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By Root 1537 0

silky. A long, tense creeping advance to a ruin where powerful foes were almost certainly waiting for them had not improved his temper-especially after one of his boots had found its first muddy, water-filled old burrow hole. That had occurred three paces before his other boot found the second. He'd lost count, since then, of how many creeper thorns had torn at him and raked across his hands and face… and all of it, of course, watched sneeringly from afar by the cruel upperpriestesses of the House, among them the Darklady herself.

Vaelam was practically dancing with excitement, his eyes large and round. The foreguard of the Sharran "wizards" was a thin, soft-spoken priest, both careful and thorough in his duties. He was more excited, now, than Elryn had ever seen him.

"Dark Brother," he hissed excitedly, "I've found something."

"No," Elryn murmured, frowning, "Really? You do surprise me."

"It's a stone," Vaelam continued, astonishingly not catching Elryn's thick sarcasm at all…or displaying uncommonly swift skill at hiding his recognition of it. "A stone with writing on it."

"Writing that says…?"

"Well, ah, just one letter actually…but one as long as a man is tall. It's a 'KT

"No!" Femter gasped sarcastically. "Could it be?"

"Brother, it is," Vaelam confirmed. He seemed genuinely oblivious to their derision.

"Show us," Elryn ordered curtly, and raised his voice a trifle. "Brothers, move slowly, keep apart, and watch the trees around. I don't want us crowded together when someone strikes from hiding. If we arrange things so that one fireball might take care of all of us, a hostile mage might not be able to resist his opportunity, hmm?"

"Aye," Daluth murmured, at the same time as someone else…Elryn couldn't tell who…muttered, "Thinks of everything, our Elryn."

Dark thoughts or not, the "wizards" of Shar reached the stone slab Vaelam had found without incident. It lay between two mossy banks, almost entirely covered with years of rotting, fallen leaves, but the K could clearly be seen. The deep-graven letter sprawled across a little more ground than one of the ornate temple chairs would cover, the stone slab seemed both old and huge.

Elryn leaned forward, not bothering to hide his own swift-rising excitement. Magic. This had to have something to do with magic, strong magic… and magic was what they were here for.

"Uncover it all," he ordered and stood back prudently to watch as this was done. The stone proved to be as long across, or longer, than a man laid out straight on his back, and twice that in the other direction, as well as being…at the one point where the ground dipped, along its edges…at least as thick as the length of a short sword.

When they were done uncovering it, the Sharrans stared at the massive slab… and it lay there patiently looking back at them.

It knew who would blink first.

After the silence grew uncomfortably long and the lesser priests started snatching sidelong glances at their leader, Elryn sighed and said, "Daluth, work the spell that wizards use to reveal magic. I can see no trigger to this…but there must be one."

Daluth nodded and did so. Elryn was as shocked as everyone else when he raised his head slowly and said, "No magic at all. None upon yon slab or around it. Nothing but what few things we carry, within reach of my spell."

"Impossible," Elryn snapped.

Daluth nodded. "I agree… but my spell cannot lie to me, can it?"

As Elryn stood glaring at him, there was a common gasp of relief…of held breaths let out…from the other Sharrans, and they strode forward to stand on the slab as if it had been calling to them.

Elryn whirled, a shout of warning rising to his lips… a shout that died unuttered. The priests under his command strode across the slab, scraped their boot heels on it, stomped and strolled, staring about at the trees as if the slab was an enspelled lookout that gave them some sort of special sight. No bolts of lightning burst from the stone to slay them, and none of them shifted shape, screamed, or acquired unusual expressions on their faces.

Instead, one by one, they