the place where the trash had landed, but for somewhere nearer the place where she'd been standing when she shouted. That was worse.

"Ho!" shouted Keman, and the thing whirled and lurched off.

What could that monster possibly be good for? She ducked out of her shelter and took a quick look around, just in time to see it pick up another horse-sized construct and toss it aside, for all the world like one of her farmers, tossing aside a stone or a brick that was in the way of the plow.

Her eyes widened involuntarily as she imagined the thing picking up—say—the load on a wagon, and moving it to a barn.

Of course . .. that's what it's for. :Keman—that monster—it's meant to move things.:

:Well, it's doing a good job of it!: Keman responded acidly. :It almost dropped that last bit it threw away right on top of me!:

:No, no, I'm telling you what it's meant to do! That's the job it's meant for, to move things. That's what the Ancestors made itfor!:

The thing stopped, and started hunting for Keman, sweeping its lights over the increasingly-chaotic and increasingly-tangled ranks of constructs. :So—what does a thing like that need—to do its job?: came Keman's reply.

"Ha!" shouted Kyrtian, and the monster was off again. Shana noticed that Kyrtian hadn't bothered to toss any junk this time. He must have seen that the monster wasn't fooled by it anymore.

:A strong back, strong legs, strong arms. It's got to learn, I suppose,: she ventured.

:Well, this one's learning! It's figuring out it shouldn't chase after the decoys we've been tossing. Don't bother throwing things. Just yell, and run,: he replied. :What else, do you think?:

:Kyrtian's already figured out we aren't fooling it anymore. Um. It would need good balance. Not easy to tip over, no matter how heavy the thing is it has to pick up—: she suggested.

:So much for my idea of tripping it: The monster was definitely getting more nimble as it moved. There was less blundering into things now, more picking them up and tossing them aside. Why was it chasing them if it was supposed to be a cargo-mover? Could the enemies of the Ancestors have something to do with that, or had the thing just gone—well—crazy in all the centuries of inactivity?

:You likely wouldn't want it to cut things up, so those pincers must be blunt.: She was trying to think of anything useful.

:Yes. It didn't have to cut that Elvenlord in half, only crush him,: came the sardonic reply. .-Whoever he was and whatever his business was.:

.¦Following Kyrtian, at a guess. Maybe the Great Lords didn 't trust him as much as he thought they did.: She shook herself to get rid of the distracting speculations. It was her turn. She got out of her shelter, picked up a flat piece of 'glass' and chose another hiding place. Maybe if she threw it in a different way than just tossing it anyhow, it might still distract the monster.

"Hey!" she screamed, sent the thing spinning off like the saucers that the children played with, and dashed for cover.

She reached it just in time, and was alarmed to see that this time the construct aimed for the center of the arc, not the place where the glass landed. Too close!

:Keman! Can that thing reach behind itself, do you think?:

She sensed Keman's head popping up cautiously, and got a brief glimpse of what he saw before he dove back down into hiding. .7 don't think it can!: he replied with excitement. .7 don't think it can see behind it, either!:

So. That was one weakness. No, two!

:Ifyou took dragon-form—: she hardly dared suggest it, and Keman would need time to take the form—but in dragon-form Keman was just as big as the monster was. Could he be a match for it?

.7 could leap onto its back and keep it occupied,: Keman replied firmly. -.Then you get to Kyrtian, and both of you get into the tunnel. I'll follow once you're gone. I'll be right on your heels.:

.But—: she protested—she hadn't intended that at all!

:You might as well, since I'm going to do what I want to anyway.: And he closed his mind off to her.

Damn him! she thought with a flare of anger—and shook that off, too. No time, there was no time for anything now but action.

She sensed where Kyrtian was, and waited.

"Ha!" the Elvenlord shouted hoarsely, and made his move. She did the same as soon as the monster was out of sight, planning her run to end near his.

The monster came to a halt almost directly between them, and she froze, holding her breath. Light swept over her hiding-place. Once. Twice.

Did it guess? Were dim senses waking up, becoming keener as its movements grew surer? Instinct shrieked at her to shrink back, further into hiding; sense told her to keep absolutely still.

"Ho!" Keman shouted, and the thing lurched off. Before Kyrtian had a chance to move, Shana did, diving under the wheeled vehicle that concealed him.

She found herself nose-to-nose with the Elvenlord, whose white face held an expression of utter shock at seeing her. "We need to get it to turn as soon as it's on top of Keman," she whispered without preamble. "He's going to take dragon-form and jump on it from behind."

"And do what?" Kyrtian asked, aghast.

"How should I know?" she snapped. "He's decided that's what he's going to do so we can get out the way your two men did. He says he's going to follow—"

"Well I think I can drain that thing if he can get it immobilized—" Kyrtian began, and the crashing footsteps 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!"