“How does it work?”
“I’m not sure.” Socrates hurried over to the nearest staircase and made a quick descent to the first level. Micah hurried after him. At ground level, they approached the base of the machine, standing clear of the driveline and the spinning disk. Socrates examined it while Micah stood back and watched.
“It appears to be some sort of energy concentration device,” the ape murmured. “It may be some sort of capacitor, or perhaps an amplification device.”
“I don’t understand,” said Micah. “What does it do?”
Socrates tilted his head to the side as he moved around the base of the machine. “If I’m correct, this base plate creates energy as it spins. It’s a strange design, but I’m sure it’s a generator of some sort. The windings, the copper tower, the orb at the top… I can’t be sure, but I think these somehow propel energy through the atmosphere.”
Micah stared at him with a blank look. Socrates paused, looking for a way to explain it that the halfling might understand. Before he could, River and Thane arrived. They were looking down from the balcony with Anu-Abas held captive between them.
“Well then,” Socrates said, glancing down at Micah. “Shall we find out what’s going on here?”
Chapter 12
Shayla located an unoccupied room in the lower tunnels, and she locked herself inside for the duration of the day. The room was void of any comforts or furnishings, and more than once she had to resist the temptation to steal out into the tunnels in search of food. Thankfully, her sense of self-preservation overcame her more mundane needs and she managed to remain safely hidden for many hours.
There was little to do in that tiny space other than rest, and even that was an uncomfortable endeavor on the cold stone floor. When that wouldn’t do anymore, she made an effort to relive the events of the past few weeks in her mind. She wondered if there was anything she might have done to avoid this outcome. She wondered if she had perhaps made a mistake in teaching her secrets to the other women.
This of course, was a fool’s quest. Shayla wouldn’t have done anything different even if she could have. She had stayed at Dragonwall to help the women there (and perhaps to stay close to a certain tall, dark-haired warrior) and that was exactly what she had done. Unfortunately, her meddling had almost done her in. What good did it do to liberate the women of Dragonwall if it cost Shayla her own life? That was more of a sacrifice than she had intended to make. And the fact that they were willing to betray her… She hadn’t seen that coming.
Still, Shayla wouldn’t have changed anything. For a short time, she had found meaning in her existence. That was something she had been severely lacking since the revolution ended in Astatia. It had been a difficult adjustment for her, coming face to face with the reality that she was the sole surviving heir to a throne that no longer existed and nobody wanted. The people had turned their backs on the monarchy, and in effect, turned their backs on her.
It was liberating, she had tried to tell herself. She was free from any responsibility or obligation to her subjects. They weren’t subjects anymore. They were free, and she was free as well. But after a lifetime of preparation, that was a hard reality to accept. It left Shayla with a void inside her, a purpose unfulfilled that she could never satisfy.
Or so she had thought, before Dragonwall. When she’d seen the women there -the bruises, the meek glances- Shayla had once again found purpose. Now, she had to wonder if she had taken things a bit too far.
As the hours passed, Shayla could only guess at what was going on in the mountain around her. She couldn’t hear anything -not even the ringing sound of the anvils at the forge- and no one passed her doorway. At one point, thinking it might be time to make her move, Shayla ventured far enough from her hiding place to learn what time it was. Thankfully, she didn’t need a clock for that. All she had to do was get a look at the position of the main gear in the chronoforge. The steam-powered machine ran on a precise schedule, performing certain tasks at regular intervals with incredible accuracy. It was about as close to a clock as one could get without actually having one.
As it turned out, it was eight p.m. Not late enough to leave yet, but the smell of food drifting down from the dining hall was excruciating. Shayla forced herself back into the room. She settled down on the floor, the elk-hide cloak wrapped tight about her, and spent another four hours sitting there, trying to ignore the rumbling in her stomach.
At last, Shayla left the room and began making her way up the tunnels toward the exit. She knew she wouldn’t be alone. Even this late, there would be a handful of people out in the tunnels: maintenance workers repairing the machines that had been used all day, chamber maids finishing their daily chores and preparing for the next morning, knights and pages coming and going on whatever business knights and pages engaged in late at night. In the darkened tunnels of Dragonwall, these were all easily avoided.
It was the guards at the door who were going to present a problem. On her way there, Shayla searched her mind for ways to expedite her escape. She had heard stories of a secret entrance to the mountain, but had not been able to glean its location. Even after months of aiding and supporting the women of Dragonwall, they still hadn’t taken her into their confidence.
She considered other ideas… a distraction, perhaps. A noise down the hall, a fire, anything that might draw the guards away from the keep doors for just a few seconds. But none of her ideas were satisfactory. Even if they succeeded, there remained one major problem yet to confront: what to do after she made it out?
She would have to travel, preferably somewhere to the west or north, where there were no dragons. If that was her goal, she wouldn’t make it far traveling on foot, wearing nothing but an old elk hide cloak. No, what she needed was a good reliable form of transportation.
Now that was a good idea, she thought. And she knew just where to find it…
Shayla made her way to the stables -the large room near the entrance, where the knight’s mechanical chargers were housed and maintained- and slipped inside. She found a mechanic there working on one of the horses. He was alone, but she couldn’t risk a confrontation. Her nudity was only a minor inconvenience compared to her real problem: a complete lack of weapons. On any other night, Shayla would have had a dozen different choices ready at hand, everything from knives and blades hidden discretely upon her person to a choice of mild tranquilizers and instantly lethal poisons. One man alone at night would hardly have been a hindrance. But that was then, and this was now. Shayla had nothing but her wits.
Shayla moved along the back wall, hidden in the shadows. The mechanic sat on a stool across the room, bathed in the light of a solitary lamp as he hammered and ratcheted his way through the bowels of a crimson red mechanical horse.
Shayla threw her gaze back and forth. She almost immediately found a dozen useful items: hammers, wrenches, saws, rope… any number of means for one person to kill another. But that wasn’t her goal. It wasn’t Shayla’s way to kill an innocent, unarmed man. Despite what the others believed about her, Shayla had a deep belief in the value of human life. Some were more valuable than others, for certain -and some not worth anything at all- but in most cases, life was precious.
Then it occurred to Shayla that she still possessed one of her weapons, and it was perhaps the most powerful she had in her arsenal: beauty. Shayla knew no man could resist her charms. It was not a matter of vanity or boasting, it was a simple fact. Shayla had a refined, elegant beauty about her that was a natural advantage. She also had years of training to supplement that beauty. As a child, Shayla had been trained in every manner of espionage and survival. The soldiers knew they might not always be there to protect her, and she might need the ability to defend herself or to blend in with other people and cultures. One of the most useful skills was one that had always come natural: flirtation.
Shayla stepped out of the shadows, boldly crossed the room with the cloak pulled about her, the hood pulled up to conceal her mutated fe
atures, her naked feet making tiny sounds against the cold stone floor. The mechanic didn’t notice her until she was upon him. If Shayla had wanted to kill him, it would have been all too easy. She giggled and said:
“Hey, handsome.”
The mechanic bolted upright, banging his head on the horse’s access panel. He stumbled back, tripping over the stool, and went sprawling across the floor in front of her. His crescent wrench clattered across the stones and his breath went out in a loud oomf!
“Oh, my!” Shayla gasped. “Are you all right?”
The mechanic shot her a disgusted look and then did a double take. His gaze lingered, sliding up and down her body. Shayla wore the cloak wrapped about her, closed at the front, but her legs were exposed and he saw more than enough to guess how little she wore underneath it. Which was exactly what she had planned.
He was an average-looking man. Average height, average girth, average dark brown hair and matching eyes. Looking the man up and down, Shayla realized there wasn’t a single thing about him that wasn’t average, from the grease stains on his forehead to the hole in the toe of his left boot. But when he glanced into her eyes, Shayla saw his anger melt into helplessness. All at once, he became a stammering, stuttering, love-struck fool:
“I’m… I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there…Miss?”
“Shayla,” she said softly.
“Yes, yes, of course! I know who you are! Who could forget such a beautiful-” He stopped short, his face flushing with embarrassment. “A proper lady, I mean.”
Shayla raised an eyebrow. She stepped closer, gazing down at him. “You think I’m beautiful?” she said with feigned innocence.
He seemed to remember suddenly that he was still on the floor. He swung his legs around, lurching so quickly upright that he bounced in the air before landing on the soles of his boots. Shayla smiled.
“My name’s Dom,” he said with a slight bow of his head
“I’m sorry, Dom,” she said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“Not at all, Miss Shayla. Of course not.”
“It’s just that I couldn’t sleep, and I thought how fun it would be to come look at your beautiful horses.”
He grinned stupidly. She walked past him, approaching the machine he had been repairing.
“I saw you working on this one,” she said. “Did you make them?”
“Oh, no. I just repair ‘em.”
“I see,” she said, looking a little disappointed. “Well, we can’t all be perfect.”
His face fell. “No, Miss Shayla.”
“They are quite complex machines though, aren’t they? I suppose working on them must take quite a bit of intelligence.”
His face lit up. “Yes, indeed. I’ve tried to train some of these knights, but they just can’t pick up a thing. Heads full of rocks, if you ask me.”
Shayla turned to face him. “Dom, do you think maybe… do you think I could ride one?”
“Oh, I don’t know if that would be a good idea, being the knight’s horses and all. It wouldn’t be a-”
Shayla relaxed her grip on the cloak, allowing it to part in front of her. Dom glanced down and his eyes widened as he saw her full nudity exposed in front of him. His faced turned a deep, dark shade of red that was almost purple.
“Just for a minute?” she said teasingly. “Maybe that one over there?” She pointed at the blue one. Dom licked his lips and cleared his throat.
When the two guards standing at the front gate heard the ringing sound of hooves on stone behind them, they didn’t pay much attention. The knights of Dragonwall came and went at all hours. The younger guard was telling a crude joke, which was the latest in a string of them going back half of their shift. When he finished, his companion bellowed with laughter.
“The queen would never do that,” he said. “Not with you, and certainly not with a dragon!”
As their laughter subsided, they realized that the mechanical horse up the tunnel was galloping at an unusually high speed. That never happened inside the tunnels. It wasn’t safe.
As they turned to see what was the matter, Shayla went racing by, cloak flapping in the wind, her glorious nudity on full display. The guards saw her and their eyes went wide. One dropped his spear. They both turned to stare at her as she zoomed past them, through the doors, and went racing down the hill towards Stormwatch. As she vanished into the night, the two men exchanged baffled grins.
Half a second later, Dom appeared. He was red-faced and breathless, dripping with sweat. “Where’d she go?” he demanded. The guards glanced at each other. Their grins faded.
Chapter 13
River released the safety on her revolver and touched the end of the barrel to the overseer’s forehead. “How many?” she repeated, her upper lip curling in a snarl. “Tell the truth, or I’ll splatter your brains all over this pyramid.”
Anu-Abas grinned, his icy blue leather-like skin wrinkling in all the wrong places. The decaying flesh pulled tight around his mouth, and his lips seemed to pucker, exposing the rotten teeth underneath. His vacant eye bulged as if it would burst forth from the socket, and the lenses over his right eye whirred as they twisted back and forth.
“Ten thousand men,” He said. “Two thousand chariots and twenty-seven hundred riflemen. My people will swarm over you like a horde of locusts. They will cut you down, and when you are dead, they will raise you back to life so they can torture you for a thousand years!”
River lowered the revolver with a sigh. She turned to face Socrates, who had been standing behind her supervising the interrogation. “It’s no use. Everything this monster says is a lie.”
Socrates stroked his chin thoughtfully. “River, come with me. Thane and Micah, keep an eye on him.”
River holstered her weapon and followed Socrates out of the pyramid, into the bright sunshine. She squinted against the light as her eyes adjusted. Socrates turned to the right, strolling into the garden. His footsteps were heavy against the stone walkway, and his gears clicked noisily as he moved.
“The heat’s not good for you,” River observed. “We should put some fresh grease on your joints.”
“I’m fine,” he reassured her. “My mechanic has been so zealous about my maintenance that I’ll probably outlast the stars.” He added that last part with a wink that brought a smile to River’s face.
“Not if ten thousand Ana-nuit show up here tomorrow,” she said.
“I highly doubt that is going to happen.”
They passed under a tall arbor and into a long trellised walkway. The air became cool and aromatic. Grapevines, fruit trees, and scented vines rose along the path, creating a shaded walkway that was almost tunnel-like. They could hear the quiet gurgling sounds of water moving through the aqueducts and waterfalls around them, spilling into ponds and planters along the way.
This, River had learned, was the work of the tall gear-driven structure on the north wall of the pyramid. The device served multiple purposes. It was driven by a high-pressure underground waterline that originated somewhere in the surrounding mountains. The force of the water turned the great gears, which in turn ran the pumps that fed the pyramids, gardens, and the surrounding village. The machine also served a secondary purpose as the driveline to the generator inside the pyramid. The purpose and workings of that device unfortunately remained a mystery.
As the canopy of vines and branches closed in overhead, River inhaled the sweet perfume of the deep blue lilacs that dangled down from the latticework. “This place is amazing,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind living here… at least for a while.”
“Really?” Socrates said, cocking an eyebrow.
River sighed. “I suppose not. I’ve never been good at staying in one place. Not since Tinker died, anyway.” She gazed through foliage at the villagers down below. “Socrates, I would hate for something bad to happen to these people… especially knowing that it’s my fault.”
The automaton glanced at her, his neck mechanisms whirring as he t
urned his head. “I believe we share that burden.”
“Why do you say that? I’m the one who shot the overseer. I started all of this. You told us not to interfere. You’ve always believed that was best. I broke that rule, and now these people might suffer because of what I did.”
Socrates took a deep breath, inflating his massive simian chest, and let out a human-like sigh. It was an automatic process designed to cool his inner workings, but so convincing that even River would have thought he was alive if she didn’t know better. “I have always said it is of the utmost importance that we respect the cultures and beliefs of the people we encounter. Do you understand why?”
River shrugged. “I don’t know. Respect?”
He turned standing next to her as they looked down on the villagers. “Centuries ago, all humanity shared one culture. Since then they have scattered far and wide. After the cataclysm, they became isolated, independent. They evolved. They rediscovered the secrets of a few simple technologies. Smelting and mining, for example. Steam power. Out of their environment and what little knowledge their ancestors retained, hundreds of unique cultures and civilizations have emerged. It is important that we respect that, and try to protect it.”
“I understand that, and I’ve tried, but-”
“Let me finish.” He began walking, and River fell in beside him. “As I was saying, that is how I have always felt, but lately I’ve been reexamining my beliefs. I understand why you did what you did. And considering your past, I should have seen it coming.” He nodded at the slave collar on River’s throat as he said this. “To be entirely honest, I’m a little ashamed.”
River frowned. “What are you talking about?
“My high ideals have cost us more than once. The child you saved today is a perfect example. I saw what was happening -I was horrified by it- and yet failed to act. I had convinced myself that somehow I would make these creatures see reason. But now, after spending a few hours talking to the overseer, I see that was a mistake. Nothing I could have said would have convinced Anu-Abas to spare that child.
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