Neverland's Library: Fantasy Anthology

by Mark Lawrence

  When she had crested the hill and vanished from sight, he started down it, toward the swamp, wondering if he would ever see her again. But Elin had made her choice, he told himself. And he’d made his.

  With every step he took, he wondered if he’d made the right one.

  Probably not, he decided. But she was gone, and she hadn’t asked him to go along. Not that he’d offered.

  Anyway, he was getting used to wrong choices.

  Story of his life…

  The Machine

  Kenny Soward

  NIKSELPIK THE GNOME rummaged through his knapsack with tiny, shaking hands as the voices of ghosts blew through the ancient cavern, whispering accusations. Another voice, his own, berated him particularly hard, reminding him of how stupid he was to have come here, how small he was in comparison to the power he sought.

  It also reminded him of how everyone around him always died.

  How long will you continue to repeat the same mistakes? You are nothing but a silly, stubborn little gnome, once again in way over your head.

  His inner voice balanced out the others—hurrah for self-loathing—reinforcing personal flaws he had already come to terms with, while the ghostly voices promised something more dark and eternal.

  “Poor girl,” they said, sounding like wisps of silk drug across stone. “You got her killed. You can atone by joining us…forever.”

  “I'll pay for her death in my own time,” he mumbled. “She came of her own accord. If I'm to be blamed for her death then I might as well be blamed for every other death in the world.”

  “But you let her go first. You practically pushed her to it, and the machine ate her.”

  “No!” Nikselpik shouted, slamming his fist into his knapsack. The gnome’s cry was so emphatic that the battle-weary mercenaries looked up from where they tended wounds or simply rested.

  “Are you well, my tiny friend?” Priest Louh approached, taking a pull from his wine skin and offering it to the gnome. Considering the priest's pallid appearance, Nikselpik could ask him the same question.

  “No thanks, priest. And yes, I'm fine.” Nikselpik averted his eyes. He pulled a heavy bracer of what appeared to be chitinous material from his knapsack. At his touch, the dark bangle came to life, twisting its body and wiggling hundreds of copper-tipped legs.

  Nikselpik glanced at his ragtag group of four hirelings, caught a glimpse of their haunted eyes, and wondered if they heard the ghosts, too.

  The living stood in a great cavern vault plucked from the real world and placed into the nether by the ancient Rapur. It was a place filled with tempting secrets, great artifacts of power, and promises of death. The mechanical, rune-covered portal they'd just come through still whirred next to them. The towering farmer’s son, Jorsh, gazed at it, leaning on his sword. “Maybe we should turn back,” he said. “We lost Malten already. We could cut our losses and be back at the Broken Dog within an hour, a pint in each hand.”

  Jancy, a quiet, waif of a girl dressed in what amounted to a burlap sack, agreed. “It's death ahead.”

  “No! There is no turning back.” Nikselpik clenched his teeth, focusing on the heavy, iron door embedded in the wall across the chamber. The machine's gate. “I'm getting the stones, and if you want to earn your silver then you'll quit your whining and loosen your blades.”

  “And who is she?” growled Glanois, the armored dwarf. He glowered at a young woman who had suddenly appeared between them and the machine's gate, and he gripped his bloodied axe tighter.

  The woman watched them, her hands clasped at her waist. Bright orange hair lay soft and vibrant against her shoulders, a vivid contrast to the spotless white tunic she wore. Her brilliant, warm smile was directed toward Nikselpik.

  The gnome blinked and then gritted his teeth, “She's no one. Just another ghost.” He slapped the wiggling bracer onto his wrist, where its needle-like legs entered his flesh, taking blood and returning a potion far richer. His misgivings melted away, replaced by a head-pounding rush of power. He strode through a sea of mist and howled at the machine's gate until blood seeped from his nose and ears, and the world spun into darkness.

  #

  “Here, let me help you.” Words with no meaning, filtered through ears that buzzed and rang. Hands helped him to sit. A battle raged before him, although he was too shaken to make any sense of it, like a dizzying dream filled with mysterious yet familiar characters.

  A small group of fighters faced a horde of terrible creatures pouring from the warped iron doors of the once-mighty gate. They were led by a stout dwarf—Glanois?—his back laden with a tarnished steel tank covered with oleaginous leakage. A tall warrior by the name of Jorsh fought beside the dwarf, their weapons tethered to the tank by hoses. They danced beautifully, like brothers born for battle. The two worked triggers and handles on their weapons, causing liquid fire to coat their blades. The warrior struck downward into the wave of shadowed figures. The shorter dwarf spun around the legs of the tall warrior, striking with deadly precision and power, cutting great swaths of fire, filling the cavern with dark, sooty grime.

  “How does he do that?” Nikselpik slurred, feeling pained and drunk, his throat raw and filled with phlegm. “That tank seems so heavy. Such a weight to bear.”

  “Let me get the blood off your face.” The voice again, a young woman's. The sound sent a pang of regret through his chest. A cool, wet cloth patted his cheek and neck, and he almost passed out from the pleasure. “You blew the door wide open, but you paid a price.”

  In the fray, Jancy bounded around with wide-eyed ferocity, climbing up some spindly-limbed monstrosity and locking her legs around its shoulders. Her murderous knives stabbed down like pistons, spraying gouts of ichor. She leapt clear before the beast could rend her to bits. Behind the mercenaries, Priest Louh moved like a strange, stiff dancer, dipping at the knee and waving his right hand above a large cup of steaming liquid held in his off hand. Whenever the darkness threatened to pour around their flanks, he would dip his hand into the cup and fling droplets in that direction. The tiny beads spun like fireworks, sizzling with thaumaturgic energy, and ripped through the enemy like a thousand slivers of glass.

  “Beautiful,” Nikselpik murmured. The fuzziness faded, and he recalled his purpose. The plan. He would tear the machine's gate from its hinges, and his mercenaries would clean up the mess. Then he would have the stones.

  He struggled to his feet, helped by gentle hands. “The stones are near. I can feel them.” He tore the bracer from his wrist, dead now that its purpose was fulfilled, and stumbled forward, nearly tripping over his robe.

  “Why don't you wait?”

  “There is no waiting,” he snapped, anger and greed and anger contorting his face.

  He shook his finger at her. “You want the stones for yourself. You always wanted them. I worked for decades to find them, and you rode on the coattails of my labor. You deserve what happened—”

  The woman slapped him across the face, filling his nose with light, sweet perfume. His head lolled, and the sounds of battle faded for a moment. When his senses returned, he found himself nose-to-nose with her. He wilted beneath her white-gray eyes. She seemed amused except for a single tear running down her cheek.

  My beautiful Jezzi.

  “I'm sorry for calling you a ghost,” he said.

  “Why would you be sorry?” Jezzi replied. “It's what I am. As for the other part though, I accept your apology. I never coveted your artifacts. I only wished to learn.”

  The mercenaries struggled to hold the line for a while before finally giving ground in a slow retreat. The darkness rolled in waves, and wicked figures sliced and cut from beneath the shadows. A slender appendage caught Glanois around the neck, its hook sinking into his flesh and pulling the dwarf forward as if to pitch him to the ground. Glanois put a boot into the mewing face and drew upward, extending the limb and then cutting through it with a one-handed swing of his fiery axe.

  Nikselpik closed his eyes and medita
ted into his wellspring, his cache of power. His head hurt, and the tendrils of energy that normally writhed and churned for him gave no immediate response. The stones would change all that, but not until they sat in the palms of his hands.

  He clenched his teeth. “We're finished. I'm finished.”

  Jezzi tsked. “You knew this path would be difficult. You should have tried a connective tendril again. With the right mindthread you would have gotten closer to the machine without going through all of this.”

  She was right, but too late now. Nikselpik shuddered, remembering his last venture into the machine's gate. Faces of dead friends flashed through his mind, followed by a spike of self-loathing. He hated his ambition.

  Have I fallen so low, to think of life this way? To have to argue with myself about what is more important?

  Deflated and sour, the gnome's eyes burned with tears. He rubbed them, which only managed to grind in more dirt and sweat, and watched his latest batch of mercenary fodder fall back, fighting desperately now. He made a surprisingly easy decision. The side of him that drove relentlessly for power fell away in the face of something purer.

  “I was a fool to have brought us this way. I'm not going to abandon them. Not this time. We'll all die together if that's what it comes to.”

  The woman caressed his cheek with the back of her hand and stood to her full height, tall even for a human, towering over him. “No. Not this time. Not in either case.” She left Nikselpik teetering and walked toward the raging battle.

  When she raised her hand, a soft, quiet glow emanated from her palm. It grew more brilliant, spreading through the darkened chamber, splitting the sooty air with razor light. Her dark brothers and sisters, those vengeful spirits and creatures who made up the foul darkness, wailed and drew away until they too were divided into pieces.

  The woman strode past Jancy, who fell to her knees and dropped her wet blades, flexing her hands in pain. The two warriors stopped swinging and leaned over, gorging on air, and Priest Louh quit his dance and gaped at the passing lady.

  Up the chiseled stairs she went, striding confidently within her own cleansing light. At the top, she turned and smiled at Nikselpik, tilting her head to one side. Tiny flames burst around the bottom of her tunic, crawling upward, devouring her entire form, breaking it apart into smoldering ash that floated away like fireflies. The woman disappeared in a soft puff of smoke.

  Her thoughts reached him. Enter by the machine's gate.

  Nikselpik nodded, tears streaming down his face, hands balled into fists, as if he might bring her back.

  “Just a ghost, huh?” Priest Louh asked.

  “Jezzine. That was her name. She was a student of mine.”

  And she forgives me.

  #

  The machine seethed with reckless purpose, a monstrous puzzle of gears, sprockets and pistons propelling a conglomeration of spinning arms tipped with deadly implements; spikes, twirling blades, and other dangerous-looking devices. Rods dispersed thaumaturgic and electric charges into the air, hinting at vast power flowing through the system.

  Corpses rotted between the machine's teeth, the fates of adventurers who had failed to best it. Many other bodies lay beneath the machine like drained husks expelled from a spider’s web.

  Nikselpik once again wondered at the madness of the machine's creator, and where that mind might have gotten off to.

  “This fucking thing makes my head hurt,” complained Glanois, putting a gore-slick hand to his forehead.

  “That's because of the energy. Can you feel it?” Nikselpik put his hands out as if feeling the heat from a hearth.

  “I feel the need to find the only stool at the Broken Dog that doesn’t wobble, and have a pint,” the dwarf growled, clearly nearing the end of his patience on this particular quest.

  Nikselpik glanced with burning eyes at the dwarf. The gnome hoped the obtuse warrior felt his disdain. “You wouldn't know true power if it slapped you on your fattened rear end.”

  Glanois only grunted and limped away, favoring an injured leg.

  “I'll hear what you have to say, my friend,” said Jorsh. His blade rested on his shoulder, his voice and posture belying his appearance, which was a messy aspect to say the least.

  Nikselpik approached the machine as near as he dared, gazing reverently at its smooth, deadly power. “The machines are the ultimate guardians, impassable to all but those with the proper key. The ancient Rapur placed their greatest secrets within them. They could have hidden the machines on our world, but they went a step further. They spread them across several worlds. Easy to understand why.”

  “I understand exactly why,” Priest Louh interjected, crossing his arms. “They, this thing, should have been destroyed centuries ago. It is an abomination. If this power were to find a way into our world…”

  “There is that.” Nikselpik sighed. No one ever appreciated anything he did. No one ever understood the skill and effort required to discover miracles like this. Oh well. He no longer cared what any of them thought. He only wanted one thing, and then they could all rot. “In any case, we need to extract the stones.”

  “We need our pay,” the dwarf called out.

  “Yes, yes. Always demanding payment, you dwarves. There are other things in life more important than payment.”

  “When you find out what those are, you let me know. Until then, pay us.”

  “As you wish.”

  The gnome reached into his knapsack and pulled out two ropes fastened to small grappling hooks. “Let's get to work.”

  He made the first toss, targeting a bag of bones impaled upon a spike, held together by dry-rotted armor and various leather packs and straps. He hooked the armor and pulled hard, bringing loose bones scattering across the stones. The gnome dragged the rest of the remains clear of the dangerous machine and began rifling through them.

  Jorsh and Glanois looked at one another, shrugged, and picked up a rope each.

  “A gold, two silver, some coppers,” said Nikselpik. He held up a tattered piece of paper and grinned. “And a rather lewd drawing of a man and woman performing coitus over a tree stump. Not bad for a first haul.”

  “I'll take the drawing, if you don't mind.” Priest Louh plucked the parchment out of the gnome's hand.

  They went on like that, pulling the deceased from their resting places and finding more than enough gold, silver and gems to be paid twenty times over. They even found three bottles of wine that had been resting on their sides, aged quite nicely.

  Nikselpik and Jancy sat cross-legged before the machine, meditating on its structure. Beads of sweat ran down Nikselpik's face. His eyes focused on a pedestal deep within the machine's center.

  Priest Louh sat down on the other side of the gnome and took a pull from one of the bottles. “And where is your key?”

  The gnome snatched the wine from the priest and turned to Jancy, offering her a drink. She took a few long draws from the bottle.

  “Do not look at the machine,” Nikselpik said to her. “Look into it. See beyond its gears and cogs, beyond its sheer power. See only purpose. What do you see?”

  “I see a pattern within a pattern. I see…a path through the chaos. Yes, it's there!”

  “Turn it off, Jancy,” Nikselpik said, inclining his head at the machine. “Turn the big bastard off.”

  “She was the key? The whole time?” Priest Louh scratched at the stubble on his face and grinned. “Lucky for us she’s still alive then.”

  “A reasonable risk,” replied the gnome. “We needed her blades, too. Jancy is a special girl.”

  Jancy no longer paid attention to either of them. She walked toward the machine, her eyes transfixed. Everyone watched as she leapt up and forward, arms extended, and clutched a metal pipe affixed to a scaffold. She swung up, and before anyone could shout a warning, jumped upon the hub of a great gear, narrowly avoiding being chopped in half by a swinging blade. The machine quickened, seeming to sense her presence, but Jancy made her way toward
the center, leaping and landing gracefully in precarious places, spinning in circles to avoid flying darts, ducking between blades.

  Glanois looked away, embarrassed, as some of the maneuvers exposed very private areas of Jancy's young body. But to everyone else, it was a graceful dance that filled them with a new respect for the girl. At last, Jancy dove toward the machine's center, thin legs springing her high into the air where she flipped and landed lightly on the wooden pedestal. She put both hands on a large lever above her head, pulled down, and flashed Nikselpik a mischievous grin.

  Yes, Jancy. You are my new number one.

  Nikselpik applauded, pacing back and forth as the whirring of the machine slowed and finally ground to a halt. He proceeded eagerly into the guts of the thing, picking his way past the deathly implements, ducking and hastening forward until he stood next to the pedestal.

  The others followed with caution, curious but not eager to have an accident along the way.

  Nikselpik placed his hands on the engraved wooden box and flipped the lid open. He inhaled sharply and lifted two milky, oblong stones from their padded resting places. He held them tightly in his hands and tucked them with great relief into his pack. Once the stones were secure, the fire in his head dimmed and his shoulders slumped. He was tired to the bone.

  He looked over his bedraggled group.

  Only one soul lost this time. My odds are getting better.

  “I've got the first round at the Broken Dog for anyone who can walk, hobble, or crawl there.”

  “Wait, here's another for the picking.” Jorsh knelt down next to a corpse in the shadows, previously hidden from view on a walkway to the rear of the pedestal chamber. It rested on its side against a block of stone, the legs and hips smashed and twisted, the arms outstretched in the direction of the pedestal.

  “Almost made it,” Priest Louh said, touching his forehead two times with his thumb and index finger in a gesture of respect.