Chapter 7
Rahvik, Kneebahn, and two other soldiers from the Arcanian Defense Corps stalk down an overgrown path in the Mucklands. Rahvik, leading the pack, motions for the men behind him to stop walking and conceal themselves in the bushes.
Peeking between branches into a small clearing, Rahvik watches the lone automate clanking and whirring through the grass, occasionally spinning its head around to make sure the path is clear. As the automate leaves the men’s sight, they creep ahead, following.
After a few moments, they once again catch up to the automate, keeping distance between themselves and the mechanickal menace. The automate approaches a stone structure covered with vines and walks through a doorway.
Rahvik places a hand on Kneebahn’s shoulder. “Stay here,” he tells his men.
Rahvik approaches the door from the side, taking a deep breath before popping his head into the doorway. He sees a stone stairway leading into darkness. Making sure the immediate area is clear, he enters the structure and begins descending the stairs.
Torches are set into the wall after every few dozen steps. In the dim light, Rahvik makes his way deeper and deeper underground. Ahead of him, he can hear the echoes of metallic feet on stone.
Eventually, the stairs give way to a hallway, culminating in an arched portal. Silently, Rahvik approaches the portal, flattening himself against the wall to be less conspicuous. The portal connects the hallway to a large, half-cylindrical tunnel stretching as far as he can see in either direction. Spotting a few crates stacked off to one side, Rahvik dives behind these, taking in the scene through the crack between the wooden boxes.
Hundreds of automates are stacking large, oddly-shaped metal bundles onto giant wheeled palettes. With a shudder, Rahvik realizes that the metal bundles are actually other automates which have enfolded themselves into cargo. Under the wheeled palettes, Rahvik sees metal tracks. At one end of the connected palettes, Rahvik sees what he assumes must be a steampuller, something he only remembers from books he’d read as a young scholast. With a cold efficiency, the automates fill the final bundles onto the tenth or eleventh palette. Counting the bundles and the stacks, Rahvik estimates that there must be six or seven thousand automates in just this single chamber.
The last automates climb onto the palettes and pull their limbs inward, rearranging their bodies in the same manner as their comrades.
With a whistle, the steampuller releases a cloud of steam and the wheels begin moving. After a few ticks, the last palette rolls out of sight. Kneebahn and the other soldiers burst through the portal, looking around. Rahvik rises and approaches them.
“We heard a loud whistle, and thought you might be in trouble,” Kneebahn asks.
“I have a feeling we’re all in trouble,” Rahvik says, “the size of the clockspring army is unimaginable. I believe they passed over Arcania because they don’t even view us as enough of a threat to bother with.”
“Then why lay waste to Krassen?” Kneebahn asks.
“It just happened to be in their way,” Rahvik says with a sigh.
Kneebahn tilts his head. “So...with this threat gone, do you think Arcania will be safe?”
Rahvik shakes his head. “I think the Mortesians will start with the larger kingdoms, like Claustria and Darrinia, and once they’ve been crushed, they will turn their focus here.”
Risma sits cross-legged on a stump behind the small house in the Deathstretch. A few man-lengths in front of her, an automate is suspended in mid-air. She turns her wrist, and the arms and legs and head separate from the torso. She spreads her fingers, and the chestplate separates from the backplate, revealing springs and gears and bolts and rods.
A black shadow emerges from the back door, pausing to watch as Risma carries out her automatopsy.
“It’s really quite clever,” she says, “I haven’t seen technology this advanced since the Atalanteans--and that was three hundred sunspins ago.”
He nods. “And what became of them?”
“They left Upper Kleighton, migrating to a domed city they built at the bottom of the Leftern Sea. Nobody’s heard from them since.”
He tosses her the book, and she catches it. The pile of metal components falls to the chalky grass.
It only takes her a moment to find the passage concerning the doll. She grimaces as she reads. “It says I need to pierce the idol with a fragment of bone--from my own body?”
He smiles. “It’s not like you can’t heal yourself before you stab the doll. It specifically mentions that you’re expected to do so. Can a goddess even feel pain?”
She narrows her eyes at him. “Of course we can feel pain. Our senses are not limited in any way. The problem is that, being immortal, it’s really easy to get jaded to sensations like hunger and pain and hot and cold. From an emotional standpoint, it’s the same thing. As we go through our long lives, we find that we have to keep doing more and more drastic things to up the ante just to feel something, anything at all.”
“Like tearing out one of your bones so that you can render yourself mortal for nine moonths?”
“Exactly.”
“So I’m wondering, why go through all this trouble just to have a half-breed child? Why not just mate with another of your kind?”
“My sister and I are the only ones left.”
“What happened to the others?”
“They got--how can I put this--bored? No, that’s not quite it. For us, there comes a point when we experience everything we think there is to experience, and then we find a secluded place to waste away. We may not age, but we can deteriorate if we don’t take care of ourselves. It still takes conscious effort for us to heal ourselves, it’s not automatic.”
“So, Risma, with the looming threat of these automates clearing the way for the Mortesians to rule over the Continent, don’t you feel any desire to stop them? Do you think your child will grow up living in fear?”
“Fear? I doubt your grandchild will ever ‘fear’ anything. As for a desire to help, you must understand that I’ve seen countless wars. I’ve seen kingdoms rise and fall. There’s always a revolution, a civil war, an invading force. I really don’t care much who rules what or how they do it. At best, it’s entertainment for me, at worst it’s a minor annoyance.”
“While I understand that, you do realize that you’ll have to spend the duration of your pregnancy as a mortal, vulnerable to every threat. For example, this place where we’re living has a tendency to turn into a murder festival every night. That doesn’t worry you even a little?”
Risma stands and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Well, Stronom, that’s what you’re here for, to keep us safe.”
He glances at the pieces of the clockspring soldier on the ground in front of them. “Where’d you get that toy, anyway?”
With a wave of her hand, the pieces rise from the ground and reassemble themselves. The automate quickly surveys its surroundings and raises its gatling arm. Risma spreads her fingers again, and the pieces once again separate.
“This little toy?” she says, “I believe it’s a scout. It wandered here all by itself. I’ve been probing it for weaknesses.”
“Oh?” Stronom asks, “did you find any?”
Risma grins. “Not yet, but I will.”
The Claustrian soldiers, a special unit of crossbolt snipers, go from tree to tree in running crouches. It takes them some time, but they finally spot the cave they believe to hold their target. The five soldiers, each crouched behind a tree, fix their aim upon the mouth of the cave.
Ticks pass with no sign of movement. Those ticks turn into a bellchime, still the professionally-trained soldiers maintain their posture and position, waiting for someone or something to emerge.
“Hey,” Varello says as he taps the middle one on the shoulder.
The other four, startled, loose their bolts at the source of the noise, with three of those crossbolts ending up lodged in the body of their c
omrade. They look around for a moment, startled, unable to spot the interloper.
He appears from behind another tree, jamming the fourth bolt into the neck of another member of their rank. The three remaining soldiers try again to hit him, but only end up shooting three bolts into the chest of their fellow sniper. Varello pulls the first bolt out of his human shield’s neck and throws it at the soldier farthest from him. With a crossbolt right between his eyes, the third soldier falls dead immediately. The two snipers left standing spin about wildly, trying to get a bead on Varello, and they finally spot him as he emerges from behind the tree closest to them. He runs right between them as they each fire a bolt, managing to miss him but hit each other. One of them takes a bolt in his ribs, and the other has one in his shoulder.
Varello stands among the fallen soldiers, two of them already dead, two in the process of dying, and one moderately injured. He claps twice, and though Desa can’t hear the sound, she can feel the vibration and recognize the signal. She steps out from between the lush curtains of a nearby willow and into the men’s field of vision.
Entranced, they stop struggling.
Zanther awakes from his late afternoon nap, his mouth filled with the taste of midday sleep and his eyes dry from sleeping in the sun. Through the window of his guest room, he sees the peapod green sky and a sight that disturbs him: a skyship he recognizes all-too-well anchored to a castle turret.
He rushes from his room, longknife-in-hand, darting down spiral staircases and through long hallways until he gets to Madra’s private dining room. Before stepping through the doorway, he flattens himself to one side of the door, peeking through. The guards stationed outside the dining room give him questioning looks, but do not hinder him. Sitting across from Novanostrum and Madra, a man talks boisterously between sips of purpleberry wine and bites of boar leg.
“So here I am in these ancient Trinese ruins searching for the legendary Jade Tigon, when I find myself surrounded by over a hundred soldiers of the Emperor’s personal guard. They bind my wrists and march me maybe five thousand man-lengths back to the Emperor’s palace, and they toss me in the dungeon, telling me my execution is scheduled for the next day.
“Up on the dais, the executioner tells me to state my name and my crime so that all of those watching may know who I am and why I’m being executed. I tell them, and they force my head down on the chopping block. I look up at the scimitar, and as the man swings, there’s a shout from the gallery, the Emperor himself screaming for the executioner to stop. So I glance up at the blade a few fingerwidths above my neck, and the Emperor, leaning over his balcony, asks me, ‘Are you related to Zanther Maus?’ and I tell him yes, he’s my son.
“Knowing Zanther’s reputation, I was waiting for them to take me somewhere for long-term torture, but instead I was taken to see the Emperor in his tea house. Sitting across from him, he looks me in the eye and says he thinks he can see the resemblance, but do I have any proof I am who I claim to be? Luckily, I always carry around a page from the issue of the Gadabout where they ran the article about Zanther winning the Leftlands Longknife Tournament when he was just nine sunspins old. I was so proud of him.
“So, anyway, I unfold this old article and show it to the Emperor. He nods at one of his guards, and after a few moments the guard hands me none other than the Jade Tigon. The Emperor looks at me and says, ‘This is just a trinket, it has no practical value. However, the debt I owe your son is beyond payment. He will always be welcome here. As a favor to him, I will give you this trinket and allow you to leave, but should you ever return here...well, I would strongly advise against you returning here,’ and then they let me go.
“I mean, I never thought I’d be the one trading on Zanther’s reputation, especially somewhere halfway ‘round the sphere!”
Madra and Novanostrum laugh as he continues.
“You know, he spent a lot of time drinking and gambling his way across the continent, making lots of enemies. I heard one time he even--”
Zanther coughs conspicuously as he stands in the doorway.
“Zanther! You look...well, you look more like me than you did the last time I saw you. I wish I could say that as a compliment.”
Zanther chooses to remain standing in the doorway. “Aristhmus Maus. The famed explorer, the ravisher of aboriginal women, the scourge of the skies. And what sort of fancy brings you into our lives all of a sudden?” he turns to Madra, “Let me guess, has he offered to allow you to finance his next expedition into the Sumadran jungle to mine for gold?”
“Now, son, wait just a tick--”
“Son?! You have the audacity to fly your little skyship into Queen Madra’s castle and demand an audience with her and drink her wine and eat her food and you’re going to bring me into whatever you’re scheming? To use me to get your foot in the door? Absolutely not.”
He turns his gaze to Madra, her cheeks turning bright red as she focuses intently on the purple liquid in her wine glass.
“Queen Madra,” Zanther says, “I just want to go on the record as saying I do NOT vouch for this man. Your business with him is your own, but be aware that while he is extremely proficient when it comes to making promises--especially those promises that he makes in exchange for his own financial benefit--his ability to actually fulfill those promises often falls short of the expectations of those to whom he has made those promises.”
He turns to Novanostrum. “I expect he’ll attempt to flatter you into going on an expedition with him. I would advise you to inquire how many members of his past expeditions have lived to spend their fabulous riches.”
Zanther once again focuses his angry glare upon his father, opening his mouth to say something, but finally decides against it, turning on his heel and storming out of the room.
Aristhmus swallows a bite of boar and washes it down with a large gulp of wine before meeting the stunned looks of Madra and Novanostrum.
“All in all, that actually went better than I thought it would.”
The Quester of Righteousness walks down the main thoroughfare, gazing at the giant metal monolith which symbolizes Mortesia’s mechanickal might. While there are many impressive buildings, the most obvious structure by far is Macchen’s Gear. To an uneducated visitor, it might appear similar in shape to the water wheel attached to a flour mill, but there is no river turning the gear; its movement is powered by a set of smaller gears at its base connected to engines.
The Quester of Righteousness checks to make sure the Longknife of Iniquity is clear in its scabbard before entering the screw-shaped tower which houses the leader of Mortesia--the infamous Threaded Spire. A guard stops him as he enters the main door.
“Only those with official business may enter here,” he says.
“I’m here to see the Vinch,” the Quester of Righteousness removes his longknife, showing the guard its broad, blood-red blade carved with runes and emblems. The guard immediately recognizes the legendary weapon and steps to the side to allow the Quester entry into the main circular chamber.
The Quester of Righteousness heads for the spiral staircase in the middle of the round room, only to find it retracting into the ceiling before he can reach it. He hears a series of loud thuds as all the doors to the room slam shut, save for one.
Six automates clank and whir their way toward him, forming a line just a few man-lengths away from him. They raise their gatling arms and train their barrels on him, and the Quester of Righteousness pulls a small orb from his sleeve and lobs it toward them as he dives clear of their first volley of shots.
The explosion tears through the line of automates, reducing all but one of them to piles of smoldering metal. The remaining automate is missing its gatling arm, but demonstrates the functionality of its longknife arm by charging towards the Quester of Righteousness and taking a swing.
The Quester dodges to his left, using his own blade to take the head off the clockspring soldier in one fell swipe. He flicks his bla
de, loosing a spatter of oil across the floor.
Above, the spiral stairs lower once more. A man wearing white trousers and a red vest descends the stairs. He wears goggles with dark red lenses, and while his right arm is muscled, his left arm is artificial, a clockspring marvel of mechanickal skill.
“And what brings the Quester of Righteousness all the way to the heart of the Rightlands?”
“The Longknife of Iniquity hungers for the blood of the one trying to subjugate Upper Kleighton. I am but a tool of its will.”
“Ah, Quester,” the Vinch says, “but you’ve got it all wrong. I’m not trying to subjugate Upper Kleighton, I’m trying to open its eyes. This continent is full of goat herders and magicians, simple oafs trying to preserve their outdated way of life, if you can even call it that, in the face of a new era, an era of steam and steel. You must realize, neither you nor the armies of Upper Kleighton can stand in the way of this progress. Attempting to resist is like bringing a longknife to a powderblast fight.”
The Quester of Righteousness coughs as he casts a glance at the pile of smashed automates and waves his own weapon at the Vinch.
The Vinch waves his hand dismissively. “Yes, I recognize the irony of that comment in light of your little skirmish here. Still, you came here for a reason, right? Let’s see how well the mythical hero can do against an ordinary man of science.”
Taking his cue, the Quester of Righteousness charges toward the Vinch, raising his blade to deal the killing blow. The Vinch doesn’t move; he stands statuesque as the blade bears down on him. At the last instant, he blocks the blow, grasping the blade with his metal hand.
In the moment it takes for the Quester of Righteousness to understand what is happening, the Vinch wrests his longknife away and tosses it aside. He tries to dive for it, but instead is sent reeling by a powerful punch to his back. The Quester scrambles along, trying to crawl to his longknife, but a kick from the Vinch rolls him onto his back. He is immobilized by a boot on his neck.
“People who can’t see reason,” the Vinch says, “don’t need eyes.”
With the Quester writhing under his boot, the Vinch presses the pointer and middle fingers of his metallic hand into the eyes of the Quester. A spurt of blood spatters onto the Vinch’s face as guards surround him, waiting for orders.
“Lock him up,” he commands them.
Deep in Claustria Castle, Madra’s war room is full. In the center of the room is a large, round table. Its surface is a detailed map of Upper Kleighton, with various figurines placed at different locations. Madra places a small gear on the table, a souvenir from Zanther and Novanostrum’s encounter, to represent the automates.
She places it just north of Claustria, on the tracks leading from the Submount Steamtunnels.
Aristhmus is seated next to Novanostrum. Zanther sits across from them, refusing to make eye contact with his father. The remaining seats are filled by the leaders of different divisions of Claustria’s military.
“Roughly ten thousand automates will be arriving on locomotes, possibly as early as tomorrow afternoon,” Madra says, her words bringing the room to silence.
“Novanostrum, I would like you to assist our army when they confront these clockspring soldiers. I’m hoping you can use your powerful magick to disable the automates so that we may cut them down. The Flatlands are vast and unpopulated, so whatever terrible power you unleash won’t be harming civilians. Lightning, meteorites, an earthquake--anything you can do to level the battlefield will be a big help.”
Novanostrum nods. Madra turns to Zanther.
“Mortesia sent this menace. They will expect us to have our hands full with their malicious toys; they will not expect our swift and immediate retribution to be directed on their seat of power. This is why Zanther and I will be traveling to Mortesia to carry out a devastating counterattack.”
Zanther blinks in disbelief.
“Just the two of us? How will we get there? What exactly do you think we can accomplish?”
Madra smiles. “Your father has generously agreed to lend us the Rakehell. And it won’t be just the two of us; I plan to pick up a little help along the way. As for what I have planned...let’s just say that the Mortesians aren’t the only ones with secret weapons.”
“He’s not going with us?” Zanther says, pointing at his father.
Madra shakes her head. “It’s too dangerous for him.”
“And not too dangerous for me?”
Madra smiles. “If there’s danger everywhere you look, wear a blindfold.”