by Dan Rabarts
They waited for something to happen. The wind groaned through the crags.
“Hmmm,” said Akmenos. “That went well.”
Cordax opened a cover in her midriff and retrieved a small tin with a thin spout, stained with oil. “I’m getting stiff out here, all this dust and snow. Could you do this for me while we’re waiting?”
Akmenos took the tin. At her direction, he squeezed oil into her joints. “What are we waiting for?”
“It’s reading the scroll case,” Cordax said.
Akmenos listened but heard nothing. Cordax rolled her eyes, mysteriously.
“What is?”
“The plinth. It’s old, but it’s still a viable Analytica reader. Says so just there.” She pointed at a line of carved text. “Down a bit? That’s the spot. Now a bit here.” She jutted a hip.
“So we’re standing on an Analytical Engine, like Araxtheon’s?”
“Something like it, only older, cruder. Probably needs a lot of power to perform a single, simple function. Araxtheon’s is far more sophisticated.” A wistfulness, slightly bitter, coloured her voice as she spoke Araxtheon’s name, but Akmenos chose to ignore it.
“It was Araxtheon, wasn’t it?” he said.
“What about him?”
“You’re a Mecha, but not a working machine like the ones in the tavern. He did something. Liberated you?”
“Mecha cannot be free in Vaporia,” she spat. “There are laws. But yes, Araxtheon bought me from servitude, and allows me to live and work as I see fit.”
Akmenos nodded, moving on to Cordax’s neck. She tilted her head, brushed aside the fine copper threads of her hair.
“He also altered my algorithms, so I would know I was not bound to labour for others. My work and my desires may be mine, but I am still owned.”
Beneath their feet arose a grinding noise. Tremors shook snow off the surrounding boulders. A faint glow appeared within the carved glyphs. Then the plinth shifted.
From the centre of the circle corkscrewed up a two-foot round contraption. Beneath the top section of solid rock appeared a space in which gears spooled and levers twitched alongside pulleys and tiny pistons. The engine lay within a shell of brass-framed glass panes. The confabulation came to a stop at about four feet in height.
“What is it?” Akmenos breathed, approaching the device. While the top section of the clockwork spun and churned, the lower part did not. A void lay at the centre of the aperture, like the machine was missing some critical piece. “That’s odd,” Akmenos said. “Looks like it’s lost a bit.” He glanced back at Cordax, who stood stock still, staring at the contraption. “Cordax?”
“It’s…” she gasped, a hiss of air through overstressed pipes. “It’s missing its heart.”
“Bugger,” Akmenos grumped. “Where are we supposed to find one of those in a place like this?” The Holy Flame were screwing with him. Maybe if he’d had Araxtheon here instead of Cordax, the tinker could’ve built something to do the trick. As it was, all he had was this Mecha…
The thought settled, cold and heavy. It all became clear. Every step of the way, the Holy Flame had made certain he had what he needed with him to successfully progress.
“No,” he said, meeting Cordax’s eyes, seeing her fear. “I won’t do it. Not like that.”
Cordax straightened. “You must.”
Akmenos shook his head. “No. They’re toying with us. It’s some sick game, that’s all. I refuse to hurt anyone else.”
Cordax stiffened her shoulders and put a hand on her chest. Several unseen latches clicked loose, and she folded her breast cavity open. Suspended inside, whirling and spinning, hung a cylinder, all shifting sliding surfaces, which moved with its own rhythm.
Akmenos swallowed hard, his mouth dry. “I can’t,” he said again, the choice weighting his shoulders. Its shape matched the void in the machine; it would slot inside, and all the static wheels would start spinning, and he would be spirited away onto the next step of his journey. But at what cost? “It’s…it’s your heart.”
“Yes,” Cordax said softly, taking Akmenos’ hand and resting it against the warm metal inside her sternum. “And I give it to you.”
“But…” Akmenos stumbled, “but you’ll…die.”
“I’m not alive, Akmenos, therefore I can’t die. You’ll do this, you’ll find the Holy Flame, and you’ll come back here and restore me. I know you will.”
“How?”
“Because I believe in you.”
“But you barely know me.”
Cordax put her arms around his neck, and drew his head to hers, their foreheads touching. “Were you not good at heart, you wouldn’t hesitate to take the life from a machine. For that reason alone, you’re the sort of hero the Holy Flame needs. And if this is all a game? If we’re all being lied to? Then you’re the sort of hero we all need to find a way to the truth.” She drew his hand inside her chest, rested his fingers on the pulsing hum of her heart-cylinder. “Take it. It’s why I’m here.”
A tear crept down Akmenos cheek. “I never wanted any of this,” he croaked.
Cordax shrugged. “Nor did I. But if I can accept a long dark sleep while I wait for you, can you accept the challenge of doing what must be done to bring me back?”
Weakly, Akmenos nodded.
“Wrap me well against the snow. All this moisture is no good for my joints,” Cordax’s voice was soft and light, full of sorrow and resignation, hope and acceptance. She gripped her fingers tight around Akmenos’ and tugged on the cylinder.
The metal body sagged against Akmenos’ shoulder.
“Cordax?” he whispered. But her eyes were dark, her limbs stiff. “Cordax?”
Nothing answered but the wind, crying among the crags.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Cordax was both lighter than Akmenos would’ve expected, and unbearably heavy. Through swirling grey snow, he bore her over the icy rocks to their makeshift skiff. He spread open an old canvas and laid her in it. Her stiff fingers clutched the cylinder. It wasn’t too late to push it back into place, restore her to life. And then? Turn around? Where were they, to even start looking for a way home?
Akmenos touched the heart, a strange pulsing heat prickling up his arm. Unclasping her fingers, he took the cylinder and slid it into a pocket. Then, shivering, he wrapped the canvas about her. Another tear froze in an icy streak down his cheek. Night was coming, the temperature dropping. Finally, he tucked the sail around her, weighting it with ropes. “Don’t go away,” he muttered, before turning back to where the pedestal with its spinning mechanisms awaited.
Warmth radiated from the pedestal, melt water running off the carved stone, revealing the plinth’s full expanse. The text was bold and crude, made up of pictographs and letters, though Akmenos understood none of it. Trembling, he inserted Cordax’s heart into the aperture. The cylinder fitted with a click, unseen forces guiding it in and locking it into place. Instantly, the tiny shifting coils on its surface began to spin, and Akmenos snapped his hands back as the clear panel snapped closed. The lower half of the engine burst to life, gears turning, lights glowing. The plinth hummed, the pedestal twisted, corkscrewing back into the void beneath.
Then the mountain began to sink.
Akmenos gasped, dropping to his knees and covering his head. The crags were falling into the earth. The world was collapsing under him, his stomach pressed into the stone. The overarching boulders opened wide, revealing the ice-bright sky above. The claw was not closing but opening to release him. The world wasn’t sinking; Akmenos was rising. Crags rushed by as the plinth ascended. A deeper rumble suggested another, greater engine of some kind, working deep in the rock. Would the machine lift him to the boiling crater and dump him into a maw of hot lava, like battered shrimp into a vat of hot oil, because all this had been just a vast, cruel joke? It seemed fitting. The cook, deep-fried.
The peak drew nearer. Looking around for something to hold onto, Akmenos spied a few inches of the scroll ca
se, popped up at the plinth’s centre. Scrambling across the wet-slick stone, he pulled it out, expecting everything might stop, but it didn’t. The scroll case had served to unlock the engine, now all it required was Cordax’s heart. He tugged the reliquary free and pocketed it, then turned to survey the vast frozen plain below. What he saw chilled him more than all the ice and snow from here to the ocean. An airship, and at the prow, an awfully familiar face, at once scowling and grinning.
“Oh, you bastard,” Akmenos breathed.
The airship was a fat-bellied trader, trailing broken spars and shredded sails on snapping lines. Hrodok crouched on the gunwale, with Scimitar at the helm, and midships, wrapped in azure lightning and hauling on winches and lines, was the taur who had carried Akmenos across the desert. How had they followed him? Whatever Araxtheon had feared about the Rip, Scimitar either didn’t know or didn’t care. The airship wouldn’t make it much farther, though. This was the end of the line, for better or worse.
Gritting his teeth, Akmenos drew his best filleting knife. He wouldn’t go down without a fight, even one he had no chance of winning.
“Little brother!” Hrodok called. The eye he had injured when they fell through the Rift was a bruised pit of blackened blood. His other eye roved about, unfocused. “It seems we have some matters to discuss.”
“I don’t think so,” Akmenos shouted, as the airship limped nearer, fighting the wind that gusted treacherously about the crags. “I don’t want you using my good towels. Get your own.”
Hrodok grinned, a cold thing like the flayed innards of a dead lizard. The airship bucked, right as Hrodok leapt.
Akmenos stumbled, then scrambled forward as Hrodok missed the plinth, vanishing beneath it. “Hrodok!” he cried, scrambling to the edge on his knees. The airship, buffeted by the shrieking wind, twisted away. Craning his neck, Akmenos peered under the plinth. A shifting armature of jointed brass arms drove the stone platform skywards, from a pit of churning gears lit by some hellish red glow. Hrodok was clinging to the moving arms, climbing upwards through the sections.
Why not just blink?
Hrodok must’ve thought the same thing, because he vanished, appearing behind Akmenos on the plinth. Something told him Hrodok was not in a mood to chat or trade recipes. Scrambling to his feet, Akmenos crabwalked away from the edge of the plinth, not wanting to slip. Or to be pushed.
Close up, it was not bloody bruising that marred Hrodok’s face, though there was plenty of that. From his shattered eye-socket jutted a hunk of shining black rock. Blood had congealed around it, forming a dark scab, and the broken rock seemed to see Akmenos more clearly than Hrodok’s surviving eye, which drifted as if chasing clouds.
“You’ll be upset about that business back there,” Akmenos started. “That’s understandable. Nothing personal, you know, I just had things to do, places to be. I figured you’d catch up in your own good time and hey, look, here you are. Well done, you.”
“Don’t jest, brother,” Hrodok growled, drawing two long bone-handled blades. “The time for games is over. You’re going to give me the scroll case, and then I’m going to kill you, and that will be the end of it.”
Akmenos kept moving. The way Hrodok’s focus never settled on him suggested movement was his best option. “Really, brother? I never picked you as a soldier of the Holy Flame.”
Hrodok paused. “The path leads to the Eternal Stair. You told me that was the road you chose.”
Akmenos shrugged. “I might’ve lied. Not knowing anything about either of them at the time and all that. But I’m pretty sure this is the way to the Holy Flame, not the Eternal Stair. See any stairs here?”
Hrodok lashed out, a wild swing, and Akmenos dodged. Had he not been moving, Hrodok’s attack might’ve been closer, but it was strangely inaccurate. Was Hrodok blind, despite only having lost one eye? Or had he simply lost his ability to judge distance, direction? Was he tracking him by the sound of his hooves? Pulse racing, Akmenos continued to circle. Hrodok recovered, twisted towards him, always looking just a little to the side. What in the Pits?
“This was never meant to be your journey, little broodling. It was my quest, my glory. You’re an inconvenience, and without Mother here to protect you, it’s time to end your miserable existence so I can achieve my goals.”
“And what goals are those?”
“To claim all the power which is my due, and which father denies me,” Hrodok growled, his teeth gritted.
The crater lip loomed closer. A wash of fetid air rolled over them. The airship struggled nearer, lifted by the hot wind. Maybe if he could keep him talking he could…what? Push him into the volcano’s mouth? Leaving his brother for dead on a distant lifeless world with no hope of rescue was one thing, but actively trying to murder him was something else entirely. Akmenos didn’t have that in him. Hrodok was mad, murderous, and wouldn’t hesitate to kill him given a chance, but he was still his brother, even if they were weaving about each other with their blades naked to the night, a twisted dance of fraternity. Brothers of the knife. They were of the same brood, all six of them, their eggs laid and nurtured and hatched together, only minutes separating their entrances into the world, yet their fates lying so far apart: Thurgrin, killed by elves at the battle of Ascouria; Versha, glorious Warleader with his army hammering at the dwarves of the Crystal Desert; Hrodok, who had never won the honours his older brothers enjoyed, despite being more dangerous than them both; Grebbeth, with his visions and his scrying; Fraag, who loved wine and women and a good brawl above all else; and lowly Akmenos, royal cook. Born of the same parents, in the same hatchling nest, but Akmenos had been unlucky enough to emerge last, and smallest. Is this what the fates had planned for him, the runt of the egg-clutch, all along? To save his nefarious sibling from this madness born of greed and ambition?
He dodged another ill-aimed blow. Whatever his filial obligations, he had a greater duty to protect himself. As Hrodok withdrew a step, Akmenos lashed out with the filleting knife, slicing a bloody swatch across the back of his brother’s hand. Hrodok howled, grabbing his injury to his chest, seething. But he didn’t retaliate, didn’t launch himself at Akmenos in a rage, missing again by a handspan. Whatever had transpired on the ashen plain, they were no longer in the same groove of time and place.
“Um, how does ending my miserable existence resolve your gripe with Father? Shouldn’t your fratricidal killing spree start at the top and work down, sort of thing? Shouldn’t you be killing Versha first?”
Hrodok glowered. “And leave a dangerous thing like you just waiting to stab me in the back?” He barked a laugh, a harsh thing of dry ash and razor stone. “As long as any of you survive, I won’t be safe.”
“And who do you kill when we’re all dead?”
The plinth jarred, its ascent halting. Akmenos spared a glance at the boiling cone below. Gears creaked, and the stone slewed sideways towards the boiling lava. Sulphurous air billowed around them, stinging his eyes and burning his throat.
“I’ll worry about that later,” Hrodok snarled, striking out at the place Akmenos had just been.
“Fair enough,” Akmenos grunted, shifting sideways.
“Give me the scroll case, and I’ll make it quick for you. If I have to pull it from your grasp, it’ll be slow and painful.”
The plinth hovered above the cone. Below, a darker crust of cooling lava moved atop the molten rock, jagged cracks of burning orange glaring through. Gases hissed and stank, and the crater rim shimmered in the heat haze.
“Kind of you, but I’ve got a better idea,” Akmenos said, dodging another misplaced thrust. “How about I tell you a nice recipe for roasting wild boar with herbed butter stuffed under the skin? It’s a bit of work but well worth it, and the smell from the fire when the fat sizzles on the coals is quite delicious.”
Something crashed onto the plinth behind Akmenos, and he spun about. He’d forgotten the airship. Over him loomed the taur, massive hooves scraping the plinth, with Scimitar astride his shou
lders. Arcs of blue energy encircled his neck and Scimitar’s wrists. The taur strained in vain against its eldritch bonds. Scimitar glared down at Akmenos with undisguised fury. He was surrounded.
The plinth began to drop towards the lava.
“No, Hrodok!” Scimitar yelled. “Not yet!”
Hrodok’s fist connected with Akmenos’ cheek in a blaze of pain. He spilled backwards, landing hard, scant inches from the lip. He’d stood still too long. He rolled, bottles and knife-hilts jamming into his belly, only to collide with the taur’s legs. He looked up the rippling belly muscles to the snorting nostrils, the gleaming horns. The beast strained against Scimitar’s whipped lightning as she tugged on it like a puppet. This creature had carried him across a desert and set him on this path rather than leave him to die amongst the hyenas. Although Akmenos had been struck by many things in his life, seldom had he been struck by ideas. But an idea struck him now. Maybe it was a terrible one, but with Hrodok sweeping in, the taur’s hooves lifting to crush him, Scimitar lording over it all with her shining blade, and the threat of boiling magma rushing up to swallow him, any idea was a good idea.
Akmenos jumped, grabbing the wiry hair in the centre of the taur’s chest in one hand and pulling himself up, far enough to slash his knife across the crawling blue lightning at the beast’s neck.
The explosion threw him across the plinth, his limbs bucking and jerking. Over the thunder of his heart in his ears came a roar of defiance, and he smiled.
~
Hrodok struck out at the ghostly, shifting image of his brother, just as a burst of white light obliterated all sight. Spinning away, he turned back to the sounds of a struggle, punctuated by an enraged roar. The bonds which had encircled the bullman’s neck were gone, leaving lines of blackened flesh scored into its skin. The creature gripped Sianna in its massive hands, lifting her from its shoulders, adjusting its grip as if to rip her in half. It roared, stretching its arms. She contorted but was held fast.