by John Goode
“The lights are a good sign,” Molly said, pulling her hand off the wall. A small metal protrusion slid back into the palm of her hand with a whir and a click. “It means the generators are still carrying a current.”
Caerus was the first to notice. “Where are the doors?”
Ferra looked around and frowned; being boxed into a situation without an escape route wasn’t on any warrior’s list of favorites. All four walls were smooth, seamless metal. A quick glance downward confirmed Ferra’s suspicion that there was no way out under their feet. “What kind of room is this?” she asked, irritated.
Molly answered her. “A waiting room, I believe. This is where customers would wait to see a design constructor and explain what kind of a clockwork they needed.”
“How could they meet with anyone if there were no doors?” Caerus asked, floating around the room slowly.
“A fair question,” Molly said, walking over to the couch. “Maybe we should ask the assistants.”
Ferra looked around in confusion. “What assistants?”
Molly knelt down next to the side of the couch and slid a panel open, revealing a complex series of cogs and gears. Taking her own key, she inserted it into the center of the panel and slowly began to wind it clockwise. The high-pitched sound of rusted gears slowly beginning to move, screeching and groaning, grew so loud that Ferra clapped her hands over her ears to protect them.
“The self-lubrication system has failed,” Molly called out over the din. “That means it’s been sitting dormant for at least three centuries.”
“What are you doing?” Ferra practically shouted to be heard.
As if in answer, the two eyes on the couch, which Ferra had assumed were painted on, slowly started to open. “Oh dear Logos!” she exclaimed as she realized the couch was alive.
It took almost a minute and several eye blinks for the couch to “wake up” completely. Two bright yellow pupils looked back and forth, taking the entire scene in before the couch opened its mouth slowly. “W-w-w-eeeeeelllll…,” it moaned.
“Is it in pain?” Caerus asked, concerned.
Molly shook her head. She removed the key from one slot and slipped it into another. “No, its speech and congeniality springs need winding now.” Another couple of minutes passed as Molly wound four additional springs before putting the key away and stepping back.
The couch blinked a few times. Ferra could hear the slight sound of whirring gears from inside it now. Its mouth curved into a huge smile, and in an exaggeratedly cheerful voice, the couch exclaimed, “Welcome to Tinker and Jones, the premiere clockwork inventors of the Nine Realms and beyond! How can I assist you gentle beings this fine morning?”
Ferra looked to Molly and then to Caerus. “Is it morning?”
Molly shook her head as she examined the chairs. “Its internal clock has been reset. It thinks the day just started.”
“I hope you have not been waiting long,” the couch went on, ignoring Molly’s words. “It appears that the workshop is very busy right now. May I offer you a refreshment?”
“It just tried to communicate with the workshop and didn’t get a response,” Molly explained, moving to another chair. “That doesn’t mean anything, though. I have no way of knowing if the couch’s communication device is even functioning.” She stood up and wiped the oil on her hands on the seat of the chair. “The chairs are rusted solid; they are going to be no help.”
“Rusted solid?” Ferra asked. “What does that mean?”
Before Molly could answer, the couch replied. “Clockwork beings whose inner gears are rusted solid are normally beyond function, except in the rare cases they receive care by a skilled tinker. Do you have a damaged clockwork being in need of assistance?”
Ferra glanced toward Molly for a translation. “It means they are dead.” That Ferra understood all too well.
“So all we have is a talking couch for our efforts?” Caerus asked.
“The couch can be of some help,” Molly answered. “Ferra, ask the couch for something to eat.”
The barbarian looked shocked at the request. “Why don’t you just ask it?”
Turning to the couch, Molly said, “Couch, we are hungry. Please provide us with some food.”
The couch stood mute, its Ready light blinking.
“It is designed not to respond to my commands. Most clockwork beings have a failsafe in them that makes it impossible to give each other orders.”
“Why in the world would they make it like that?” Ferra asked in a disgusted tone.
“So we can’t order each other to rebel or to incite a rebellion against our owners,” Molly answered, her voice emotionless.
Ferra paused, not sure how to respond to that information. As happened every once in a while, she felt very much like a barbarian wandering in a strange land. Machines like Molly were unknown to her people, and though she could understand how Molly was alive, the thought of the clockwork girl inciting a rebellion was too much for her to imagine.
Caerus floated near the couch. “We are hungry. Can you bring us some food?”
“Of course! Where are my manners?” the couch responded, its voice sympathetic. The Ready light on its console changed from red to green as the couch communicated with a location somewhere in the structure around them.
Ferra jumped and formed an ice spear when the sound of grinding gears suddenly echoed throughout the room. The noise seemed to have no single source. It sounded as if it was coming from the other side of each wall. “What is that?”
Molly, who seemed unmoved by the commotion, looked from wall to wall in anticipation. Ferra’s hand began to glow with ice as Caerus watched in fascination. The noise grew louder before the sound of something breaking reverberated throughout the room.
Moving faster than they had ever seen before, Molly raced forward and began pushing on one of the walls. “Here!” she called to Ferra. “I need your ice, quickly!” Not sure what was going on but trusting Molly, Ferra strode over to the wall and placed her hands next to Molly’s. “Start freezing this area. Make it as cold as you can.”
Ferra nodded, focused, and the temperature in the room dropped several degrees instantly.
This close, Ferra could see that Molly was actually straining against the wall, pushing it as hard as she could. Generating more and more cold, Ferra could see a latticework of ice begin to build outward from her hands. The ice crept over Molly’s hands, encasing the polished brass surface and burying it under an ever deeper layer as the seconds went on. When the ice reached a radius of about two feet, two vertical straight lines were revealed, their width less than a hair. Two horizontal lines then appeared, creating the outline of a wide rectangle in the wall.
Molly pulled her hands back, easily cracking the ice that had sealed them to the wall. “That’s good enough,” she said, giving Ferra a nod to stop the cold.
Caerus floated right up the wall and examined the seals. In a tone of obvious awe, she exclaimed, “This was completely undetectable before.”
“The entire room is a clockwork construction,” Molly explained. “In fact, the whole workshop was.”
Ferra, who had been thinking over what Molly had said earlier, asked, “The workshop was alive?”
Molly nodded. “Of course. It was Tinker and Jones’s finest creation.”
Ferra gave a small smile and said, “I wouldn’t say finest.”
Molly giggled and covered her mouth with a still-thawing hand.
“I believe I can force it open now that I know it’s here,” Caerus announced, ignoring the couple’s flirting.
“Do you need any help?” Ferra asked.
Caerus didn’t answer. Instead, a malachite-colored beam lashed out from the center of the sapphire and hit the center of the panel dead on in a high-energy impact. Ferra had to look away from the beam when it became too bright, and she could feel the heat from where she stood. A pair of mirrored, polarized lenses slid down over Molly’s eyes to protect the sensitive optic
al mechanisms from harm while she watched the gemling work.
Caerus was able, slowly, to buckle the panel inward. The hairline seams began to expand as the metal melted. Caerus continued the barrage until the metal verged on complete meltdown. Satisfied with what she’d done, the gemling canceled the beam and floated back from the now blackened and scorched piece of metal. “Now ice it up,” she told Ferra. “And cover your eyes.”
Ferra held a hand up to her eyes as she touched the other one to the superheated panel. It went from glowing to iced over instantly. Cracks danced across its surface before it exploded outward, the radical change in temperature far too powerful for it.
Inside was a small alcove that was actually connected to a dumbwaiter, which allowed it to rise or fall as needed. Molly walked over and examined the inside walls for a moment before she put her hand into the gap and began to work by touch alone. “I think…,” she said as her hand moved, “there’s the panel….” The sound of more gears moving came from the once secret compartment. “And there!” she announced, pulling her hand out of the way.
The dumbwaiter crept into motion, lowering the sealed shelf out of sight. The creaking and groaning its gears and chains created echoed up the shaft.
Ferra cocked her head in Molly’s direction and received a nod in reply. Uneasy about the whole thing, the warrior walked to the wall and bent down to peer inside. When she looked back at Molly, her expression reflected puzzlement and annoyance.
“Now there is another wall,” Ferra said angrily. “What did that get us?”
“Patience, Ferra. Please,” Molly replied. She smiled at Ferra, who humphed and grumbled but at least didn’t stab a spear into the mechanism. Seconds later, another compartment slid down. This one was filled by a stack of five ancient containers covered with dust. With a click, the shelf locked into place.
Ferra stared distrustfully at the five metal cases inside, making no move to touch them. “What are they?” she asked.
Molly unlocked the shelf, reached in, and pulled the top metal case out. It was a box a little smaller than a loaf of bread, with a curved top. A latch secured by a rectangular clasp decorated the front of the box, which was hinged on its back side. “This was once refreshments,” she said, breaking the now dust-encrusted latch off with one hand. The hinges did not want to move, but the clockwork girl’s strength was more than enough to force the lid open.
Inside were the moldy and shriveled remains of what had once been food. “The vacuum seal has been worn down by time,” Molly announced as she examined the box and its contents.
The smell was overwhelming. Ferra took a few steps back, offended by the odor. “That’s wretched,” she said, stumbling away from it.
“Oh! I hadn’t considered that,” Molly said. Looking to Caerus, she asked, “Can you?”
The gem shot a beam into the container, burning the waste instantly.
“Now it smells of burnt filth,” the barbarian complained.
Wisely, Molly didn’t respond to the complaint. “These are the fruit of a meal tree,” she said, putting the now broken serving container back into its alcove. “My creators made one for the royal family years before the capital fell. The tree produced whole meals inside of these containers. From what I was told, they were quite delicious when ripe.”
Caerus floated into the alcove and examined the still sealed meals. “These were grown?”
Molly nodded and took her key out again. “The mechanism looked like an actual tree, but it was highly sophisticated. The tree would build an entire meal inside the boxes for anyone’s use. If the content spoiled, the tree would release the spoiled boxes for waste and reabsorb the materials for later use.” She put the key in one of the seven keyholes around her collarbone and began to wind her compassion spring tighter. “The royal family had the only one located outside of the factory, but there used to be an orchard of them in the workshop.”
Caerus paused her examination. “You mean this alcove is connected to the workshop?”
Molly put her key away. “That elevator has to be. The individual compartments can only be reloaded in the workshop….”
Ferra looked confused. “How do we get to the workshop, then?”
Molly gave her a smile. “We don’t. Caerus does.” Turning to Caerus, she said, “Say ‘thank you, we are done.’”
“Thank you, we are done?” Caerus asked, not sure what was going to happen. There was another storm of metal on metal from inside the shaft as the ancient machine tried in vain to work again. They all waited for something to happen. After a minute Caerus began to say, “I don’t think that work—”
And she was gone as the dumbwaiter plummeted downward suddenly.
ATER WAS used to teleporting blind.
In his years of service to the throne of Arcadia, his team of assassins had been sent to four of the nine realms for official duty, all by means of a Sender. Since Facilitation Points were well-guarded locations, using them covertly was impossible, which meant a Sender was the only alternative. At first, he had hated the feeling of emptiness that came from being moved from one place to another. There was a momentary feeling of absence that reminded him of the bonds he had severed with his people. The bond between elves and Faerth, their home since the Beginnings, could only be explained in elvish. Other languages had no equivalent words. Other beings had no equivalent emotions. However, no matter how long the elves had been bonded to Faerth, that bond remained voluntary.
Dark elves were another story.
Dark elves chose to sever their bonds with Faerth and its natural energies. In elvish terms they were referred to as Shaladrow Kin Ki, which had no direct translation outside their culture but was explained to others as dark soul ones. The term “dark elves” was the closest other cultures could come to understanding.
Another elven term for them was lilkanas, which meant “betrayal” in their language. For the most part, when an elf chose to sever the connection that bound him to Faerth, he or she became a dead being to their kin and were forced to flee the lands lest they be struck down in the name of Koran. Most dark elves never made it out of the elven woods alive, a fact most of the outside world would never know.
The air of Evermore still cloyed, still bore that same heavy, ambrosial smell that always made his stomach turn when he was younger. From outside, the city looked like just another one of the dozen or so copses of trees that littered eastern Arcadia. The inner truth, much like the elves themselves, was far different.
Ater hadn’t moved from the spot at which he appeared.
He wasn’t wearing weapons or armor of any kind and was not carrying a pack. He was dressed in a normal leather outfit and nothing else. He knew if the guards hadn’t seen him appear, they would sense it soon enough, and he knew they would spend the first few minutes just watching him. If he made a move toward Evermore, he’d be killed instantly, unarmed or not. Once it was obvious the Shaladrow was not hostile, word of his arrival would be sent to the center of town, where it would be conveyed to the ruling council.
Then would come the “discussion.” Or, as Ater put it, arguing.
Elves were some of the longest-lived mortal beings in the Nine Realms. The perspectives of age showed in their attitude when dealing with others. It was not unusual for a debate among elders to draw out into months and sometimes years if the situation was complicated. Passion and exuberant emotion were generally frowned upon in the upper echelon of elven culture; instead, calm and well-thought-out logic was desirable, especially in the case of council members.
Which meant the council would spend more time on sticking to the established rules and protocol of an argument than arguing the actual point itself. Ater waited, knowing an unarmed dark elf standing outside the city boundaries was such an unusual event that it would take them some time to come to a decision as to how it should be handled.
Knowing a long, boring wait was coming, Ater passed the time by counting the number of guards hidden in the deep shadows of the
trees watching him watch them. The sun had moved from midday to almost setting by the time someone presented himself to speak to him. As soon as he saw who they had sent, Ater knew the ruling council had identified him.
The elf who strode toward him from the cover of Evermore had a full, curly head of brassy red hair that seemed to go out of its way to cover the distinctive ears and eyebrows all elves possessed. It was a sign of his devotion, since followers of Koran were forbidden to cut their hair or to be clean-shaven. Most elves cut their hair only once when they came of age as an adult, the ritual signifying the end of one life and the start of another to Koran. Instead of a pondak—a traditional elven weapon, which was a long bow with a razor-sharp blade laminated into its outer edge for use in hand-to-hand combat as well as long-range attack—the elf wore what looked like an intricately carved longbow on his back. Ater knew, though the weapon looked less threatening than its bladed cousin, it was far more devastating than it seemed. In the past, whole nations had fallen to such weapons as the one the approaching elf wore, and Ater knew not to underestimate it.
The thought struck him that, if the council had wanted him dead, they would have had him killed from the cover of Evermore, so what did he have to fear from a weapon?
Ater said nothing as the light elf got closer and closer. The look on the newcomer’s face was a combination of great anger and great dread. The dark elf understood both emotions and couldn’t blame him. The light elf stopped a few feet in front of Ater, his hands balled into fists as if he were struggling against the urge to swing at him.
“Is he?” was all the elf asked.
Ater nodded and looked away from the other elf’s accusing eyes.
