The Survivors

CHAPTER 18

Bradok made his way toward the big building with the enormous clock. He hadn’t noticed at first, but the floor of the cavern was littered with all kinds of debris: everything from scraps of clothing and bits of metal to fragments of wood and bone.

He climbed over the broken door and stepped into the clock building. Inside there was once-ornate furniture that had been smashed to bits and murals on the walls that evinced aging and deep gouges. Each painting seemed to depict one of the dwarf clans making their way to a shining city in the distance.

A spiral staircase of metal ran up to a second level, and another shattered set of doors led deeper into the building. Bradok wanted to see the workings of the giant clock. He tested the stairs with his foot and, finding them sound, began to climb.

The room above stretched up well over two stories. It housed the massive gears, chains, and cams that kept the time and moved the hands. To Bradok, there seemed to be more machinery than was necessary for a clock. He traced several of the gears and shafts and found they led to other mechanisms unrelated to the clock. Each of them had a set of metal cables running from a giant spindle that ran out through a hole in the wall. Despate the thick layer of dust and debris, all the apparatus seemed to be intact.

“I wonder how long this place has been here,” Corin said, coming up the stairs gingerly, followed by Much.

“Judging by the dust, I’d say a long, long time,” Bradok said, wiping encrusted grime from a large metal pulley.

The pulley had been painted black, no doubt to resist corrosion, but as Bradok looked at the stripe he had wiped clean with his finger, he realized there was no rust or corrosion anywhere.

“I’d guess it’s all still in working order,” he pronounced.

“Why not try it, then?” Corin said, taking hold of one of the massive gears and putting his shoulder into it. Nothing happened.

“Stuck somehow, I’d say,” Corin said with a grunt. “Pretty big machinery. What were they using it for, power?”

“Water is my guess,” Much said.

Bradok turned to find the old dwarf examining a long horizontal bar with what looked like flat metal gears protruding from its center. Below the bar, a metal trap door covered a hole in the floor that was cut just large enough to allow the bar to be lowered through it, using a winch assembly mounted to the wall.

“Give me a hand,” he said, pulling on the trap door. After it scraped across the stone with a noisy screech, Bradok and the others could clearly hear the sound of running water below.

“Hey, not so fast. Fooling with this stuff might not be a good idea,” Corin said. “We don’t know what any of it does. Some of it might be simply broken; some of it might be dangerous. It wouldn’t do for a frozen gear to bring the whole works down on our heads.”

“He’s got a point,” Bradok agreed. He leaned close to one of the giant mechanisms and wiped it with his sleeve. Tiny letters had been etched into a plate, to which was attached a movable arm.

“Some of the mechanisms are labeled,” he pointed out. “This one’s got a lever to account for something between summer and winter.”

“This one has levers for five irrigation zones and two different fountains,” Much said. “Maybe it’s the master control for the city’s water.”

Corin whistled. “It’s hard to imagine something like this existing here underground.”

“I helped design air shafts for some of Ironroot’s newer caverns,” Much said, stroking the machinery reverently with his calloused hands. “But I’ve never seen anything like this craftsmanship; it’s incredible.”

Bradok opened his mouth to say much the same thing when he heard Rose calling his name. Her voice sounded urgent and frightened.

“Here,” he called, running to the stairs and starting down.

Rose rushed into the room over the broken door. “There’s trouble,” she said then led him back out into the square.

The second lantern hung suspended from a statue in the middle of an elaborate fountain that Bradok had missed on his way in. Dwarves were gathered around the slumped figure of one of their group.

“Is it Lyra?” Bradok asked worriedly.

Before Rose could answer, however, the crowd parted to reveal Tal standing over Perin. The human seemed paler than usual, and he breathed in great gasps. In a flash, Bradok remembered the blast of stale air he’d tasted when they’d entered the cavern.

“We need to find a vent or something,” Tal said as Bradok arrived. “He’s dizzy and incoherent. For some reason he can’t breathe right. If this lasts much longer, he is in danger of dying.”

“What is it?” Much asked, coming up behind Bradok.

“We’ve got to take a chance,” Bradok said after a long moment.

“What do you mean?” Rose asked.

“This city is too big not to have proper ventilation, and it’s too deep to rely on just an open shaft,” Bradok said. “They must have had some way to move the air around down here, and I’m betting it’s controlled by the machine in the clock tower.”

“Get going, then. Give it a try,” Tal said. “I don’t know how much longer Perin can survive breathing like this.”

Bradok turned and raced back to the tower. Corin had stayed behind, using a glowsac to investigate the machinery. He looked up excitedly when Bradok and Much came pounding up the steps.

“You won’t believe what this machine does,” he said.

“Control the city’s ventilation system?” Bradok asked as he and Much moved to inspect the open slot in the floor.

“How did you know that?” Corin asked with wide eyes.

“Lucky guess.”

Bradok took hold of the chain that ran through a gear and controlled the height of the horizontal water wheel. He pulled hard, feeling the resistance, until finally it broke free. As Bradok hauled on the chain, the bar was lowered slowly into the water. When the flow hit the metal blades, the shaft began to turn. A moment later it shuddered and stopped as the gears on its end meshed with gears hidden below the turbulent surface of the water.

Slowly the shaft began to turn again, driven by the water. A second shaft, running vertically up to the ceiling of the chamber began turning as another gear transferred the water horizontally. A groan came from the machinery as it shook off the years of disuse. Amid creaks, clangs, and rattling, the gears began turning and the enormous clock started to tick.

Dust rained down with chunks of debris and cobwebs as the operation shuddered to life. Bradok coughed and covered his face with his cloak. In the midst of the din, he heard Much shouting something. He looked over just in time to duck a metal lever swinging straight at his head. As it passed over him, Bradok suddenly became very aware of all the dangerously moving gears and undulating cogs. One wrong step in that place could crush a limb or catch at the edge of a cloak, yanking or strangling a dwarf to death.

“We’ve got to watch ourselves,” he shouted at Corin, not entirely sure the Daergar leader could even hear him.

Much pointed. Bradok nodded, and the pair made their way carefully over to the ventilation controls. Above the moving gears and cogs, a brass plate read Main Ventilation. Below were six levers in a row, all of them frozen in the up position.

Bradok shrugged and reached for the closest one.

“Wait a minute,” Much yelled over the din. “Why that one?”

“We have to start somewhere,” he said. “Everything else is marked,” Much said. “These probably are too.”

He wiped off one of the levers with his cloak, revealing more engraving, but with all the dust in the air, it was impossible to read.

“We need more light,” he said.

“Over here,” Corin called.

He stood by the mechanism that operated the clock. Bradok could see a miniature version of the hands outside the wall, mounted into a gearbox on the clock machine. A giant lever thrust out of the machine nearby and rose up above Kellik’s head.

“Help me with this,” he said, using all his weight to attempt to pull the lever down.

“What are you doing?” Bradok demanded, rushing over so quickly he nearly got hit by a spinning gear.

“It’s a twenty-four-hour clock,” Kellik explained, hanging off the lever. “To change the setting, you just move the hands on the little clock and then pull this lever to synchronize.”

“How do you know that?” Much shouted over machine noise.

“It’s written on the plate behind the clock,” Corin said.

Bradok and Much leaned in and examined the little clock sticking out of a brass plate. Unlike a normal clock, it started at one and counted up to twenty-four. Kellik had moved the hands so they pointed down at the noon position.

“Why should we bother setting the clock?” Bradok said. “What we have to concentrate on is helping Perin.”

“It says there’s a Daylight System attached to the clock,” Much said, squinting at the engraved plate. “If this clock still works-and it’s a good bet that it does-the clock will think it’s midday, noontime. So it might light up this place.”

Bradok nodded excitedly. He had to jump to reach the end of the giant lever. He caught hold and hung, suspended, his entire weight on the metal beam. Corin joined him and slowly they felt it begin to shift and break free.

With a screech and a clang, the lever snapped down, dumping the dwarves on the ground in a heap. The mechanism sped up, whirling and clanking, and Bradok imagined he could see the giant hands sweeping across its face on the tower outside. As they neared the midday hour, the lever began to rise up again, and the machinery slowed to its normal pace.

“So much for light,” Corin said when nothing happened.

The words were barely out of his mouth when a loud grinding sound filled the tower. A metal cable high above the clock mechanism began to turn, and Bradok followed it over to another assembly of gears and wheels. The cable pulled a giant wheel, spinning it almost halfway around until it stopped. Then a gear somewhere engaged, and the entire machine whirred to life.

Gears began turning spools of metal cable, playing some out and reeling others in. Some of them moved easily, while others clearly resisted the effort after so many years of immobility. One of the cables screeched and stopped, the cam pulling relentlessly against it, stretching it. Somewhere above, whatever it had been attached to had refused to wake and go to work.

“Get back,” Kellik yelled. “There’s too much tension on the thing. If it snaps, the loose end will slice up anything it hits.”

The cable kept stretching and stretching, while the pitch of the machine changed as it pulled relentlessly. A metallic clang suddenly echoed through the tower, and the cable went slack. With the machine no longer restrained by the cable, the other spindles sped up, and suddenly an explosion of light flooded the tower.

Bradok swore, covering his eyes. When he could see again, a rosy light that could only have been sunlight illuminated the tower.

“Reorx’s beard,” he swore again.

The light shone in through a small hole in the high ceiling and struck a curved reflector that diverted it down into the room.

“They’ve got some kind of mirror system that reflects in light from outside,” Much said, awe in his voice.

“Look at this,” Corin said, bending down by the ventilation controls.

Bradok and Kellik joined him. With the bright light flooding the room, they easily read Main Hall on the first lever.

“Try it,” Much said as Corin took hold of it.

Unlike the lever to reset the clock, the Main Hall lever was short and thin with a bulbous end. Corin grasped the bulb and, without any seeming effort, pulled it down.

A gear somewhere in the bowels of the machine engaged, and one of the six shafts that emerged from the machine began to spin. It spun slowly at first but picked up speed until it whirled. From somewhere outside, a clanking, screeching noise erupted then seemed to grow in pitch, higher and higher until it disappeared.

“Did it work?” Bradok asked.

They all looked at each other then raced down the spiral stair and out over the broken door. The cavern outside was blazing with light that descended into the cavern from three shafts in the ceiling. Below each shaft, giant crystals caught the light and sent it out in targeted beams. Some struck reflectors, like the one in the tower, shedding gentle light down into the cavern. Other beams vanished into holes in the walls and ceilings, no doubt heading off to illuminate other parts of the city.

In the bright light, Bradok could see that the main cavern had been carved in the shape of a cross, with four arms radiating out from the central square. Elegant buildings had been cut into the walls on either side and, although it was abundantly clear from the trash in the streets that they had been looted, neither time nor defilement diminished their true beauty.

Along the lanes were planters with long-dead trees, twisted and skeletal, attesting to the decay of Starlight Hall. At the far end of one of the cross arms, there stood a round void, as if something had stood there and had simply vanished. From his vantage point, Bradok could see that the hollow hole left behind appeared perfectly smooth. For some reason, the sight disturbed him.

A strange coughing noise caught his attention, and Bradok glanced up at the ceiling. Great gouts of dust and debris were being vomited out from behind metal grates in the ceiling.

“Cover your faces,” he yelled to the group still gathered around the central fountain.

“What’s happening?” Corin asked, covering his face with his cloak.

“It’s the vents,” Much said, laughter in his voice. “Who knows how long they’ve been out of use? And now they’re busy pushing all the years of muck out of them.”

Even through his cloak, Bradok could tell that Much was right. The dust and debris rained down for a full ten minutes.

As the dust finally began to drift out of the air, Bradok rejoined Tal and Perin at the fountain. As the minutes passed, the human seemed to be breathing easier, his color returning.

“That was the right thing to do,” Tal said.

“Lucky guess on my part,” Bradok said. “I don’t know who this Galoka guy was, but this city of his is amazing. I’ve never dreamed anything like it.”

“I want to know how they’re moving so much air,” Much said. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “In another hour or so, the air should be completely replaced. It’s incredible.”

Perin stood up slowly, gripping Bradok’s shoulder for support. “Thank you,” he said, breathing deeply. “I feel like myself again.”

He wobbled a bit, and Tal put out a hand to steady him. “Take it easy for a while,” Tal said. “We can rest here, can’t we?” he asked Bradok.

Bradok checked the compass. The Seer held her spear at her side, which usually meant it was all right to stop. He nodded to Tal. “We can stop here,” he said.

“Good,” Much said, rubbing his hands together eagerly. “I’m going to inspect those machines, see what I can learn.”

“Maybe there are some books or murals that tell the story of Galoka and his followers,” Corin said with equal zest.

“It looks pretty picked over,” Bradok said, plopping down by the fountain. Then he looked at them and smiled. “Explore all you want,” he said. “Just take someone with you.”

Corin looked for Omer and motioned to the other. Omer grinned and ran after him, still clutching the rag doll Much had made for Teal. Bradok had noticed that the dwarf never went anywhere without the doll. He seemed happy enough as long as he had the doll close by.

Bradok leaned against the base of the fountain and watched the hands on the clock turn, counting off the minutes. It felt so good just to sit and rest, he didn’t notice as several hours passed. Only the diminishing light in the cavern eventually alerted him. Clearly the daylight above was fading into night.

He rose just as Corin returned with Omer, Kellik, and Rijul in tow.

“Have you just been sitting here all this time?” he asked, chuckling.

Bradok nodded.

“Boy have you missed it!” Rijul said, full of youthful enthusiasm. “This city is enormous. All sorts of things to explore. There’s at least three more caverns off this one.”

Kellik nodded. “They’ve all been looted, like this one, but it’s like the looters didn’t know or care what they were looking for,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Bradok asked.

“The inside of the buildings have been trampled,” Corin said. “The furniture is smashed, the tapestries ripped, but we’ve found weapons and tools and valuables just lying around in the mess.”

“Who tears a building apart but doesn’t take weapons or valuables?” Bradok wondered.

“Someone who is stupid,” Kellik said, shrugging.

“Or someone looking for something specific,” Rose said, joining the group. She held what appeared to be a book with a metal cover.

“I found this inside a burned-out library,” she continuing, holding out the book, made entirely of polished steel, so they could all see.

Bradok knew instinctively that it had been made of the same, corrosion-proof steel as everything else. At the edges, along the spine of the book, ran an intricate metal hinge so the book could lie flat for easy reading. The front had been painstakingly engraved with the title: Galoka, His Travels and Teachings. Below that was a subtitle: The Chronicles of Starlight Hall.

Something in Bradok yearned to touch the strange metal book. He reached out and opened the cover, revealing fifteen metal pages bound into the spine with small metal rings. Each page was perfectly flat, and each was the same size. Tiny rows of engravings marched down the pages like columns of ants, and Bradok had to lean in close and squint to read the words.

“I’m sure it’s all very fascinating,” Chisul’s voice interrupted them as he came striding up with a small group, all carrying the fruits of their scavenging. “But what makes you think the people who wrecked this place were looking for that?”

“I didn’t say they were,” Rose said, still cradling the book reverently. “But whoever burned the library wanted these people’s knowledge destroyed. I bet they didn’t count on a metal book that was able to survive the fire.”

“Yeah, I can agree with that,” Chisul said, a grin on his face. Then he looked around at the magnificent hall. “This whole place feels good, feels right.”

“What are you talking about?” Much asked, joining the crowd.

“Just that this place is perfect,” Chisul said. “It’s got light, air, clean water. We’ve even found some seeds for trees and vegetables and a garden cavern where they used to grow food.

“In fact, this place has got everything we need. Best of all, there’s no one to protest us just moving in,” he added.

“I don’t know,” Corin said worriedly, running his hand through his beard. “Something bad happened to the people here, and someone sure tried to destroy this place.”

“Maybe a long time ago in some fairy tale,” Chisul mocked him. “But no one’s been here for decades, maybe even centuries.”

Bradok had to admit Chisul made good points.

“There’s no telling if these caverns are truly secure,” Much argued. “We’ve barely begun to investigate all of them.”

“We can secure them one at a time,” Rose said eagerly. “Check each one out, make sure they’re safe, and then move on.”

“I don’t think that will work,” disagreed Jeni in her dreamy voice, which drifted above the crowd.

All eyes turned to where the peculiar Daergar girl stood, rocking from one foot to the other, undulating her hips as she moved.

“I bet the compass won’t let us stay here very long at all,” she said.

Bradok reflexively put a hand to his pocket then hesitated. He liked the idea of staying in the fantastic city, and he wasn’t sure he wanted the opinion of Reorx’s compass. Before he could extract it from his pocket, however, Corin spoke up.

“Why do you say that?” he asked Jeni, narrowing his eyes. “What do you know? Have you discovered something you haven’t told us about?”

Jeni shook her head, pointing to a pile of rubble at the base of the clock tower. Bradok had been staring at the tower for hours and hadn’t noticed anything odd, but as one the group followed Jeni’s pointing finger and approached the rock pile.

“What are you getting at, girl?” Kellik demanded.

He opened his mouth to say something else, but the words died in his throat. There, in the center of the pile, everyone saw the same thing: covered in dust and looking for all the world like a rock was a skull. Once Bradok could see it, he also saw what looked like an armored chest and arm, ending in a long, curved spike.

“What is that?” Rose said fearfully.

Bradok pushed his way to the front and picked up the skull. What had made it so hard to see before was that it didn’t look like a skull, at least not like any he’d ever seen. There weren’t any holes for eyes, just a smooth, curved surface all the way across the front of the face where the eyes should be. Two vertical nostril slits sat high in the center of the forehead, and the upper jaw held a double row of backward-facing, needlelike teeth.

Much bent down and picked up two long, curved bones from the floor, holding them up close to the skull. They were long enough to be arm bones, but everyone could see they were wicked, curving teeth.

“This jaw bone is two separate pieces,” Much said, holding the huge teeth in place against the skull in Bradok’s hands. “The bottom part must be missing.”

It was the largest jaw anyone had ever seen or imagined. The sight sent shivers up Bradok’s back.

“What was it?” Bradok asked Corin.

The Daergar reached out and took the skull, pouring water from his bag over it. As the dust disappeared, the skull took on a green hue, like bottle glass. Even more disturbing, Bradok could see Corin’s hand through the side of the skull.

“It’s not bone,” Corin said, holding the skull up for everyone to see. “It’s chitin.”

“What does that mean?” Lyra asked in a small voice.

“Chitin is what insect skeletons are made of,” Urlish Hearthhome said.

“That’s no insect skull,” Chisul said. “It looks human or maybe elf.”

“Only if humans had no eyes,” Perin said.

While the others argued, Bradok studied Corin. The dwarf’s normally easygoing manner had hardened, and his left eye was twitching.

“Tell me more. What do you know about these chitin creatures?” Bradok asked.

“He doesn’t know anything for certain, I’m afraid,” Xurces cut in. “There are old legends, nothing more than bard’s tales really, of a race of humanoid insects who burrow deep in the earth.”

“This is no legend, Xurces,” Corin said, holding up the skull. “This is real.”

“Well, what do the legends say about these insects?” Chisul asked.

Xurces sighed as if he didn’t believe he was having such a preposterous conversation. “They’re called the Disir, or at least that’s what I’ve heard them called. They’re supposed to be deep-dwelling insects with armored bodies, swordlike arms, and ravenous appetites. They’ll eat just about anything, even some rocks.”

“That’s it?” Kellik said.

Xurces shrugged. “Until five minutes ago, it was just a story to frighten disobedient children,” he said. “I never really paid attention to the details.”

Kellik brought out his hammer and a crowbar and began clearing debris. Bradok, Chisul, and Corin helped until half an hour later they had uncovered all the rest of the skeleton.

Kellik whistled, glancing at Xurces. “The next time someone tells that story, you can tell them it ain’t a story,” he said.

The skeleton had four legs attached to an oblong, tail-like piece that Urlish called the abdomen. Above that, a massive chest sprouted two arms that ended in serrated, swordlike blades. They assembled it partly on the ground, but even so, its size was enormous.

“I would not want to meet that monster in a dark alley,” Much said once they had all the pieces laid out.

“Dark,” Xurces said, snapping his fingers. “I just remembered something else about the legend. The Disir are blind. They prefer the dark. They hunt with sound, like bats.”

Much and Bradok looked at each other then turned slowly, looking up at the clock tower above them where the cogs, shafts, and gears were churning merrily away. It suddenly seemed like an awful lot of noise.

Watching them, Chisul also looked up and felt terror. “Turn that thing off,” he yelled. “Turn it off now!”