The Fire Cage

by Scott Hungerford

  Ignoring the threat, his eyes stinging from the heat as if he had sat too close to a forger’s fire, Davin reached out again, gripped the thing’s heart, and tore the felon’s fire cage asunder with his will, freeing the second spirit in the same manner he’d freed the first. This one took longer to tumble, but McCarthy swung his steam horse out a bit to avoid the falling wreckage, then brought it back in tight before the edge of the rutted path could catch a wheel.

  With the threat passed, the driver slowed the horse back down again to a speeding four-beat, keeping pace with the back of the gigantic machine. The King Serpent was starting to make its turn now, to avoid the Dob as Davin had expected, and its speed was beginning to slow.

  “Can you get me on there?” Davin yelled. “Before it speeds back up again?”

  “Probably,” McCarthy said, “but you’ll have to climb down the harness to do it. That won’t be an easy task.”

  “This might be a lot to ask,” Rajon said from behind Davin, haphazardly hanging onto the side of the cart. “But if we asked you to, would you drive your horse forward, and straight up through that door?”

  “That’s suicide!” Verona exclaimed.

  “It’s only a machine,” Davin said, earning a dirty look from McCarthy.

  “I see your point,” the old man said after a moment of reflection. “Even if I get you on the stoop, you’ll still need to get inside.”

  “There could be a singing lock. I could sing it open.” Verona postulated.

  “Unlikely,” said Rajon. “That is the kind of thing that Vermeni would be expecting.”

  “Too late!” McCarthy yelled, even as the King Serpent abruptly slowed. With only the choices to pull left, dodge right, or go straight ahead, McCarthy chose the darkest course. Spurring his beast on one final time, he closed his eyes and sang one final triumphant note of love for his beast, just before the expensive five-thousand noble steed crushed its way, steam-screaming and struts-kicking, up and through the King Serpent’s triply-reinforced rear door.

  Chapter Twenty

  Davin knew that he hadn’t lost consciousness for very long, but it had been long enough to disorient him. As he came to, he could feel that he was laying on his back on a spongy material, slightly warm and moist in its countenance, cradling what he hoped was Verona’s lovely forearm, hopefully still attached to the rest of her lovely body. When he opened his eyes, he was looking into the wide, staring metal eye of McCarthy’s steam horse. Carefully moving his neck, then his toes, and then his fingers, he tried to feel if anything in him was too badly broken, but apart from a dozen bumps and bruises, he didn’t seem too bad off. Then he chanced a look down past his feet, down past the weird, bumpy floor, to the open vortex that led outside to the speeding road.

  Lit by one surviving lamp, Davin could see the remnants of the proud little carriage listing off of the edge of the stoop, its side dragging in the dust like a drunkard. One wheel was completely gone, and one of the steam-horse’s metal legs, separated from the missing trunk by the force of the collision, was tangled in the harness, bouncing and crashing its way along the road behind them. Before Davin could even make himself begin to stand, to try and recover the carriage before it was swept free, the whole contraption slipped off the end of the Serpent’s tail and screeched off into the darkness in a cloud of fiery sparks.

  Grateful that he was still alive, Davin carefully put one hand down of the weird-feeling carpet beneath him, then lifted himself up gingerly one limb at a time, to where he could see that not just the King Serpent’s door, but the entire rear wall and supports constructed to hold the door in place had all come asunder at the tremendous hit McCarthy’s steed had dealt it.

  But he didn’t see Rajon, or McCarthy, which distressed him equally. He faintly remembered hurtling through space, following the equine battering ram all the way through the wall, until something heavy had slapped him in the face without mercy or hesitation.

  Verona groaned next to him, an excellent sign that she was still alive.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, his voice hoarse with dust and soot. He considered standing, but when the whole world still seemed to be spongy, he didn’t seem to know where to put his feet.

  “You’re an idiot. But I think I’m all right,” Verona said.

  “Your father...” he started to say.

  “Went off the side, yes. I saw that, just before we hit.”

  “He’s tougher than he looks,” Davin promised.

  “He always pulls through,” she said, with a reassuring tone in her voice. But he knew she was worried about him, just as much as he was. Rajon had been through a lot today, with the death and resurrection and all, and Davin hoped he had survived the rough fall.

  “Did you see McCarthy?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Davin replied. “When the carriage struck, I saw him go past me, into the bushes on the side of the road.”

  Groaning, she managed to push herself up to her knees, using the steam horse’s severed head to help steady herself. The sense of movement beneath Davin, of the swaying of the Serpent’s tail like a wave-tossed dinghy in a current, was starting to roil Davin’s stomach. Not wanting to be incapacitated by motion sickness before doing his best to save the world, Davin struggled up to his feet, trying his best to stay upright on the rolling, spongy carpet. With a firm hand, he got Verona fully to her feet and held her close as she got her own balance.

  “Well, now I think I can say that my dress is completely finished.”

  “I’ll buy you a new one,” Davin replied.

  “You don’t have any money.”

  “I’ll gamble you up a new dress.”

  “I didn’t know you were such an expert on women’s fashion,” she teased.

  “Let’s see what Vermeni has waiting for us.” Davin said, changing the subject.

  “Can you feel any fire cages?”

  “None other than my father’s,” he said, feeling for the necklace still safe in his pocket. “But the crazy music seems quieter in here. I can still hear it coming from out there, from beyond the wreckage.”

  “But in here, it’s like it’s muffled a bit,” Verona said, stomping once on the spongy stuff beneath her feet. “Odd, that.”

  “Well, let’s climb up and see what we can find.” Together, they started to stumble their way up the snake’s insides, with Davin doing his best to ignore the imagery of what it would be like to walk up the inside of a living snake’s dung-hole. He assumed that this jaunt was a bit more pleasant than that, then did his best to shut away the subsequent series of vivid mental images until his dying day.

  The short climb up the spongy ramp revealed a wide metal door blocking their access into the further interiors of the death machine.

  “There has to be a way in,” Davin said, feeling around the edges of the door. By the little bit of light they had from the lamp on the stoop, he could see that the portal was a little taller than he was, and wide as six of him standing side by side. Finally, down by where he would expect the handle to be on an ordinary door, all he could feel was a little impression, like a hollow in the wall, that reminded him of something he’d seen just earlier that day.

  “It’s a receptacle for a fire cage,” he guessed. “I’d bet a fortune on it.”

  “We have one of those, don’t we?” Verona said.

  “Indeed we do,” Davin replied. “But it’s an odd one.”

  “Then it will have to do.”

  Fumbling a bit, Davin reached into his filthy coat and pulled out the necklace. Placing the fire cage up against the hollow, holding it there by its frame and clasp, Davin was pleased to hear the door clank open, then watched it ratchet back into the wall with pleasure. Even more to his liking, the monstrous chamber inside was illuminated by strands of candyglass lighting tacked to the walls and ceiling, revealing a thing he never expected to see inside a giant mechanical snake.

  The abandoned automaton workshop, right down to the required lifts, tables and tools whe
re machines could be repaired or rebuilt with everything that a whole team of Machinists would ever need. Even as the overhead lifts swung and clanged with the King Serpent’s rolling, rocking movement, Davin saw that it was the perfect place to enact battlefield repairs, and even would allow Vermeni being able to fit his felonious army with new weapons, attachments, and other gadgets that might be useful in different military situations. He figured out as well, just then, that the spongy material layered across the floor wasn’t just damping material for heat or noise. It provided the perfect surface for Vermeni’s ten-legged needle-footed monstrosity to walk upon, even when the King Serpent was fully on the move.

  “Let’s keep moving,” he said, trying to avoid looking at the high ceilings above. Racks and chain-bays dangled overhead, providing extra storage for repaired devices and spare parts. Cutting through the middle of the space, through where it looked safest, he led Verona up to the next door at the end of the great workbay hall.

  It was another door, much like the first, wide and tall to accommodate six Davin’s standing side by side. After another quick pass of his father’s fire cage near the slot, the doors slid open, this time showing an even more confusing display of machinery lit from all angles by candyglass strands. While the repair room was stable, the next segment in the snake was a topsy-turvy nightmare all contained within a giant rotating cylinder.

  While the whole outer shell of the snake rotated by influence of massive machines, in this space, a series of thick metal struts were bolted in at key places and grooves throughout the room, connecting a great mass of metal, cabling, wires and tubes together in mid-air above the center of the thirty-foot high chamber. Feeling something like an ant looking into the center of an ice-cream churn, Davin felt his stomach start to churn as well with only seconds of looking at the dizzying display of scientific ingenuity. He knew that very soon, if he looked at it too long, he would probably be sick, which seemed to be a recurring theme when invading the innards of a giant mechanical snake.

  “Oh, my,” Verona said beside him, as she tried to puzzle a way across the rotating space. Davin guessed that if they just walked out onto the smooth floor, then would be whisked off to the left, then up and over, and then would violently fall down onto the machinery or the floor far below like a discarded child’s toy. If they tried to run in order to keep up with the moving floor, the number of pegs, struts, and wires stretched across the floor in places would probably trip, vivisect or decapitate them before sweeping their mortal remains up to the roof and dropping the pieces up and down a few hundred times more for good measure. “Do you see anything?” she asked. “Is there any way across?”

  Davin looked on the wall next to him for any sign of switches or levers that might provide them a way through the maelstrom of machinery. But he didn’t see anything that would help. All the way across the space from them, maybe a hundred footsteps across the spinning floor, was another stoop doorway leading further into the interior of the machine. But getting there would take a miracle.

  “My turn,” Verona said, getting an idea, as she turned and went back into the workshop.

  “What are you thinking?” Davin asked as he watched her rummage from one bin to the next. “What are you looking for?”

  “This!” she said, as she struggled to pick up a heavy rear armor shell from a pile of waiting repair parts. The sheet of metal was nearly as big as she was, with four gaps where the automaton’s metal arm bones and leg bones would ultimately sit.

  “We’ll be tossed around like marbles on a saucer,” Davin told her.

  “No...” she said with a smirk. “It will be just like sledding!” Turning it around, balancing the piece of armor on its tip, she showed him the smooth outside, all perfectly glossy just like a factory-made sled. “We stay on top of it, just like a toboggan, and keep its smooth belly down as we slide towards the other door!”

  “There are all manner of things sticking up — ”

  “Are you afraid?” she interrupted.

  “If you mean, I don’t want to die a terrible death? I suspect most folks would call that common sense.”

  “Here,” Verona said, as she lumbered her treasure to the door. With a lunge and a toss, she hurled the piece of metal out onto the killing floor with a noisy bash-clang! Davin, waiting to see what would happen, was amazed when the thing didn’t get immediately drawn up the side of the rotating barrel, but hung in the edge of the curl like a child swimming in the hook of a sizable ocean wave. While the sliding plate had a few hits and bumps, it nearly made it to the far side before it was stopped cold by a peg sticking up out of the floor. Upon losing its momentum, now Davin watched it get carried up and over until it was thrown unceremoniously into the cluster of cogs, gears and other moving parts that drove the interior of the machine.

  “So, we just don’t hit any pegs.” Verona said.

  “Or we die.” Davin replied.

  “You said it. Not me. So, who goes first?”

  Davin looked out again, measuring the speed of rotation, and saw a few places in the path where it might be possible to skate on through.

  “I will.”

  “Take your pick,” she said, gesturing to the other armored shells lying in the bin. After a minute of careful inspection, Davin finally chose one that was just about as long as he was, with a slightly concave bit that he hoped would help with the friction. Verona then chose her own, one similar to Davin’s but a bit shorter, then began eyeing the room’s angles, figuring the best possible routes for her run through the maze of pipes and wires.

  “Here we go,” Davin said as he saw his path coming around. After getting a quick kiss from Verona for luck, he stepped back a couple of paces, turned around and then took a running start. Throwing himself off of the edge just like he used to throw himself off of his mother’s roof during the snowstorms Agora had when he was a child, Davin clanged down hard and fast on the slick flooring and started to pick up speed. One by one, he counted the beams, rods and obstacles sticking out of the floor that might catch him and spill him, while keeping one eye on the door ahead of him and the other eye on the deadly slope to his left. But with a little bit of dodging, and scuffing out with his left foot to spin him right past a rogue eye-bolt screwed into the floor, he successfully crashed up onto the low lip in front of the door — with Verona smashing up on his heels right behind!

  Scrambling, he managed to get up on the stoop and grab her hand before she was swept away by the motion, her feet and toes slipping and scraping on the rotating surface until Davin could grab her around the waist and pull her onto the stoop for safety.

  “That,” he told her, even as he tried to catch his breath, “was very stupid of you.”

  “I missed you,” she told him. “Besides. You took my lane.”

  Shaking his head, he reached in to give her another kiss — only to nearly jump out of his skin when Verona’s abandoned sled slammed down right next to them, nearly bent in half from the violent impact, before it was dragged off on its next run again.

  “Come on,” he said, shaken. Taking out his father’s necklace once again he quickly fitted it to the hollow in the lock, hoping they wouldn’t have to come this way again.

  The door slid open and a blast of warm wind poured out, smelling of lightning and steam. Before them, a long, low-ceilinged tunnel stretched into the darkness, its walls, floor and ceiling blocking out any view of the complicated machinery that surely had to be surrounding it. With this portal now open, both Davin and Verona could hear the distant, crazy music just a bit louder, even above the relentless grind of the serpent’s segments turning within their moorings.

  “My, that’s dark,” Verona said, stating the obvious.

  “I think I can see a ladder just up ahead.” Davin said.

  “Your turn. After you, then.”

  Davin began to make his way forward, placing one hesitant toe at a time to make sure that there was still solid footing beneath his feet. As he made his way towards the lad
der, absently listening to the whorls of music echoing down the tunnel above them, a sifting of fine ash drifted down on him from the ceiling above, forcing him to cough and spit in order to keep it out of his lungs.

  With Verona clenching her fist into the back of his vest, Davin finally moved forward enough to reach the wide ladder and start his way up. As the staircase was too wide for him to hold onto both railings, he clung to the right hand side and focused on the climb, all while trying to ignore the sound of the walls circling and grinding around his insignificant little walkway like a vortex of gnashing teeth.

  At rungs steps up, now a little out of breath, he reached the top of the climb. Helping Verona also reach the top of the ladder, he moved them forward a few dozen paces until they were forced to climb down an equally steep descent, then begin their trek down an identical tunnel that cut through the next of the serpent’s sections. For the next few minutes, as they moved forward from one segment to the next, the music grew just a little bit louder still, even as if it were sounding from the machine rooms beneath and above them and reverberating through the walls of the walkway for their pleasure.

  After climbing and descending through four grueling sets of tubewalks, the fifth door in the sequence opened into a very hot room filled with a brutal amount of noise, loud enough to make his ears ring. This time, there was no ladder, but only a metal grillwork catwalk and a pair of rickety railings extending from their ledge across the vast room to another ledge seemingly identical to their own. Below them, sets huge copper coils and dozens of pieces of strange machinery continually threw jags of lightning from one to the other, their continual flaring light showing the full extent of the massive steam-powered device. Suspended in mid-air on giant struts and chains the width of Davin’s chest was a giant furnace, with a bulbous coal-stoker sporadically dropping loads of fuel into the heart of the machine.