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 light-
beams 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