Aelmarkin smothered a howl of glee, and placed the hand holding his hand-light against the Elf-stone embedded in the construct's side. It sucked in the power greedily. The hand-light vanished.
And then—Aelmarkin felt it wake and—look for more. And felt its fierce concentration focus on him.
He tried to pull his hand away in a flash of alarm.
But by then, of course, it was already too late.
Kyrtian had finally allowed Lynder and Keman to lead him to a seat on a nearby outcrop of rock. He felt—hollow. And exhausted. As if he had wept for a year, although he was dry-eyed.
At least mother isn 't here. That was all he could think of. At least she can't see—this. I don't think she could bear it. I think she 'd go mad.
"No, don't try to chip—it out," he said with difficulty in answer to Lynder's question. "I don't ever want Lady Lydiell to see him. Not like that, anyway. Maybe we can find a way to cover him over—"
He shuddered, a spasm of a thing that left him sweating and shaking. What must have happened? He must have somehow wakened one of those—things. Maybe it fed off his mage-lights, and he didn 't realize what was happening. He must have been so excited—too excited to think clearly.
He buried his head in his hands, shuddering all over, in spasms he couldn't control. He wanted to howl, to rail at fate, and above all things, to weep. Why couldn't he weep?
Which one of these hulks had done the deed? He wanted to know that, suddenly, with a fierce anger that took him and left him shaking. That, above all, he had to find out! He'd find the thing and take it to bits with his bare hands, and grind the bits to
dust and scatter the dust over the barren desert, by the Ancestors, he would!
He stood up, still shaking, and turned towards them—just in time to see one of them slowly rising up from among its fellows, towering higher and higher, with something doll-like and screaming clenched in one fearsome claw.
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 wilder-
ness 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.