by Alex Archer
“Go ahead, find out what happens,” Garin said.
“If we do that blindly, we could all die,” Roux stated. “Or Michalis’s workshop could be forever closed to discovery.”
“I could get some earthmovers in here,” Garin replied. “Trust me, I could find whatever is buried in this hill, with a whole lot less personal risk.”
“But how much would you lose if you pursued that course of action?” Roux shook his head. “No. Find the letters we’re looking for.”
A few minutes later, Garin said, “I’ve got them. They’re here under the chin.”
“Are you certain?” Roux asked.
Grinning, Garin pushed on the carved chin. “We’ll see.”
Gears ground away inside the stone wall. Abruptly, the bull’s head withdrew, backing six feet and turning to the left on a tracked runway to reveal a doorway to another dark cavern.
After a careful examination of the doorway and the tiles on the other side, Annja led the way inside. Her light reflected off several metallic surfaces and ignited the euphoric sense of impending discovery. She stepped forward, then stopped at a railing. Peering down, she saw she was standing on the precipice of a ledge.
Garin stepped up beside her and snapped to life a glow stick he had been carrying in his equipment bag. He pitched the glow stick into the darkness. As the blue glow arced into the pit, it revealed Michalis’s workshop in teasing glimpses.
The glow stick hit the metallic tiles of the floor, rolled briefly and came to a stop. Shadows, long and lean, stretched from the fantastical metallic creatures that surrounded the flare. The blue glow revealed a unicorn, a rearing Pegasus with wings spread and a merwoman. Several other smaller clockworks sat on elegant marble tables. There were insects, fish, lizards and...other things Annja couldn’t identify at a distance.
“This way.” Roux walked to the left, following the circular observation deck to a flight of steps that led down. Annja was hard-pressed to keep up to him. Garin and the two security men trailed behind, all of them speechless in astonishment and awe.
“You said you came here for a clockwork, Roux?” Annja played her light around the hundreds of clockworks.
Roux didn’t break stride, marching unerringly through the darkness so fast he was almost catching up with the light he carried. “I did.”
“How are you going to know which one you’re looking for?”
“Because I will.” Unease tightened Roux’s expression. “This thing is very dangerous, Annja. I cannot express to you how dangerous it is.”
“Like the thing in China?” Annja still sometimes dreamed of the jade ogre she had helped Roux find in the abandoned City of Thieves. Memory of Garin and Roux with their hands on it, speaking a language she didn’t understand, then the huge explosion afterward that had never been explained to her.
“Even worse. The artifact in Loulan City represented power. A dark casting that could be used for so many bad things. Horrible things.” Roux took a breath and let it out. “But this, it has the power to twist and weave, to make done and undone.”
“To make what done and undone?”
Roux pursed his lips. “What is and what is not.”
“You’re speaking in riddles.”
“This thing was never meant to see the light of day. And I must find it.”
“Can you tell me what we’re looking for?”
“Not precisely. This thing...it will be something that weaves.”
“A loom?” Annja pitched her light at the clockworks.
A human-size metallic seahorse stood on its curled tail near a table that contained a replica of the Parthenon. The small figure of woman a foot tall stood in front of the structure. She wore a breastplate and a winged helmet, and carried a spear. Beside her, an owl perched on a horse and a Gorgon stood to one side, her snake hair poised to strike.
“Roux.”
He stopped.
“That’s Athena standing in front of the Parthenon.”
“Yes.”
“She’s the goddess of weaving.”
Roux shook his head. “That’s not the clockwork we’re looking for.” He turned back the way he was going.
Reluctantly, Annja moved with him, wishing she could have stayed behind long enough to see what the clockwork Athena did. But it was just as possible that Michalis created a clockwork of Athena because she was also goddess of arithmetic.
Garin and his men tossed more flares on the floor. Together, they created a ruby pyre that lit up more of the workspace. Several plants Annja could identify created gardens with nymphs and dryads and satyrs cavorting in them. Only then did she remember her camera and start taking pictures.
She was so distracted she almost tripped over Roux, who had come to a stop in front of her. Stepping to one side of him, she aimed her beam ahead and peered at what had caught his attention.
Two metallic legs stood revealed in the light. Each leg was massive and ended standing on a foot that had to be eight feet long and four feet wide across the keg-size toes.
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Annja trailed her light up the huge legs and took in the rest of the giant. The figure was that of a young male in a kilt. A belt encased his hips and supported a long knife. He held a massive spear in his right hand. A small, mocking smile curved the warrior’s lips. He was handsome, his wild hair brushing his shoulders. He gazed out as if looking across the room.
“Is that the Colossus of Rhodes?” Annja asked. When Roux didn’t answer, she looked for him, only to find that he had moved.
He stood over to the left, in front of a giant clamshell that was ten feet across. He put his hand on the shell. “The clockwork I’m looking for is here.”
“The clamshell?”
“No. Within the shell. Help me.” Roux knelt in front of the clockwork clam and pushed on it. He called out to Garin.
Garin came immediately, holding the MP5 in one hand. His tense expression was made more severe by the dried blood on his cheek, his eyes so black they looked like holes. “This is it?”
“What we want is within.”
After a brief hesitation, Garin knelt and laid his weapon on the floor, then began helping. “Tell me what the clockworks are, Roux. After all that we have been through, after all that we have been to each other over the centuries, I deserve that.”
Stubbornly, Roux kept his silence as he strained against the clamshell. Then he said softly, “These things—not all of Michalis’s work, but some—were constructed with an ancient power. A force even stronger than Joan’s sword because they recognize no rules, no balance. These clockworks were fashioned before the concepts of good and evil had been fleshed out.”
“So they’re neither one thing nor the other?”
“No. These things...they are riddles. Very dangerous riddles.” Roux glanced at Garin. “They’re aspects of power that are able to channel even more power.”
Garin pursed his lips, then nodded. “Michalis made this thing?”
“Yes.”
“How could he have wielded something so dark?”
Roux shook his head. “Michalis didn’t wield that power. It wielded him. As it wielded so many others throughout the lives of men. That power, once it was done with Michalis, left a taint that he used to fashion other clockworks that held powers of their own. As he worked the metal, he forged some of that remaining energy into pieces. I’d found several of them, but not this one. This is the one he used to create.”
“What are you going to do with this?”
“I’m going to destroy it, as I did the others we found. As I’ll destroy any others I discover.” Roux strained against the clamshell. “Michalis didn’t know everything that he was doing. He didn’t know the extent of the power he was working with. Power like this―” he shook his head “―it b
linds those who use it. Usually it corrupts them, turns them into vessels that never again truly know their own wills. Only a few people have ever broken the shackles to that particular darkness and lived to tell about it.”
“Did that happen to you?” Annja asked.
Roux ignored the question. He pushed against the clamshell again, then fell back and cursed.
Garin pulled his dive knife from the sheath on his calf and thrust it in the gap between the two halves of the shell. He prized with both hands, adding strength to the leverage he had.
The knife blade snapped.
Annja continued her examination of the device, still overwhelmed by the intricacy of the clamshell’s detail.
“I can blow it open,” Garin said, backing away. “Since you’re going to destroy whatever is inside, anyway, it won’t matter if we use explosives.”
Roux nodded. “Go ahead.”
Garin turned to the two security men. Trockel again rummaged in his pack.
“Wait.” Annja ran her hand over the clamshell’s hinge, pointing her light at the bull’s head she’d found with her other hand. The lock was almost hidden in the darkness and by the filigreed edge of the shell. She took the pipe key from her pack and engaged it, then pulled outward more easily than she’d expected.
Almost immediately, the clamshell started slowly opening, the top half lifting hypnotically.
Garin and Roux stepped back, ducking behind nearby clockworks, a standing crocodile and a harpy, respectively. Staying crouched even though there was no immediate reaction from inside the shell, Annja made her way around the clockwork and peered inside.
Instead of a pearl, the clam held the mummified body of a dead man. The tissue had gone gray-white with age and sunk in tight against the bones, making him look anorexic. The skull stood revealed in the horrible face, the lips sunken in so that the teeth were prominent. He—and it was a he judging from the dress and the physical aspects—bore no signs of violence. He looked like he’d simply climbed into the clam, laid down and died. A thin mattress supported the body. He wore a toga, and a leather satchel at his side held tools. His wispy gray hair fanned out around his head. A thin beard looked too big on the sunken face.
There, in the master’s workshop, the shade of Michalis guards his creations. If you disturb the master, death will come to any who trespass and do not come in peace.
“Wait,” Annja called out, freezing the others in place. “There was a warning, remember?”
Garin lifted his machine pistol and gazed around warily. “I don’t see any shades. And this thing isn’t getting up from that giant clam.”
“That doesn’t mean there isn’t a trap.”
“If there was a trap,” Roux said, “this would never have opened. We’re safe, Annja.” He paused, then reconsidered. “Safe enough for the moment, at any rate.”
“Is that Michalis?” Trusting that there were no more nasty surprises in store, Garin joined Roux at the foot of the giant clam.
“It would appear so. Although I had understood he was murdered by Romans. How he ended up preserved like this is anyone’s guess. I sincerely doubt they took the time to lay him out and secure him in one of his own creations.” Roux knelt respectfully and played his light over the corpse. The interior of the shell, like natural ones, glowed with an iridescence in the light. Roux gently removed the large, ornate ring on the dead man’s right forefinger. He held it up to display the bull’s head. “His seal.” He glanced at Annja, then tossed her the ring. “A keepsake.”
Annja caught it, but her attention was on the parchment scroll under the corpse’s left sleeve. She pocketed the sigil ring, then leaned down and picked up the scroll. Trapping her light under her arm, she carefully opened the scroll just enough to make out the Greek writing. She couldn’t read it, but Thodoros Papassavas or one of his cronies could.
Wrapping the parchment around the rod again, she reached into her pack and pulled out a plastic Baggie. She sealed the scroll inside and returned it to her pack.
“Annja, might I borrow the key?” Roux had taken a small metallic box from beside Michalis’s body. The box held one of the bull’s head keyholes.
Annja gave him the key, then watched curiously as Roux operated the lock. The box unfolded, laying out flat and revealing a crystal globe inside. Roux tossed the box aside.
“Ah. The weaver.” Reverently, he held the globe up to examine it.
In the otherwhere, Annja felt her sword vibrating like a tuning fork. Without thinking, knowing only that she needed it, she pulled the blade into the workshop with them. The tingling along the sword continued. She tightened her grip on the leather-bound hilt.
The globe in Roux’s hand might have been eight inches around, no larger than a baseball. It looked as if it was made of clear, flawless crystal, no trace of a bubble in it.
Yet inside the globe, a small golden spider no longer than the nail of her little finger, moved restlessly, spinning a strand of webbing that dropped it from the top to the bottom. Once at the bottom of the globe, the spider climbed back up the side, then it spun another single gossamer strand because the first one had mysteriously disappeared and it began its descent again.
“That’s it?” Garin hunkered down beside them. “A clockwork spider trapped in a crystal globe?”
“Yes,” Roux said reverently. “This is it.”
“Doesn’t look like much. Something that might capture a child’s attention. For a time.”
“Exactly. Sometimes the most dangerous things in this world are beautiful things, or innocuous.” Roux rolled the globe over while the spider was descending again. The arachnid froze in place, then flipped over till it was moving down the strand again. “With children, all things are possible, and there are no moral boundaries. Only whim and imagination without restraint. No responsibility or consequences.” He shuddered. “Picture the most dangerous weapon you know of, Garin. Those nuclear warheads the larger nations like to enter sabre-rattling contests with.” He balanced the globe on his fingertips. “This is more dangerous than all of those things put together.”
“The weaver.” Recalling the model of the Parthenon and the Athena figure standing before it, Annja watched the spider slide back down the web strand. “Arachne was a mortal weaver who claimed she was better than Athena. Bad enough she didn’t acknowledge that her skill was a gift from her goddess, but Arachne agreed to a weaving competition with Athena.”
Roux nodded. “During the competition, Arachne not only won, but the tapestry she wove depicted embarrassing situations for the gods and goddesses. Arachne exposed the lives of the gods as if they were on some tawdry reality show.”
“In the end, Athena turned Arachne into a spider.” She couldn’t take her eyes off the crystal globe. “Are you trying to tell me that is Arachne?”
“No.” Roux shook his head. “This is a clockwork. A representation of Arachne, perhaps, but not Arachne. But it’s been embued with that dark power. Loose in the world, this thing would spread like a disease, bearing death and discord.”
Noticing for the first time how enraptured he was by the globe, Annja put down her light and dropped her hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Roux.”
As if shaking off a lethargy, Roux closed his hand over the globe, obscuring the spider from view. Then he stood, breaking the spell that had held them all at the dead man’s final resting place. “It’s something I need to destroy. It’s too dangerous to exist in this world.”
Annja stood, as well, feeling the fatigue from the last long days settling on her. Still, curiosity nagged at her. She was in a place filled with the stuff of legend. Turning, she directed her light out over the surrounding clockworks and suddenly felt a spray of warm fluid against the side of her face. She reached up to touch her face and drew her hand away.
Red stained her fingertips. The coppery
smell of fresh blood filled her nostrils.
One of Garin’s security men dropped in a heap without a word. When he flopped back bonelessly, the gaping gunshot wound in his temple drew her instant attention.
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“Look out!” Annja reached forward and shoved Roux into motion, throwing herself after him as at least two bullets struck the open clamshell and ricocheted into the long-dead creator. The toga jumped from the impacts. Annja flattened Roux and rolled off as bullets cut the air over their heads, then they were both scrambling to find cover.
Garin rocked back on his heels and blood spurted from his right shoulder. If he hadn’t been moving, the bullet would have struck him in a more terminal spot. He lost the MP5 for a moment, then kicked it ahead of him toward a clockwork apple tree. More bullets knocked one of the golden apples from the tree’s branches as he sprinted for the protection the thick trunk offered. Garin scooped the machine pistol from the metallic tiles with his left hand, bringing it up before him as he settled in behind the apple tree.
The second security man fell midstride, the top of his head blown away as the staccato reports of automatic weapons thundered inside the workroom. The opening attack had been with a silenced weapon. Now there was no need for stealth.
Rolling behind a trio of dolphins standing on their tails on a wave, Annja gripped her sword and scanned the workshop entrance. Whoever was firing at them had to have come from that way. The glow sticks Garin and his security people had thrown around the room were dying, allowing the darkness to gather, but she spotted movement along the observation deck. Men circled from either side, coming around to take them from two different directions.
“Annja,” Garin called.
When Annja looked at him, he extended a leg and kicked the dead guard’s dropped MP5 toward her. She caught the weapon as it spun across the tiles. Autofire thundered and muzzle flashes lit up a section of the observation deck. Bullets ricocheted off the metallic floor tiles in a spray of sparks, then ricocheted again off clockworks.