The Hand of Chaos

14

Limbeck came to a halt at the foot of the stairs. “Now what?” A veritable honeycomb of tunnels branched off from the one in which they were standing, lit by the blue runes on the floor. The sigla advanced no farther, almost as if waiting for instructions.

“Which way do we go?”

The dwarf spoke in a whisper, they all spoke in whispers, though there was no reason why they shouldn’t have talked out loud. The silence loomed over them, strict and stern, prohibiting speech. Even whispering made them feel uneasy, guilty.

“The time we were here, the blue lights led us to the mausoleum,” said Jarre.

“I don’t want to go back there again.”

Neither did Haplo. “Do you remember where that was?” Jarre, holding fast to Haplo’s hand, as she had once held fast to Alfred’s, shut her eyes and thought. “I think it was the third one to the right.” She pointed.

At that instant, the sigla flared and branched off in that direction. Jarre gasped and crowded closer to Haplo, hanging on to him with both hands.

“Wow!” Bane whistled softly.

“Thoughts,” said Haplo, recalling something Alfred had told him when they were running for their lives through the tunnels in Abarrach. “Thoughts can affect the runes. Think of where we want to go and the magic will lead us there.”

“But how can we think of it when we don’t know what it is?” Bane argued. Haplo rubbed his itching, burning hand against his trouser leg, forced himself to remain patient, calm. “You and my lord must have talked about how the machine’s central control would work, Your Highness. What do you think it’s like?”

Bane paused to consider the matter. “I showed Grandfather the pictures I’d made of the Kicksey-winsey. He noticed how all the machine’s parts look like parts of our own bodies or the bodies of animals. The gold hands and arms of the Liftalofts, the whistles made in the shape of mouths, the claws like bird feet that dig up the coralite. And so the controls must be—”

“A brain!” guessed Limbeck eagerly.

“No.” Bane was smug-“That’s what Grandfather said, but I said that if the machine had a brain it would know what to do, which it obviously doesn’t, since it’s not doing it. Aligning the islands, I mean. If it had a brain, it would do that on its own. It’s working, but without purpose. What I think we’re looking for is the heart.”

“And what did Grandfather say to that?” Haplo was skeptical.

“He agreed with me,” Bane replied, loftily superior.

“We’re supposed to think about hearts?” Limbeck asked.

“It’s worth a shot.” Haplo frowned, scratched his hand. “At least it’s better than standing around here. We can’t afford to waste any more time.” He set his mind to thinking about a heart, a gigantic heart, a heart pumping life to a body that has no mind to direct it. The more he considered it, the more the notion made sense, though he would never admit as much to Bane. And it fit in with the Patryn’s own theory, too.

“The lights are going out!” Jarre clutched Haplo’s hand, fingers digging into his skin.

“Concentrate!” he snapped.

The sigla that had lit the hallway to the right flickered, dimmed, and died. They all waited, breathlessly, thinking about hearts, all now acutely conscious of the beating of their own hearts, which sounded loud in their ears.

Light glimmered to their left. Haplo held his breath, willing the runes to come to life. The sigla burned stronger, brighter, lighting their way in a direction opposite that of the mausoleum.

Bane shouted in triumph. His shout bounded back to him, but the voice didn’t sound human anymore. It sounded hollow, empty, reminded Haplo unpleasantly of the echoing voice of the dead, the lazar on Abarrach. The glowing sigla on Haplo’s skin flashed suddenly, their light becoming more intense.

“I wouldn’t do that again, if I were you, Your Majesty.” The Patryn spoke through gritted teeth. “I don’t know what’s out there, but I have the feeling someone heard you.”

Bane, eyes wide, had shrunk back against the wall.

“I think you’re right,” he whispered through quivering lips. “I—I’m sorry. What do we do?”

Haplo heaved an exasperated sigh, endeavored to loosen Jarre’s pinching fingers, which were cutting off his circulation. “Let’s go. But let’s be quick about it!”

No one needed any urging to hurry. By now, all of them, including Bane, were anxious to complete their task, then get out of this place.

The glowing sigla led them through the myriad hallways.

“What are you doing?” Bane demanded, pausing to watch Haplo, who had stopped for about the fourth time since they’d started down the tunnel. “I thought you said to hurry.”

“This will ensure us finding our way out, Your Highness,” Haplo replied coolly. “If you’ll notice, the sigla fade after we pass them. They might not light up again or they might take us another way, a way that could bring us out into the arms of the elves.”

He stood facing the arched entryway of the tunnel branch they had just entered and, with the point of his dagger, was scratching a sigil of his own on the wall. The rune was not only useful, but he felt a certain amount of satisfaction in leaving a Patryn mark on hallowed Sartan walls.

“The Sartan runes will show us the way out,” argued Bane petulantly.

“They haven’t shown us much of anything yet,” remarked Haplo. But eventually, after a few more twists and turns, the runes led them to a closed door at the end of a hall.

The glowing sigla that ran across the floor and skipped over other doorways, leaving them in darkness, now arched up and over, outlining this door in light. Recalling the warding runes on Abarrach, Haplo was glad to see the sigla glow blue and not red. The door was formed in the shape of a hexagon. In its center was inscribed a circlet of runes surrounding a blank spot. Unlike most Sartan runes, these were not complete, but appeared to have been only half finished.

Haplo registered the odd shape of the door and the sigla formation as something he had seen or encountered before, but his memory offered no help, and he thought little more of it.[24] It looked to be a simple opening device, the key being sigla drawn in the center.

“I know this one,” said Bane, studying it for a moment. “Grandfather taught me. It was in those old books of his.” He looked back at Haplo. “But I need to be taller. And I need your dagger.”

“Be careful,” said Haplo, handing the weapon over. “It’s sharp.” Bane took a moment to study the dagger with wistful longing. Haplo lifted the boy, held him up level with the rune-structure on the door.

Brow furrowed, tongue thrust out in concentration, Bane stuck the dagger’s tip into the wooden door and began slowly and laboriously to draw a sigil.[25] When the last stroke was completed, the sigil caught fire. Its flame spread to the runes around it. The entire rune-structure flared briefly, then went out. The door opened a tiny crack. Light—bright, white—flared out, the brilliance making them blink after the darkness of the tunnel.

From inside the room came a metallic clanking sound.

Haplo dropped His Highness unceremoniously on the ground, shoved the boy behind him, and made a grab for the excited Limbeck,’ who was preparing to march right inside. The dog growled, low in its throat.

“There’s something in there!” Haplo hissed beneath his breath. “Move back! All of you!”

More alarmed by the tension in Haplo than by the half-heard sound in the room, Bane and Limbeck obeyed, edged back against the wall. Jarre joined them, looking scared and unhappy.

“What—” Bane began.

Haplo cast him a furious glance, and the boy quickly shut his mouth. The Patryn paused, continuing to listen at the crack of the partially opened door, puzzled by the sounds he heard within. The clanking metallic jingle was sometimes a rhythmic pattern, sometimes a chaotic clashing, and other times completely stilled. Then it would start up again. And it was moving, first near to him, then advancing away.

He could have sworn that what he was hearing were the sounds of a person, clad in full plate armor, walking about a large room. But no Sartan—or Patryn, either—had ever in the history of their powerful races worn such a mensch device as armor. Which meant that whatever was inside that room had to be a mensch, probably an elf.

Limbeck was right. The elves had shut down the Kicksey-winsey. Haplo listened again, listened to the clanking sounds move this way and that, moving slowly, purposefully, and he shook his head. No, he decided, if the elves had discovered this place, they would be swarming around it. They would be as busy as ants inside this tunnel. And there was, as far as Haplo could determine, only one person making those strange sounds inside that room. He looked at his skin. The sigla still glowed warning blue, but were still faint.

“Stay here!” Haplo mouthed, glaring at Bane and Limbeck. The boy and the dwarf both nodded.

Haplo drew his sword, gave the door a violent kick, and rushed inside the room, the dog at his heels. He halted, came near dropping his weapon. He was dumbstruck with amazement.

A man turned to meet him, a man made all of metal.

“What are my instructions?” asked the man in a monotone, speaking human.

“An automaton!” cried Bane, disobeying Haplo and running inside the room. The automaton stood about Haplo’s height, or somewhat taller. His body—the replica of a human’s—was made of brass. Hands, arms, fingers, legs, toes were jointed and moved in a lifelike, if somewhat stiff, manner. The metal face had been fancifully molded to resemble a human face, with nose and mouth, though the mouth did not move. The brows and lips were outlined in gold, bright jewels gleamed in the eye sockets. Runes, Sartan runes, covered its entire body, much as the Patryn’s runes covered his body, and probably for the same purpose—all of which Haplo found rather amusing, if somewhat insulting. The automaton was alone in a large and empty circular room. Surrounding it, mounted in the room’s walls, were eyeballs, hundreds of eyeballs, exactly like the one eyeball held in the hands of the Manger statue far above them. Each unwinking eye portrayed in its vision a different part of the Kicksey-winsey. Haplo had the eerie impression that these eyes belonged to him. He was looking out through every one of these orbs. Then he understood. The eyes belonged to the automaton. The metallic clanking Haplo had heard must have been the automaton moving from eyeball to eyeball, making his rounds, keeping watch.

“There’s someone alive in there!” Jarre gasped. She stood in the doorway, not daring to venture inside. Her own eyes were opened so wide it seemed likely they might roll out of her head. “We have to get him out!”

“No!” Bane scoffed at the notion. “It’s a machine, just like the Kicksey-winsey.”

“I am the machine,” stated the automaton in its lifeless voice.

“That’s it!” cried Bane, excited, turning to Haplo. “Don’t you see? He’s the machine! See the runes that cover him? All the parts of the Kicksey-winsey are connected magically to him. He’s been running it, all these centuries!”

“Without a brain,” murmured Haplo. “Obeying his last instructions, whatever those were.”

“This is wonderful!” Limbeck breathed a sigh. His eyes filled with tears, the glass in his spectacles steamed over. He snatched them off his nose. The dwarf stood staring myopically and with reverent awe at the man-machine, making no move to come near it, content to worship at a distance. “I never imagined anything so marvelous.”

“I think it’s creepy,” said Jarre, shivering. “Now that we’ve seen it, let’s go. I don’t like this place. And I don’t like that thing.” Haplo could have echoed her sentiments. He didn’t like this place, either. The automaton reminded him of the living corpses on Abarrach, dead bodies brought to life by the power of necromancy. He had the feeling that the same sort of dark magic was working here, only in this instance it had given life to what was never meant to be alive. A degree better, he supposed, than bringing to life rotting flesh. Or perhaps not. The dead at least possessed souls. This metal contraption was not only mindless but soulless as well. The dog sniffed at the automaton’s feet, looked up at Haplo, baffled, apparently wondering why this thing that moved like a man and talked like a man didn’t smell like a man.

“Go watch the door,” Haplo ordered the dog.

Bored with the automaton, the animal was happy to obey.

Limbeck pondered, fell back on his favorite question. “Why? If this metal man’s been running the machine all these years, why did the Kicksey-winsey stop?”

Bane pondered, shook his head. “I don’t know,” he was forced to admit, shrugging.

Haplo scratched his glowing hand, mindful that their danger had not lessened.

“Perhaps, Your Highness, it has something to do with the opening of Death’s Gate.”

Bane scoffed. “A lot you know—” he began.

The automaton turned in Haplo’s direction.

“The Gate has opened. What are my instructions?”

“That’s it,” said Haplo in satisfaction. “I thought as much. That’s why the Kicksey-winsey stopped.”

“What gate?” Limbeck asked, frowning. He’d wiped his spectacles, replaced them on his nose. “What are you talking about?”

“I suppose you could be right,” Bane mumbled, glancing at Haplo balefully.

“But what if you are? What then?”

“I demand to know what’s going on!” Limbeck glared at them.

“I’ll explain in a minute,” said Haplo. “Look at it this way, Your Highness. The Sartan intended that the four worlds all work together. Let’s say that the Kicksey-winsey was not meant to simply draw the floating islands into alignment on Ananus. Suppose the machine has other tasks, as well, tasks that have something to do with all the other worlds.”

“My true work begins with the opening of the Gate,” said the automaton. “What are my instructions?”

“What is your true work?” Bane parried.

“My true work begins with the opening of the Gate. I have received the signal. The Gate is open. What are my instructions?”

Where are the citadels?

Haplo was reminded, suddenly, of the tytans on Pryan. Other soulless creatures, whose frustration over not having their question answered led them to murder whatever hapless being crossed their path. Where are the citadels?

What are my instructions?

“Well, give it the instructions. Tell it to turn the machine on and let’s go!” Jarre said, shuffling nervously from one foot to the other. “The diversion can’t last much longer.”

“I’m not leaving until I know exactly what’s going on,” Limbeck stated testily.

“Jarre’s right. Tell it what to do, Your Highness, then we can get out of here.”

“I can’t,” said Bane, glancing at Haplo slyly out of the corner of his eye.

“And why not, Your Highness?”

“I mean I can, but it will take a long time. A long, long time. First I’ll have to figure out what each different part of the machine is meant to do. Then I’ll have to give each part of the machine its own instructions—”

“Are you certain?” Haplo eyed the boy suspiciously.

“It’s the only safe way,” Bane replied, all glittering innocence. “You want this to be done safely, don’t you? If I made a mistake—or you made a mistake—and the machine started running amok... maybe sending islands scooting here and there, perhaps dropping them into the Maelstrom.” Bane shrugged.

“Thousands of people could die.”

Jarre was twisting her skirt into knots. “Let’s leave this place, right now. We’re well enough off, as it is. We’ll learn to live without the Kicksey-winsey. When the elves find out it isn’t going to work again, they’ll go away—”

“No, they won’t,” said Limbeck. “They can’t or they’ll die of thirst. They’ll search and poke and prod until they discover this metal man and then they’ll take it over—”

“He’s right,” agreed Bane. “We must—”

The dog began to growl, then gave its warning bark. Haplo glanced down at his hand and arm, saw the sigla glowing brighter.

“Someone’s coming. Probably discovered the hole in the statue.”

“But how? There weren’t any elves up there!”

“I don’t know,” Haplo said grimly. “Either your diversion didn’t work or they were tipped off. It doesn’t matter now. We’ve got to clear out of here, fast!” Bane glared at him, defiant. “That’s stupid. You’re being stupid. How can the elves find us? The runes went dark. We’ll just hide in this room—” The kid’s right, Haplo thought. I am being stupid. What am I afraid of? We could shut the door, hide in here. The elves could search these tunnels for years, never find us.

He opened his mouth to give the order, but the words wouldn’t come. He’d lived this long relying on his instincts. His instincts told him to get away.

“Do as you’re told, Your Highness.” Haplo took hold of Bane, started dragging the squirming boy toward the door.

“Look at that.” The Patryn thrust his brightly glowing hand underneath the child’s nose. “I don’t know how they know we’re down here but, believe me, they know. They’re looking for us. And if we stay in this room, this is where they’ll find us. Here... with the automaton. You want that? Would Grandfather want that?”

Bane glared at Haplo; the hatred in the child’s eyes gleamed bare and cold, like a drawn blade. The intensity of his hate and the malevolence accompanying it appalled Haplo, momentarily disrupted his thinking. His hand loosened its grasp.

Bane jerked himself free of Haplo’s grip. “You’re so stupid,” he said softly, lethally. “I’ll show you just how stupid you are!” Turning, he shoved Jarre aside, ran out the door and into the hallway.

“After him!” Haplo ordered the dog, who dashed off obediently. Limbeck took off his spectacles, was gazing wistfully at the automaton. Unmoved, it remained standing in the center of the room.

“I still don’t understand ...” Limbeck began.

“I’ll explain later!” Haplo said in exasperation.

Jarre took over. Grabbing hold of the august leader of WUPP, much as she used to do, she hustled Limbeck out of the room and into the hall.

“What are my instructions?” the automaton asked.

“Shut the door,” Haplo growled, relieved to be away from the metal corpse. Out in the hallway, he paused to get his bearings. He could hear Bane’s pounding footsteps running up the tunnel, back the way they’d come. The Patryn sigil Haplo had scratched above the arch shone with a flickering bluish green light. At least Bane had had sense enough to run off in the right direction, although that was likely going to take him right into the arms of their pursuers.

He wondered what the fool kid had in mind. Anything to make trouble, Haplo supposed. Not that it mattered. He’s a mensch, so are the elves. I can handle them easily. They’ll never know what hit them.

Then why are you afraid, so afraid you can barely think for the fear?

“Beats the hell out of me,” Haplo answered himself. He turned to Limbeck and Jarre. “I’ve got to stop His Highness. You two keep up with me as best you can, get as far away from this room as possible. That”—he pointed at the burning Patryn symbol—“won’t last long. If the elves catch Bane, keep out of sight. Let me do the fighting. Don’t try to be heroes.” With that, he ran down the hallway.

“We’ll be right behind you!” Jarre promised, and turned to find Limbeck. He had removed his spectacles, was staring myopically at the door that had shut behind him.

“Limbeck, come on!” she ordered.

“What if we never find it again?” he said plaintively.

“I hope we don’t!” was on the tip of Jarre’s tongue, but she swallowed her words. Taking hold of his hand—something she realized she had not done in a long while—she tugged at him urgently. “We have to leave, my dear. Haplo’s right. We can’t let them find it.”

Limbeck heaved a great sigh. Putting on his spectacles, he planted himself in front of the door, folded his arms across his broad chest.

“No,” he said resolutely. “I’m not leaving.”