by P. D. Kalnay
“Master,” One bowed low, “we could not locate Mistress Ivangelain or deliver your message.”
Three stepped forward and vigorously pointed at Ivy. One reached over, pushing his arm down.
“The Master is aware she is standing next to him,” he said in a withering tone. “Mistress Ivangelain was moving too swiftly for us to follow.”
“That’s OK,” I said. “We found each other.”
“You’ve changed, Master,” Two said, looking up at me.
She wasn’t kidding.
“Better or worse?” I asked.
“Just different, Master,” she said. “I like your wings.”
Two gave her tiny metal wings a flutter before walking over to stand in front of Ivy.
“Mistress, you are even more beautiful,” she said.
Ivy squatted. They were almost eye to eye. Seeing them together, I realised that they had the same face. One was larger and pink, and the other tiny and golden, but Two’s face was a perfect scaled-down version of Ivy’s. Like a golden action figure. Weird.
“Thank you, Two,” Ivy said. “It’s good to see you again.”
A tinkling squeak was audible as Two’s metal face smiled up Ivy. Then she gave a shriek when Sirean picked her up by her narrow waist. The dragon examined Two in detail, turning her upside down, prodding here and there, and giving her wings an experimental wiggle.
“What are these things, Smith?” she asked.
Sirean was staring at Two like she was a puzzle to be solved.
“Be careful with her,” I said. “She’s a friend.”
“A friend?”
“Marielain Blackhammer created them… a long time ago. I don’t know more than that yet.”
“Please, be gentle with her,” Ivy said.
“Huh.” Sirean set Two back on her feet. Two made a hasty retreat to stand with her companions again. “You’ve always been full of surprises, Smith. Not all have been good surprises. Let’s continue to the tower.”
She didn’t wait for my answer and headed up the trail to the tower’s door. I glanced at Ivy, who shrugged, and then we followed. One, Two, and Three brought up the rear of our strange procession.
“The Master called me his friend,” Two whispered behind me.
“He doesn’t remember much,” One whispered back.
That brought an end to conversation, until we’d made it back to where I’d met Sirean.
***
For a second time that day, I reached the door to the eastern tower. The towers flanking the entrance to harbour mouth were enormous stone structures, rising five hundred feet from waves to pinnacle. The door was wide, tall, and stood ajar. Sirean led us into a vast, empty room with several doorways around it and a wide spiral staircase filling the centre. Hooks and bare racks lined the walls between the doorways.
“This was the main guardroom,” Sirean said. “Back when there was something to guard. The gate wheel is up, and the mechanism is down.”
She pointed at the central stairs.
“I’ll have to get the hammer first,” I said.
“Master,” One said.
“Yes.”
“Someone will need to move the wheel slightly, to release the pressure on your hammer, Master,” he said. “So that you can pull it from the gears.”
“I’ll do that,” Sirean said.
“How will you know when?” Ivy asked.
“Are the speaking tubes intact?” Sirean asked One.
“Yes, Great Dragon, the tubes still function.” He turned to Ivy. “We are too short to use the tubes, but you could watch, and send signal when the Master is ready.”
“Send word when you’re in position,” Sirean said.
Then she strode to the right-hand side of the staircase and headed up.
“How far down is it?” I asked One.
“Just below sea level, Master.”
I felt exhausted. Hundreds of more steps didn’t appeal.
“OK,” I said, “I guess we’d better get going.”
“It wouldn’t be wise to keep a Dragon waiting, Master,” One agreed.
***
We descended hundreds of steps, passing dozens landings, before reaching the bottom. It was nowhere near as deep as the forge under the other side of the island, but I felt like half of my time on Knight’s Haven had been spent climbing stairs. Lamps hung from the walls, emitting a gentle bluish-white light. I wondered how they worked, but decided to leave investigating until later. The stairs ended at a wide ledge overlooking a massive assembly of dark iron gears. The smallest gear was thirty feet in diameter. Some were many times as large. Each gear was inscribed with complex symbols, and despite the nearness of the sea, and smell of salt in the air, I saw no sign of rust. I didn’t have to search for the Black Hammer. I could feel it. It felt similar to the other items I’d crafted, but not exactly the same. The hammer radiated a powerful feeling of age. I knew it was far older than a few thousand years. One, Two, and Three didn’t give off any such feeling of antiquity. For a while, I simply stared down at the hammer.
It was wedged between the teeth of two giant gears, fifty feet below where we stood. I found the ladder after a quick look around. Iron rungs had been driven into the rock wall below our feet. I leaned my shield against the wall. The wall was bare except for a strange brassy funnel sticking out at shoulder height.
“Is this the speaking tube?” I asked One.
“Yes, Master.”
“How does it work?”
“Any words spoken directly into the tube are conveyed to the other tubes in the towers, Master, and to the central tube in the Great Hall.”
Magic intercom. I briefly wondered how that worked, adding it to my long list of things to figure out.
“Does it need to be activated somehow?” I asked.
“No, Master, one need only be close and speak with intent.”
Ivy was barely tall enough to speak into the funnel, so I set my shield face-up on the floor in front of it.
“That will give you a boost.”
“Thank you, Jack,” she said.
Her smile made by heart beat faster. I realised we still hadn’t had a moment alone since our reunion. The thought of being alone with Ivy made my heart beat even faster.
“Are you well?” she asked.
“Yeah, it’s nothing,” I said. “I just… missed you.”
Ivy’s smile grew a bit bigger.
“The sooner you fetch the hammer, the sooner we can discuss that,” she said.
I tried not to run to the top of the ladder. Other than the discomfort of holding the rungs with my damaged hands, the climb down was without incident. My new wings might not have allowed flight, but they gave me a lot of additional stability. Standing on the wide ledge at the bottom, and looking up at the gears, I felt like an ant inside a cuckoo clock. A short leap took me over a drop of unknown depth and onto the face of the closest gear. Then I carefully moved gear to gear until I stood over the hammer.
I bent and grasped the hammer’s handle in both hands. Touching the hammer hurt far more than holding things in my damaged hands usually did. The longer I touched it, the more it hurt.
“OK, Ivy, tell her I’m ready,” I shouted up.
Ivy disappeared from the edge. A few seconds later, the gear, on which I stood, turned. As soon as the teeth moved apart, the hammer practically flew up in my hands. It wasn’t weightless, but no heavier than a pound or two. Marielain’s hammer was as big as the one Mr. Ryan had brought me to practice with. The head was blunt on one side and tapered to a curving spike on the other. Symbols, like those I inscribed on the items I’d enchanted at Gran’s, covered the dull black metal. Looking close, I discovered that inset into those symbols—as fine as the hair on my head—was distilled Blood of the World Tree. If the hammer had been forged using the stuff… some had maintained its original state. I could feel the power emanating from the dull red symbols. The long handle was crafted from a smooth black substance that mig
ht have been an exotic First World wood, or something else entirely. Symbols were also carved along the length of the handle giving a secure grip.
The gear kept turning under me, taking me towards other giant gears. Not wanting to be mashed in the enormous clockwork mechanism, I took a few quick steps and hopped back off of the gears onto the ledge at the side. Then I set the hammer down. My hands burned. The red lines, matching the pattern from the half rings, hadn’t been lost with my freaky fairy transformation. Now, they were glowing ruby red under my rough grey skin. My hands looked, and felt, like they were on fire. Releasing the hammer helped. The glow and the pain gradually receded. Behind me, the monstrous gears continued to turn.
“Jack, are you coming back up?” Ivy called.
“Yeah, give me a second.”
I had to figure out a way to climb the ladder with five feet of hammer. The Black Hammer was giant, and intimidating, but not very convenient. I settled on pushing the handle through the back of my belt. The long handle swung around, hitting my legs, but I made it to the top with only a little cursing under my breath. Then I carefully extracted the hammer and leaned it against the wall. All that time, the gears had continued turning noisily behind me. They came to a stop with a resounding thud.
“Smith, are you there?” Sirean’s voice came from the golden funnel.
“Yes, I’m here. Are the gates closed?”
“They are,” Sirean said, “but there is an issue we must resolve. I’ll await you at the wheel.”
Great. Not only did I have to climb back up the stairs we’d just come down. I’d also have to go the rest of the way to the top.
Chapter 22 – A Tale of Two Lunches
We found Sirean waiting for us at the top of a long climb. The stairs ended in a circular room with narrow windows, spaced at regular intervals, around its circumference. On one side, hung a wheel that looked like a ship’s wheel. The horizontal wheel hovered waist-high above the floor, unattached to anything visible. Sirean looked out the narrow window next to it. I set down the hammer at the top of the stairs. It wasn’t heavy, but I’d had to keep shifting it from hand to hand because of the pain. Ivy had carried my shield. Sirean turned back towards us.
“It appears you arrived none too early, Smith.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
She stepped back from the window, and I moved to take her place. The window was hardly wider than an arrow slit, so I had to press my face up to the opening to get a good view. Dark green sea stretched out to a horizon, unbroken by any land. There were, however, a lot of ships. I stopped counting at eighty. A fleet filled the waters to the north of Knight’s Haven. Mighty ships of fantastical design, flying sails that were every colour of the rainbow, spread out as far as my eyes could see. They made the nine ships that had fled look insignificant.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s a lot of ships.”
“Indeed,” Sirean said. “The number has grown with the passing years.”
“Do the fae leave that much stuff behind, to make it worth it?” I asked.
The dragon shrugged.
“Yes and no, Master,” One said. “Perhaps half of them will have come to plunder the stores that were left behind.”
“What about the rest?”
“They come to use the island as way station, on a longer journey, and to trade at a temporary market. The trading has often become quite violent, Master.”
“I guess it’s good we got the gate shut in time,” I said.
“Good,” agreed Sirean, “but not sufficient.”
“What do you mean?”
“This wheel turns easily and accepts any hand. In the past, watchers were set in these towers, and gate guards controlled access to the harbour. Unless, you plan to stay and guard this wheel, any with the gift of flight might open the gate and allow enemies in.”
I remembered the harpy and wondered if it could have followed instructions that complicated. I suspected it could. My wings were apparently vestigial, but Ivy had told me of a handful of intelligent races from the First World who could fly. If they happened to be on one of the many ships below—or on another ship that showed up when we weren’t looking—we’d be in trouble.
“You can place the hammer back into the mechanism, with it closed,” Ivy suggested.
That was a great idea, but I didn’t relish carrying the thing back down the stairs. Any excitement I’d felt over getting my hands on the Black Hammer had disappeared with the pain caused by holding it. Her idea gave me different one. I retrieved the hammer and set it by the wheel. After a little experimentation, I discovered the wheel was easy to turn, but whatever kept it hovering, kept it firmly in place. A few turns of the wheel barely moved the massive gates below. I turned it all the way shut again. Then I leaned the handle of the hammer against the wheel. It turned a fraction of one rotation, but not enough to visibly affect the gate.
“Will that be enough?” Ivy asked.
I didn’t know.
“Can you try moving it?” I asked Sirean.
She shrugged and had a go at pulling the hammer’s handle away from the wheel. She pulled harder. The hot radiant sensation, the dragon gave off, grew stronger until the stones cracked beneath her feet. Then she let go. The hammer’s handle hadn’t budged a hair. Sirean took a step back.
“Is someone stronger than you likely to show up?” I asked.
Sirean shook her head without looking away from the hammer.
“Then I guess the door is locked,” I said. “If nobody moved it in over a thousand years… this should be good enough for a temporary solution.”
“Now what?” Ivy asked.
My stomach gave a loud rumble. In the last two hectic days, I’d eaten only one small meal of fruit and nuts.
“Do you know where there’s something to eat?” I asked.
“I’m going to sup on a ship’s crew… or two,” Sirean said, looking out the window again.
It didn’t look as though she was joking. What do you say to that? I couldn’t come up with an appropriate response.
“I shall seek information concerning Janik’s banishment.” Sirean headed for the stairs. “I’ll return when I know something.”
Then she was gone, with nothing in the way of a goodbye. On many levels that was a relief—it felt as if a weight had been lifted. My stomach rumbled again.
“You’ve been here for a while,” I said to Ivy. “Do you know where some food is?”
“We have many problems to solve,” she said. “Finding food is not among them.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’ll see.”
Ivy smiled up at me. Then her smile vanished, and she hurried to the window. She pressed her little face into the opening.
“What are you looking at?” I asked.
“Something one rarely sees, even on the First World,” she said. “Or at least, something that few live to tell about.”
I joined her at the window. The nearest ship was close enough now that I could make out crew-members on the deck and in the rigging. They looked like ants scurrying below us.
“What–”
My asking what she was talking about was cut off by a dragon’s roar. The sun was blotted out above us as Sirean Silver Mantle flew past. I was completely unprepared for the sheer size of Sirean in her natural form. Nothing that big should have been able to fly—in any world. I got a good look as she dove at the nearest ship. Sirean was, unsurprisingly, silver. Her scales and wings reflected the sun’s light like mirrors. She was literally dazzling, and despite her size, as graceful as a swallow. Of course, I’d never seen a swallow set a sailing ship aflame—or eat anybody whole—so the similarities ended there. A minute of watching the grisly scene was plenty for me. Every other ship in the armada immediately headed in a direction that wasn’t Knight’s Haven. I turned away, and my stomach rumbled again. Amazingly, I was still hungry.
“No point in hanging around here,” I said.
Ivy was sti
ll pressed up to the window.
“How can you watch that?” I asked.
Ivy turned and shrugged.
“It’s what dragons do,” she said, apparently unfazed by scene below. “That’s why normal people are afraid of them.”
My stomach rumbled loudly for a third time.
“Come on,” Ivy said.
She headed down the stairs. I gave the Black Hammer one last glance before following.
Chapter 23 – Home Sweet Home
The narrow walkway, leading to the tower’s main door, wasn’t conducive to conversation. I followed Ivy, and was, in turn, followed by our small metallic friends. They clicked, clanked, and squeaked away behind me. A squirt of oil in the joints was definitely in order. When we exited the trail, and were back on one of the terraced fields, Ivy stopped. She stopped so suddenly that I almost ran into her.
“Why’d you stop?” I asked.
“You said you were hungry, didn’t you?” Ivy squatted down.
The terrace we were on was mostly covered in blackened earth with the odd bit of grass growing at the edges.
“I don’t see anything to eat here,” I said.
“There’s a seed beneath the soil.” Ivy pointed between her feet. “It’s still alive and waiting to grow.”
“Grow into what?”
“Sweetroot. A sort of… melon,” Ivy said. “Well, not exactly a melon, but that’s close.” She paused for a second before adding, “Maybe, more of a potato.”
Even as I tried to imagine a melon crossed with a potato, Ivy held a hand out in front of her, palm down, and hummed a short tune. A green stalk rose from the soil and sprouted broad leaves. It happened in a matter of heartbeats, like in a stop-motion video. For a short time the plant continued to grow, and then the soil swelled up at the base of the stalk. Tiny white flowers sprouted before it stopped growing. Ivy bent and brushed the dark earth away from the base, revealing half a dark purple globe, the size of a large watermelon. Then she grasped the base of the stalk and tugged the whole thing out of the ground.
