Part 9 (2/2)

A m.u.f.fled hoot made D'Marr glance down at the captive. The Quel had evidently fathomed the raider leader's intentions. He squirmed anew, trying to free himself from bonds designed to hold creatures much stronger than he. D'Marr increased the intensity of his scepter and jolted the Quel back into submission. He would have liked to have asked the beastman what concerned him so, but he had neither the time nor the means to do so. We will know soon enough . . .

The former keeper inspected the curved artifact. ”There can be no flaw,” he explained to no one in particular. ”All of my calculations of the past days demand that. Any flaw would mean disaster.”

It was no comfort at all to the young raider that D'Rance was just as dismayed by the comment as he was. The blue man took an involuntary step backward and, if anything, was a much paler blue than he had been seconds before.

D'Farany looked up from his work. He gazed at the Quel as if seeing him for the first time. ”This device is recent, isn't it? I thought as much. It lacks the care and design of so much else here, yet it holds so much more potential. Why did you build it?”

The Quel, of course, could not and would not answer. This was apparently unimportant to Lord D'Farany. He shrugged and returned his concern to the Aramite talisman and the peculiar creation of the armored underdwellers.

”It is incomplete. I shall complete it for y-for me.”

With his free hand he rearranged the central pattern, plucking gemstones from their chosen locations and replacing them with others from the array. The Quel started to shake and twist, but still to no avail. D'Marr gave his captive another touch of the rod, but even then the ma.s.sive figure continued to s.h.i.+ft.

Satisfied with his alterations, the Pack Leader added the talisman to the arrangement.

The room crackled . . . and from each point of light a bolt of blue darted toward the Quel creation.

D'Marr covered his eyes and ducked down. The blue man pressed himself against the wall nearest to the entrance to the chamber and simply stared. Beside D'Marr, the underdweller rocked back and forth as if expecting the end of everything.

The wolf raider was almost inclined to agree with him.

Tenuous, frantic strands of light, the blue bolts struck the crystalline device, bathing it in brilliant color. D'Marr felt his hair stand of its own accord and saw that the others suffered the same effect. Only Lord D'Farany, standing within the bright cobalt glow, was untouched . . . at least on the surface.

He was smiling. Smiling as a lover might while in the tender embrace of his desire. It was perhaps a very apt description, the officer realized, for to the former keeper the power that bathed him was both his love and desire. The loss of it had killed most of his kind and sent him into madness.

Orril D'Marr was too young to really recall the keepers when they had been at the apex of their glory. He only knew the stories and the few survivors he had seen. He knew that without the will of the Ravager and the work of his most trusted servants, the keepers, the empire had begun to crumble. Part of him had always wondered at the speed of that decay. Why had the great armies so depended on a tiny minority in their ranks?

Seeing D'Farany, he thought he understood. A keeper at the peak of his power was an army unto himself.

The Pack Leader still smiled. His eyes stared upward at the spiderweb of energy pouring into the crystalline artifact. Blue sparks drifted from his fingers whenever he moved his hands. His eyes gleamed blue.

With each pa.s.sing second, the glow surrounding both the Pack Leader and his newfound toy became less bearable. D'Marr turned away, but found himself facing the blinding glow in a thousand reflections. He turned farther, seeking some respite, something that did not reflect the light.

What the raider found instead was the very pa.s.sage he had been searching for.

A gaping mouth, it was so blatant a sight he could not understand how it had taken him even this long to notice it. He took a step toward it, but then something caught him by the foot, nearly sending him cras.h.i.+ng to the harsh floor. The Aramite regained his balance and glanced over his shoulder. He saw the desperate Quel, the inhuman eyes wide, struggling to roll over to him and somehow stop the raider's advance. D'Marr smiled briefly at the pathetic sight, but a sudden change in the Quel's eyes, a change from fear to burgeoning hope, shattered the smile and sent the raider's attention flying back to the secret entranceway.

It was already fading. The same crystal-encrusted wall was slowly re-forming, growing more solid with each pa.s.sing breath. The Quel suddenly forgotten, D'Marr raced toward the vanis.h.i.+ng pa.s.sage. The wall was still transparent, but that was rapidly changing. Reaching out in desperation, he slammed a hand against it, but his efforts only rewarded him with pain. It was too late to cross through. The split-second delay caused by his gloating had lost him his opportunity.

Still, he had a moment, but only a short one, in which to glimpse what secret lay behind the cursed wall. It was a harried glimpse, made the worse by the lessening transparency of the stone and crystal. Nonetheless, he was able to make out shapes, hundreds of shapes, in a cavern that must have been nearly as immense as the one in which the city lay.

D'Marr saw no more than that. The wall became completely opaque, the stone and crystal completely innocent in appearance.

He slowly turned back to the others and was not at all surprised to find that Lord D'Farany had just completed his work. The tentacles of energy had withdrawn; if not for the blue glow about the top of the Quel device, the chamber would have looked exactly as it had before they had entered.

”Not the same . . .” the Pack Leader was muttering. Despite his words, however, a smile had crept across his scarred visage. ”Not the same, but so very close . . . I will just have to accept that.”

His eyes were still focused.

”My lord, I shall remove the tooth, yes?” D'Rance looked exceptionally eager. D'Marr momentarily put his discovery aside and started to mouth a protest. He knew, through careful observance, that the northerner had some trace of power. Was it possible that he had more? Did he have the will and ability to control the keeper talisman? That would take more skill than the Aramite had suspected him of having.

His words of protest never left his lips, for Lord D'Farany was quicker to respond. His eyes bore down on the blue man and D'Marr had the distinct pleasure of watching his rival cringe under the intensity of those suddenly alive orbs. ”Your readiness to a.s.sist me in all is commendable, Kanaan, but you may leave it where it is. There is no more secure place for it now than where it presently stands.”

D'Rance a.s.sumed a more servile position. ”Yes, my lord. I meant nothing by it, my lord.”

The Pack Leader had already dismissed him from his attention. Now those eyes focused on the peculiar scene of the Quel lying on his side far from where he had been earlier positioned and Orril D'Marr standing near the wall, much too far away from the prisoner that he had been charged with guarding. ”And you, Orril?”

The raider wondered how he was to convince Lord D'Farany of what he had seen. An entire cavern lay hidden from the invasion force, yet only he believed-knew, rather-that it was there. The Pack Leader and the blue devil had been so engrossed in the spectacle above them that they had missed the unveiling of the Quel's secret.

”Forgive me also, Lord D'Farany. Sorcery is not my realm. I admit to having been somewhat . . . overwhelmed . . . by the results. I've seen things I'd never expected to see.”

”Wonderful things . . . and there will be so much more . . .” The Pack Leader gazed down at the Quel creation, his eyes filled with great fondness. ”We shall do so much together, the two of us . . .”

The eyes were losing focus.

With a last gentle touch, the Pack Leader separated himself from his prized possession and, to neither subordinate's surprise, departed without a word. Kanaan D'Rance remained behind only long enough to look from the device to his rival before he disappeared into the tunnel after the Aramite commander.

D'Marr stared thoughtfully at the wall that had, so far, beaten his efforts to unmask it for what it was. He would have to find another way in than this place, that was all. Perhaps there was another chamber that also shared a wall with the hidden cavern. It would be a simple matter of exploration, of hunting. He excelled in hunting, no matter what the prey. Then, with the aid of his explosive toys, he would create for himself a new and permanent way inside. There would be no magic to stop him then.

From the mouth of the tunnel, a wave of black armor flowed into the room. It was the guard contingent Lord D'Farany had brought with him. The ranks split as each man entered, one line moving to the left side of the chamber and the other to the right. D'Marr signaled two of the soldiers to take custody of the Quel. The captive departed without protest, but inhuman eyes watched the young officer until the depths of the tunnel swallowed the creature. The other guards s.h.i.+fted their ranks to make up for the slight loss to their number.

I will have to make measurements, D'Marr thought, returning with antic.i.p.ation to the project ahead. Too much powder and the explosive would bring down not only the wall but the rest of the cavern as well. Best to find the proper spot first. Then I can judge how much will be needed.

There were already men mapping the complex system of caverns and tunnels that made up the Quel domain. While far from complete, he was certain that their charts already revealed enough for his present concerns. With so much importance placed on this particular section of the underground world, it had only been logical to map it first.

He had much work ahead of him, but Orril D'Marr was pleased. He was on the verge of shattering the last hope of the beastmen and discovering what great secret lay in that cavern behind the wall.

The guards came to even greater attention as he pa.s.sed them on his way out of the chamber, but the raider officer paid their fear of him no mind this time. His only thought was on the coming success of his project and the look on the blue man's face when D'Marr revealed to Lord D'Farany the most closely guarded of the underdwellers' mysteries . . . whatever it was.

THEY DID NOT know how close they had come.

The Crystal Dragon stirred himself from the self-imposed stupor. Trust the wolf raiders to be both predictable and unpredictable. He had been certain that they would somehow seize control of the Quel's domain. He had been fairly certain that they would have some success with the subterraneans' mechanisms. What he had not been prepared for was the level of that success. The invaders already had a grasp of the abilities of Quel might. Given just a little more time, they would grow adept. A little more . . . and they would dare to confront him.

He should strike before they grew too strong. He should risk himself, for delaying the inevitable only made the later consequences worse.

How? How do I sssstrike? It mussst be effective but taking the least effort and concentration possible! There cannot be too much risssk. That might lead to . . . If only there had been time to rest. That would have changed everything. They would have been insects to crush beneath his huge paws.

The glittering leviathan twisted his neck around and sought among the treasures he had acc.u.mulated over time. Some were there because of simple value, some because of purpose. Carefully he scoured the vast pile. There were times when he had thought of organizing it again, storing it anew in the lower cavern chambers, but that would mean leaving the protection of his sanctum and doing so might prove the final, fatal blow.

Sssomething . . .

Then, to one side of the pile, almost separate from it, the Dragon King sighted the answer to his plea. It was not what he had wanted, not in the least, but the longer he stared at it the more the dread monarch knew it was his only choice. Ma.s.sive, daggerlike talons gently picked up a small crystalline sphere in which it seemed a tiny, reddish green cloud floated. There was something unhealthy about the cloud, for the colors did not speak of life, but long and lingering decay. The sphere was no larger than a human head, which made it tiny indeed for one such as he, but he had learned care in using this gargantuan form, for even s.h.i.+fting to the manlike image his counterparts preferred was dangerous now. Each transformation distracted him, made him more vulnerable to . . . to the danger of losing himself. Now especially he dared not transform. It might be just enough, combined with his lack of rest, to defeat his long efforts.

He was careful for another reason. What the cloud represented could not be accidentally released full-fledged upon the world, not even for as short as a single blink of an eye.

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