Sabotage had been easy. The Kingpriest had little regard for safety, and the whole network tumbled in upon itself in a vast, subterranean chain reaction. Already dust was rising from the lower corridors, and Spinel urged the younglings on, lifting a frail little elf-maid to his crusted shoulders and carrying her toward the entrance and freedom.
"Where are we going?" she asked, and asked again as the corridor snaked up through thick, glassy layers of obsidian.
Spinel soothed her with a faint, musical cooing, reached up and stroked her shoulder with a knobby hand.
He must protect these children. The fate of the Lucanesti lay in their futures.
^ Spinel calmed the children, stepped over the body of a battered Istarian sentry sprawled at the intersec shy;tion of two collapsed tunnels. It was apparent that Jargoonjiail been hard at work, and judging from the face of the poor Istarian, the elves had been enthusiastically merciless.
Holding his breath, the old elf rushed up the corri shy;dor, past another felled sentry, and another. Now the entrance to the mine was fully visible, a bright arch in the receding gloom some hundred yards away.
Spinel quickened his steps.
But where was Jargoon and his company? Spinel looked to the side tunnels, all collapsed and filled with rubble.
There was no sign of the other elves.
* * * * *
Long before the Lucanesti were brought to the cav shy;erns below Istar, before the long line of Kingpriests
and the city itself, a race of creatures ruled the intricate underworld of obsidian and brittle pumice and ages of dark voldanic gems.
The spiritvnaga had guarded these recesses dili shy;gently, jealously, hoarding the jewels, the precious metals-any stone that caught their depthless, glit shy;tering eyes-and guarding their riches out of sheer and aimless greed.
When the elves had come, the naga had fought against their invasion, and the nightmares of Lucanesti children were soon peopled with these monsters. Enormous serpents with passionless, blank human faces became the villains of a thousand elven legends, and every catastrophe from famine to collapsed tunnels was seen as the doing of the naga. Most importantly, the beasts practiced a rough and villainous magic, armed with an array of spells that blinded and stunned their unfortunate victims, so that the creatures might approach them and, using a magic more ancient and despicable still, drain their prey of all moisture, leaving the elves a mocking heap of opalescent bone.
Sinister and marginal, the spirit naga were a mys shy;tery to the Lucanesti, to the Istarians, to dwarf and druid as\well.
But nojt to Takhisis.
Long ago the goddess had found them and made them her minions.
The time had come to deploy them.
Now, an ancient naga crouched in the shadows beside the last clear entrance to the Istarian mines, hissing with hungry anticipation. The sinuous, scaled form flashed once in the rubble.
It was answered by another movement in the darkness on the other side of the entrance.
Which was enough for the old elf to understand.
Two of them. And no sign of Jargoon.
The monsters would make short work of the chil shy;dren, here at the edge of freedom, unless …
How did the words of the chanting go? It had been a hundred years since he used the spell, four hundred seasons with his thoughts on tunnels and corridors and hidden veins of opal.
Yet it was there, if he mined his memory wisely.
Slowly, Spinel lowered the elf-child to the tunnel floor. A faint rumbling from the rocks let him know the naga awaited them, had begun their long and treacherous incantations.
"Culet," he whispered to the little elf-maid. "When I tell you to run toward the light, you will do so. It is a game we can play, you and I, but remember to keep running when you reach the light and the wind. The rest of the people will follow."
Two of the older elf-children exchanged troubled glances, andthe corridor filled with the sound of a dry rustle, like something crawling over a century of leaves.
"Do not concern yourselves with me," Spinel assured them, affecting bravery, confidence, hoping his voice did not betray him. "You will follow Culet on my signal, and I shall join you later."
May the gods grant that reunion, he thought, his gaze flickering over the stirring darkness, the deep muttering in the rocks.
Slowly his arm encircled the elf-maid. Spinel guided her to the forefront of the company and, with a last, quick embrace, pushed her forward and away from him.
"Now!" he commanded, and the girl ran dutifully toward the light, the others following. Spinel ran with them, his old, stony bones creaking with sud shy;den movement, and there, at the entrance to the mines, he turned to face the waiting creatures.
Mouthing an old elven incantation, Spinel stood in the opening, and a globe of amber light formed around him. As each child, each youngling passed through the glow, it was as though they were cleansed and delivered. Shielding their eyes, they burst into sunlight and fresh airland a new, unex shy;pected life.
The nagas, unable to penetrate the amber glow of magic, groaned angrily in the darkness.
Finally, the last of the elf children leapt free of the mine. The light around him fading, Spinel prepared to follow, but the incantations, faint during his own swelling magic, grew louder and louder still.
Blocking out thought, and will, and memory.
Wearily, he took a last step toward the light, and his unveiled eyes looked longingly at the rockface, a patch of green and a spray of wildflowers in the midst of the black obsidian.
Gentian, he thought. And I had almost forgotten.
The monsters slithered into the light, blockingxthe entrance, Rising and arching, their pale, human› faces expressionless, they chanted the last of the spell to the humped, opalescent pillar at the edge of the cavernous dark.
Spinel became one with his ancestors and the earth that covered them.
The Dark Queen hovered in the upper chambers of the opal mines. A black dust whirling in the stag shy;nant passages, she heard the rumbling deep in the ground and rejoiced.
What difference did it make that the mines col shy;lapsed? That the elven younglings had escaped?
Most of the Lucanesti were far underground, easy prey for rockslides and spirit naga. As for the rest…
They would suffer the most in her impending return.
For now was the hour, when the Kingpriest chanted and the glain dust, the godsblood, filled with her fierce and abysmal life.
This did not go according to her schedule. Had it not been for that impudent ancient elf-the one who lay stony dead at the very edge of light and free shy;dom-she could have planned all things in her own time.
But now, the remaining opals darkly glittering in the depths of the earth, far from the grasp of her minionsTitwas as good a time as any. And a time to demolish the twenty or so remaining Plainsmen in the southern passes, the fool of a slave, the bard- the lot of them.
As though a wind rose from the deepest recesses of the planet, the dark dust rose and sifted through the cracks in the earth, merging into a hulking black cloud, sprouting tail and talon and tattered wings in its headlong flight for the lofty parapets of the King-priest's Tower.
When the windows spoke to him, clouded in smoke and approaching evening, their message was urgent, angered.
Now is the time, they told the Kingpriest. Your bride awaitsryou in the collected dust.
But he no longer believed the voices. It was fear that prompted his magic, rather than hope and desire. Sifting the glain dust through his trembling hands, he began the first of the incantations, his breath enkindling the dust, spangling it with a harsh, artificial light.