The Lodestone Trilogy (Limited Edition) (The Lodestone Series)

by Mark Whiteway

  Heat. “You said there was power available here.”

  “Yes.”

  “Could that be used to create fire?” she asked.

  “The power is electrical. Anything electrical can be shorted out–made to produce a spark. So yes, we could create a fire. But I don’t know what that would get us, other than a way to stay warm.”

  “You said heat would work against them,” she reminded him.

  “I meant excessive heat, Shann–as in an explosion of some kind. Waving a firebrand in their faces would be pointless. It would only attract them. But a sufficiently powerful incendiary device would have an effect. I doubt it would kill them, but it would almost certainly overpower their heat senses, blinding them. Of course, the effect would probably only be temporary.”

  Lodestone grenades. If only she had just one of those. But no. “This is all Keris’ fault,” she blurted out.

  She could hardly see Rael’s face now, but she could sense his confusion. “Keris–she was another one of your travelling companions. What’s she got to do with this?”

  Shann took a deep breath. “You remember me telling you about lodestone grenades? Well at Gort, the desert fortress, she managed to obtain a cache of them. But she wouldn’t allow me to have any. If she had, then I might have been able to use them to get us out of here.”

  “Tell me about them again,” Rael inquired. “How do they work?”

  “They’re round,” she replied, “about…this big. To activate one, you twist the hemispheres like this. Then throw it at the target.”

  “Is there anything else you remember?”

  Shann thought carefully. “They make a whining sound that increases in pitch until they explode. They produce a lot of light and heat.”

  “And you say these devices use lodestone?”

  “That’s what I was told,” she said.

  “Mmmm.” He was silent for a moment. She could see his hand was on his chin. “It sounds like a chemical reaction of some kind. The twisting action might cause two different substances to mix. But for that to happen, they would probably have to be liquid…or gas.”

  “Perhaps it mixes together different sorts of lodestone?” she offered.

  “Or maybe it’s simpler than that. Like…like lodestone and ordinary matter.” He suddenly grabbed her wrist. “Shann, come with me.” She was about to object, but there was something in his voice–an earnestness that stilled her protest. His long stride outpaced hers, so that she was half dragged across the stone platform. They passed through the door to the tower and proceeded down the stairs. At the first level they reached, he conducted her to the nearest room and activated the panel lights in the ceiling. There were banks of machinery and some odd looking glass and bronze instruments, all dormant. He ignored them all. Instead, he went to one of the blank walls, pulled out his writing implement, and began writing rapidly. This is odd behaviour–even for him.

  She sat on the floor and watched him curiously. The symbols didn’t appear to be Kelanni, or any other language she recognised. He stopped a moment as if deciding something, then began scribbling furiously again. Eventually, she could stand it no longer. “What are you doing?”

  “Calculating the results that would be obtained by a commingling of lodestone and ordinary matter in gaseous states.” He continued writing on the wall, utterly absorbed in his work. She wondered idly how Hannath would react to his defacing ‘the most important ancient find ever’. She decided not to make an issue over it. Instead, she pointed to an icon at the beginning of his script. “What does that mean?”

  “What?” Rael turned his head and she pointed again. He glanced at the character she was indicating. “Kinetic energy,” he said, then turned his attention back to his work. Shann was none the wiser. Half the wall was now filled with unintelligible scrawl. She was getting bored. Perhaps she should just leave him to it and go check on Boxx as she’d originally intended? She got to her feet and prepared to leave.

  He stopped, underlining the final set of characters with a flourish, then stood back, putting a hand to his mouth. “Oh, my…”

  What is it?” she demanded.

  “There is lodestone in this tower?”

  You saw me leaping from the roof. “Yes.”

  “Then if I can find a few more materials, I should be able to put together one of those grenades of yours, and…I think I know something else now.”

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “I think I know how the Unan-Chinneroth intends to destroy the world.”

  ~

  Shann stared at the fragment of lodestone in the palm of her hand. As she shifted her perspective, dark whorls on its surface shifted and coalesced like eddies in a midnight stream, concealing whatever lay beneath the surface.

  Rael’s voice pulled her back into the real world. “We should be able to use these.” He held up a small canister for her to examine. “They’re made of some sort of metal. I’m not sure what it is, but it doesn’t seem to include iron. Fortunately for us, or it would have rusted long ago.”

  Shann looked over the simple cylinder. “You can really make a grenade out of that?”

  Rael nodded. “Uh-huh. Assuming I can get the furnace to work in the laboratory we found earlier, then we can use it to convert some lodestone into gas.” He picked up another cylinder and brought the two together. “I can connect these by a tube with a simple valve. We put lodestone gas in one, positive gas in the other. To activate it, you just open the valve. It’s crude, but it should work.”

  “And you learned all of that from your writing on the wall?”

  Rael laughed. “In a way, yes. I work with numbers. They can teach you a lot.”

  Shann didn’t see how, but if the grenade actually worked…well, she couldn’t argue with that. For the first time since they arrived at the tower, she dared to hope. “All right. Let’s see if we can get that furnace of yours to work.”

  They gathered the canisters and the fragments of lodestone they had managed to chip away from the roof platform. To her great relief, his earlier awkwardness seemed to have evaporated in the heat of a new challenge. She was keen to maintain that momentum. “You said you know how the Prophet is going to destroy the world,” she prompted.

  He nodded. “I think so, yes. At least, the equations point to an astonishing result; one that will excite Hannath as much as the discovery of this place, I would think. It seems that when you mix lodestone and positive matter together as gases, heat is transferred from the lodestone. The positive matter gets hotter and hotter. The only limiting factor would be the strength of the containment–the canister.”

  “So when it gets hot enough, it explodes.”

  “Right,” he said. “However, the really surprising thing is that there’s no limit to how hot it can get. If you used a sufficiently strong lodestone container, you could in theory construct something powerful enough to destroy a whole city…or more.”

  The thought was horrifying. “And you think that’s what the Prophet is doing now?”

  Rael nodded. “It makes sense. It would explain why he needs so much lodestone.”

  Shann tried to imagine something so powerful it could destroy a city. “Annata assured us that the instrument she has hidden for us in the past can disarm the weapon safely. How would that work?”

  He smiled. “Sorry, Shann, I haven’t addressed that one yet. I would need to do some more…writing. For now, the priority seems to be to escape from these mountains.”

  You’ll get no argument from me.

  They reached the room Rael called “laboratory” and the boy busied himself about the strange equipment. Shann emptied the pouch of lodestone fragments onto a bench and picked one of them up once more, feeling the familiar resistance to her pull. She held it between her thumb and forefinger. There was beauty and grace here, the gift of soaring above the world. Yet there was also terrible power. The power to destroy that same world.

  She scooped the fragments back into the po
uch, clutched them to her chest and carried them to the furnace, as if preparing to consign her dreams to the fire.

  ~

  Ail-Kar and Ail-Gan were approaching the western horizon as Keris reached the outer limits of the ancient ruined city of Kynedyr. She roamed through broken streets between remnants of once proud edifices and broken spires. Even in its dilapidated state, there was a stateliness and a magnificence to this place.

  Other than the flock of white birds with grey tipped wings that she disturbed on entering what was once a wide plaza, there was no life here. Nothing remained that could pose a threat. Nevertheless, she could not ignore the fact that she had been given two distinct warnings. Those misgivings appeared to be based on little more than superstition. Nevertheless, Keris had not risen to the position of Keltar by treating warnings lightly. Her eyes flicked between shadows and her fingers flexed, ready to claim her staff at a moment’s notice.

  At the centre of the plaza was a broken statue. At one time it had been a representation of a Kelanni in flowing robes, an image of…pride? Victory? It was hard to tell, as the head was missing. Whoever this eminent person had been, whatever acts of bravery or heroism or self-sacrifice he or she had performed, they were all forgotten; rendered irrelevant by the death of the society in which they had had meaning. It was as if she were looking at her own end. All her efforts would ultimately come to nothing, eroded away by the implacable winds of time. Had she saved a world, or had she damned it? In the end, would anyone know or even care?

  An explosion of light and sound. Keris wheeled around, staff at the ready…and her jaw fell open. Towering above her, a gigantic flat image hovered in midair. It flickered gently, reminding her of the likeness of Annata that had appeared to them from the machine. Yet there was no machinery in sight. The apparition hung with no visible means of support. A scene was being played out in front of her. She struggled to make sense of it. Kelanni were speaking with one another: a man, a woman, a child. The backdrop showed huge curved buildings and large flying craft drifting across a bright blue sky. Writing or symbols appeared, of a type she had never seen before. Then, just as suddenly, the incarnation winked out and was gone.

  Keris stood transfixed to the spot. What was it that Thork had said? There are illusions there. Impressions of those who have died. She steeled herself. Illusions were not going to make her crawl away in fear. She needed answers. With her staff gripped tightly in both hands, Keris plunged deeper into the ruined city.

  <><><><><>

  Chapter 19

  The modest fire crackled and sputtered, giving forth as much in the way of noise as it did in the way of heat. Flames from kindling gathered in the midst of the dead Forest of Atarah licked at brushwood she had cut down from where it clung to cracks, here in the ruins. The green wood began to smoke. After a while and a fair amount of work, she had a respectable blaze going. Aside from the stars that shone overhead, her fire was the only light in the abandoned city. Keris leaned forward, rubbing her hands.

  The ancient city of Kynedyr was huge; she didn’t yet have a clear view how far it extended. As a young girl she had been brought to the keep at the great city of Chalimar. It was magnificent. Overwhelming. Colossal facades of grey stone towered over her. She feared that if she wandered too far, she might get lost in the maze of interconnecting streets. And yet in its heyday, this city would have made Chalimar seem like a village by comparison.

  She reached for another branch and placed it carefully in the flames. As she did so, she sensed movement behind her. There it was again. Her stalker was back.

  Soon after leaving the deserted plaza, it had become evident that she was being followed. A scraping of stone here. A dislodged pebble there. The unmistakeable feel of eyes boring into the back of her neck. Too wary–too careful to be an animal. A single individual. Someone skilled in stealth but not skillful enough to escape her notice.

  Keris did not break her stride or turn her head as she calmly debated what to do. She was in no immediate danger. Their only chance of a successful assault against her would have been the element of surprise, and they had already lost that. In any case, they did not appear to be seeking a position of tactical advantage. Whoever it was seemed content merely to shadow her. Very well, then, time for introductions later.

  Now the watcher had returned, lurking somewhere in the deep shadows, beyond the circle of firelight. Keris allowed her Keltar training to kick in. She cycled through various strategies, couched in the shorthand of shassatan. River and Dam. Channel the enemy down a single path, then close it in front of them. Bread and Dagger. Present them with a supposed advantage to draw them out, then take that advantage away. Variations on a theme. However, in this case, she wanted to test this person’s motivation, their reasons for following her. Bread and Dagger it was, then.

  She rose from her haunches in a deliberately unhurried fashion and stretched, feigning tiredness. I hope you’re watching my little performance. She pulled her single blanket from her pack, freeing it with a flourish. Then she moved around to the opposite side of the fire, laid out the blanket and pulled the stopper from her canteen full of melted snow. Preparations complete, she shut her eyes tightly and began to count.

  One…two…three…The intruder would wait until they could be reasonably sure she was asleep. Time enough to put her plan into effect. As they watched, light from her fire would have entered the tracker’s eyes, causing their pupils to contract, cutting down night visibility. Twenty-one…twenty-two…twenty-three…behind her eyelids, cut off from the light, her own pupils were dilating. Thirty-seven…thirty-eight…thirty-nine…allowing her to see and move in the dark; to enact her little subterfuge while the enemy would still be blinking away afterimages on their retina. She readied herself…fifty-eight…fifty-nine…sixty.

  Keris sprang into action. She opened her eyes and quickly doused the fire with her canteen, plunging the area into darkness, then shoved her pack under the blanket and set off at a low run toward a broken down wall. In moments she had dived over the wall and concealed herself behind it. There was no movement from the amorphous shapes beyond the far edge of the camp where her quarry was hiding. Soon the intruder’s eyes would adjust to the lower light conditions and they would see exactly what she wanted them to see, the remains of a campfire and a blanket with a bulge beneath it. Bread and Dagger. The trap was set. Your move. Keris permitted herself a small smile of satisfaction and settled down to wait.

  It occurred to her that there was something faintly ridiculous about two people skulking in the darkness, watching an empty blanket. She tried to speculate who her unwelcome guest might be. It seemed inconceivable that someone had trailed her here all the way from the house in the highlands near Kieroth. Most of the time she had been travelling through open country, with little enough in the way of cover. As a trained Keltar, she would surely have spotted any signs of pursuit long before this. She was quite certain that no-one had been following her before she had reached the ancient city.

  Thork. The avionic pilot she had encountered just outside the dead forest had offered to send someone to “rescue” her. She had declined, but maybe he had ignored or misunderstood her reply and dispatched someone to check up on her, regardless? No, that couldn’t be it. The flying machines were large and noisy. She didn’t see how one of them could approach without her noticing. Thork had warned her about Kynedyr, but she had told neither him nor anyone else that she actually intended to go to the ancient city. So how would they have known to follow her here? Then again, if it really was someone concerned about her welfare, why not simply walk up and announce themselves? Why hide in the shadows?

  Across the camp, something was stirring. Perhaps some answers at last. A silhouette rose soundlessly and started to approach the extinguished campfire. Keris moved rapidly, sidestepping to her right and staying low. She skirted around till she could see the intruder’s back. His attention would be focussed on the unmoving blanket. As she crept up behind the shadowy figure, she
drew her staff. The sinews in her arms knotted in response to the smooth feel of the darkwood. As the dark shape started to bend over, she exploded into action. One hand whipped out, grabbing the intruder’s arm and twisting it to the point of breaking; the other slid smoothly up the haft, bringing the diamond blade to bear against the throat like a dagger. Her quarry let out a gasp, then a grunt of pain. Finally she heard him swallow as he felt the keen edge pressing against his jugular. She might already be drawing blood. For the moment, she neither knew nor cared. “Did no-one tell you it’s rude to creep up on people unannounced?” she hissed into his ear.

  He tried to speak, but seemed unable, possibly fearing that in the act of doing so, he might inadvertently cut his own throat. She subtly eased her pressure on the blade. At last he spoke. The voice was dry and cracked, but there was something about it…something familiar.

  “Keris,” it said.

  ~

  Keris threw caution to the winds and spun the intruder around by his shoulders. Her eyes flicked over the long face, the sharp angular nose, the long dark matted hair. “Patris? In the name of the Three, what are you doing here?”

  Patris put a hand protectively to his released throat and massaged it. “Making a fool of myself, apparently.”

  “What did you think you were trying to do?” she pressed him.

  The sailor-thief looked down at his boots. “I was just curious…I…” She glared at him. He looked up and met her eyes. “All right, I was trying to rob you. Are you happy now?”

  “Why?” she demanded. “Why would you do such a thing?”

  “It’s my trade, remember? It’s what I do for a living in Sakara.”

  “Well, it may have escaped your notice,” she said acerbically, “but we’re no longer in Sakara.”

  Patris’ voice was gloomy. “Don’t remind me. Look, I’m sorry. It was a stupid thing to do. But I was desperate.”

  Keris remembered the staff resting in her hand. She sheathed the darkwood weapon. “Why not just come up and announce yourself? Why all this…this creeping about in the shadows?”