Of Machines & Magics (23 page)

They pushed them shut. They were made of metal and incredibly heavy, they closed with a great clang, giving the three of them a sudden feeling of safety.

“Is there a locking bar?” asked Calistrope looking wildly at the inside of the doors.

“No,” said Ponderos. “Find some stones to hold them closed.”

There was very little light. Stones of any size were few and far between but they found a half dozen or so and piled them up against the doors and used smaller ones as wedges, driving them tightly under the lower edge.

“Thank Destiny,” gasped Roli, his back to the door.

Bang! They started and then realized that it had been an echo of the doors’ closing reflected from some far distant part of the space they had entered. A moment or so later there came a whole regiment of echoes. Bang! Bang! Bangangng!

Like every place they had seen within the mountain so far, this was huge. Ponderos turned away from the doors and looked around the gloomy place. Lit dimly by the glow from strings and curtains of the same moss and lichen which illumined the ants’ catacombs, it was just possible to guess at a cathedral-high roof far above them.

“The ants aren’t going to get through those, surely?” Roli asked in disbelief.

“They surely will. Nothing is more certain. Pressure of numbers will push them open and if not, they will chew away at the stone to either side or underneath,” Calistrope looked this way and that but the floor was unnaturally flat and bare. “Any more stones?” he asked. “Anyone see any more?” Their feet kicked up a fine dust in little puffs but beyond an occasional pebble or a collapsed skeleton, there was nothing.

“Bones?” Said Calistrope to himself.
Bones?
“Bones,” he shouted. “There are bones here and there, find the strongest you can, we’ll brace the doors as well.”

But even as he said it, there was a groan of tired hinges and one of the door panels swung open by a hand’s breadth. Ponderos heard the sound and whirled about to slam the door shut again. “Go on,” he shouted. “Get away from here, I’ll hold them closed as long as possible then follow you.”

Ponderos leaned against the doors and felt the insistent pushing of the guardian ants on the other side. After a second’s pause, Calistrope nodded and he and Roli set off at a run. A minute passed, another, a third and the pressure behind the doors began to build up. Ponderos’ muscles bulged.

As the others ran into the gloom, there came a rushing sound above them, a flutter. Not the steady hum of dragon flies nor the dipping darting whine of mosquitoes, this was a ragged, flapping; a thousand scraps of parchment racing through the air just above their heads.

Back at the doors, Ponderos could feel the panels pressing against his hands and arms, pushing him slowly across the floor. A dozen pairs of unblinking bright eyes looked through the widening gap. He drew in a huge breath and heaved the doors shut once more then turned and bolted after the others, following the dimly visible footprints in the dust.

Close above him, he also heard the uneven beating of thin wings and turning as he ran, saw a cloud of black scraps silhouetted against the bright opening between the double doors. As their erratic flight took them closer, Ponderos saw the doors begin to close once more and just before the bright bar of light vanished completely, he saw a half dozen of the flying creatures dart between them.

“Something seems to worry the ants,” said Calistrope, catching and steadying Ponderos who was still trotting with his head turned back towards the now vanished opening.

“Certainly does,” rejoined Ponderos. “I wonder what they are.”

“Bats,” said Roli.

Calistrope asked, “Mm? Bats? And what are bats?”

“Flying animals. Tiny, size of your thumb.”

“Animals,” Calistrope was hardly convinced. The only animals around Sachavesku were those which he had grown in his vats over the years. There was a small herd of unicorns and four pairs of very small elephants, one or two others which he had seen in old books and had taken a fancy to. “They exist in the wild? Are you sure?”

Roli nodded. “I saw them around the Raftman’s Ease while you were sick. When the air was thick. After rain, sometimes. Jiss showed me their roosting places.

“Well, well. Still, those weren’t the size of my thumb,” he nodded in the direction of the doors.

“Perhaps they’re better fed.”

Calistrope did not find it an amusing remark.

“Ponderos. How about a light?”

“I don’t know Calistrope. We’re almost certain that it needs a large number of people to generate a field of power, and there aren’t many here,” Ponderos held up his hand and a tiny flame grew from the tip of his index finger. “You see?”

“I know all that. But we do have a certain globe of light tucked away in your coat pocket. No?”

“In my… Aha. Well yes, of course.” Ponderos reached into first one pocket then another and finally, the last pocket, the pocket which held the globe.

“You’d forgotten it I suppose?”

“For a moment only,” he felt around. “Just for a moment. Ah!” Ponderos brought out the globe and tapped its surface, a pearly luminescence shone forth and holding it aloft, it shed a circle of soft white light around them.

They looked around them. The dusty floor was a light grey. Above, a suggestion of a rocky ceiling could just be made out but around them, to right and left, behind and before, not a single glimpse of a supporting wall could be seen.

“Let me,” suggested Calistrope, “I am a little taller.” He held the globe higher.

“This is a stupendous place,” said Ponderos in a stage whisper. “Gigantic. Will the light attract these flying animals, do you think?”

“Probably so,” said Calistrope. “Roli?”

Roli shook his head. “They are practically blind I believe.”

“Well then. Blind, Ponderos. Roli’s bats are blind.”

The three of them continued on. Now that
Roli’s bats
had frightened the ants into closing the doors—or so they supposed—they walked at an easy pace.

Calistrope stopped and pointed to several piles of small bones which they were about to pass. “This shows there are indeed animals here, insect remains are quite different,” he indicated other debris. “You see, broken chitin plates, hollow tubes of the stuff.”

There were other marks in the dust, smudged tracks from something that must drag its feet, long grooves as though some bony snake had writhed its way between the debris.

“Bones, yes but flying animals? That’s quite a leap of imagination,” Ponderos stopped and scratched his head, he was not convinced that Roli was right.

“These bones are quite light though. Look,” Calistrope broke a long slender bone in half to see its cross section. “Triangular and they’re hollow, too. Look at that, it weighs practically nothing.”

“At least they’re…”

“There are a lot of them here,” Roli’s voice came from further on where he had been investigating more remains. “These are broken and… and I think they’ve been chewed.”

“I was about to say small. There must be something here bigger than bats, then.”

“It wouldn’t need to be very much big…”

“We’re about to find out, I think,” said Roli and drew his sword from its scabbard.

Roli was looking at a pile of stones almost as tall as himself.

Ponderos approached and asked, “Do you see something?” Roli pointed with his sword. “There. Big, I think. Very big.”

“Yes. Take care.”

A pile of broken rock had been dragged together to make a protective lair. From one end a large triangular head like a ploughshare rose to stare at them. It moved slowly from side to side, warty green hide covered the angular skull and bulges at either side had the appearance of eyes. The jaws gaped, a bulbous grey tongue bulged behind a ragged fringe of yellow teeth.

“I think it must be blind,” said Calistrope. “Like Roli’s bats. Perhaps it locates us by the sounds we make. And it seems to move slowly, if we go around it quietly…”

The creature moved out into the open and the light illuminated it more clearly. A fat body set on four splayed legs which worked in diagonally opposed pairs; the belly was gross, a distended bag brushing the ground as it moved—a long spiny tail dragged a groove into the dust. From nose to the start of its tail was the length of a man, the tail was easily as long again.

It looked sick and weak. Beside the laggard movement and probable blindness, the forlorn crest which ran from the head along its back was limp and drooped to one side.

“It really is an animal,” gasped Roli. “I never dreamed they could grow so big.”

“If that is an animal in the wild, give me insects,” said Calistrope. “At least they cull the terminally sick and the healthy look after the others. Anyway, whatever it is, let us edge around to the right. Quietly, maybe it’s harmless…”

There was the merest flicker of movement between its jaws and something long and nauseatingly smelly flashed past Calistrope. The tongue which had been fat and swollen had suddenly become a long rope, dripping with sticky fluid and firmly wound around Roli’s’ arm. It started to retract, pulling the boy, struggling and shrieking with terror, towards it.

The two men, for long moments petrified with shock, rallied and dashed towards the creature’s head with swords upraised. Closer to the animal, they saw that there were eyes behind the green swellings, each one shining behind a tiny aperture and moving independently, one watching the struggling, screaming boy, the other swiveling to keep Calistrope and Ponderos in focus.

Calistrope brought his blade down to slice the tongue in two but to no avail. It was made of some marvelously resilient fiber and showed no sign of harm at all as the glass blade rebounded. Ponderos attacked the gross abdomen but with similar lack of success. Try as they might, neither weapon inflicted more than minimal damage.

From somewhere Roli drew on reserves of courage. He ceased struggling, exchanging panic for icy calm. With teeth clenched viselike, he pulled a long thin-bladed knife from his belt then turning, letting the loathsome tongue pull him closer, he plunged the knife down through the tiny opening at the center of the armored turret into the creature’s left eye.

The tongue let go, retracted and let Roli go free. He fell to the ground, panting and gasping with reaction now the danger had gone, he crawled away. Calistrope and Ponderos stood watchfully as the obscene creature backed into its pile of stones, shaking its head where the hilt of the knife still protruded from its eye.

“Is he all right?” asked Calistrope.

“Roli?” asked Ponderos turning back to the boy.

“Yes. Yes I’m all right. Let’s just get out of this place. Lizards, ugh!”

“Let’s go by all means,” Calistrope replied. “But where to? I’m not sure which way we were going?”

Ponderos held the light high and there, thrown into shadowed relief were their foot prints trailing off into the darkness. He pointed in the other direction. “That way.”

They walked on, light held high and eyes open for further attack. As time passed and nothing came to trouble them, they relaxed a little. Now and then, in low tones, they discussed the obnoxious animal.

“Lizard,” said Calistrope suddenly. “Roli, you called it a lizard. Do they also roam around the Raftman’s Ease?

“No. I don’t think so. I heard the hunters there though. They talked about the things they hunted. One showed me some hide, it looked like the skin on that thing.”

Calistrope nodded. “I met a lizard in the high valley, where the moth took me but it was the length of my hand, we became friends. I fear my education has been neglected.”

“Or forgotten,” suggested Ponderos.

“Perhaps. I really ought to review my memory vault when we return.

They came at last to what must have been the far side of the cavern. To either side of them, the walls had closed in until now, they were only a few ells apart. The roof had become low enough to see that it was natural rock cracked and fissured and stained white with guano. A faint odor of ammonia had been evident for some time and had grown in strength as they approached; heaps and drifts of bat droppings lay along the walls.

The wall ahead boxed them in. A wall that was not rough rock; here, the stone had obviously been dressed.

“We’re blocked in here,” said Calistrope and even as he said it, the sound of unevenly flapping wings reached them from above, like a hundred scraps of parchment fluttering down on their heads.

Down they came again, tiny eyes gleaming in the lamp light, like black ink blots suspended on brown dried-up leaves. Into and out of the sphere of light, closer and closer to their heads, brushing their hair, tapping their faces with wing tips, claws scratching at skin like tiny thorns.

They waved their arms and shouted to no avail. The scratches became bites, some of the animals clung on and began to feed on the living flesh, to lap at the blood flowing from wounds.

“Shades,” Roli wailed. “Here come those lizards again,” he pulled out his sword and sent it scything through the bats before taking up a guard against the reptiles.

Two lizards lumbered towards them like giant geriatric frogs. Their turreted eyes were never still, swiveling and darting as the creatures looked first at the humans then up into the clouds of bats.

They bunched together, Calistrope trying to keep the flying animals at bay while the other two watched the lizards, ready for attack. The expected never happened though. The bats—formidable as a flock and obviously panicking the ants—held no terrors for the chameleons. The long sticky tongues shot upward, picking bats out of the air with uncanny accuracy.

The flock was enormous, though; too large for the lizard’s feeding frenzy to make a substantial reduction in numbers. However, once the creatures realized they were also the hunted as well as hunters, they took more care in their approach, slowing their attack to a point where the humans had time to do more than defend themselves.

“Look,” shouted Ponderos battering his way from a cloud of the things with two or three clinging to his shoulder and neck. “There’s a way out; another door there, in the wall.”

“Lead the way,” returned Calistrope. “Can you open it?”