No danger until the dig-claws came down to mine.
Limbeck had just settled himself beneath a huge piece of torn wing fabric, to protect himself from the rain, when the terrible thought of the dig-claws occurred to him. Hastily he leapt to his feet and peered upward, but couldn’t see a thing except for a black blur that was probably storm clouds and flashes of fuzzy lightning. Having never served the Kicksey-winsey, Limbeck had no idea if the dig-claws operated during storms or not. He couldn’t see why they wouldn’t, yet on the other hand he couldn’t see why they would. All of which was no help.
Sitting back down—being careful to first remove several sharp splinters of wood and drop them down the holes of the coralite—Limbeck considered the matter as best he could through the pain in his head. At least the pit offered protection from the storm. And, in all probability, the dig-claws—which were huge, cumbersome things—would move slowly enough that he would have time to get out of the way.
Which turned out to be the case.
Limbeck had been squatting in the pit for about thirty tocks or so, the storm was showing no signs of abating, and he was wishing he’d had the foresight to stuff a couple of muffins down his pants, when there was a large thump and the pit in which he was sitting gave a tremendous shudder.
Dig-claws, thought Limbeck, and began to climb up the sides of the pit. It was easy going. The coralite offered numerous hand- and footholds, and Limbeck reached the top in moments. There was no use putting on his spectacles—the rain streaming over the glass would have blinded him. And he didn’t need them anyhow. The dig-claw, its metal gleaming in the incessant flashes of lightning, was only a few feet from him.
Glancing upward, Limbeck could see other claws dropping out of the sky, descending on long cables lowered from the Kicksey-winsey. It was an awesome spectacle, and the Geg stood staring, headache forgotten, his mouth gaping wide open.
Made of bright and shining metal, ornately carved and fashioned to resemble the foot of some huge killer bird, the dig-claws dug into the coralite with their sharp talons. Closing over the broken rock, the claws carried it upward as a bird’s claw grasps its prey. Once back on the isle of Drevlin, the dig-claws deposited the rock they had mined from the Terrel Fen into large bins, where the Gegs sorted through the coralite and retrieved the precious gray ore on which the Kicksey-winsey fed, and without which—so legend had it—the Kicksey-winsey could not survive.
Fascinated, Limbeck watched the dig-claws come smashing down all around him, biting into the coralite, digging down deep, scooping it up. The Geg was so interested in the procedure—which he’d never seen—that he completely forgot what he was supposed to do until it was almost too late. The claws were shaking free of the coralite and starting to rise back up when Limbeck remembered he was to put a mark on one of them to let Jarre and her people know where he was.
Broken bits of coralite, dropped out of the rising claws, would serve as a writing tool. Grabbing up a chunk, Limbeck made his way through the driving rain, stumbling over the rock-strewn ground, heading for one of the claws that had just come down and was burying itself in the coralite. Reaching the dig-claw, Limbeck was suddenly daunted by his task. The claw was enormous; he’d never imagined anything so big and powerful. Fifty Limbecks would have fitted comfortably inside its talons. It shook and jabbed and clawed the surface of the coralite, sending sharp shards of rock flying everywhere. It was impossible to get close to it.
But Limbeck had no choice. He had to get near. Gripping his coralite in one hand and his courage in the other, he had just started forward when a bolt of lightning struck the claw, sending blue flame dancing over its metal surface. The simultaneous thunder blast knocked Limbeck off his feet. Dazed and terrified, the Geg was about to give up in despair and run back to his pit—where he figured he would spend the remainder of a short and unhappy life—when the claw came to a shuddering stop. All the claws around Limbeck stopped—some in the ground; others hanging in midair on their way back up; others with talons wide open, waiting to descend.
Perhaps the lightning had damaged it. Perhaps there was a scrift change. Perhaps something had gone wrong above. Limbeck didn’t know. If he had believed in the gods, he would have thanked them. As it was, he scrambled over the rocks, chunk of coralite in hand, and cautiously approached the nearest claw.
Noticing lots of scratch marks where the claw dipped into the coralite, Limbeck realized that he would have to make his mark on the upper part of the dig-claw, a part that didn’t sink into the ground. That meant he had to choose a claw which was already buried. Which meant there was every possibility that it would start up again, yank itself out of the ground, and spill tons of rock down on the Geg’s head.
Gingerly Limbeck touched the side of the dig-claw with the coralite, his hand shaking so that it made a ringing sound, like the clapper of a bell. It didn’t leave a mark. Gritting his teeth, desperation giving him strength, Limbeck bore down hard. The coralite screeched over the metal side of the claw with a sound that made Limbeck think his head would split apart. But he had the satisfaction of seeing a long scratch mar the claw’s smooth unblemished surface.
Still, someone might take that one scratch for an accidental occurrence. Limbeck made another mark on the claw, this one perpendicular to the first. The dig-claw shivered and shook. Limbeck dropped his rock in fright and scrambled backward. The claws were functioning once again. Pausing a moment, Limbeck gazed proudly on his work.
One dig-claw, rising into the stormy sky, was marked with the letter L.
Dashing through the rain, Limbeck returned to his pit. No claws seemed likely to descend on him, this time at least. He climbed back down the sides and, reaching the bottom, made himself as comfortable as possible. Pulling the fabric over his head, he tried not to think about food.
CHAPTER 17
STEPS OF TERREL FEN,
LOW REALM
THE DIG-CLAWS CARRYING THEIR ORE LIFTED BACK UP INTO THE STORM clouds, on their way to the Drevlin dumps. Limbeck, watching them ascend, pondered how long it might take them to unload the coralite and return for more. How long would it take someone to notice his mark? Would someone notice his mark? If someone did notice his mark, would it be someone friendly to his cause or would it be a clark? If it was a clark, what was the clark likely to do about it? If it was a friend, how long would it take to attach the help-hand? Would that happen before he froze to death or died of starvation?
Such gloomy wonderings were unusual to Limbeck, who was not, ordinarily, a worrier. His disposition was naturally cheerful and optimistic. He tended to see the best in people. He held no malice toward anyone for his having been tied to the Feathers of Justick and tossed down here to die. The high froman and the head clark had done what they considered to be best for the people. It wasn’t their fault that they believed in those who claimed to be gods. It was no wonder that the froman and his followers didn’t believe Limbeck’s story—Jarre herself didn’t believe it either.
Perhaps it was thinking about Jarre that made Limbeck feel sad and discouraged. He had fondly assumed that she, at least, would believe in his discovery that the Welves weren’t gods. Limbeck, huddling, shivering, in the bottom of his pit, could still not quite accept the fact that she didn’t. This knowledge had nearly ruined his entire execution. Now that the initial excitement was over and he had nothing to do but wait and hope things went right and try not to notice that there was an incredible number of things that could go wrong, Limbeck began to reflect seriously on what would happen when (not if) he was rescued.
“How can they accept me as their leader if they think I lie?” Limbeck asked a stream of water running down the side of the pit. “Why would they even want me back at all? We’ve always said, Jarre and I, that truth was the most important virtue, that the quest for truth should be our highest goal. She thinks I’ve lied, yet she’s obviously expecting me to continue as leader of our Union.
“And when I go back, then what?” Limbeck saw it all cle
arly, more clearly than he’d seen anything in years. “She’ll humor me. They all will. Oh, they’ll keep me as head of the Union—after all, the Mangers have judged me and let me live. But they’ll know it’s a sham. More important, I’ll know it’s a sham. The Mangers haven’t had a damn thing to do with it. It’s Jarre’s cleverness that will bring me back, and she’ll know it and so will I. Lying! That’s what we’ll be doing!”
Limbeck was growing increasingly upset. “Oh, sure, we’ll get a lot of new members, but they’ll be coming to us for the wrong reasons! Can you base a revolution on a lie? No!” The Geg clenched his thick wet fist. “It’s like building a house on mud. Sooner or later, it’s going to slip out from under your feet. Maybe I’ll just stay down here! That’s it! I won’t go back!
“But that won’t prove anything,” Limbeck reflected. “They’ll just think the Mangers did me in, and that won’t help the cause at all. I know! I’ll write them a note and send it up with the help-hand instead of going myself. There are tier feathers lying around. I can use those as a pen.” He jumped to his feet. “And silt for ink. ‘By choosing to stay down here and perhaps dying down here’—yes, that sounds well—‘I hope to prove to you that what I said about the Welves was the truth. I cannot lead those who do not believe me, those who have lost faith in me.’ Yes, that’s quite good.”
Limbeck tried to sound cheerful, but he found his pleasure in his speech rapidly draining. He was hungry, cold, wet, and frightened. The storm was blowing itself out, and an awful, terrible silence was descending over him. That silence reminded him of the big silence—the Endless Hear Nothing—and reminded him that he was facing that Endless Hear Nothing, and he realized that the death of which he spoke so glibly was liable to be a very unpleasant one.
Then, too, as if death wasn’t bad enough, he pictured Jarre receiving his note, reading it with pursed lips and that wrinkle which always appeared above her nose when she was displeased. He wouldn’t even need his spectacles to read the words of the note she’d send back. He could hear them already.
“‘Limbeck, stop this nonsense and get up here this instant!’ Oh, Jarre!” he murmured to himself sadly, “if only you had believed me. The others wouldn’t have mattered—”
A bone-jarring, teeth-rattling, earth-shaking thud jolted Limbeck out of his despair and simultaneously knocked him down.
Lying on his back, dazed, staring up at the top of the pit, he thought: Have the dig-claws come back? This soon? I don’t have my note written!
Flustered, Limbeck staggered to his feet and stared up into the grayness. The storm had passed over. It was drizzling rain and foggy, but it was not lightninging, hailing, or thundering. He couldn’t see the claws descending, but then, he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. Fumbling for his spectacles, he put them on and looked back up into the sky.
By squinting, he thought he could just barely distinguish numerous fuzzy blobs materializing out of the clouds. But if they were the dig-claws, they were far above him yet, and unless one had come down prematurely or fallen—which seemed unlikely, since the Kicksey-winsey rarely allowed accidents like that to happen—the dig-claws couldn’t have been the cause of that tremendous thud. What, then, was it?
Hurriedly Limbeck began to climb the sides of the pit. His spirits were rising. He had a “what” or a “why” to investigate!
Reaching the rim of the pit, he peeped cautiously over the edge. At first he saw nothing, but that was because he was looking in the wrong direction. Turning his head, he gasped, marveling.
A brilliant light, shimmering with more colors than Limbeck had ever imagined existed in his gray and metallic world, was streaming out of a gigantic hole not more than thirty feet from him. Never stopping to think that the light might be harmful or that whatever had created the humongous thud might be lethal or that the dig-claws might be slowly and inevitably descending, Limbeck clambered up over the edge of the pit and made for the light as swiftly as his short, thick legs would carry his stout body.
There were numerous obstacles blocking his path; the surface of the small isle was pockmarked with holes dug by the claws. He had to avoid these, as well as heaps of broken coralite dropped when the dig-claws carried the ore upward. Making his way up and over and around these took some time, as well as considerable energy. When Limbeck finally reached the light, he was out of breath, both from the unaccustomed exertion and from excitement. For as he drew nearer, Limbeck could see that the colors in the light were forming distinct patterns and shapes.
Intent on the wonderful pictures he could see in the light, Limbeck stumbled almost blindly over the rocky ground and was saved from tumbling headfirst into the hole by tripping over a chunk of coralite and falling flat on his face at the hole’s edge. Shaken, he put his hand to his pocket to feel if his spectacles were broken. They weren’t there. After a horrible moment of panic, he remembered that they were on his nose. Crawling forward, he stared in amazement.
For a moment, he couldn’t see anything but a brilliant, multicolored, ever-shifting radiance. Then forms and shapes coalesced. The pictures in the light were truly fascinating, and Limbeck gazed at them in awe. As he watched the constantly shifting and changing images, that portion of his mind which continually interrupted important and wonderful thoughts with mundane matters such as “Mind you don’t walk into that wall!,” “That pan’s hot!,” and “Why didn’t you go before we left?,” said to him urgently, “The dig-claws are coming down!”
Limbeck, concentrating on the pictures, ignored it.
He was, he realized, seeing a world. Not his own world, but somebody else’s world. It was an incredibly beautiful place. It reminded him some, but not quite, of the pictures he’d seen in the books of the Welves. The sky was bright blue—not gray—and it was clear and vast, with only a few puffs of white sailing across it. Lush vegetation was everywhere, not just in a pot in the kitchen. He saw magnificent structures of fantastic design, he saw wide streets and boulevards, he saw what might have been Gegs, only they were tall and slender with graceful limbs …
Or had he? Limbeck blinked and stared into the light. It was beginning to fragment and break apart! The images were becoming distorted. He longed for the people to come back. Certainly, he’d never seen anyone—not even the Welves—who looked like what he thought he’d glimpsed in that split second before the light winked out, then blinked back on, and shifted to another picture.
Trying to make sense of the flickering images that were beginning to make his eyes burn and ache, Limbeck pulled himself farther over the lip of the hole and saw the light’s source. It was beaming out of an object at the bottom of the hole.
“That was what made the thump,” said Limbeck, shielding his eyes with his hand and staring at the object intently. “It fell from the sky, like I did. Is it part of the Kicksey-winsey? If so, why did it fall? Why is it showing me these pictures?”
Why, why, why? Limbeck couldn’t stand not knowing. Never thinking of possible danger, he crawled over the edge of the hole and slid down the side. The nearer he drew to the object, the easier it was to see it. The light pouring out of it was diffused upward and was less brilliant and blinding approached from this angle.
The Geg was, at first, disappointed. “Why, it’s nothing but a hunk of coralite,” he said, prodding chunks of it that had broken off. “Certainly the largest hunk of coralite I’ve ever seen—it’s as big as my house—and then, too, I’ve never known coralite to fall out of the sky.”
Slithering closer, displacing small bits of rock that skittered out from under him and went bouncing down the side of the crater, Limbeck drew in his breath. Delighted, awed, and astounded, he immediately squelched the mental prod that was reminding him, “The dig-claws! The dig-claws!” The coralite was just a shell, an outer covering. It had cracked open, probably in the fall, and Limbeck could see inside.
At first he thought it must be part of the Kicksey-winsey, and then he thought it wasn’t. It was made of metal—like t
he Kicksey-winsey—but the metal body of the Kicksey-winsey was smooth and unblemished. This metal was covered with strange and bizarre symbols, and it was from cracks in the metal that the bright light was streaming. And it was because of the cracks—or so Limbeck reasoned—that he couldn’t see the complete picture.
“If I open the cracks wider, then perhaps I could see more. This is really exciting!” Reaching the bottom of the crater, Limbeck hurried toward the metal object. It was about four times taller than he was and—as he’d first noticed—as big as his house. Gingerly he reached out his hand and made a swift tapping motion with the tips of his fingers on the metal. It wasn’t hot to the touch—something he’d feared due to the bright light pouring from it. The metal was cool, and he was able to rest his hand on it and even trace the symbols engraved there with his fingers.
A strange and ominous creaking noise sounded above him, and that irritating part of his brain was shrieking at him some thing about dig-claws coming down, but Limbeck ordered it to shut up and quit bothering him. Putting his hand on one of the cracks, he noticed that the cracks ran all around the symbols but never intersected one. Limbeck started to tug at the crack to see if he could widen it.
His hand seemed reluctant to perform its assigned task, however, and Limbeck knew why. He was suddenly and unpleasantly reminded of the fallen Welf ship.
“Rotting corpses. But it led me to the truth.”
The thought passed through his mind swift as a heartbeat, and, refusing to let himself think about it further, he gave the metal a good hard tug.
The crack widened, the entire metal structure began to shiver and tremble. Limbeck snatched his hand away and jumped backward. But the object was only, apparently, settling itself more firmly into the crater, for the movement ceased. Cautiously Limbeck approached again, and this time he heard something.
It sounded like a groan. Pressing his ear to the crack, wishing angrily that the creaking sounds of the dig-claws descending from the skies would cease so that he could hear better, Limbeck listened intently. He heard it again, louder, and he had no doubt that there was something alive inside the metal shell, and that it was hurt.
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