The Longsword Chronicles: Book 03 - Sight and Sound

by GJ Kelly

  Tyrane peered into the darkness. “I think so. And unless that’s low cloud, I’d say the land rises steeply before us.”

  “It seems so. Too dark to tell yet,” Gawain pushed forward away from the deckhouse they were leaning against, and loosened his weapons. Passing through a lock at night was no different to passing through one during the day, but night gave enemies an advantage that daylight and Eldengaze denied them.

  As the barge moved closer they saw that indeed it was a massive lock gate barring their way, and that the land rose steeply, the forest seeming to bubble up into the cloud-strewn sky.

  “Looks too high for a simple lock,” Gawain mumbled as they moved into the deckhouse to peer through the portholes by the controls. “At least from my simple understanding of the things.”

  “Aye, m’lord. Strange shape beyond too. I don’t think this is an ordinary lock.”

  With the usual monotonous clunk, the chain below disengaged, and the barge began slowing to a halt. Gawain pushed the lever forward and cranked the wheel, and Tyrane stepped out to grasp the tiller while Gawain made the leap ashore.

  As soon as the younger man had landed nimbly on the tow-path, Tyrane nudged the tiller a little, aiming the prow towards the centre of the lock gates. He would have to wake Rollaf and Terryn for help with the poles once Gawain had the gate open.

  Ashore, Gawain paused by the small hut containing the lever which controlled the chains behind them, and listened. Nothing, save for the gentle sound of water lapping, and the occasional sounds of night birds. He opened the door, and heaved on the lever to still the chains, then softly pushed the door closed until the locking handle clicked.

  A flight of twelve broad and steep blue-stone steps led up to the massive wheel which controlled the southern lock gate, and when he crested them, he stopped suddenly. Beyond the northern gate of the lock pair lay a broad pond, its surface like glass, reflecting patches of starlight and drifting clouds, and towards the northern edge of the pond, an immense and indistinct shape, gleaming dully. A small cluster of identical barges lay moored, silent and unmoving, in the northeast corner of the pond.

  Movement from below drew his attention back to the barge, where Rollaf and Terryn had mounted the walkways, poles in hands, ready to propel the barge gently into the lock. Gawain strode forward to the wheel, unlocked it, and began cranking, watching as a crack appeared in the middle of the gate, water levels beginning to equalise.

  When the barge had been gently eased forward and nestled alongside, Gawain closed the gate and strode forward to speak softly with the three men of Callodon, squatting on the path to talk down at their upturned faces.

  “There’s a large rise, and then a pond, smaller than the one where we found the barges but big enough. You’ll see for yourself when the level in the lock rises. I think we’ve found one of Arramin’s great lifts. We’ll have to rest here for the remainder of the night until the wizards are up and about. Stay close to the side once you’re through the gate, so I can come back aboard, then we’ll pole out to the middle, and wait there for morning.”

  After receiving three acknowledgements, Gawain walked quietly back to the lock controls, and very slowly cracked the north gate. Water at once began flooding into the lock, and he let it flow gently, not wishing to wake the sleepers in the aft deckhouse with a sudden surge. The two scouts kept the barge from scraping against the side of the lock by main force, and when the levels were almost equal, Gawain opened the gate wide.

  Once the barge was locked in to the pond and the gate closed, Gawain stepped aboard, and the vessel was poled out to the middle of the pond where it simply sat idle upon the water. The huge shape in front of them loomed high overhead, dull, metallic, the faint sound of trickling water giving some hint of its purpose. Rollaf and Terryn returned to their bedrolls to doze by the horses, leaving Gawain and Tyrane with nothing to do except keep watch over all of them.

  “Do you think this mechanism will work after all this time?” Tyrane asked, the two of them back in their familiar positions at the prow.

  Gawain shrugged, and nodded towards the barges to the right of the immense shape. “I imagine there is a pond above, perhaps even with vessels moored like those over there in case the lift should fail. At least I hope so. We’re making good time, to have to abandon the canal and walk through the forest for the plains would be disheartening. Not to mention risky given our diminishing provisions.”

  “Aye. Perhaps the deer Terryn saw yesterday afternoon will be more prolific here, and we can get a bit of hunting in, here or above.”

  “I suspect my lady will have the last word on the matter in the morning. It might also depend how long it takes the wizard Arramin to set the mechanism in motion. I’m waiting for dawn and daylight to learn whether my eyes can make sense of the description he gave, a great metal wheel which will carry a barge up into the air while at the same time bringing another down.”

  “Makes no sense to me either, m’lord. If there’s barges above and below, why not just climb up?”

  “I imagine because in the old days, the barges carried tons of stone for construction, and supplies and provisions. I wouldn’t want to have to carry a barge-full of blue-stone blocks from up there.”

  “A fair point m’lord.”

  “Not that it matters much to us really. If the mechanism doesn’t work, we’ll have no choice but to make the climb. And if there are no empty vessels moored up top, then we’ll also have no choice but to abandon the canal, or simply follow it on foot.”

  “Is it my eyes or is it becoming a little lighter?”

  “It’s not your eyes. It took a while to get through the lock, dawn’s approaching.”

  And so it was, little by little, the sky slowly shifting from charcoal to an iron-grey hue. The shape looming above them in the gloom reflected the light, and began slowly to resolve itself, first appearing as an immense wheel, but then more details emerged, and the two men gaped up at the seemingly impossible structure.

  It looked as though a giant letter S had been pierced through the centre by an enormous axle, and encircled by a giant letter O. An identical structure was fixed to the opposite end of the axle some seventy feet from the first. Pivoted on the outermost limbs of the S-shaped construction, vast metal caissons hung motionless, the bottom one in the water, the upper one aligned perfectly with an aqueduct above. As the dawn chorus began, the air filled with birdsong, the function of the immense structure became apparent even to the two men who had never seen such a thing before.

  “I don’t think I like the idea of that thing much, m’lord.”

  “No, me neither. I imagine you simply open the gate at the bottom there, pole the barge into the tray of water in the bottom of the S, close the gate behind you, and then the wheel rotates, carrying you up to the top while bringing the other tray down here.”

  “Indeed. Assuming there’s water in the channel above, it looks to be leaking there.”

  Tyrane pointed up to the caisson suspended from the upper arms of the boat-lift. With sunrise came greater clarity, and they could see the full wonder of the thing; the upper section of canal was an aqueduct of metal, and it projected out from the cliffs facing them a good distance, perhaps sixty feet. Water was indeed trickling from the joint where the caisson met the aqueduct, where enormous metal legs supported the final section of the aqueduct nearest the wheel.

  The sheer scale of the works was breathtaking, and they couldn’t help but gaze in awe at the immense metal structure. Around them, the waters of the pond lay still, scarcely a ripple from the morning breezes. Around the pond, as at Calhaneth, grubby-looking blue-stone paving. But here the expanse of stone was broad, both to the east and to the west, holding back the forest. And clustered around the base of the cliff near the bottom of the wheel, there were a number of stone buildings which, amazingly, seemed intact.

  “Is that a path up to the top?” Gawain murmured, pointing to a dark area beyond the buildings.

  “I c
an’t make it out clearly, m’lord. It does look like steps carved in the stone there, but there’s too much foliage overhanging to see for certain.”

  “There’s a similar-looking way, beyond the barges. Perhaps two ways up to the top, cut into the stone of the cliff.”

  “It must be a hundred feet or more up to that waterway.”

  “A hundred and twelve, my lords,” a familiar voice announced quietly from behind them. “Oh dear me. Oh dear, dear me.”

  “Good morning, Serre wizard,” Tyrane greeted the elderly Arramin, offering a hand as the old wizard stepped off the walkway to stand beside the captain in front of the deckhouse.

  “We decided not to wake anyone, Arramin, it’s very early yet.”

  “I know, my lords, I know, but I am an old man and it takes very little to rouse me these days. The birds, and the light, and the lack of noise from the chains…”

  Arramin clutched his staff tightly, hands no longer bandaged and no longer needing the see-eelan’s unguent. The old wizard gaped, and blinked, admiring with wide-eyed astonishment the feat of elven engineering before him. Gawain thought he saw tears welling in those aged eyes.

  “D’you think it will work, after all this time?” he asked, and Arramin turned his wide-eyed gaze to the young king. “We were worried about the water leaking from up there.”

  “Oh, oh I shouldn’t be concerned about that, my lords, bound to be a few dribbles here and there. Isn’t it magnificent! Isn’t it magnificent! To see such a thing!”

  Arramin’s enthusiasm seemed infectious, and both men found themselves smiling up at the immense boat-lift towering above them. In truth, it was magnificent, if only for its sheer size, never mind for the power of the minds which had conceived it and the labour which had built it.

  “I never dreamed, my lords, that one day I should find myself here, upon the canal of Thal-Marrahan, gazing up at the mightiest of his works. In all my years of study, in all my readings, never did I come upon a description of a thing from elder times which so captured my imagination, and at the same time defied it, as this.”

  Arramin sighed, and then shook his head. “There are those, I know, at the Hallencloister and elsewhere, who gape and gush over some pile of stones and extol the beauty of architecture, but, well,” and with a brief flick of his hand he dismissed them, “For me it is this, this mechanism, based upon the simplest of principles yet embodying the highest knowledge of its day, this is beauty. This is where thought leaves the wispy and intangible realm of the mind, and becomes solid, and real, and magnificent.”

  “You like it, then?” Gawain smiled.

  Arramin chortled, and wiped his eyes. “Aye, my lords, I do.”

  “For myself, I’m concerned. I don’t like the idea of trusting the horses to it, and certainly not people. Did your books speak of a path up to the top of the cliff?”

  “Not in so many words, my lords, no. Of course there would need to be ways up and down, to support and facilitate the construction of the wheel as well as the canal. There is doubtless a way around and up to the top, but the cliff, as you can see, is almost sheer where it was cut back to accommodate the wheel and also the aqueduct above.”

  They could, now that the sun had climbed above the horizon far to the east; the day was bright, sky blue though puffy clouds spoke of the possibility of rain later. A small area of land behind the wheel and the buildings sloped gently enough and was covered now by trees, but higher up they could see the weathered face of the cliff where it had been sliced almost vertically. Now, in daylight, rocky steps could be seen leading up to the top, but they had been cut long ago, and intended mostly for access to the cliff face for construction work.

  “Dwarfspit,” Gawain sighed, eyeing their surrounds. “We’d never get horses up that way.”

  “Aye, and people wouldn’t like it much either, m’lord. Still, wouldn’t take long to ride around and up, we could always send the scouts ahead to get the lie of the land?”

  “We could simply take the lift, my lords.”

  “Easy for you to say, Arramin, since you’ll doubtless be over there on dry land operating the mechanism. Which does rather beg the question, how will you get up there?”

  “Oh dear. In my excitement I hadn’t thought of that. When the canal was in regular use, elves lived here, there was a boarding house yonder, and an inn, and accommodation for those who remained here to operate the mechanism.”

  “Well, we’re not leaving you here. I’ll remain with you, and when the others are safely up, we’ll go through the forest and around, and re-join them up top.”

  “I suspect, m’lord,” Tyrane announced gently, “Your lady and the others might have something to say about that. I doubt your lady would have you too far from her sight in unknown territory.”

  “Quite so,” Arramin agreed.

  “I’d be glad to escort the wizard, my lord.”

  “I’m not surprised, Tyrane. Given the prospect of being lifted up in that thing, I suspect there’ll be no shortage of volunteers happy to do so while remaining on solid ground.”

  Tyrane grinned. “Alas, none of them of sufficient rank to trump me, my lord, save of course for your lady.”

  “Hmm,” Gawain scowled in mock disdain. “I think we’ll let the others decided for themselves now that we’re here.”

  “Tsk tsk, my lords, you could’ve been halfway to the top in the time it’s taken to have this conversation.”

  “And stuck there the remainder of our days if the mechanism fails.”

  “It will be a simple thing to test the wheel before its use, we can merely rotate it a time or two to put everyone’s minds at rest, and then operate it in earnest. We shall need at least one or two aboard when we send the barge up, to open the caisson gate and pole the vessel out into the aqueduct. Then shut the caisson gate behind them. They must pole the barge the short distance to the lock gate at the end of the aqueduct, and then pass through into the mooring lake there.”

  “You make it sound as simple as going upstairs, Arramin.”

  “Simpler, really, my lord. For those aboard the vessel it is no different to passing through a lock, as we have done often now.”

  Gawain remained unconvinced, and when he drew a lump of frak from his pocket and pared a slice with his boot knife, Tyrane withdrew to find breakfast for Arramin and dinner for himself, returning a short time later with cheese and salt pork for both of them. The three of them ate, contemplating the great wheel, each with their own opinions of the marvel. To be confronted with such mighty works so soon after the horror of Calhaneth left them all with conflicting emotions, not least of which was incredulity that people capable of such construction could have wrought such destruction at the city in the south.

  Allazar was the next to wake, joining them for breakfast at the prow, and he seemed content simply to gaze in astonishment at their surroundings. Slowly, as the morning advanced, the day watch stirred, and once Elayeen had given her usual pronouncement as to the safety of their immediate vicinity, Gawain and Tyrane took up the poles, and gently nudged the barge to the docking area in the northwest corner, alongside the buildings.

  Gawain and the men of Callodon made a brief excursion to scout the area, but it rapidly became apparent that nothing had disturbed the peace of this ancient dock for a very long time. The horses were brought ashore, and exploration began in earnest while Rollaf and Terryn were dispatched in search of game and exploration further afield.

  The buildings were disappointing. While they gave the appearance of being intact and functional from the outside, the insides told a different story. Wooden joists and floors had long since collapsed and rotted away, leaving nothing but vacant shells. There was, however, a stark reminder of the terror they had left behind them; in what had been the long and capacious boarding-hall for travellers and barge-men, it had apparently been the custom to leave one’s name scratched neatly on the blue-stone wall by the main entrance. There were hundreds of names there, many of which we
re common and thus familiar, names which had been heard scant days ago, at Calhaneth.

  To the rear of what had presumably been a hostelry or inn of some kind, Allazar discovered a long box made from the same stainless elven metal as the barges and the wheel. He called for Gawain and Tyrane to assist with opening it, the rectangular lid was heavy, fully twenty feet by six. Once they’d lifted it, Allazar let out a delighted cry.

  “Ah! Behold! Master Arramin, come see!”

  Within, there were rows of small metal barrel-shaped containers at one end, in the middle there were metal boxes, and at the other end, in the same dull but untarnished metal, a stack of drums.

  “Oh dear me!” Arramin gasped, rubbing his hands happily.

  “Will someone kindly tell me the reason for the excitement? This lid isn’t getting any lighter.”

  “Ah, apologies, Longsword. Master Arramin, if you wouldn’t mind?”

  Allazar took two of the barrels from the container, handing them one at time to Arramin who seemed to gauge their weight before putting them down. The boxes were heavier, and it took both wizards to heave four of them out and onto the paving. The canisters, however, seemed very light in comparison and in no time half a dozen had been removed and set aside.

  “You may close the lid now,” Allazar smiled, and Gawain and Tyrane eased the lid down, whipping their fingers clear and allowing it to fall the last couple of inches to close with a loud bang.

  Arramin squatted on his haunches, or attempted to, and then gave up and simply knelt on the stone before one of the barrels. There was a small T-shaped handle set in the top of the barrel and he gave it a sharp twist, and then withdrew what appeared to be a long-handled ladle in the cup of which a heavy liquid glistened and dripped. A strange odour drifted up, almost like wood-tar but with an acrid edge that threatened to make eyes water. Arramin promptly returned the ladle and secured it.

  “Ellamas oil,” the old wizard announced.

  “And these must be boxes of pyre-brick,” Allazar released a latch and lifted the lid of one of the metal boxes to reveal small black blocks about two inches cubed.