The Corps of Sergeants waited patiently for Crovax to join them. The commander's kerl was tethered to the stump of a lance outside his quarters. More than half the army was on the path back to the Stronghold, and there was no sign of Crovax.
"Someone should rouse him," Tharvello said. The other sergeants shook their heads. No one wanted to incur his wrath.
"Nasser, you're his favorite. You do it," said Tharvello.
"I can wait."
"Ha! You're afraid of him too!"
Eyes narrowed to slits, Nasser dismounted his sootsmudged kerl and tossed the reins to the nearest mogg. He squared his shoulders and walked to the door of the little sod hut-just a flap of tattered canvas, waving slowly in the light breeze.
Five feet from the hut, Nasser halted and called out, "My lord! The army is underway. Will you take your place with us?"
A muffled thud, and a cloud of dirt whirled away from Crovax's hut. Shafts of blinding white light burst from every crack and crevice in the sod walls. Nasser threw an arm over his face, and the hut collapsed with a spurt of gray dust and ash.
"Sergeants, to me!" Nasser cried. A dozen seasoned warriors ran to the destroyed shack and tore through the poles and clods of earth looking for their commander. When they found themselves scraping at virgin soil beneath the hut, the sergeants realized Crovax was gone. Everyone spoke at once.
"What happened?"
"Eladamri-"
"-elven magic!"
"Some new weapon-?"
"-Eladamri-"
Nasser squatted in the remains of the hut, toying in the debris with his fingers. His careful contemplation of the situation gradually calmed his fellow sergeants.
At last someone said, "Where did he go?"
"Maybe back to where he came from," Tharvello said. "What do we do now?"
The senior sergeant dusted the drab soil of Rath from his hands. "I will take command."
They were more than happy to let him shoulder the burden. Tharvello said, "What are your orders, Nasser?"
"Without a body, I can't assume Lord Crovax is dead. The commander's last order stands," he decided. "We go home."
Predator was airborne again, thanks to Greven's tireless efforts. After the hostages were secured, Greven returned to the airship dock, where he oversaw the replacement of Predator's powerful engines. The hull was floated out the lower dock and carefully steered to the upper landing pylon. There the final refit would take place, and Greven would take on new crew to replace those lost in the costly battle with Weatherlight.
Ertai disappeared into the libraries of the Citadel, beset by the conundrums of his place in the scheme of things. Days passed, and Belbe saw little of him. When she finally did, she was amazed by the changes slowly transforming him. Early one morning she found him perched on a table in one of the old scroll depositories, surrounded by heaps of discarded documents. It was stifling in the narrow room, and Ertai had stripped to the waist to better bear the heat.
Never a muscular fellow formerly, Ertai now displayed a formidable breadth of shoulder as he sat hunched over a scroll. That, and the fact his hair had become copper-brown made Belbe doubt she was seeing him at all.
"Hello," she said uncertainly. "I see you're making use of the libraries."
"These scrolls are all wrong," Ertai said, pushing the heavy scroll aside. "Their description of energy crossover-"
"What's happening to you, Ertai?"
He looked at her from under heavy-lidded eyes. "What are you talking about?"
"You're changing. Your hair, your physique-"
"It's to be expected," he said, stretching his bare arms, now covered with thin, ropy muscles. "The energy infusions you started me on are doing it. Every time I go back to Volrath's laboratory, I change a little more."
She drew back. "You're still using the infuser? Why?"
"Imagine my chagrin when I discovered the effects of the device were only temporary. When my injuries return, I have to go back to the infuser for another treatment. I should've known it wouldn't actually heal me. If I hadn't been so hurt, I'm sure I would have thought of it."
"Thought of what?"
Ertai leaned his cheek against his knee. "Only natural life-energy can heal human flesh. Other varieties can mask damage by transforming it into something else. In my case, Volrath's device seems to be making me into a lesser version of our friend Greven."
"No!"
"It doesn't matter. I can't stop now, anyway. If 1 miss a day at the infuser, the misery of the torture session comes back. I can't bear it… a little muscle won't hurt me, and my mind is still my own. Maybe even better, if that's possible. I'm reading eight books a day, did you know that? I'll be through this library soon, then I'll move on to the next."
"Be careful, Ertai."
He smiled in his own wry way. Ertai held up his hand, palm out, to the closest scroll-laden shelf. The flowstone rippled like a reefing sail. He sustained the motion for several seconds before it faded.
"Your influence is improving," she said, pleased.
"Yes. I may give Crovax a surprise before long."
She wanted to speak to him about his growing power, but Ertai lowered his head to his reading again and quickly forgot Belbe was present. She backed out of the close little room. Her heart was beating fast, and she didn't know why. It took several minutes to slow it to a normal rhythm.
Belbe continued her rounds of the Citadel, stopping by the factory control room to check on the Accelerator unit she'd installed. The stubborn device kept trying to raise production to inefficient levels above 100 percent, which forced Belbe to improvise a method to hamper the machine's excessive enthusiasm for production. She settled for tampering with the output meter, resetting it by hand to fool the Accelerator into thinking the factory was producing more flowstone than it actually was. However, there was a problem with her makeshift solution. Like every other mechanism in the factory, the output meter was self' correcting. In the course of several days' production, it would discover its readings were inaccurate and correct itself. Thus Belbe would have to return to the control dome every other day to reset the output meter to maintain maximum efficiency.
While she was adjusting the output meter for the first time, she spotted a ball of white light, about two feet wide, circling and descending the energy column. The ball darted first in one direction, then another. Belbe lost it for a second against the glare of the beam, then adjusted her vision to see past the column's corona. High above, the white ball of light hovered over the upper airship dock. It dipped behind the pylon and was lost from sight.
Curious, she left the control station and made her way back to the residential wing of the Citadel. Everything seemed normal. Servants and courtiers bowed as she passed. Guards stood at their stations, unalarmed.
She reached the main intersection in the heart of the palace. From here, stairs and flowbot lifts branched out all over the structure-up to the evincar's quarters, down to the laboratories, libraries, map room, armories, and prison. Belbe strained every nerve in her being, searching for the fiery intruder. The strongest trace (which was very weak indeed) came from a window in the outside wall. From there she looked down on the mogg warrens, map tower, Volrath's laboratory, and the roof of the Dream Halls. The arched roof of the hall bore ghostly heat trails, crisscrossing back and forth. The phantom visitor was there.
For the first time in her short life, Belbe ran. Her legs were quite healed after her fall in the ruins a few days ago, and she ran to the physical limits of her alloy frame. Flashing down the dark corridors of the palace, she passed unsuspecting courtiers and soldiers in a blur. Within seconds, Belbe was at the doors of the Dream Halls. Her hands were just about on the handles when the tall double doors swung silently inward. Belbe rushed into the vast, silent hall.