The Clockwork King of Orl tok-2

by Mike Wild

  She proceeded upwards, finding that the conduit levelled out some now, and as a result found her feet squelching in patches of alchemical waste that had not been fully flushed away. She avoided the muck as much as she could, stepped lightly and quickly through that which she could not, spurred to such action by the small skeletal remains of floprats who had chanced to crawl here. The remains of the rodents hadn't just been eaten away, their skeletons had been twisted and changed.

  Her slightly increased pace made Kali no less aware of the danger around her, and she deftly avoided the triggers for another couple of traps — one apparently designed to release a cloud of living biomagical toxin into the conduit, another — which she purposefully triggered once she'd passed by — to make that section of the conduit momentarily discorporeal, meaning anyone unfortunate enough to be traversing it at the time would become part of the conduit on a permanent basis.

  Pits of Kerberos! These guys really are bastards.

  She continued on, relieved to find that at last the traps seemed to have stopped. Quite right, too, because anybody who had made it this far bloody well deserved to make it the rest. She couldn't relax until she was out of the conduit, however — the number of delays she'd suffered had eaten into the time she had for safe passage, and she reckoned she had less than a minute left before the alchemical laboratories were purged.

  She hurried, the seconds ticking, and spied at last the access hatch marked on the map. The moment she reached it she heard dull, echoing rumblings from above, and grabbed quickly for the hatch wheel to swing it open.

  Thread magic coursed through her, a crackling storm of blue energy that paralysed her momentarily before blowing her off her feet and slamming her into the conduit wall. Kali groaned and slipped to the floor, lay there stunned, bucking and spasming involuntarily as small discharges continued to spark off her body.

  Dammit, one last trap. They'd lulled her into a false sense of security and caught her unawares.

  One thing she couldn't help but be aware of, though, were the noises. The echoing rumblings from above had become a series of metallic clangs, and as she lay there she realised with a dull knot of fear that the drop-hatches from the labs were opening.

  Gods! She had to move now! Only she couldn't, not an inch. Not even to thump the conduit in frustration. Annoyingly, all she could do was dribble.

  Dammit, Hooper, come on, come on. You've been an idiot, but do you want to die here? Do you want to die and prove Jengo Pim right?

  The conduit filled with the sound of sloshing.

  Hooper, she screamed inwardly, do you want to fail the old man?

  Kali roared with exertion and, consciously forcing every movement of her body, lurched forwards, twisted the hatch wheel and heaved the cover open just in time. The last thing she saw before she dived head first through the hatch and it clanged shut behind her was a raging torrent of rainbow sludge.

  She plummeted with a yell and thudded onto the floor below as if she had just been birthed by a pregnant mool, embryonic, twitching and covered in splashes of gunk. After a second she thrashed the gunk away, but stayed down while her spasms subsided, coughing and retching loudly. Only then did she perceive where she was — the middle of a corridor in the first tower — and lying there exposed and all but helpless, it occurred to her that her entrance had not exactly been the stealthy one she'd planned. She comforted herself, however, with the fact that the last trap would have killed — or at least hammered the final nail into the coffin of — anyone less bloody-minded than she.

  She frowned, wondering. Was it just bloody-mindedness that had got her out of there? Or was it something to do again with the changes happening to her, the things that made her able to do the things she did? One thing was certain — now was not the time to think about it.

  Kali groaned and picked herself up. The corridor in which she'd landed was a shimmering, smooth affair and, thankfully, empty, though it felt oddly not so. The corridor thrummed quietly to itself, as if the power of the Three Towers were contained within its walls, and Kali had the uneasy feeling that, while she saw no one, she was not alone. She felt as if she were being observed from all angles, almost as if she were being watched by the building itself, which, considering the nature of the place, it was just possible she was. Nothing happened as a result of her feeling, though, and she wondered if perhaps it was just a magical suggestion that hung in the air, designed to unnerve anyone who shouldn't be here. Even so, it was pitsing creepy.

  Pulling out Jengo's map, she orientated herself and crept slowly forwards, thankful for the fact there'd been no alarms. She'd had more than enough alarms in Scholten. She began to weave her way through a maze of corridors towards the stairs that would lead her upwards and from there, across the bridge, to the third tower and her destination. The Forbidden Archive.

  Despite Jengo's concerns, she moved with relative ease. Now that she was within the outer defences, there was little to be wary of in the way of traps, and as most League members were busy blowing up or dissolving things in the labs she passed, they presented little problem. Those mages that she did encounter in her path she simply avoided, a task made easier by the fact that in their flowing and colourful patterned robes it was easy to spot them before they chanced upon her.

  Those robes. She found it perverse how these bastards still garbed themselves in the garish showbusiness style of parlour entertainers when their business was no longer entertainment but death. Still, she couldn't help but think that one or two of them were wasted here in the towers and should actually put themselves up for sale as a nice pair of curtains.

  As she moved steadily on, only one thing hampered her — here and there certain corridors were blocked by shimmering curtains of different coloured energy and, while the mages moved through them with ease, presumably having protected themselves against whatever the energies did, a stray floprat that attempted to follow ended up as a small puddle of fur and blood. Kali did not want to chance her arm — or any other part of her body — by emulating it. Instead, she found the bottom of the stairs by a different route.

  Following echoing, whispering corridors, they appeared before her at last, and Kali looked up their spiralling heights and cursed. According to the map, the connecting bridge to the Forbidden Archive could be found on the thirty-fifth floor. There was no lift. The hells with a lift, she thought. These guys were mages so why hadn't they magicked some kind of… lifty-uppity zoomy tube. But they hadn't, had they? No. Knowing her luck, they probably just spouted some kind of incantation that stopped them getting absolutely bloody knackered.

  She began the long ascent, but it soon became clear that she would never make it all the way up without being detected — the stairs were simply too busy with mages crossing between floors. There was only one alternative. Much as she hated the idea of having to take one on, Kali secreted herself in an alcove near the base of the steps, reasoning that the best way to tackle a mage would be to surprise him from behind. This she did, waiting until she caught one alone then, as he passed cracked him on the head and caught him as he dropped. His robe came off in one.

  The body concealed in the alcove, and suitably attired, Kali continued quickly on. She did not want to be anywhere near him when he woke up.

  Thirty-five storeys later she emerged gasping through an exit into the open air, which led directly onto the bridge she wanted. Thirty-five storeys was a dizzying height and Kali expected a worse buffeting than she had received above Scholten, but to her surprise the bridge was totally calm and silent, protected, she assumed, by some invisible magical canopy. Made sense, she thought, smiling. After all, if they needed to visit the archive the last thing the League's mages needed was a nasty draught up their robes disturbing their forbidden musings.

  Had Makennon got some of her own information from here? Kali wondered. After all, if ever a place needed to be infiltrated by a sender, this was it. The bridge leading to the Forbidden Archive looked harmless enough but Kali had by now s
een enough of the things to recognise that the barely visible but variously coloured curtains of shimmering and sparkling energy that separated the bridge into sections promised something nasty the moment she tried to step through them. These were particularly powerful, no doubt about that — she could feel them buzzing in her brain.

  She studied the bridge. It had no walls or railings and, naturally enough, no conduits, no side passages and no ledges. None, in other words, of her usual shortcuts. She tentatively touched where she imagined the magical canopy to be, and while her hand moved through it with ease, she guessed that if she passed through it completely there would be no way back in.

  Handy enough for suicidal sorcerers but useless as far as she was concerned.

  She had to admit, she felt stymied. There was no way across without indulging in some serious lateral thinking. She was beginning to think she was completely out of laterals when, fortunately, one arrived in the form of a mage coming through the door behind her. As soon as she heard the door open Kali twisted to the side and flattened herself against the wall, watching as a League member came through and began to amble across the bridge, seeming almost to float in his long robe. His relaxed attitude made her presume that he was not about to be frozen, incinerated or generally done to death by any of the traps so, like his brothers below, he had to have some kind of protection about him.

  Normally, she would not have welcomed his presence at all, but this, she hoped, was her way through. She had to take the gamble, there was no other choice. She had to stick to him as close as a second skin. Used as she was to sneaking about places, she was about to find out just how stealthy she could be.

  As the mage moved past her, Kali moved into step behind him, a living shadow, crouched but moving on tiptoe, matching his every move. As his left leg moved, so did hers, as his right, the same. Every pause, every hesitation and every subtle twist and turn of the mage's body was matched perfectly as he — and she — passed through the first of the defensive curtains and she felt nothing other than a slight fluttering in her muscles. But that she felt even that while she was protected proved her suspicion of how powerful these final traps were.

  Two curtains, three curtains, four. Her plan was working — and then it wasn't. She was one curtain away from the end of the bridge when the mage stopped dead in his tracks, causing Kali to wobble and almost bump into him it was so unexpected.

  There was what seemed to be an eternal pause. What are you doing? she thought. Come on, come on, tell me what you're doing.

  The mage patted a pocket of his robe, shook his head in self reprimand and tutted loudly.

  He's forgotten something, Kali thought. The bloody idiot's forgotten -

  Oh, cra -

  She moved as he did, a hundred and eighty degrees in perfect silence and synchronisation, staying in the same position behind him all the time. She couldn't believe she managed it, but she did, and the mage didn't even have a clue she was there. Though outwardly calm and in control, as Kali watched him walk back the way that he had come, she was surprised he didn't hear her heart threatening to burst out of her chest.

  He disappeared through the door and she was left trapped between the last two curtains.

  She threw her hands in the air and walked quickly around in a circle. There was no way forwards, no way back — and absolutely nowhere to hide when Mister Duh! Forgot My Head returned.

  Idiot!

  There had to be a way through — and she had to work out what it was fast. The first step was finding out what kind of trap she was looking at. Kali quickly tore a small patch from her dark silk bodysuit and tossed it at the curtain. There was a zuzzz, a puff of smoke and then nothing — the patch was gone. This was some kind of electrical trap and if she tried to step through she'd end up doing a dance that would put the Hells' Bellies to shame.

  A very brief dance.

  Dammit! She wasn't going to find out the location of the keys this way.

  The keys, she thought, something nagging at the back of her brain. These differently coloured curtains with their different magics — surely the mages couldn't constantly invoke protection against each? What, then, if they instead carried with them some kind of key? She hadn't seen anything actually being used and so what could it — ?

  She looked down. The pattern on her stolen robe scintillated slightly, more so when she moved closer to the curtain. Gods, she thought, was that why the mages still wore them — because the robes themselves were the keys?

  Again, it was a gamble, but if she didn't take it she was stuffed anyway. Kali took a deep breath and walked slowly forwards, passing through the energy field with ease.

  She cringed. All the effort she'd put into marking Mister Duh! Forgot My Head when she could have passed through any time.

  Idiot!

  She opened the door ahead of her and she was inside at last. The Forbidden Archive.

  Her eyes narrowed.

  Or… not.

  What in the hells was this? Kali wondered, aghast. There was nothing here. After all her effort, the upper half of the third tower was an empty chamber, completely featureless apart from a solitary, podium-like structure at its centre and a red glow that suffused the place and seemed to emanate from the walls.

  Okay — if this had been a guided tour, then she'd have demanded her money back.

  She moved towards the podium, her footfalls clattering despite the fact she wore shnarl-hide soles. Of all the things she had encountered so far it was the clattering that made her shiver. This place was weird.

  Kali mounted the podium and found it inscribed with a number of symbols, none of which she recognised, the symbols being magical not linguistic, and not her area of expertise. She pressed one, then another, and then each in turn, but nothing happened. She tried a different order and, again, nothing. On her fourth unsuccessful attempt she threw up her arms in frustration, then quickly stepped back as the air in front of her seemed suddenly to change. Then, spiralling down seemingly from thin air above came a number of tiny shapes that began to gather before her eyes, and as they did an object began to assemble itself from these tiny building blocks. Some kind of container — elven by the look of it — marked with the familiar circular symbol of their race.

  Kali moved her hand forwards to touch the container but found nothing there.

  An idea struck her, and she waved her hands again. As rapidly as it had appeared, the container disassembled itself and spiralled back towards the heights of the chamber, replaced by another object spiralling down and assembling itself in its place. This time it was a manuscript containing, by the look of it, some kind of outlawed spell.

  Kali's gesticulations became more varied, and she dismissed and summoned more and more objects, each redolent to some degree of evil and possessed of an ominous aura. She had no idea what magics were involved, but it was becoming clear to her what was happening here — the League of Prestidigitation and Prestige obviously considered the collection of the Forbidden Archive too dangerous to keep physically in one location and so had devised this method of virtually retrieving each object for study from elsewhere — perhaps some plane that could not be physically reached at all.

  It was an indication of their power and it was wondrous, but it did her very little good. How out of all the collection was she meant to find what she needed, because if she had managed to summon the items she had at random then the collection itself had to be immense, with infinite combinations of symbology. And hells — she didn't even really know what it was she was looking for.

  There had to be a way of narrowing it down. Kali looked at the symbols on the podium again, reasoning that not even the League's mages could reasonably be expected to remember every combination, and that maybe they were subdivisions — some kind of cataloguing system. Instead of pressing it this time, she replicated the first symbol on the podium with arm movements, feeling what she had missed before, some kind of receptive magical field slightly thickening the air, and a second later a b
ox not dissimilar to the first she had summoned assembled itself. Kali took a gamble and tried waving it on, and to her surprise the gesture worked — another curiosity assembling itself in its place. But she was clearly in the section for artefacts when what she wanted was manuscripts. She replicated the next symbol — spells — and the next — ancient relics. Only on the fourth and last did she find what she was looking for, or at least a place to begin.

  Kali's gesticulations increased in pace and she began to summon, study and dismiss manuscript after manuscript, growing more and more adept with the practice until she looked as if she were conducting some complex symphony. She found she was able to pull writings towards her for closer study, turn them around or upside down to seek hidden illuminations and, in the case of actual tomes, flip from page to page with ease. The number of ancient documents stored astounded her, but her joy at discovering such a treasure trove was tempered by the knowledge that she had no time to truly study any but those she sought. Having still not found them and increasingly aware that the forgetful mage could return at any time, her efforts became more urgent, a degree of frustration creeping in as she hurled each document on with a snap of her hand.

  Then suddenly, there. Images similar to those Slowhand had described from Makennon's archive in Scholten. There, on the first manuscript she saw, and on more following, diverse and variously decomposed references presumably collected here from different sources and different times.

  Kali stopped cycling, hands moving slowly so that she could fold back and forth between the most telling documents, an illuminated manuscript, a map, and what appeared to be some ancient bard's tale of events. It was all there just as Slowhand had said. The hellsfire, the damnation, the vast horde marching under what appeared to be the crossed-circle banner of the Final Faith — not to mention the people kneeling before the horde in apparent worship. Also, looming over them in the background, a figurehead that could have been a representation of the Lord of All — what Makennon believed to be the horde's leader — but to less subjective eyes could equally have been anything else, including, troublingly, a gigantic and stylised version of your typical — how could she put this? — small, warlike person.