Free Anderson, Kevin J - Gamearth 01 by Gamearth Page A

them, but it did not match Vailret's imagined picture at all. "Something's happened," Bryl exclaimed.
    "Look at it!" Delrael craned his neck upward. Vailret stared, letting his mouth drop open.
    The tall crystal spires were warped and drooping, with their decorative pinnacles melted away. A stumpy cascade of icicles ran like tears down the sides of the towers. Motionless frozen streams hung down the walls, stained black with a sooty residue. The structural blocks were now cloudy rather than transparent ice. The top of the main pyramid had been sheared off, blasted inward and leaving ragged, melted edges.
    Vailret forced back a strong urge to cry. He felt angry and helpless.
    "What did this?"
    "And what if it's still here?" Bryl mumbled. His wrinkled skin made him look parched and afraid.
    Delrael narrowed his eyes and looked for enemies hiding in the rocks.
    He broke the astonished silence and nudged them toward the destroyed buildings. "Let's get out of this cold." He moved forward, ready with his hunting bow, though his fingers were probably too numb to use it.
    The tunnel entrance to the main pyramid gaped like an abandoned trap.
    The Palace had no gates, no defenses at all.
    "The whole point was that anyone could come here, whenever they wished," Vailret said with a note of despair. "It was a memorial ¯ why would someone destroy it?"
    Snow had piled up at the entrance. The ragged wind hooted through the hole. Everything inside lay desolate and untended, empty. Delrael led the way down an uneven, half-melted corridor, deeper into the main pyramid. The rough texture gave them footing on the ice walkway. The main tunnel spiraled around the outer wall of the pyramid, working its way toward the central chambers.
    Their boots sounded like thunderclaps on the frozen floor.
    Refracted light seeping through the prismatic walls made unnatural rainbows, rippling and bathing them in color. Vailret looked from side to side, feeling the loneliness and emptiness gnaw into him.
    The sound of the wind soon vanished behind the thick blocks of ice, but the cold itself seemed to focus and deepen as they neared the heart of the Palace. Up ahead, lights danced on the frozen walls, ricocheting and sparkling like tiny meteors. The wind returned, louder, from a source within the central chamber.
    Intrigued but uneasy, Vailret pressed close to his cousin as they moved forward. A vaulted arch rose over the corridor, and the three of them emerged into the main reception room.
    The entire ceiling of the central pyramid had been blasted away, and frigid air swirled out of the wide hole. Great rivers of ice streamed to the floor like petrified waterfalls. Snow drifted down to settle in a bull's-eye pattern of ripples in the floor where the ice had been melted and refrozen.
    A blocky white throne stood in the center of the room. Encased in tendrils of frost, an old man sat staring mindlessly at the blasted walls.
    Sardun the Sentinel looked shriveled, mummified by cold. A long gray mustache hung against the wrinkled folds of his face. Vailret stopped and stared, afraid to make any sound. Delrael looked at him, questioning. Sardun blinked.
    "He's even older than Bryl!" Delrael whispered.
    "He's old enough to be my father," Bryl said, annoyed.
    The old Sentinel had plunged his left arm up to the elbow in the translucent ice of the throne's armrest, embedding it. Through the murky ice, Vailret could see Sardun's gnarled hand grasping the sapphire Water Stone. The Stone was a cube with a number etched on each face, shaped like a six-sided die, more powerful than the four-sided Air Stone. Unnatural cold spewed from the gem, swirling up and out into the world. "Sardun!" Vailret called. His voice cracked.
    The Sentinel swung his eyes back to focus around him. The wind breathed a ragged gasp and failed as the blue glow in the Water Stone died away.
    "Haven't I been wounded enough?" Sardun's high pitched voice held a tone of condemnation, then he chuckled a