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!"