Ertai shoved Dorian backward. The chamberlain's head thumped on the floor, and when it did, the flowstone gripped his balding head and held it there.
Eyes wide with shock, Dorian babbled, "You control the stone!"
"In small ways," Ertai replied, rising and dusting himself off. "Now, what's got you in such a panic? Six thousand people don't just disappear. Greven must have moved them."
"Greven flew out in Predator this morning-and not a single hostage remains in the holding area!"
His words speared Ertai through the heart. With his concentration rattled, his control of the flowstone evaporated. Freed, Dorian sat up and clutched Ertai's leg.
"I received a report from the commissary officer not two hours ago. He went to the stockades to distribute food and water and discovered everyone was gone."
"What about the guards?"
"Gone, too." Dorian began to weep. "There were large numbers of footprints leading out of the city into the caverns, but there's no way out of the crater there."
"Did you send anyone out to search?"
Dorian nodded, wiping his nose on his sleeve. "Of course I did! Some came back saying the tracks lead right up the crater wall-but there's no tunnel or cave at the spot, just a blind wall! Four men were lost during the search. I fear the Death Pits-"
"What's that?"
Dorian squirmed with reluctance. "A fable, mostly. The residue of the flowstone creation process is pumped into remote caverns and crevices. It looks like tar, but it's very poisonous. The credulous believe the Death Pits are sentient. It's just a myth."
"You said you feared it," Ertai objected.
"It is poisonous!" Dorian began to tear up again. "If a single hostage dies, it will be very bad for us!"
"Come," said Ertai, hoisting the rotund chamberlain to his feet. "We'll find Belbe."
"I've looked and looked. No one knows where she is."
Ertai closed his eyes and held his hands six inches apart, right in front of his chest. Magical energy crackled between his palms, quickly solidifying into a spinning starshaped object.
"What's that?" asked Dorian, drying his eyes.
"A ferret." Ertai imparted a single mental command to his magical creation: Find Belbe. The star spun away. He grabbed the front of Dorian's robe and said, "This way! Don't lose sight of it!"
They followed the flying ferret through dark halls and light, and before long it became obvious where it was going.
"She's in the great hall," Ertai said. "Where she arrived."
One of the huge doors was ajar. The spinning star hovered outside, unable to pass the powerful wards placed around the Dream Halls. Ertai dispelled the ferret with a wave of his hand. With Dorian in tow, they entered the vast hall.
Ertai's foot crunched something. The floor was littered with shiny gray shards. It wasn't flowstone but some kind of crystal. As far as the eye could see, the concourse was peppered with the stuff.
Several yards away there was a crash, followed by the tinkle of broken bits. Ertai raced ahead and found fragments of a newly smashed globe still spinning on the mirror-black floor.
"Belbe?"
He heard a low voice muttering, and another gray globe came crashing down a few feet away. Ertai looked up and saw a figure moving in the dim heights overhead.
"Belbe?" he called more loudly.
"Go away, I'm busy."
He frowned. What had gotten into her? "It's about the hostages! They're missing!"
She was silent for a moment, then said, "Come up."
He cast about for a ladder, stairs, any way up. "How?"
"You're the magician."
Angrily, he went to one of the monumental pilasters that supported the glass roof. He placed his hands against the hard flowstone surface, and scooped handholds formed for him. He climbed steadily, noting the handholds smoothed out after he passed them. The ceiling was very high, and it took him several minutes of climbing before he reached a sort of mezzanine made of a black metal lattice, invisible from below. Here were stored all the strange devices Volrath used to explore and preserve his dreams. Belbe had been going along the platform prying out all the dream storage globes and hurling them to the floor.
She sat astride the mesh ledge, her feet dangling in the open air. Ertai cautiously slipped onto the platform and tried not to look down.
"What are you doing?" he demanded.
"It's called 'cleaning house,'" she said. "I've been getting tid of Volrath's collection of terrors and pleasures." She held up a broken shell. "In his case, there wasn't much difference."
"Belbe, the Dal, Vec, and Kor hostages are missing!"
She tossed the shell into the void. "Did they escape?"
"I don't know! Dorian says even the guards have vanished."
"Ah. I wonder…"
"You know something?" He leaned over and grabbed her hand. "Belbe, what's going on? The safety of thousands is at stake!"
She looked away. "It's probably Crovax's doing."
"Crovax? Is he here?"
"Crovax has returned, and his powers have greatly increased. He could open a tunnel through the crater wall with a wave of his hand."
"By all the colors-if he hurts those people, every member of their families will join Eladamri's rebellion!"
"Crovax…" She gripped the mesh platform on either side, each finger in a different perforation. When she said Crovax's name, she closed her hand, tearing the enormously strong metal lattice like rotten cloth.
"Let's get down from here," she announced.
"I can make handholds, if you want to go down with me."
"Too slow." She grabbed an empty dream catcher and hugged it close. "Come here, Ertai." He crept to her. She scooped him in with her free arm. "Hold on."
"What are you-?"
Before he could finish his question, Belbe slid off the platform. They plunged down, Ertai yelling all the way. Halfway to the floor the dream catcher's wire spool tightened, slowing them. It adjusted for their extra weight and lowered them gently to the concourse.
His feet on solid ground again, Ertai said, "You could have warned me!"
"Candidates for evincar should be bold," she said. She opened her arms, releasing Ertai and the dream catcher. The empty mechanism whirred, and with a snap, flew back to the rafters.
With Dorian in tow, Belbe and Ertai rushed out of the hall. She detoured through the garrison to turn out the palace guard.
Seal the Citadel, she ordered the guards; no one was to get in or out without her approval. Then she, Ertai, and Dorian piled into one of Volrath's fleshstone walking machines. Even with extreme haste, it would still take a couple of hours to circumnavigate the crater to the point outside the Stronghold where the hostages' tracks had led.
Deep within the Skyshroud Forest lay the Eye of Korai, a flat-topped mound created over the course of several centuries by the elves of the forest. Baskets of dirt and stone were brought from outside the Skyshroud and deposited in a spot located within the densest part of the swamp. Over the years, an artificial island was created, rising some twenty-two feet above the stagnant black waters. The flat top covered an acre and a half and was paved with thousands of carefully fitted stones, brought in by hand by generations of elves. The mound was called the Eye of Korai after the great elf chieftain who began it.
Early in the rebellion, Greven il-Vec found the Eye from the air, and the site was badly damaged by bombs. The Eye was repaired, and a giant camouflage net was fabricated to cover the mound. Woven of living vines, the net blended in with the natural tree canopy, hiding the elves' sacred assembly site.
It was at the Eye of Korai that the elf tribes gathered to celebrate their most solemn ceremonies, to honor their dead (who were buried in tomb chambers deep in the mound), and to consult each other on important issues. It was only natural the Eye was chosen as the place Eladamri and his allies were to meet the most revered holy figure on Rath, the Oracle en-Vec.