Terry Brooks - The Elves of Cintra

Simralin stopped. "I think you should use the Stones, Little K." She flashed the beam of her torch right and left. "Do you see? Tunnels branch off in several directions from here. We need to know which way to go."

Kirisin nodded, but looked around doubtfully. He didn't care much for the idea of trying to summon the magic of the Elfstones in this con–fined space. Who knew what it might do underground? But he duti–fully fished out the Stones, dumped them into his palm, held out his fist, closed his eyes, and formed a mental picture of the Loden. The re–sponse was so instantaneous that it made him jump in surprise. The Elfstones flared sharply, and the blue light shot from his hand and down the corridor directly ahead to illuminate something crouched in the middle of a massive cavern chamber, something that was more nightmare than vision.

The light from the Elfstones dimmed and vanished. Kirisin stood in shocked silence with his sister, staring down the black hole of the cave tunnel.

"Did you see?" he whispered, shaken.

"I saw something," she replied. "But I don't think it was real." "It looked real to me."

"No, it was just a carving. Out of ice and rock."

"It was a dragon, Sim."

She shook her head. "There aren't any dragons. You know that."

Well, he did, but that didn't make him feel any better about what he had seen. He tucked the Elfstones back in his pocket beneath his all–weather cloak, suddenly wishing he were wearing something more pro–tective.

"Let's go have a look," she said, and started ahead once more.

They passed down the corridor, moving from one chamber to an–other, winding their way deeper and deeper into the mountain. The beams of their torches cut through the darkness, giving them some re–assurance that they were not about to be set upon. Time slipped away, and still the tunnels and caves continued and there was no sign of the chamber and its dragon. Kirisin began to wonder if he really had seen a dragon. He began to wonder if the altitude had affected him and he was starting to see things that weren't there.

And then suddenly they passed out of a broad tunnel into a huge cavern, and there it was.

They stopped the moment they saw it, tiny figures in its presence. The dragon was huge, fully thirty feet tall if it was an inch, crouched down on four legs at the chamber's very center, its body covered with scales and horns, leathery wings folded back against its body, claws ex–tended at the ends of its crooked toes, spiked tail curled back around its hindquarters like a giant whip.

But it was its mouth–or more accurately, its jaws–that drew their immediate attention. The great head was lowered so that the lower jaw and long, forked tongue rested on the cavern floor. The upper jaw was stretched open to the breaking point, so wide that a man eight feet tall could have walked upright to the back of its throat. Teeth ridged the jaws in double rows, top and bottom, front to back, like bars across a gate leading into a dark fortress.

Kirisin stared at the monster, transfixed. Simralin had been right: a layer of ice covered over what appeared to be chiseled stone, every–thing frozen in place. It was not alive; it was only a sculpture.

But what was it doing here?

He looked suddenly at its eyes, cloudy orbs within its fierce face. A shiver ran down the back of his neck, and he took an involuntary step back.

— Kirisin Belloruus

The voice whispered to him, hushed and disembodied, the voice he had heard earlier that same morning when he had used the Elfstones to find the cave entrance. Calling to him. Summoning him.

He took a quick breath. "Sim," he whispered. "Did you hear … ?"

"Use the Elfstones," she interrupted, not listening to him.

"This has to be where it is."

Kirisin already knew that. He already knew a whole lot more than he wanted to. He couldn't have explained it, not in a rational way. He just knew in the way you sometimes knew things. By how being close to them made you feel. By how logic took a backseat to instinct. He wished it weren't so, but there it was. He just knew.

He didn't have to use the Elfstones to find out where the Loden was. It was inside the dragon.

This was more of Pancea Rolt Gotrin's work. Magic of a kind that no longer existed had been used to create this dragon and to place the Loden within. The dragon was the Elfstone's protector. It was its keeper and its warden. If you wanted to take possession of the Loden, you had to brave the dragon's maw. You had to accept on faith or what–ever reasonable argument you could make to yourself that it would let you pass.

But how would it know who to admit? There had to be a way, a trigger for determining whom it should be.

"The Loden is inside the dragon," he said to his sister. "I have to go in after it."

She shook her head at once. "Oh, no. That's entirely too dangerous. We have to be certain about this first."

She walked forward to stand right in front of the dragon's mouth, shining the beam of her solar torch through the rows of teeth and into the throat. The beam shone to the front of the throat and stopped as if it had encountered a wall.

"There's nothing back there," she announced, leaning forward to peer inside.

Kirisin knew that this wasn't so. But Sim would have to be con–vinced. He reached into his pocket and took out the Elfstones. Then he walked forward to stand next to her. He let her see what he was hold–ing, then closed his hand about the Stones, squeezed his eyes shut, and went inside himself once more, searching for an image of the Loden. He had his vision in place quickly, and his response from the Elfstones more quickly still. The magic flared within his fist, and its blue light ex–ploded down the dragon's throat, past where Simralin's torchlight had stopped and then down farther still, traveling a distance too far to de–termine, coming to rest finally on a pedestal that cradled a white gem–stone blazing as brightly as a small sun.

The light from Kirisin's Elfstones died away, and he looked over at his sister questioningly.

"Okay," she said. "But I'm going with you."

He shook his head. "I don't think you can. I don't think it's allowed. This dragon is some kind of watchdog. Pancea Rolt Gotrin and her fam–ily probably constructed it with magic. They put the Loden Elfstone inside to protect it. It keeps out everyone who isn't permitted to enter. A moment ago, I was wondering how the dragon would know who to let in. I think the blue Elfstones are the key. I think that's one reason Pancea's shade gave them to me. Whoever holds the Stones is allowed inside. Everyone else gets …"

He trailed off, shrugging. "Eaten or something."

"You think this, but you don't know it," she pointed out.

He shook his head. "I think it, but I also feel it." He tapped his chest. "In here."

His sister gave him a long, hard look. "I don't like it. What if you're wrong?"

"Then you can come get me out. That's what big sisters are for. Meanwhile, you can wait here for Angel. She should be along any mo–ment now. She needs to know what we're doing."

He could see Simralin struggling to find something more to say, still unhappy with what he was proposing. But they both knew there wasn't any other choice if they were to have a chance of gaining pos–session of the Loden. And after all, that was what they had come this far to do. In the final analysis, that was what they must do.

She gave a deep sigh and nodded. "Be careful. If there's magic at work, you won't have much protection."

"About as much as I had in the tombs of Ashenell," he replied, smil–ing. "Keep the faith, Sim."

She smiled back. "You keep it for me, Little K."

He turned back to the dragon. Its jaws yawned before him, an invi–tation to enter the blackest of maws. He gave a quick glance at its rows of teeth and then at the strange glassy eyes, wondering again if he had seen them move.