For recently paid sailors who may have been at sea for two or more years, they screamed paradise. The only oddity remained the size and shapes of the buildings. Whimsical western decorations could not completely hide the underlying history of this once dwarven city. Above every door and threshold was the sign: “Watch your head.”
Seagulls cried overhead, crisscrossing a brilliant blue sky. Water lapped the sides of ships that creaked and moaned like living beasts stretching after a long run.
Hadrian stepped onto the dock alongside Royce. “Feels like you’re gonna fall over doesn’t it?”
“To answer your question from before…No, I don’t think we should be sailors. I’d be happy never to see a ship again.”
“At least you don’t have to worry about land sickness.”
“Still feels like the ground is pitching beneath me.”
The five of them bought fresh cooked fish from dock vendors and ate on the pier. They listened to the shanty tunes spilling out of the taverns and smelled the pungent fishy reek of the harbor. By the time Wyatt returned to the ship, he was red-faced angry.
“They are going through with the venting! They refused to listen to anything I said,” he shouted, trotting up the quay.
“What about the invasion?” Hadrian asked. “Didn’t you tell them about that?”
“They didn’t believe me! Even Livet Glim, the port controller—and we were once mates! I shared a bunk with him for two years and the bloody bastard refuses to—as he puts it—‘Turn the entire port on its ear because one person thinks there might be an attack.’ He says they haven’t heard anything from any other ships, and they won’t do a thing unless the armada is confirmed by other captains.”
“It will be too late by then.”
“I tried to tell them that, but they went on about how they had to regulate the pressure on the full moon. I went to every official in the city, but no one would listen. After a while I think they became suspicious that I was up to something and I stopped when they threatened to lock me up. I’m sorry.”
“Maybe if we all went?”
Wyatt shook his head. “It won’t do any good. Can you believe this? After all we’ve been through, we get here and it won’t change a single thing. Unless…” He looked directly at Hadrian.
“Unless what?” Poe asked.
Hadrian sighed and looked at Royce who nodded.
“What am I missing?” Poe asked.
“Drumindor was built by dwarves thousands of years ago,” Hadrian explained. “Those huge towers are packed with stone gears and hundreds of switches and levers. The Tur Del Fur Port Authority only knows what a handful of them actually does. They know how to vent the pressure and blow the spouts, and that’s about it.”
“We know how to shut it off,” Royce said.
“Shut it off?” Poe asked. “How do you shut off a volcano?”
“Not the volcano, the system,” Hadrian went on. “There’s a master switch that locks the whole gearing system. Once dropped, the fortress doesn’t build pressure anymore, the volcano just vents itself. It won’t be able to stop the invasion, but it won’t explode either.”
“How does that help?”
“If nothing else, it will prevent the instant destrucon of this city. When the black sails appear people might have time to evacuate, maybe even put up a defense. Once the system is shut down Royce and I can crawl through the portals to find out what Merrick did. If we can get it fixed in time, we can raise the master switch and barbeque an armada of very surprised goblins.”
“Can we help?” Banner asked.
“Not this time,” Hadrian told him. “Can you four handle this ship alone?”
Wyatt nodded. “It will be tough with no topmen but we’ll work something out.”
“Good, then you get out of here before the fleet comes in. You were a good assistant Poe, stick with Wyatt and you’ll be a captain one day. This one we have to do alone.”
***
Legend held that dwarves existed centuries before man walked the face of the world. Back in an age when they and the elves fought for supremacy of Elan, dwarves were a powerful and honorable nation governed by their own kings with their own laws and traditions. It was a golden age of great feats, wondrous achievements, and marvelous heroes. Then the elves won the war.
The strength of the dwarves was shattered forever and the emergence of men destroyed what remained. Although never enslaved like the remnants of the elves, men distrusted and shunned the sons of Drome. Fearful of a unified dwarven kingdom, humans forced the dwarves out of their homeland of Delgos into a shadowy existence of nomadic persecution. Despite their skills in crafts, humans scattered them whenever they gathered in groups too large for comfort. For their own survival, dwarves learned to hide. Those that could adopted human ways and attempted to fit in. Their culture obliterated by centuries of careful erasure, little survived of their former glory except what stone could tell. Few dwarves, and even less humans, possessed the imagination to recall a day when they ruled half the world—unless, like Royce and Hadrian, they were staring up at Drumindor.
The light of the setting sun bathed the granite rock, making it shine like silver. Sheer walls towered hundreds of feet, rising out of the bedrock of the burning mountain’s back. The twin towers stood joined by the thin line of what appeared from that distance to be a wafer thin bridge. The tops of the towers smoldered quietly, leaking thin plumes of dark smoke out of every vent, creating a thin gray cloud that hovered overhead. Up close the scope and mammoth size was breathtaking.
They had one night and the following day to accomplish the same magic trick they had performed eight years earlier. It was dark by the time they purchased the necessary supplies, slipped through the city of Tur Del Fur, and hiked up into the countryside, following goat paths into the foothills that eventually led to the base of the great fortress itself.
“Is this where it was?” Royce asked, stopping and studying the base of the tower.
“How should I know?” Hadrian replied as his eyes coursed up the length of the south tower. Up close, it blocked everything else out, a solid wall of black rising against the light of the moon. “I can never understand why such small people build such gigantic things.”
“Maybe they’re compensating,” Royce said, dropping several lengths of rope.
“Damn it, Royce. It’s been eight years since we did this. I was in better shape then. I was younger and, if I recall, I vowed I would never do it again.”
“That’s why you shouldn’t make vows. The moment you do, fate starts conspiring to shove them down your throat.”
Hadrian sighed, staring upward. “That’s one tall tower.”
“And if the dwarves were still here maintaining it, it would be impregnable. Lucky for us, they’ve let it rot. You should be happy—the last eight years will only have eroded it further. It should be easier.”
“It’s granite, Royce. Granite doesn’t erode much in eight years.”
Royce said nothing as he continued to lay oils of rope, checking the knots in the harnesses, and slipping on his hand-claws.
“Do you recall that I nearly fell last time?” Hadrian asked.
“So, don’t step there this time.”
“Do you remember what the nice lady in the jungle village told you? One light will go out?”
“We either climb this, or let the place blow. We let the place blow and Merrick wins. Merrick wins, he gets away and you never find Degan Gaunt.”
“I never thought you cared all that much if I ever found Gaunt.” Hadrian looked up at the tower again. “At least not that much.”
“Honestly? I don’t care at all. This whole quest of yours is stupid. So you find Gaunt—then what? You follow him around being his bodyguard for the rest of your life? What if he’s like Ballentyne? Wouldn’t that be fun? Granted, it will be exciting, as I’m sure anyone with a sword will want to kill him, but who cares? There’s no reward, no point to it. You feel guilt—I kinda get t
hat. You ran out on your father and you can’t say you’re sorry anymore. So for that, you’ll spend your life following this guy around being his butler? You’re better than that.”
“I think there was a compliment in there somewhere—so thanks. But if you’re not doing this to help me find Gaunt, why are you?”
Royce paused and from a bag he drew out Wesley’s hat. He must have fetched it down before they left the ship. “He stuck his neck out for me three times. The last one got him killed. There’s no way this fortress is blowing up.”
***
Even in the dark, Royce found hand and footholds that Hadrian could never have spotted in the full light of day. Like a spider, he scaled the side of the tower until he came to the base of the first niche. There, he set his first anchor and dropped a rope to Hadrian. By the time Hadrian reached the foothold of that niche, Royce was already nailing in the next pin and sending down another coil. They continued this way, finding minute edges where several thousand years of erosion revealed the maker’s seams in the rock. Centuries-old crevices and cracks allowed Royce to climb what was once slick, smooth stone.
Two hours later, the trees below appeared like tiny bushes and the cold, wintry winds buffeted them like barn swallows. They were only a third of the way up.
“It’s time,” Royce shouted over the howl of the wind. He anchored a pin, tied a rope to it, and climbed back down.
Hadrian groaned. “I hate this part!”
“Sorry buddy, nothing I can do about it, the niches are all over that way.” Royce gestured across to where the vertical grooves cut into the rock on the far side of a deep crevasse.
Royce tied the rope to his harness and linked himself to Hadrian.
“Now, just watch me,” Royce told him and, taking hold of the rope, he sprinted across the stone face. Reaching the edge of the crevasse, he leapt swinging out like a clock’s pendulum. He cleared the gap by what looked like only a few inches. On the far side, he clung to the stone, dangling like a bug on a twig. He slowly pulled himself up and drove another pin. Then, after tying off the rope, waved to Hadrian.
If Hadrian missed the jump, he would slip into the crevasse where he would end up dangling helplessly, assuming the rope held him. The force of the fall could easily pop out the holding pin, or even snap the rope. He took a deep breath of cold air, steadied himself, and began to run. On the far side, Royce leaned out for him. He reached the edge and jumped. The wind whistled past his face, blurring his vision as tears streaked back across his cheeks. He struck the far side just short of the landing, bashing his head hard enough to see stars. He tasted blood and wondered if he had lost his front teeth even as his fingertips lost their tenuous hold and he began to fall. Royce tried to grab him, but was too late. Hadrian fell.
He dropped about three inches.>
Hadrian dangled from the rope Royce had the forethought to anchor the moment his partner had landed. Hadrian groaned in pain while wiping blood from his face.
“See,” Royce shouted in his ear, “that went much better than last time!”
Hadrian declined comment knowing the look on his face said it all.
They continued scaling upward, working within the relative shelter of the vertical three-sided chimneys. They were too high now for Hadrian to see anything except the tiny lights of the port city. Everything else below was darkness. They rested for a time in the semi-sheltered niche, then climbed upward again.
Higher and higher Royce led the way. Hadrian’s hands were sore from gripping the rope and burned from the few times he slipped. His legs, exhausted and weak, quivered dangerously. The wind was brutal. Gusting in an eddy caused by the chimney they followed, it pushed outward like an invisible hand trying to knock them off. The sun came up and Hadrian was nearing the end of his endurance when they finally reached the bridge. They were slightly more than two-thirds of the way, but thankfully they did not need to reach the top.
What appeared from the ground to be a thin bridge was actually forty-feet in thickness. They scrambled over the edge, hauled up their ropes, ducked into a sheltered archway, and sat in the shadows catching their breath.
“I’d like to see Derning scale that,” Royce said, looking down.
“I don’t think anyone but you could manage it,” Hadrian replied. “Nor is there anyone crazy enough to try.”
Dozens of men guarded the great gates at the base of the tower, but no one was on the bridge. It was thought impossible for intruders to start at the top, and the cold wind kept the workers inside. Royce gave the tall slender stone doors a push.
“Locked?” Hadrian asked.
Royce nodded. “Let’s hope they haven’t changed the combination.”
Hadrian chuckled. “Took you eighteen hours last time, right after you told me, ‘this will only take a minute.’”
“Remind me again why I brought you?” Royce asked, fanning his hands out across the embossed face of the doors. “Ah, here it is.”
Royce placed his fingers carefully and pushed. A hundred tons of solid stone glided inward as if on a cushion of air, rotating open without a sound. Inside, an enormous cathedral ceiling vaulted hundreds of feet above them. Shafts of morning sunshine entered through distant skylights built into the dome overhead, revealing a complex world of bridges, balconies, archways, and a labyrinth of gears. Some gears lay flat, while others stood upright. Some were as small as a copper coin, and then there were those that were several stories tall and thicker than a house. A few rotated constantly, driven by steam created from the volcanically superheated seawater. The majority of the gears, particularly the big ones, remained motionless, waiting. Aside from the mechanisms, nothing else moved. The only sound was the regular, ratcheting rhythm and the whirl of the great machine.
Royce scanned the interior. “Nobody home,” he said at length.
“Wasn’t last time either. I’m surprised they haven’t tightened security up more.”
“Oh, yeah, a single breakin after centuries is something to schedule your guards around.”
“They’ll be kicking themselves tomorrow.”
They found the stairs—short shallow steps built for little feet, that they took two and three at a time. Ducking under low archways, Hadrian nearly had to crawl through the entrance to the Big Room. This was a name Hadrian gave it the last time they visited. The room itself was huge, but the name came from the master gear. It stood on edge and what they could see was as high as a castle tower, but most of its bulk sunk beneath the floor and through a wall, leaving only a quarter of the gear visible. Its edge was crenellated like the merlons on a castle battlement, only larger—much. It meshed with two other gears, which connected to a dozen more that joined the dwarven puzzle.
“The lock was at the top right?” Royce asked.
“Think so—yeah, Gravis was up there when we found him, right?”
“Okay, I’ll handle this. Keep an eye out.”
Royce leapt up to one of the smaller gears and walked up the teeth like a staircase. He jumped from one to the next until he reached the master gear. It was harder to climb, since the teeth were huge, but for Royce this was no problem. He was soon out of sight and a few minutes later a loud stone upon stone sound echoed as a giant post of rock descend from the ceiling, settling in the valley between two teeth, locking the great gear.
When Royce returned he was grinning happily.
“I’d love to see the look on Merrick’s face when this place doesn’t blow. Even if the Ghazel take the city, he’ll be scratching his head for months. There’s no way he can know about this master switch. Gravis only knew because it was his ancestor that designed the place.”
“And we only know because we caught him in the act.” Hadrian thought a moment. “Do you think Merrick might be nearby, waiting for the fireworks?”
Royce sighed. “Of course not. If it were me, I wouldn’t be within a hundred miles of this explosion. I don’t even want to be here now. Don’t worry, I know him. The fact that this mountain
doesn’t explode will drive him nuts. All we have to do is drop the right hints to the wrong people and you won’t have to look for him—he’ll find us. Now come on, let’s see if we can find what is blocking the vents so we can put this back in place and cook some goblins.”
Chapter 22
Going Home
Archibald Ballentyne stared out the window of the Great Hall. It looked cold. Brown grass, blowing dead leaves, clouds that looked heavy and full of snow, and geese that flew away before a veil of gray all reminded him the seasons and changed. Wintertide was less than two months away. He kicked the stone of the wall with his boot. It made a muffled thud and sent a pain up his leg making him wince.
Why do I have to think of that? Why do I always have to think of that?
Behind him, Saldur, Ethelred, and Biddings debated something, but he was not listening. He did not care anymore. Maybe he should leave. Maybe he should take a small retinue and just go home to Chadwick and the sanctity of his Gray Tower. The place would be a wreck by now and he could busy himself with repairing the damage the servants caused in his absence. Bruce was likely dipping into his brandy store and the tax collectors would be behind in their duties. It would feel nice to be home for the holiday. He could invite a few friends and his sister over for—he stopped and considered kicking the wall again, but it hurt enough last time. He decided against it.
Sleeping in a tent this time of year would be miserable. Besides, what would the regents say? Moreover, what would they do in his absence? They treated him badly enough when he was here, how much worse would they conspire against him if he left?
He did not really want to be home. Ballentyne Castle was a lonely place, all the more horrid in winter. He used to dream of how all that would change when he married, when he had a beautiful wife and children. He used to fantasize about Alenda Lanaklin. She was a pretty thing. He often imagined taking the hand of the King Armand’s daughter, Princess Beatrice. She was certainly appealing. He even spent many a summer evening watching the milkmaids in the field and contemplating the possibility of snatching one from her lowly existence to be the new Lady Ballentyne. How grateful she would be, how dutiful, how easily controlled. That was all before he came to Aquesta—before he met her.
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