The Lodestone Trilogy (Limited Edition) (The Lodestone Series)

by Mark Whiteway

  “Can you get this thing airborne?” she asked.

  “I…I don’t know. The avionic carries some basic tools, but…I’m not an avionics engineer.”

  She smiled encouragingly at him. “I thought a scientist could do anything.”

  “I’m not that kind of a scientist,” he replied. “I deal mainly with calculations, formulae, designs. I work on paper.”

  Shann did not see what possible use that sort of a scientist could be, but she didn’t want to discourage him. “Why don’t you see what you can do? I’ll keep a watch out for these murghal.”

  “All right,” he said, his voice still querulous, “but if you see one, don’t try and fight it. Just run.”

  <><><><><>

  Chapter 16

  Shann stood alert, her right hand gripping the balance point of Saccath’s staff, black Keltar garb stark against the pure white snow of the mountain. She scanned the area for any movement. In truth, she didn’t really know what she was looking for. She had no idea what a murghal looked like, and after Rael’s brief but chilling description she was afraid to ask. The boy was obviously terrified at the very mention of them. Better to keep his mind occupied with other things–like getting out of here.

  She glanced back at the avionic. Rael’s long legs dangled over the engine mounting, his head lost somewhere in the workings of the huge fan. She could hear a sound like rushing air coming from the flame tool he was using. She waited till the sound stopped, then called out, “how’s it coming?”

  His head appeared from out of the depths of the machinery. To her surprise, he was smiling. “Good…I think. Of course, I won’t know till I switch on, but I think I’ve managed to patch her up. Enough to get us going again at any rate.” He let himself down to the ground, grabbed a small tablet of paper and began scribbling furiously. “Uh-huh.”

  “What?” she said. “What is it?”

  “Well, by my calculations, the port rotor should work, but only at about fifty per cent efficiency. Because of the damage, I’ve had to reconfigure the blades to balance them and prevent asymmetrical rotation. It’s not perfect. We won’t be able to pull any fancy moves like the one you did. But if we’re careful and don’t overtax the engines, it should get us off this mountain, at least.”

  Shann only understood about half of what he said, but she managed a smile. “Good… That’s good. How long?”

  “Well I should run a few more checks before we trust our lives to my repair efforts. Soon.” He climbed back up to the rear seat of the cockpit. Boxx had resumed its former position in the front seat, as if it were impatient to be off. Or perhaps it was just sheltering from the frigid mountain wind.

  Shann checked the sky. Thus far the weather had been merciful. It was a beautiful day. Up here near the roof of the world, the sky seemed a deeper blue. Farther up the mountain, the peaks were shrouded in brooding clouds, but here the air was clear. Of course, that could change rapidly. The afternoon was also wearing on. However, she was sure that Rael needed no reminder of the dangers of remaining here after nightfall.

  “You know, if Ravid could see me now, he’d laugh his head off,” Rael was saying.

  “I don’t know,” Shann said. “Seems to me he’d be pretty impressed by your efforts.”

  Rael shook his head and laughed. “That shows how well you know him. He sees me as a real science-head, someone who has no idea what goes on in the real world. Still, after this, I think I could probably find work as an avionics engineer if Hannath does decide to kick me out.”

  Shann’s face fell. Rael glanced up from the cockpit and caught her gesture. “Sorry, Shann, I was only kidding. I’m sure Hannath will be angry, but I very much doubt he’d let me go. The truth is he’s very protective of me. In some ways, he’s more of a father to me than my own father ever was.”

  Shann blinked in astonishment. From what little she had observed, Hannath was a hard taskmaster, rude, condescending and unappreciative. If Rael’s father was worse than that, she was sure she wouldn’t want to meet him.

  She decided to change the subject. “So, who do you think it was who attacked us?”

  “Well, it wasn’t the drach, I can tell you that,” Rael replied. “For one thing, they don’t use weapons.”

  “They carry those silver staff things–I’ve seen them,” Shann declared.

  “Yes, but those aren’t used on people. They’re electrolasers. The laser forms an electrically conductive plasma channel in the air, and an electrical charge is then delivered to the target. But they’re only used to shock, not to kill–and only on creatures from the wild that stray too close to the settlements, like the valthar you encountered.

  They almost used one on me. However, there didn’t seem much point in bringing that up. “You said before that avionics aren’t fitted with weapons.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “At least, I’ve never heard of it. I don’t even know what kind of a weapon it was that they used.”

  “Maybe it was one of those…electro-things you mentioned?”

  Rael shook his head. “I don’t think so. The electrolaser produces nothing more than an electric shock. Whatever it was that they used caused explosive damage. I’ve not seen anything like it before. If you hadn’t…”

  Shann chuckled. “It was an act of desperation, believe me. I was as surprised as you were when it actually worked. I guess you can thank Lyall. He was a very patient teacher.”

  “I thought avionics didn’t exist in Kelanni-Drann?”

  “They don’t,” she confirmed. “But there are certain basic similarities between the flying cloak and your avionics–at least as far as their use of lodestone is concerned. I had to learn the principles quickly when we were being tracked by the Prophet’s men.” Shann paused a moment in reflection. “Maybe it was the Unan-Chinneroth.”

  Rael looked up from his position in the cockpit. “What?”

  “Maybe it was the Unan-Chinneroth who fired at us.”

  “The hu-mans?” Rael exclaimed. “In an avionic? Impossible.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, because for one thing, an avionic could never make it to the mainland from Helice. It’s about ten times too far. The aircraft would run out of charge and fall into the sea long before it got here.”

  “And yet the Prophet made it to my side of the world somehow,” she pointed out. “Maybe you’ve underestimated them?”

  A low growl reverberated in the gelid air. Shann spun round, eyes wild, trying to ascertain its direction. The sound melded with others; louder, more menacing, until it seemed to come from all around her. All of a sudden, a creature shambled into view. Ice clinging to off-white fur, shaggy and matted. At the centre of what she took to be its head, a huge maw with razor sharp teeth. From its body protruded four prehensile arms with what looked like long waving fingers at the ends. She could not see any eyes, but it was moving directly towards her.

  “Murghal,” she heard Rael cry from behind her. She stepped forward to meet it, blipping the neck control of her flying cloak instinctively to scan for lodestone. The arms waved toward her, seeking her out. “Be careful, it can sense body heat,” he called.

  She pushed off a small deposit behind her to gain height, then extended her bronze layer, allowing the push toward the ground to give extra momentum to her swing. Her diamond blade made contact with one of its arms. The blade hardly penetrated before it was stopped short, and the shock of impact travelled through the darkwood and up her arm. It was more like striking iron than flesh. Another of its arms whipped out. She jumped back so that it narrowly missed her midriff. “Whatever you do, don’t let it touch you,” Rael warned. “It attacks by leeching heat–freezing its victim.” Thanks. You could have mentioned that before.

  “Does it have any vulnerable spots?” she yelled.

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Rael returned. “They have an oddly generalised anatomy. I imagine it’d be pretty hard to kill one.”

  Shann extended he
r lodestone layer and leaped again, higher this time. She twisted in the air and came down behind the monster, thrusting the staff forward with all her strength, driving it into the creature’s back. Her blade met the same resistance. She managed to yank it out just as the creature roared and whirled around to face her.

  “They preserve heat by depositing ice crystals between their cells,” Rael was saying. “It makes their skin hard–like armour.”

  I noticed that. Shann circled around to come between the beast and the avionic once again. As she did so, she saw a second murghal advancing rapidly on her position, then a third and a fourth. She weighed her options. In any other circumstances, she could use the cloak to leap away and make good her escape. However, that would mean abandoning Rael and Boxx to their fates. If she retreated to the avionic, the murghal would soon overwhelm it. From limitless possibilities she was reduced to just one. Time to make an end of it.

  “Can you lift off?” she cried out.

  “I’d need a couple of dahns to power up,” he called back.

  “Do it.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll hold them off so you can escape.”

  She heard his voice crack. “No. I won’t leave you behind.”

  “Get out of here,” she yelled. “Take Boxx and find the Chandara. Get Annata’s instrument and disarm the Prophet’s weapon. Do it for me. Please.”

  “No, I won’t…I can’t leave you here.”

  The murghal were almost on top of her. From the corner of her eye, she saw there were more on the way. Rael had still not started the avionic’s engines. Idiot. Shann cursed to herself. She launched herself skyward, landing on the far side of the flying machine. “Quickly, follow me,” she called.

  “What about the avionic?” Rael asked, climbing out of the cockpit and pulling Boxx out by its forelimbs.

  “You said they follow heat. Since you haven’t started the engines, they should leave it alone and come after us instead. Maybe we can double back later.”

  Rael and Boxx caught up to her just as the murghal were skirting the craft and starting to bear down on their position, hirsute arms outstretched in a grotesque parody of welcome.

  “Get behind me,” she ordered.

  “Where are we going?” Rael asked.

  Shann started backing away, higher up the mountain. “Away from them.”

  ~

  Keris spied the white line of the Great Forest from a considerable way off. Before long, it resolved into individual trunks, like bony fingers pointing up toward a leaden sky. She crossed the tree line and began making her way among the bare trunks. The eerie silence was broken only by her breathing and the sound of her footfalls on the forest floor.

  Her mind went back to her journey with Boxx through the Great Forest of Illaryon, far to the west of Chalimar. That had been a vibrant place, replete with the chirruping and cooing of living things, the scent of bark and of fresh loam, orange and yellow and crimson leaves reflecting sunlight like fire. This was different. There was no life here: no leaf, no moss, no scampering animal fleeing her approach. No birds wheeled in the empty sky. There were not even any insects as far as she could tell. The entire forest was a dirge–an epitaph carved in dead wood.

  As she headed deeper into the forest, she thrust aside her unsettling thoughts and focussed her mind on her task; to uncover evidence of what had happened to the Chandara. In truth, she did not know exactly what she was looking for. There were some investigations where you started out with very little. You just had to follow your nose and see where it led you.

  Keris stopped and knelt down on one knee. She scooped up some of the soil, letting it run between her fingers. It was grey-brown and felt powdery, like dust–or ash. She had heard of instances where whole areas had been devastated by fire, storm or flood. Yet a very short time later, often within days, signs of new growth would appear; shoots budding forth, birds pecking at the devastated ground and animals burrowing into it. Here there was nothing. It was as if the forest had been…murdered.

  She froze, stunned by her own audacity. She had nothing to substantiate such an outrageous theory. It was a thought unworthy of a trained investigator. There was no way that such a thing could be done. More importantly, there was no conceivable reason. And yet…and yet, it was evident that something ill had transpired here–something that chilled her to the very bone.

  Keris rose to her feet and hastened toward the heart of the dead forest.

  ~

  “Keep moving.” Rael and Boxx scrambled over the black rocks that jutted out between the covering of snow, while Shann acted as rearguard, swinging the diamond blade in a wide arc in an attempt to slow the progress of the murghal. The creatures kept coming, heedless of the blows inflicted on their outstretched limbs. Tubules that passed for fingers flashed inches in front of her face, forcing her to retreat. Don’t let them touch you.

  Two more murghal appeared, adding their throats to the chorus of gnarls. She could not tell whether they had eyes; the creatures seemed to be attracted by heat and sound. One thing was clear. She and the others couldn’t keep running indefinitely. Sooner or later one of them would stumble, or be claimed by cold or exhaustion. If they headed back to the avionic, the beasts would swamp the flying machine before Rael could get it airborne.

  “Shann.” Rael’s urgent shout behind her. She glanced over her shoulder. The murghal surged forward. A sharp stab of pain. A tubule brushed her bare left arm. Shann pulled back her arm instinctively and retreated to join Rael and Boxx. They were not moving. Another murghal was shuffling down the mountain toward them, bellowing loudly. The party was about to be surrounded. Shann clutched her left arm and cast about wildly. There was a narrow cleft in the rock face to her right. “Come on.” Boxx scampered through the fissure. She waved Rael forward.

  He turned to her as he passed. “You’re hurt.”

  “Never mind that,” she snapped, shoving him through the gap and clambering after him. She reached the other side and spun round to face their pursuers. The pain in her arm felt like fire. Already, she could see the murghal jostling together on the other the side of the opening, preparing to surge through after them. However, they would not be able to pass through more than one at a time. She might at least be able to hold them for a while. And if this was to be their last stand, then it seemed as good a place as any.

  “Look.” She heard Rael’s voice behind her, but it was different somehow. The fear, concern, the panic–they were gone. In their place was…wonder. She turned and saw it. Rising out of the ice directly ahead of them was a round grey tower, an open portal at its base, dark and inviting.

  “What is it?” Rael asked in hushed tones.

  The answer came to Shann from a distant place, in words spoken by a woman dead for more than three thousand turns. Yet there was no room for doubt.

  “It’s a vacuum displacement transporter.”

  <><><><><>

  Chapter 17

  “It’s a what?” Rael looked confused as Shann bundled him in the direction of the doorway. Behind, the sounds of scraping and growling as the murghal forced themselves through the gap in the rock face. Boxx had already covered the distance to the tower. She called after it, but it ignored her and disappeared inside. She cursed under her breath. For all they knew, there could be more of the creatures inside. Too late now.

  She and Rael reached the doorway and plunged into the darkness inside. As her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, she scanned the interior for signs of movement. There were none. A pair of cabinets stood off to one side. She went over and tried to move one. It was made of metal, and heavy. “Give me a hand,” she called. With Rael’s help she dragged the cabinets over one by one so that they blocked the open doorway, light filtering in from the top. The two of them scoured the entranceway and located whatever bits of furniture and other detritus they could find. Pretty soon, they had a respectable barricade. Outside they could still hear the bestial growls of the frustrated murghal
. Shann remembered something and located a smooth protuberance near the entrance on the left wall. She pressed it, and there was a series of clicking sounds as light spilled from rectangular panels in the ceiling.

  Rael gasped. “How did…?”

  “It’s one of my many talents.” Shann eased herself down to the floor with her good arm, cutting off a cry of agony with a grimace. When she looked up, Boxx was standing over her, its black beadlike eyes unreadable. “You Are Hurt,” it trilled. “Cellular Disruption.”

  “If you say so,” she sighed wearily.

  “Remain Still,” it instructed, then placed its forelimb on the site of her injury and closed its eyes. Its mouth began rippling wordlessly.

  “What’s it doing?” Rael asked.

  “Making my arm better…I hope.”

  “I didn’t know it could do that,” he said. He began walking around the artificially lit room. Various banks of instruments stood at waist height, their purpose unknown. “This is…ancient technology. From before the Goratha.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “Annata’s people built this.”

  “There are three principal ancient sites in Kelanni-Skell,” he continued. “The ruined cities of Kynedyr and Gal-Mador, and the Tower of Akalon.”

  She could feel a strange warmth in her arm. The pain was subsiding. “Congratulations. You discovered a fourth.”

  Rael was drinking in everything. “I think these are computers.”

  “Computers?” she queried.

  “They’re a type of machine that does calculations very fast. We’ve been experimenting with them…Hannath is going to go crazy when he hears about this.” He doesn’t comprehend the nature of our situation. Shann felt waves of tiredness wash over her. All she wanted to do right now was curl up and go to sleep. “You said this was…a transporter.”

  “A vacuum displacement transporter,” she repeated. “There are four of them–two on your side and two on ours. We have the Dagmar Tower near Chalimar and the one on the Eastern Plains. That one was destroyed by the Prophet’s soldiers. You have this one and…”