Mercedes Lackey - Elvenborn

"What — are — those?" Shana asked, her voice high and strained.

Kyrtian only shook his head. "I don't know. There isn't any­one alive who could tell you. Oh, I know what they are collec­tively, they're things the Ancestors made to serve them in all the ways that slaves do now. Magic is what made them work, but once the Portal closed, they wouldn't work anymore and they were abandoned. As to why they wouldn't work, I can't say."

"Serve them?" Lynder said, puzzlement in his voice.

Kyrtian's tone was as dry as the dust lying over everything. "Of course. You don't think our Ancestors ever put hand to tool themselves, do you? They created these things—to plow and dig, build and tear down—"

"And make war?" Keman asked, harshly.

Kyrtian glanced at him, mouth set in a thin line. But his tone was mild. "Make war?" he replied, softly. "Oh yes. That, cer­tainly. Above all other things. The Ancestors made war among themselves, war of a sort that makes everything we did to the Wizards seem the merest game."

Shana looked away from Kyrtian's face back to the rank upon rank of constructions, and shuddered. Under the dust, metal gleamed with cruel efficiency. Were those blades? Was that a reaper of corn—or of lives? A digger of ditches—or of graves?

She decided not to ask a question to which she did not want to know the answer.

But Kyrtian made a strangled little sound, and abruptly jumped down from the edge of the cave-mouth, landing in a crouch only to sprint off to one side of the huge cavern, where there were a few of the mechanisms that were not in such or­dered rows. With a muffled oath, Lynder followed, then the rest of them, trailing along behind.

Aelmarkin cursed the men who lowered him down every time he collided with another rock, lashing them through their col­lars with the punishment of pain. It was not enough to satisfy him, but he dared to do no more; too much and they only be­came clumsier. He'd assumed—foolishly, in retrospect—that they could simply lower him down comfortably to the bottom of the place. Instead, he was having to practically walk down the tumbled slope of rocks that was the mirror of the pile out­side; just as difficult as being hauled up that slope, but more painful, since the idiots above kept dislodging rocks that fell on his head and they kept lowering him in a series of jerks. Each one endfcd in a collision with more rocks since each time he was caught off-guard and off-balance.

Idiots! He would certainly leave some of them behind as bait for the monsters in this benighted place, and at that it was bet­ter than they deserved. He'd suspect they were doing this on purpose except that his punishments were worse than anything he was enduring.

When he finally bumped down with a painful thud onto the floor of the cave, he gave them all a final reminder of his power over them that made them yelp. The echoes of four howls of pain reverberated long enough to give him a fleeting moment of satisfaction. He picked himself up out of the dust and kicked the trash he'd fallen on out of his way angrily before sending his mage-light up to illuminate more of the area.

No point in looking up to glare at them. They were gone, of course, Scuttling back to the shelter of their tents and their fire, where they would stay, probably lazing about and trying to find

non-existent supplies of wine among his belongings. He knew they wouldn't leave the camp; they were more afraid of the for­est than they were of him. Foresters they might be, but this wasn't their forest, and they were superstitiously terrified not only of the very real monsters among the trees, but the spirits they swore they'd heard in the night. They'd be waiting for him when he returned, all right... not knowing that if his hopes were fulfilled, he wouldn't need them. He'd have power enough to blast this place open or create a Gate home. Or fly, if he chose. That would be novel; there were old legends of how the Ancestors flew, on the backs of metal-beaked birds with razor-tipped wings and scythes for talons, how they would duel in the air until blood fell like warm rain on the faces of those below. Perhaps there were constructs like that waiting here....

Well! He wasn't finding them standing about and kicking trash. Nor was he discovering just what Kyrtian was up to if it wasn 't hunting relics of the Ancestors or the Wizards he was supposed to be pursuing.

He turned. It was clear enough where Kyrtian had gone, the path through the debris was plain enough for a woman to pick out. It was also clear that this cave wasn't littered with just the trash that the wind had blown in. So—Kyrtian had found the place where the Great Portal had made an entrance into this world!

"By the Ancestors!" Aelmarkin said aloud, and his own voice repeated his astonishment in echoes that whispered in the cave as if a crowd mimicked his surprise.

A skull—an Elven skull, by the high-arched forehead and the narrow jaw—lay directly in his path, glaring at him, as if daring him to pass.

Aelmarkin sneered at it. What matter a few bones? Bones were nothing. Those of the Ancestors that died here weren't Ancestors at all, were they? They hadn't gotten their bloodlines any deeper in this world than the floor of the cave. What matter that Aelmarkin's path led over those bones? That way lay his fortune, and he wasn't going to let the bones of a few dead fools stop him.

"You," he told the skull, contemptuously, "are a nothing. A dead-end. You can't even manage to block my way."

He brought his booted foot down on the skull deliberately, smashing it. It broke with no more effort than destroying an egg. His next step took him past the fragile fragments, and he didn't look back.

The demi-barricade at the tunnel's mouth didn't stop him, ei­ther; in fact; he took a great deal of grim pleasure in bullying past it, kicking at the carts and the bones of the legendary dray- lanthans and seeing them disintegrate. Not as much pleasure as he might have, since the wreckage pretty much fell to bits at a touch, but enough.

Some fools might find all this horrifying. All he felt was more contempt for the weaklings who had been so afraid of pursuit—for of course, it could only have been pursuit that they feared—that they allowed their panic to turn what could have been an orderly procession into a rout. And for what?

So their bones could rot on the floor of a cave before they even saw the light of their new world, that's what.

He wondered, as he penetrated further into the cave-complex, if all of the legends of harmony and cooperation were so much rot after all. It was obvious from this decayed chaos that there had been panic, fighting, but there was no sign of whatever was the cause. Unless, of course, the Ancestors had brought the cause with them....

What if they'd begun fighting amongst each other for ascen­dancy as soon as they got safely to the other side?

That would certainly explain the rout—

In fact, such an explanation made more sense than the offi­cial version of the Crossing.

Suppose, just suppose, that not all of the Ancestors had given everything they had to the creation of the Great Portal? That was what he would have done, come down to it. Now, suppose that faction-within-a-faction had then turned on the rest, when they were out of magic, depleted, vulnerable?

He grinned savagely, kicking a bit of debris out of the way. Of course—that was what must have happened! It explained all

of this, and explained why no one had ever come back here un­til the secret of just where the Portal was had been lost to mem­ory. After all, those clever bastards who'd won wouldn't want to chance coming upon a survivor amid the wreckage, or chance on someone uncovering the real version of what had happened! And besides, things had been hard enough on those who survived, creating their strongholds, waiting to see what perils lurked in this new world and trying to defend against whatever might come.