They came to the dwerka city of Ogofdinas in the mid-afternoon of the second day. The only known entrance lay at the base of a range of mountains just north of The Hidden Valley. The Hidden Valley lay east of the Pelavale between the High Meadows were the tribesmen grazed their animals in the summer and the Arshan Plateau where no one went or, at least, from which they never returned.

"Great," Garanth muttered as they paused before the yawning entrance in the stone. He had grown used to life in the field. "From one hole in the ground to another."

Ogofdinas was substantially more than a hole in the ground. Garanth's first clue was the broad sloping avenue that led gently down into the heart of the mountain. As the tireav marched down its smooth and well-lit stone passages, he noticed deadfalls, covered pits and sliding barriers designed to seal the passage against anything, like angorym or drwg, which might threaten them.

They passed a couple of portals consisting of massive stone slabs set on rollers in deep grooves in the floor. Once the temporary bridges over the grooves were removed and the stone slabs dropped into place, it would take hundreds of dwerkan excavators thousands of hours to break through. No angorym-or anyone else for that matter-was likely to be a threat once the city was sealed.

Passing through the last portal, they entered a square antechamber which opened into a space so vast Garanth thought they had crossed through the mountains into a shadowed valley beyond. Below them hundreds of buildings, some towers quite tall, spread out beneath the gentle pastel glow of phosite crystals embedded in the ceiling. Ramps and stairs rose and fell while balconies and galleried bridges crisscrossed from building to building in what looked, from Garanth's high vantage point, like gossamer webs of stone. Over it all the colored phosite gems waxed and waned with the eddies of the invisible flow of karis. If it weren't for the varied colors, it would have looked exactly like the beams of light moving across a city as they pierced through drifting clouds.

"Quite some hole." Harkin snickered as he passed.

Garanth stood frozen in awe. "They didn't build Har-Tor like this."

"That's because they were building for men." Karux paused and inspected the view. "Though individually short, they see their race as having greater stature and so build to reflect that."

The heads of the trade guilds, who competed in all things, each attempted to out-welcome their guests from the surface. Everyone ate massive feasts of expensive and imported meat and bread and beer.

"We need to be careful around these allies," Harkin said after a second course of food had been taken up and a third lain out before them. "I think they are trying to kill us with food."

"This is my kind of fighting," Garanth agreed.

The tables also included traditional Dwerkan delicacies swimming in strange soups and sauces. Many of them consisted of roots, mosses and mushrooms but others were far less identifiable. Garanth fished out something that looked like a kidney-shaped white nut except for its segmented ridges. He held his spoon up to a servant bringing out more bread. "Excuse me, can you tell me what this is?"

"We call that pryfed. It's something of a delicacy. Its flesh has a subtle flavor; I think you will like it."

"Flesh? Is it meat?"

"Oh yes," the dwerka nodded. "It's larva."

Garanth set the dish aside, his appetite somewhat abated.

"Try this soup, Garanth," Corha urged. "It's quite savory."

Garanth tried to smile back at her and trawled through the soup with a spoon. It seemed relatively bug free, though there will little specks he couldn't identify. He hoped they were only herbs.

"Try it!"

Garanth sipped it, noticing she didn't seem to be too choosy with her food. He liked the spicy flavor the roots gave it though he eyed the chewy mushrooms with suspicion.

Time became strangely suspended in that shadowy subterranean banquet hall. Though the dwerka had ways of telling time without the sun, Garanth kept wondering about the lateness of the hour. He started nodding over his plate before the last course was taken up and the hosts bade everyone a goodnight.

The next day, they inspected the training grounds and watched the maccari train with the new weapon. Torkin came to collect Garanth for the training but Garanth made a point of catching Corha before he left. "I need a favor," he said.

"Certainly. What do you need?"

"I need you to come get me if Karux tries to sneak off to visit the seat of power."

Corha stared thoughtfully across the grounds at Karux who was talking to the instructors. "Do you think he'd do that? Sneak off?"

"Yes. He doesn't want anyone to know about the seat of power. He may well sneak off and tell no one, not even his students. So keep an eye on him and let me know if he does."

"I will, if I possibly can."

Garanth spent the rest of the day training with the maccari using the sword and shield. The dwerka preferred spears, but the angorym would often send the drwg, giant wolf-like creatures, into the tunnels to hunt them down and break up any organized resistance. To fight them, the dwerka had developed a fighting technique very similar to the sword and shield technique they were teaching the men, though obviously their weapons were scaled to their size. The dwerka had found the shorter weapons more useful in tighter spaces than spears, especially when it came to close in fighting.

Standing shoulder to shoulder with his fellow trainees, the maccari were taught to form a wall of shields. When the formations were broken up, they were taught to pivot and regroup, coalescing to form hard knots of resistance. And even in that divided state, the dwerka insisted they continue to work together, each unit supporting the others like the left and right hands of a boxer.

After a day of grueling training, Garanth didn't much care if Karux decided to seek the seat of power or not. He was convinced that the dwerka had taken advantage of the lack of sun to work them longer than a normal day. Fortunately the dwerka fed them well, real food to help them recover their strength and not the strange stuff the dwerka ate. Garanth collapsed on his sleeping pallet and fell into an immediate and dreamless sleep only to be awakened for more brutal training the next day.

He managed to catch Harkin on the way out and learned that Karux planned to visit the smithies that day and see how the weapons production was doing. Assuming it wasn't a ruse, Garanth threw himself into the training and promptly forgot about the seat of power. The dwerkan trainers took an interest in him and soon he, and a handful of others who had shown leadership potential, were directing groups of maccari back and forth, responding to numerous simulated emergencies and enemies. Again, at the end of the "day" he fell onto his pallet and into a dreamless sleep.

Awakened far too early to account for a full night's sleep, Garanth staggered to his feet and stumbled to the common area. He ate a quick morning breakfast of sausage, bread, cheese and had a hot bowl of chaia. His body ached all over and he was so exhausted from lack of sleep that he failed to notice that Corha had entered the room until she called his name.

"Garanth?"

He looked up from his bowl and focused on Corha. "Yes?"

With a quick glance over her shoulder, she spoke in a near whisper. "Karux has asked us to meet together this morning outside the transport master's office and to come prepared to travel."

Garanth struggled to focus on her. "Huh?"

"We think he's leaving for the seat of power today."

"Today, huh?" Garanth drained his chaia. "I'll go get my things."

<====|==|====>

"He's the one what did it!"

Andral looked up from his reluctant trek from Sarco's butcher shop to his new house. The faces of the bullies who had once tormented him had begun to fade over the course of the last two years, but now they stood accusing and angry before him.

The one who had singled him out spoke to a tall young man Andral didn't know. The young man, however, held the hand of a boy he did recognize. It was the bully he had hit in the head with a rock, though he was strangely transformed. The side of his head was dented in and the bully stared off into space, drooling slightly from a gaping mouth.

"Isn't he the one they're calling an oracle?" asked one of the half-dozen boys standing behind the young man.

The young man let go of the bully's hand and pushed up his sleeves. "I wonder if he saw this coming?" He took a step forward, pointing back at the drooling boy. "You did this to my little brother. I'm going to do the same thing to you!" He swung at Andral.

Everything seemed to slow down for Andral. He wanted to run, but his legs wouldn't move. He wanted to dodge the fist as it flew at him, but his body wouldn't respond. The man's knuckles ground against Andral's jawbone and he was suddenly flung back, lying on the ground.

Andral blinked up at the man crouching over him, lifting him by his tunic, right arm cocked back and ready to hit him again.

The man paused and noticed a bug on his arm. He brushed it off, then winced. "Ow!" He looked down. Beetles crawled up both legs. The man staggered backwards, a look of horror on his face. Millions of the black bugs swarmed up his legs and torso. The boys behind him sprinted away. The young man tried to follow. He made four steps before the insects overwhelmed him and he fell. A shiny black mound covered him, writhing, rising up to make a single forward surge before collapsing. It settled down into a steady pulse of movement. After several minutes, the beetles began to wander off.

Fascinated, Andral watched the churning pile wondering what had become of the man, but as the last of the insects scurried away, not so much as a drop of blood was left behind.

The broken bully stood alone, staring in his direction and drooling.

Andral walked up to him. "Ha!" he shouted in his face.

The bully blinked.

Feeling a deep sense of victory, Andral left for home.

<====|==|====>

Garanth found Karux's students waiting outside the work team dispatch building. He dropped his pack against the wall and leaned his short spear next to it. He wore his sword in a scabbard which hung from a belt draped across his chest and over one shoulder. Nearby, Corha seemed to be trying to corral Eiraena who had decided she needed to run away somewhere. Corha was clearly getting frustrated while Eiraena seemed to look upon it as a game. She laughed at Corha's frustrated growls when she failed to catch her.

"Did you see those devices in the smithies?" Harkin asked Netac as they waited for Karux and their Dwerkan guide to arrive.

"The carts?" Netac asked.

"Yeah the basket things that rolled around on discs."

"Yes."

"We need to have them make us some bigger ones. Imagine how much food and gear we could carry. We wouldn't need the long donkey trains to haul everything."

"Yeah, try and drag one of those things over the mountains. Those narrow metal wheels would just sink in the dirt, anyway."

"They could make them wider, perhaps out of wood," Harkin suggested.

"What are you doing here?" Karux demanded.

Garanth jerked awake where he had crouched against the wall and nodded off.

"Stand still, will you?" Corha shouted in exasperation.

Garanth rose and walked over. "Eiraena, take my hand."

Eiraena stopped and allowed Garanth to take her hand. He walked with her back to Karux. "I heard you were leaving town."

Karux looked at Garanth and Eiraena and the other students and sighed. "I see you brought your things. Then, to the group, he said, "This is Twys. He'll be our guide.

"We have a long walk ahead," Twys said. "If we want to return in one day, we must start moving."

Garanth had expected their guide to lead them out the main city's entrance, but instead he started down one of the narrow streets of a service district. For several minutes they tramped up and down stairs and across bridges, occasionally returning the wave of a passing dwerkan laborer who might well be seeing a human for the first time. Gradually the buildings, which were normally well polished and intricately decorated, took on a rough unfinished appearance.

They turned down a street, choked with boulders and broken rock, which ran along the edge of the huge cavern. They passed a number of openings on their left that had the look of mineshafts about them and passed a couple of teams of dwerka loading stone into one of those large metal wheeled carts Harkin and Netac had been talking about. Garanth kept looking over his shoulder, hoping to see one of the carts in motion.

They came, soon after, to a narrow side passage that was little more than a fracture in the rock face. Two dwerkan minors lurked near the entrance, one sitting on a rock and the other standing, leaning casually against the wall. Puzzled, Garanth couldn't recall ever seeing a dwerka shirking from any sort of work. Their hard eyes followed the newcomers' every movement and Garanth noticed they each had picks close at hand.

Twys spoke with one of the dwerka who replied in their native language in low curt phrases. Twys gestured toward Karux and the other dwerka nodded.

"Come," Twys said and led them into the narrow gap. Their way quickly grew more challenging, requiring them to crawl over, under and between large stones.

Garanth caught up to Karux at one of the difficult passages. "Were those guards back there?"

Karux, whose walking stick kept catching on stony projections, struggled to lift his bad leg over a large rock. "Yes. You don't think they'd normally leave large boulders in the street of an active work site do you?"

"You mean those dwerka loading the carts were guards too?"

"Every dwerka you saw on that last street is a guard. I've asked them to be discreet. The best way to guard something is to not let anyone know there is anything to be guarded."

Before long they came to two dwerka who were, unmistakably, guarding a door. They each wore fully articulated metal armor which covered them from head to toe and gave them the nickname "Silverskins" above ground.

Twys spoke with them and one of the guards fiddled with a series of levers built into the door which unlocked it. They passed through into a short passage which ended at the top of a rickety wooden ladder. Garanth found descending in his coat of plates while carrying his spear to be a little awkward, but his trainers had made him run obstacle courses in full gear, so he was able to scramble down and hold the ladder for Corha as she followed cautiously.

Eiraena, however, was another story. She hopped on the ladder as if eager to climb down, and then froze. They tried coaxing and encouraging her, but she just hugged the ladder, eyes closed, and started to make a flat keening sound. It wasn't a full scream yet, but Garanth knew it would build to one just before she lost all control at which point she would begin lashing out at whoever tried to help her. He didn't know what she might do while hanging from a ladder.

"Ah! Ah! Ah!"

Garanth climbed back up and with many encouraging words manually positioned each foot on the rung below. Harkin, hanging over the edge, did the same with her hands, prying each from their death grip on the rungs and placing them on the next. A third of the way down, Harkin could no longer reach and Garanth was forced to climb up and move each of her limbs, helping her to slowly descend the entire length. Even on the ground, Eiraena would not be consoled and, if anything grew more upset. Karux stepped up and began calling on the names of the elements, moving his hands as he fashioned them. Whatever it was must have interested Eiraena, for it caught her attention and her cries diminished. He held out his hand and Eiraena stared in wonder at something all but Garanth and Twys could see, her prior distress forgotten.

"I think we can continue now," Karux said.

The group passed through a large chamber in which stalactites dripped onto stalagmites rising from smooth mirrored pools. It was the first hint of water they'd encountered in the whole dusty trip. A faint rushing sound grew as they approached the cavern's far side.

"Is that the rush of water I hear?" Garanth asked.

"Yes, we're near the true source of the Pardos River." Twys paused expectantly as if awaiting some further question or comment on the river's source. When none came, he continued, leading them up a natural stair toward an alcove from which a cool bluish-white light emanated.

"What is that?" Corha asked.

"The seat of power," Karux said. "Can't you tell? Use your perception."

"Ah!" Corha, Harkin and even Netac gasped as they stopped and stared at the rocky ledge beyond which the seat of power waited.

Garanth continued past them, the light growing as he neared the top. He stopped and crouched, peering through a short round tunnel beyond which lay another chamber. The mysterious stone which the dwerka called cor-dwna, and which had unlocked the Karux's students' powers, filled the walls of the chamber beyond and produced the glowing light. Water covered the chamber's floor except for a peninsula of rock, extending out to its center. A knee-high lump of stone sat at the end of the peninsula against which three other slabs of stone had been thrust up in a chair-like formation that seemed too intentional to be caused by mere chance.

"Is that it?" Garanth whispered, crouching next to Karux.

"It must be." Netac took a step toward it.

Karux's hand snapped out and caught him by the back of his tunic, jerking him to a halt. "If you were to claim the seat of power, you'd get far more than you asked for."

Netac glared at Karux, then at their dwerkan guide. "Is that what has kept the dwerka from claiming it?"

Twys' expression became unreadable. "No. It is not for us." He rose, lifted his lantern and took a step towards the opening.

Millions of shiny black beetles boiled from the opening in a skittering rush. The opening itself irised closed by the press of their armored bodies.

"Are you sure no one knows of this? Karux asked Twys.

Twys sighed. "We dwerka value our relationship with the humans. We know what would happen should word of this get out. Just knowing the Pardos' source had been discovered would cause a great disturbance among my people." The dwerka stared earnestly. "I only told Torkin because I knew you trusted him."

"Good. We must keep this secret. I suggest you look into sealing the entrance in such a way that no one can tell that it ever existed." Karux paused and looked around. "Where is Eiraena?"

Everyone looked around. Netac casually peered over the ledge into the cavern, then turned back with a shrug and a shake of his head. Karux made a strange strangled sound and everyone followed his gaze through the tunnel into the chamber of the seat of power.

Standing bent over, so that her nose almost touched the chair, Eiraena had somehow made it past the insect barrier and was circling the seat of power, examining it.

"Garanth," Karux choked. "Get her out of there."

"How?"

"I don't care how you do it, just do it! You have no idea what disaster would come from her sitting in that chair and claiming its power. The chaos that would ensue would make Amantis' curse look like gentle mercy!"