Tungdil stood up and surveyed the havoc all around him. Broad cracks were appearing on the cavern walls. The damaged rock would not withstand the pressure much longer. “Quick, everyone, get down again!” He leaped into the lift cage. “There’s only one way to escape death.”
Before they had reached ground level the roof fell in. A torrent of water cascaded in, threatening to engulf and drown them all: dwarves, ubariu and humans.
XVII
Girdlegard,
Queendom of Weyurn,
Thirty Miles Northeast of Mifurdania,
Late Summer, 6241st Solar Cycle
The Waveskimmer raced across the water toward the northern edge of the Red Mountain Range where the monster had said the tunnel entrance lay. The fog had lifted and those on deck were basking now in sunshine.
Sirka kissed Tungdil. “You are a very clever dwarf.”
He relished the sensation of her soft lips on his own. “No, I just used my powers of observation,” he said, watching out for the sandbank.
“Always so modest,” complained Rodario from his hammock, where he was soaking up the invigorating rays. “If you hadn’t had the idea of climbing into the empty boiler, we’d all have drowned.” He shut his eyes against the bright light. “Even Lot-Ionan. Again, my deepest appreciation and heartiest thanks.”
“It was the same principle as with the island. If something is full of air, it’ll rise.” Tungdil smiled and permitted himself a touch of pride.
Flagur, with a nasty cut on his shoulder from the sharp edges of the damaged boiler, nodded in agreement. He was seated on a barrel, naked to the waist, bandages to hand. One of his comrades was stitching the wound. “The actor is right. Things were looking very bad. As it is, most of us have survived.” He did not appear to feel the needle.
Tungdil noticed Lot-Ionan was sitting in the shade on a coil of rope a little way off, near the main mast, and looking extremely ill at ease. He went over to his foster-father. “Revered sir, what is wrong?”
Lot-Ionan raised his white head and attempted a smile. He held out his hands. “Didn’t you see? In the old days spells never went wrong. Never!” He clasped his hands as if he wanted to hide them from sight. “Now all I can do are silly little spells; my memory is playing tricks just when we need it most.” He sighed heavily. “A mirror spell in a chamber surrounded by water and at the bottom of a lake. How stupid of me!”
“It’s Nudin’s fault, not yours,” said Tungdil, trying to console him.
“I know that,” the magus replied, “but it doesn’t make it any better.” He looked at the dwarf. “I am concerned about the future. About what happens after the battle with the unslayable.”
Tungdil tried to guess at his thoughts. “The Outer Lands?”
“No. The future of magic in Girdlegard.” He ran his fingers up the weathered timber of the mast. “The new magic wellspring lies so deep. Without the island nobody will ever get there to use it.” He looked at the cliffs rearing up out of the water four miles ahead. One of them resembled a face, with a promontory like a nose. A giant’s nose. “What’s bothering me most is this: Is there anyone at all, apart from me, able to make use of it?”
“Perhaps one of Nudin’s other initiates?” Tungdil played with the free end of the rope. “Don’t worry about getting to the lake bed. If you can get up to the surface in a boiler then you can get down again the same way. It’s just a question of ballast. We don’t need the island.”
Lot-Ionan asked pensively, “But if any others trained under Nudin, why didn’t they join Dergard and his friends?” He got to his feet and rubbed his back where stabs of pain were still troubling him. “What if I’m the last magus in Girdlegard?”
“They might have seen Dergard going with you instead of following in Nôd’onn’s footsteps as a betrayal,” Tungdil suggested. “Dergard located the source. We’ll see if anyone else turns up in Weyurn suspiciously close to the same place.” A call from the lookout warned they were nearing the cliff. “We’re at our destination, venerable sir. Are you ready?”
“I don’t know.” His pale blue eyes seemed very tired. “But I have no choice.” He smiled. “None of us have a choice, do we?”
The Waveskimmer ploughed through the waves toward the vegetation growing on the shore.
Tungdil wished his friend Ireheart were at his side for the coming confrontation. He was not only a good fighter but could lighten even the most critical of situations with a joke or scurrilous turn of phrase.
A squall pattern on the lake surface reminded Tungdil of the last of the rune messages: the one on the armor of the creature now at the bottom of the lake together with the remains of the island.
“Eight,” he said quietly, mentally arranging the words. “Your deaths have eight faces.” It was the unslayable’s threat to the elves. Would it prove to have been spoken too soon? He was clear what the number eight meant. Five machine creatures, two unslayables and the älfar from Toboribor. Death in eight forms. Two were still around.
Rodario opened his eyes and got out of the hammock. “Where is the man o’ war the unslayable used to get here? He can’t have made it invisible.”
Flagur—his injury stitched and bound, and his armor back on—pointed to starboard. “There’s something over there.” He looked up to the crow’s nest. “What’s that?” he called to the watch, indicating a shadow beneath the water.
“A ship,” came the answer. “Sunk or scuppered and run aground on the sandbank. Looks like a warship.”
“Well, that’s that. The unslayable is here.”
Sirka got the sails furled and launched the boats, not wanting to take their vessel too close in. Who could say how quickly they might have to make their escape?
They rowed over in silence, deep in thought. Walking over the soft sand they found a tunnel mouth three three paces high and two paces wide, concealed behind some thick bushes.
Cautiously they stepped into the cave, which soon became a stairway leading steeply down. Distant sounds echoed up out of the dark passage: hammering, stamping and banging.
They went down the steps and arrived in a tubular tunnel about ten paces in diameter. The floor was covered in a knee-deep layer of fine rock particles and the air was thick with dust, making Rodario sneeze. The polished tunnel walls shimmered in the faint light.
“Don’t anyone light a torch,” warned Tungdil. “The dust is too dense—it could easily combust.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that can happen,” nodded Rodario. “Didn’t a flour mill in Porista once blow up? A candle flame igniting the flour dust?” He turned to where the tunnel met the lake. Solid supports with the girth of forest trees had been inserted to hold up the tunnel roof and walls of hefty shoring timbers and strong steel kept the water from pouring in and flooding the huge passage. “Bandilor certainly knew what he was doing when it comes to mining techniques,” said Rodario. “And I thought the thirdlings were warriors first and foremost?”
“There’s a lot to be learned from books, though,” Tungdil replied with a grin. “Come on, let’s go! We don’t know how far ahead the unslayable is.”
They hurried along the tunnel and reached a set of rails like those the dwarves were used to from back home. Three wagons stood ready; they could be propelled by muscle power.
Flagur pointed to marks on the ground where the dust was thinner: “So there was a fourth wagon.”
“After him!” Tungdil jumped onto the vehicle, closely followed by the others. The journey began.
The ubariu operated the mechanism, and they soon reached considerable speed. Fine dust plagued them, getting into eyes, noses and mouths, the bitter-tasting grit grinding between their teeth and causing their eyes to burn and sting so that it was all they could do not to close them.
This tunnel took them in straight line through the heart of the Red Range.
“The monsters from the Outer Lands couldn’t ask for an easier way in,” said Rodario, spitting out a mouthful of acrid dust. “No cont
ending with mountain peaks, precipices, biting winds or ice and snow.”
“True. But they would have to carry boats with them. Otherwise how would they get off that sandbank?” Sirka pointed out.
At the back of his mind Tungdil still had doubts about Bandilor being behind the whole plan. Though he did not want to believe it, he had to face up to the likelihood that it was Furgas, mad for revenge, who had planned the annihilation of Girdlegard’s peoples. And he was sure the technical genius would have had some means up his sleeve to transport the army of monsters over the water. Perhaps they would have used the island or one of Weyurn’s floating islets. There were plenty to choose from.
The mechanical expert’s guilty involvement would have been indisputably proved if he had followed up the detailed hints Furgas had given them about the various monsters’ weak points. But there had been no time to do that in the heat of battle. “Let’s be glad we don’t have to witness exactly how they would have done it,” observed Tungdil. “Because that would have meant we were too late.”
The tunnel was long but they were finally getting closer to the source of the rumbling, banging and hammering. The veil of dust was so thick it was like driving through an ash cloud; and the noise level increased until they could no longer hear themselves speak.
A huge black shadow suddenly appeared in front of them, completely filling the tunnel. It was a machine twenty paces long, rattling, clicking and grinding. At the front a drill was biting its way through the rock face, while dust and fine rubble spewed out behind. Rows of wheels, each the size of a hut, turned slowly to drive the drill.
Now Tungdil understood about the purpose of the tunnel. It must have been terribly complicated to fill it all in again behind them. They must have brought the excavation rig here to the Red Range via the floating nightmare island and of necessity have entered the cliff from under the water line to keep their activities secret. When they’d tunnelled far enough into the mountain, they’d been able to shore up their entrance hole behind them and then continue drilling their way down through the mountain range.
“The machine moves by itself,” shouted Sirka into Tungdil’s ear, yelling over the noise. “I can’t see anyone operating it.”
He nodded. This was by far the magister’s greatest technical achievement. A machine that can eat its way through solid rock without being steered or directed, and can keep it up, cycle after cycle. Until it reached the Outer Lands, opening the door to death and destruction.
Rodario tugged at Tungdil’s mail shirt and pointed to the missing wagon; it was tucked under the machine. The unslayable was not in it.
“He’s somewhere on the machine,” shouted Tungdil, climbing out and sinking nearly up to his armpits in the layer of dust. He made his way forward to the metal ladder near the hindmost wheel. It was like wading through powdery water.
His comrades followed him and one by one they climbed onto the machine. The iron frame shuddered and vibrated; rumbles continued unceasingly, as if there were heavy hammers at work on the inside. There was a strong smell of metal, oil and dust.
Soon they reached a narrow mesh platform: a walkway encircling the entire machine from which ladders led at regular intervals up and down to different levels. There was no sign of any levers or controls that might check the progress of the machine. Then they heard the noise level increase and noticed the juddering was getting faster. The drill was speeding up.
“We’ve got to stop it somehow,” Tungdil roared. “The unslayable has—”
A figure in black armor landed immediately behind the ubari bringing up the rear. It used both its swords on the hapless victim. Cut into three pieces the warrior fell onto the metal walkway without even having glimpsed his killer. His blood washed the dust off the iron mesh and mixed with it to form damp grayish-red clumps.
The unslayable one moved swiftly and confidently forward in his magnificent suit of tionium armor—as if there was no weight to it at all. The pale, sulfur-colored light lent him an uncanny aura and the helmet’s closed visor allowed no sight of his face. Tungdil stared at the foe and could only guess what was behind the protective armor.
The älfar did not want protracted combat at this stage. It hurried on up to the next level.
Flagur threw a dagger at him and caught the unslayable in mid-leap. The point penetrated the armor just above the right hip joint and dug its way halfway through the älfar’s body. But he disappeared, nonetheless, as quickly as he had come.
Tungdil pointed overhead. “Up there! Perhaps there’s a way in,” he bellowed. “We must get the machine first. The älfar will come and find us.”
Cautiously they clambered up from one level to the next, crawling over the back of the filth-covered mechanical digger. When they reached a hatch, Flagur went through first, followed by Tungdil and the others.
They saw that the unslayable had been busy. The machine, presumably, could be steered but there had been so much violent destruction in the hot, sticky, tight space that now it was impossible to see what levers and wheels were supposed to do what.
Sirka had found a wide door leading down to the engine room. She pointed to it, raising her eyebrows questioningly. Tungdil nodded.
Things were getting really uncomfortable. The heat had the sweat dripping off them all; oil on the rungs of the ladder made progress dangerous, and the gangways were even narrower than the one on the exterior of the machine. At least lanterns gave some light; not enough to help Rodario or Lot-Ionan, but sufficient for the dwarves and the ubariu.
They were overwhelmed by the sight that met their eyes. A collection of cogwheels of all sizes whirred round at different speeds. Rods and pistons rotated; chains and wide leather belts drove rollers, from which metal poles protruded, disappearing into iron cylinders. It was a living forest of metal. One false move and they would be dragged into the machinery.
“So what are we looking for?” Sirka yelled. “Or do we just try and break it?”
“Shouldn’t think that would work. We need to find the driving mechanism. Then we have to destroy it.”
She made a face. “And what does a driving mechanism look like?”
Rodario indicated something on the left: a huge iron block as big as a house. Chains emerged from it, distributed via a series of rollers and pulleys to other parts of the machine. “Let’s start there and see what happens,” he suggested.
One of the ubariu screamed and dropped its weapon. A narrow blade poking up through a gap in the iron mesh they were walking on had pierced the warrior’s groin. Beneath their feet the unslayable was clinging like a spider to the underside of the walkway.
The dying ubari fell and the unslayable launched himself into the air, deftly landing on a slender cross-pole and then disappearing again into the dark.
Rodario gulped. They only had a handful of ubariu left to fight the enemy with. “Lot-Ionan, do something, for goodness’ sake,” he begged.
Tungdil could not blame the actor for such a reaction. “Over to the block, quickly,” he commanded, racing ahead.
They reached the iron block. Chains were running past them at such a speed that they were only a blur causing an oil-laden draft. It would be almost impossible to halt them, Tungdil decided. They would have to concentrate on the pulleys.
But before he could tell the others what he wanted them to do the älfar turned up again out of the blue. He was targeting Flagur, but this time he faced an opponent who was expecting an attack.
Flagur parried the first blow with his own sword and caught hold of the arm bearing the second weapon. Then he kicked the unslayable one in the chest, making him hurtle backwards. He did not release the arm. The bone would fracture.
The älfar fell back like a doll, but pushed off again from the wall, slamming back into Flagur with twice the impetus. He thrust at Flagur with his sword, forcing the ubari to release the arm without having injured him at all.
His fellow ubariu rushed up and delivered blow after blow.
Th
e unslayable one quickly realized his mistake. These opponents were not the normal kind of orc: strong but not very nimble. He took some punishment: two hits on the chest and on his left thigh. He tried to flee off into the shadows once more to try another surprise ambush.
Striking one of the ubariu down, he tricked a second with a feint that left his victim perilously close to a chain. After another lightning strike the ubari was tangled in the links and dragged off, his screams soon dying away. From somewhere inside the machine came a sickening clunk and the chain come back out of the engine room covered in blood.
“Grab him!” Lot-Ionan had seized the opportunity to weave a binding spell that he threw like a net over the unslayable one.
The runes on the black armor glowed in protest, but they could not protect the wearer from the effects of the magic. He froze stock still, issuing shouts of fury from behind his helmet.
“Force him to the ground!” Tungdil flung himself on the älfar. Flagur came to his aid and wrenched both weapons out of their enemy’s grasp.
“Go ahead, you two.” Rodario had no desire to join in. Instead he made for the engine. “I’ll stop the motor.” He had found a hatch that opened to reveal a whole row of cogwheels and a number of large fat metal springs constantly coiling and uncoiling.
Underneath them stood a tray full of oil; into which small lubricating ladles dipped prior to smearing the rapidly moving parts. The black liquid ran back along the rods to collect back in the same tray.
“Even I can work out what to do here.” He laughed, then took his sword and punched a hole in the tray so that the oil ran out. The ladles had nothing to spoon up now.
Nothing happened. The machine went on running smoothly.
“That will take too long.” To speed things up, Rodario chucked handfuls of powdered rock in through the hatch. The ladles picked it up and spread it over the circulating parts of the machinery.
Soon the first sharp tearing noises were heard. The metal was running hot and emitted a scorching smell. It would not be long before the machine came to a standstill.