The floor of the nest felt sturdier beneath their feet. A fine gray dust coated every surface and hovered in the air, choking the meager clusters of torch blooms. The kids crept along the perimeter, holding their noses to keep from gagging on the stink. Piles of refuse buzzed with clouds of metal insects that looked like tiny fluttering wing nuts. Skins and hides hung from spiny branches, and a collection of what looked to be mummified mechanical creatures were propped up in perverse poses like an audience waiting for the show to begin.
They heard a scuffling sound. Phoebe and Micah looked for the source, their hearts racing, but the echoes were confusing and the shadows impenetrable.
Standing in the center of the nest was a cracked table made from a slab of broken tree. Decorated with an elaborate assortment of decrepit talismans and bowls, it looked part altar and part…tea set? Fragile-looking metal cups sat on a frilly foil mat beside polished bric-a-brac as if arranged by a meticulous granny. A boiling pot steamed nearby, a vessel that might have been the petrified head of a mechanical beast.
Confused, Micah reached out to inspect the weird gathering of trinkets.
“NO, BLEEDER! NO TOUCH-UCH!”
The kids jumped. The screeching voice seemed to come from everywhere, but they looked around and saw no one. Then came that scuffling sound once again, this time from directly overhead. A skeletal figure skittered across the top of the nest like an emaciated metal lizard.
They screamed, and it screamed back at them.
“Stick-icky fingers rahkazess, NO! No touch-uch!”
The creature swung across zip lines, seizing the cables with knobby clamp hands as he emerged from the shadows. His head was a grinning human skull, yellowed and cracked with age. A deep fissure ran across the cranium, stained with brown crust that must have been dried blood. A crest of broken rib bones sprouted from the top of the skull, flaring out in a crown.
“Talky rha’khalor, bleeder lies-eyes. Come to Mehk. Choking Chokarai, crushing Chokarai, bring all to RUST-UST!”
The creature let out a horrid screech. He pounced.
But instead of the agile landing they expected, he clattered to the ground in an awkward heap, flailing like an overturned tortoise and knocking his skull mask askew. The kids now saw that he was the same as the other tree dwellers that had captured them, only ancient and withered. His body was wrinkled and peeling like scorched foil, and his frail form was a constellation of tattoos and carvings.
“Gah! No-no looky!” he squawked. The creature tried to hide his face—filmy eyes veiled in cataracts, and a bent jaw bearing a few lonely teeth.
“Pfffew, he’s just a geezer!” Micah breathed in relief. “Here I was thinkin’ we was in serious trouble.”
“What do we do?” Phoebe asked.
For a moment, they just watched the wizened thing struggle. He looked so pathetic that Phoebe stepped forward to help him up, but he shrieked and drove her back. He scrambled for his mask and tried to slip it on, but his clamp hands were too arthritic and clumsy, and he kept dropping it.
Phoebe saw wheels inset in his palms, like blackened pulleys. Again, that familiar feeling needled her, though she could not put her finger on it.
“Krazomakish nhar-ark, Dollop. DOLLOP!” he snarled.
A nervous, lopsided creature shuffled out from a dark corner. Though he walked on all fours, the kids could tell right away that this “Dollop” was not like the others. He was about waist-high to Phoebe, hobbling on back legs that were too short, and front limbs far too long. Dollop’s body looked cobbled together from different kinds of metal, like a toy model made from several kits. His head was triangular and maybe a bit oversized for his body, and his two huge eyes bulged out at either side, giving him the appearance of a hapless bug.
“H-h-halt, cruel and evil b-bleeders,” Dollop stammered in a voice that was much more polite than commanding. “We’ll be just one m-m-moment.” He hurried over to the ancient one and helped him fasten on his skull mask.
“You speak our language?” Phoebe gasped in relief.
“Why y-y-yes! Your f-f-filthy Bloodword is quite e-easy. But, um, the Ascetic…” Dollop motioned to the withered old creature. “H-he pretty much only speaks Rattletrap. He’s a little, er, slow in his advanced age.”
The elderly creature scrambled back to his feet. “Bleeders,” he growled, chattering the mandible of his skull mask. “Angry killing-ing, hacking Chokarai, bones to mash, bloods to eat. WHY kill-ill Chokarai?”
“We didn’t kill no one!” Micah protested.
“We’re sorry to offend you,” Phoebe pleaded, “but who is Chokarai?”
“This!” the Ascetic snapped. “Chokarai ahz vil’ott. Chraida praise-aise to Chokarai.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
But the Ascetic was lost in his train of thought, his words becoming an indecipherable purr as he waved his arms in the air and began to sway and dance slowly in place.
“Sorry. He, um, h-he does that sometimes,” Dollop explained as he cooed to the shriveled old creature in quiet, reassuring tones. But the Ascetic broke away from Dollop and leaped onto the altar. He turned his gaze upon the kids and pointed at them with a gnarled finger. His voice bristled with malevolence as he barked harshly.
Dollop cleared his throat with a tinny cough and raised his voice to speak over the Ascetic’s guttural pronouncements. “The Ascetic c-condemns you and all bleeders,” he translated. “His people, the chraida, c-curse you for killing the Chokarai. That’s umm, that’s their name for the fo-fo-forest.”
“But we haven’t done anything wrong,” Phoebe explained.
“Where’s he get off, cursin’ us?” Micah blustered. “Tell him that ain’t fair!”
Dollop hastily relayed the message, and the Ascetic cackled in response.
“He says F-Foundry doesn’t know, um, fair,” Dollop squeaked. “He s-says it isn’t f-f-fair you bleeders slaughter mehkans and, er, k-kill chraida.”
“Hold your horses there, Goggle Eyes!” Micah strode toward Dollop, who took an anxious step back. “We ain’t got nothin’ to do with the Foundry.”
Phoebe held him back. “We didn’t hurt anyone,” she said.
In a spastic fit, the old chraida wrenched the kids by their collars and yanked them close. They struggled to break free, but he held them fast.
“Chokarai brings-ings bleeders,” the Ascetic gurgled wickedly as Phoebe and Micah pulled back from his putrescent breath. “What to do-do-do? Read Splinters, shavings, and slag, Chokarai will choose-ooze your gro’thsylah-ha-ha!” The Ascetic burst into a convulsive fit of laughter and shoved them away.
“Uh, he says that the t-t-tree will decide your f-fate,” Dollop translated.
“Gimme a break!” Micah said with a roll of his eyes.
“Dollop, please,” Phoebe implored. “Please ask him to let us go. We haven’t done anything to the Ascetic or his people. We shouldn’t be here. We’re lost, and we don’t have much time. We need to find the Citadel and—”
The Ascetic’s maniacal laughter choked into a high-pitched squeal. Dollop fell backward with a mortified gasp, trembling and hugging his body as if trying to hold it together.
“N-n-no,” Dollop chattered. “Nuh-uh. N-never speak of it! It’s a v-vile thing.”
“You’ve heard of the Citadel?” Phoebe asked.
“H-how could we forget?” He ducked under a pile of rubble to hide. “It is an ancient ab-b-b-b-bomination. A sc-scar from which Mehk may never heal.”
“Cool! So how do we get there?” Micah chimed in.
Without warning, the Ascetic burst into wailing, uncontrollable tears. The withered chraida crawled over to one of his grotesque mummified companions and laid his weeping head on its lap. He was inconsolable, his metal shoulder plates shuddering with every sob. The kids looked at each other, unsure what to do. Phoebe reached o
ut to touch his wrinkled arm.
“TEAAAA!” the Ascetic hollered abruptly, followed by a flurry of shrill giggles that echoed throughout the nest. He bolted upright and blasted past the kids, galloping on all fours toward his altar and kicking up a cloud of gray dust in his wake. Micah twirled a finger around his temple.
“Please,” Phoebe said, following the old chraida. “You have to tell us. We’re looking for someone important and—”
“Shush-ush, no talky, bleeder,” tutted the Ascetic. “Let spilling Splinters speak-eak.” He whispered some grinding words and stirred his boiling pot. Dollop sprinted to his side and busied himself by adjusting the little knickknacks on the altar. But the Ascetic shooed him away and corrected the arrangement of the curios with great precision. He dipped two cups into the cauldron, gingerly wiped the rims clean, and offered them to Phoebe and Micah, an enthusiastic grin visible beneath his skull mask.
“Uh, thank you,” she said, taking the hot cup in her hands. “Will you tell us where the Citadel is if we drink this?”
Dollop whimpered again, peering fearfully from behind the altar. The Ascetic nodded vaguely at the kids and pointed to the cups, the jaw of his skull mask clicking eagerly.
“So…what kinda tea is this exactly?” Micah asked.
“You go first,” Phoebe instructed him.
“Pffft, in your dreams!”
“Don’t be rude.”
“I don’t like tea. ’Specially not crazy spider monkey tea.”
“Fine, we’ll go at the same time, okay?”
“Whatever.”
They raised their clinking cups in unison and looked at the contents. It was a translucent brown fluid with a hunk of something hard and dark at the bottom. It looked exactly like…well, tea. They eyed each other suspiciously and brought the steaming cups to their lips. The Ascetic leaned in anxiously.
The kids took a sip. Their eyes popped wide. This was the smell they detected when they first arrived—blood, chemicals, rot, garbage, all boiled down to one concentrated, obscene taste. Micah gagged and rubbed at his tongue to scrape away the foul residue. Phoebe covered her mouth so that she could spit more modestly.
The ancient chraida clapped giddily and snatched the cups from them, a vicious gleam twinkling in his rheumy eyes. He poured the scalding liquid into his bare hand, and out from the cups clinked a pair of jagged stones. Not stones, Phoebe noticed, but chunks of metal from the tree—just like the broken shards that cluttered the nest. The Ascetic pounded these pieces with a few vigorous blows, and then gathered the fragments into his shaking hands. He closed his eyes, chanting in Rattletrap as he listened to the deep drone that moaned up from the depths far below.
“The Splinters speak-eak,” he croaked. “Spirit words, broken thoughts, and burning-ing froth.”
With great ceremony, the Ascetic cast the pile of metal filings down on his altar, and they stood on end. So did the hair on the back of the kids’ necks.
The Splinters began to shift, and Phoebe and Micah watched them in wonder. The little shards shuffled and swam, dancing as the Ascetic swept his hands over them. Images and arcane words appeared in the Splinters, but they were fleeting, swishing away into swirls and scattering, only to form again as he flicked his wrist.
The Ascetic’s eyes rolled back in his head, lost in concentration. Phoebe and Micah, too, were so mesmerized that none of them noticed a rhythmic thrumming. The noise grew and grew until the tree shuddered all around them.
The old chraida snapped out of his trance. There was terror in his eyes.
That was when the sound finally registered.
Aero-copter blades.
he Splinters on the altar shook with the thunder of approaching engines. The Ascetic’s nest trembled. A rib of broken tree shook loose from the roof and crashed down, scattering debris.
The old chraida dashed across the cable bridge and disappeared into the hollow. Left with no other escape, they scrabbled after him, fleeing back through the dank tunnel. In her haste, Phoebe stepped on something sharp and yelped as it cut into her shoeless foot. No time to see how badly she was injured—she could only hobble and try to keep her weight off it.
As she and Micah ran for the exit, they saw the heavy flap peel open. Three chraida finished securing the feeble Ascetic onto a cable zip line, then sped him away through the treetops.
“Hey! What about us?” Micah cried.
The kids rushed to the mouth of the hollow and looked out upon the chraida village. Searchlights sliced down through the darkness, reflecting off metal leaves and casting a million fragments of wild light. A torrent of wind parted the treetops to reveal Aero-copters, their onyx bodies blotting out the stars. The twirling blades embedded within their frames chugged like a collective heartbeat. Their bases irised open, and hydraulic arms bearing shielded platforms emerged and maneuvered through the canopy like the heads of a hydra.
“We gotta split!” shouted Micah.
“How?”
“There!” He pointed to a wind-blown zip cable that ran down and out of sight. He pushed past her and tested the line with a few hard tugs. “Come on!”
There was commotion in the village as chraida tried to fend off the invaders, leaping at the aircraft, casting nets, and hurling crude weapons. The Aero-copters’ articulated platforms hissed open to reveal cruel cannons. In a blinding flash, the guns whirred out a spiraling shower of white rounds.
Phoebe looked away, but she could not avoid the screams.
Then another desperate cry pealed out behind them.
“Help!”
She recognized the warbling voice. “Dollop?”
“Nothin’ we can do for him now,” Micah said. “We gotta—”
But she had already turned to limp back through the tunnel despite his furious protests. Dollop had information about the Citadel. He was her best shot at finding out where Goodwin had taken her father.
As Phoebe rushed into the Ascetic’s suspended nest, something smashed against the tree outside. The whole cocoon swung wildly, like a birdcage struck with a sledgehammer. She staggered, clinging to a beam for support. Debris fell around her. Cables snapped and sang.
“What are you doin’?” hollered Micah. “This thing’s gonna fall!”
“H-here! Under here!” Dollop’s desperate voice squeaked.
Beneath the crumpled altar they could see a slim metal arm. She pulled and shoved at the slab, but it was too heavy for her. Aero-copter blades boomed all around them, and Phoebe felt her blood thrumming.
“Help me!” she screamed.
Micah ran to her side. Together, they strained to lift the massive altar. It only raised a couple of inches, but that was enough. Dollop yanked himself free and skittered to the far end of the demolished den. He hesitated, staring back at the kids in wide-eyed terror, unsure of what to do.
“F-f-follow,” he stuttered at last, and then vanished.
The word struck Phoebe. It was the same one that had beckoned her into the train tunnel. She felt a surge of exhilaration. No time to linger.
They booked after Dollop with Phoebe hobbling as fast as she could. The little creature wormed his way through a gap in the woven floor and into a crawl space so tight they had to wriggle along on their bellies.
It wasn’t long before Micah stopped, blocking the way.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Look.” He squeezed over so that she could see. “Think you can make it?”
The crawl space ended in the base of the nest. A twanging cable stretched over to the inner wall of the tree five or six yards away. Dollop pulled himself across the line, grabbed on to rungs carved in the tree’s surface, and then rapidly climbed down into the darkness below.
She and Micah had to catch up or lose their only guide.
“I’ll go first,” he said. “Wrap your arm
s and legs around it and hang underneath, then you can inch across and—”
“I get it. I did this a thousand times in gym class,” she lied.
“All right. Don’t get all snippy.” He grabbed on to the cable and slung beneath it, scooting his way across like an inchworm. He made it look easy.
Now it was her turn. She held on and let gravity swing her below the line. Her legs were stronger than her arms, so she favored them, locking her ankles tight. Phoebe felt her arm muscles tremble with exertion, but she ignored it and focused on moving as fast as she could. Within a minute, she was at the wall and easing onto the notches cut into the rough tree.
That wasn’t so bad, she thought.
Then her foot slipped. Micah shouted. Adrenaline flooded her body. She clung to the cable, flailing and kicking her legs wildly as she tried to regain her foothold, but the rungs were slick with sap. Phoebe wedged her shoe into a crevice in the wall and, using that as leverage, she pulled herself close enough to find a solid grip. She let go of the cable and clutched the rough carved handholds for dear life.
“You okay?” Micah called up.
She realized with a pinch of embarrassment that her skirt was whipping all over the place, and Micah was right underneath her. Nothing to be done about that now.
Slowly, one notch at a time, they climbed down the wall. She tried desperately to not think about falling, and instead concentrated on maintaining her grip. The adrenaline was wearing off, and now she was feeling spent and shaky. Every time she forced her uncovered right foot into the grooves of the wall, a flaming dart of pain shot up her leg.
Micah, on the other hand, was climbing down at a steady clip. He was used to running and scaling trees, twisting ankles, and getting beaten up. The kid was tough for his age—she could see that now. But not Phoebe. Had she ever felt exhaustion like this in her entire life? Did she ever have to strain for any reason at all? Of course not. She had servants like Micah to do everything for her. She gritted her teeth and bore down into the slick handholds.
Micah is right, she admitted hopelessly. I’m just a stuck-up, pampered little brat.
The First Book of Ore: The Foundry's Edge Page 11