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CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Druadaen leaped away from the wall. He couldn’t tell if the spear could reach his horse, but if it did and the device closed on it…

The metal-man swerved after him, raising its weapons and apparently unaware of the horse. But that split-second of concern for his mount almost cost Druadaen his life. The shining brass automaton jabbed the full length of its spear toward him in one abrupt motion; holding the weapon effortlessly by its butt, it bore down on him.

Training took over. Just like a charging lancer, and not enough time to draw my sword.

It was almost upon Druadaen, the sword-arm back for a cut to follow the attack of the lancelike spear.

Wait, wait… now! And as if Druadaen might miss the moment, the velene pulsed—then unfolded explosively off his wrist as he shoulder-rolled—

—toward the automaton.

It wasn’t able to drop the spearpoint fast enough, although it cut a seam along the armor on Druadaen’s back. But now its sword was flashing forward, faster than he would have believed a machine could move.

But just as it swung, the blade pulled back—because the automaton had reversed, rotating at the “waist” to keep it facing Druadaen.

Just as the velene flew at its head, a deep hum resonating out of it.

The automaton never stopped moving, but it kept interrupting its own actions, first as its target dove forward and under the lowest angle of its spear. Then again as that target calved off a small metallic ally. The sum effect was that the device’s reactions had the appearance of a sudden fit: a flurry of hasty corrections, each abruptly interrupted and reversed by the next.

Druadaen rolled up to his feet already running, drawing his sword as he charged to get beyond the furthest limit of the rails.

A solid clank, almost like a muffled bell, sounded behind Druadaen—and the velene went past him, still airborne but not exactly flying. It came out of its aerial tumble as Druadaen realized what had happened: the automaton had swatted it away. Evidently, its attempt to use sound against the device hadn’t worked; Druadaen could hear it whirring closer.

But he got beyond the last brass rail and leaped for the slimy slope, hearing the rush of a weapon in the air behind him.

The spearpoint tapped the back of his armor, not quite penetrating it but sending him a few extra feet up the slope… and safely out of its range.

The velene landed alongside Druadaen as he rolled over, sword held out in a two-handed guard. Because if that mad machine can throw the spear…

But instead, it shot forward to the limit of the rails, spear straining outward… just as its foot-wheels reached the slurry that Druadaen’s flight and fall had strewn across the tracks. The automaton jerked and faltered, pebbles snapping. As if pulverized by a foundry hammer, they flashed into sprays of dust as the wheels ground through them, raising a smell as sharp and arresting as the fumes in a stone-cutting mill. It had pushed to the limit of the brass curves; somewhere in its lower body—abdomen?—gears groaned as it struggled to close with its target.

Druadaen rose carefully, still holding his sword before him. The velene crept forward, staying low against the ground.

The gears continued to grind. Its eyes—set wide, far to either side of the crestlike disk that divided the head—were round, lifeless, and maniacally focused on him. Druadaen took a step to the right. They tracked with him. Another step and the whole automaton shifted to remain as close to him as possible. And still, the gears groaned in mechanical frustration.

Druadaen hopped quickly back, then reversed to the prior position.

With a clatter, the brass mannequin shifted back and forth with him, barely lagging the movements it tracked.

The horse started at that sound, its cloaked head rising sharply; it whinnied in an uncertain mix of equine discomfiture and annoyance.

The automaton turned toward it, its gear-whine lessening as it leaned in that direction, clearly ready to switch to a new target. But the horse quieted, and after a moment’s pause, it refocused both of its crystal clockwork eyes on Druadaen.

Who had learned what he needed about the device: while unthinkably fast and flexible, it was also somewhat distractable. He glanced toward the other side of the pit, and confirmed what he’d seen on his survey; a particularly rocky mix of the slurry stretched further along that wall, paralleling the rails for a few yards.

But before a plan became clear, the horse shifted again—and the automaton’s attention snapped back toward it. One more sound or movement might trigger it to attack—and so, strand Druadaen in the Godbarrows. No time to do anything but—

Druadaen jammed his sword point-down in the muck, and grabbed the nearest semi-intact earthenware bowl to scoop up the muck. Snatching up a stone with his other hand, he rose into a forward step, throwing it at the horse. In that instant, the automaton was already straining toward him again, its weapons vibrating with readiness—

The stone hit; the horse yipped and stamped.

The brass man spun toward it, gear sounds increasing—

Druadaen leapt forward, shifted the broken bowl to his throwing arm and, counting on the automaton’s nightmarish speed, threw it at the side of its gleaming head. Which, coming around in a heartbeat, caught the slop-streaming projectile full in its face.

Earthenware fragments flew; the slurry landed with a muddy slap across both its eyes. Leaping into a sprint, Druadaen grabbed his sword as he passed, heading toward the opposite wall while trying to keep the automaton in the corner of his eye.

For a long moment it was motionless. Then it began shaking its head to clear the muck from its eyes—but no, Druadaen realized; its whole head was actually spinning like a top. The black mire sprayed off in a wide arc. Before it had hit the ground, the automaton was after him.

Druadaen sprinted across the clear floor and rails, trading risk for a straight line and solid footing. Although the rails’ serpentine and often recursive paths prevented the automaton from coming directly after him, its speed was dizzying as, swerving from side to side, it slipped from one rail intersection to another in a race to cut him off.

Druadaen couldn’t even spare a glance as he neared the far limit of the tracks; his head start hadn’t been as great as he’d hoped, and to waste even one second looking over his shoulder—he sped over the last rail and leaped.

The jump carried him all the way to the wall and atop the mix of rocks and mire. He turned. The automaton was there. Of course. It was pressed against the farthest rails again, as if straining to break free of them, weapons vibrating faintly. Druadaen moved slightly…

The spear thrust at him, stopping less than a foot away from him. It returned to its vigil.

Drawing a deep breath for the first time since it had emerged, Druadaen glanced up and down the long heap of debris that also defined his margin of safety. It narrowed as it approached the north wall and the openings from which the rails emerged, widened as it rejoined the greater slope. He looked around for the velene—and spotted it lying motionless at the bottom of that pile: waiting.

Clans and Consenters, does it know my plan? Well, let’s find out. He began walking slowly along the wall. Predictably, the automaton tracked him. Every step, he stopped and kicked some of the debris at the device, but most of it landed to the side where it had been poised just a moment before. Sometimes it thrust the spear at him; mostly it simply waited for Druadaen to take another step. But before he did, Druadaen always used the point of his sword to build up the part of the slope he’d just kicked down behind his adversary, always making sure it was mostly comprised of pebbles and scree.

By the time Druadaen got to the end of the diminishing margin of stony debris, a good amount of it was scattered in an uneven path behind the metal monster. More had been heaped up along the edge of the pile that had been his safe walkway along the wall. He cleaned the blade—and without any preparation sprinted back the way he had come.

If there was any delay in the automaton’s response, he couldn’t detect it—but that was less important to him than kicking the newly heaped slurry of grit and scree down upon the prior trail he’d already built in the device’s wake. Doing so as he ran made it impossible to stay as close as he had to the wall; the spear jabbed at him repeatedly, once cutting a seam in the topmost spaulder of his cured leather armor.

But the automaton was also beginning to fall behind: not much, but every time its wheels hit a cluster of pebbles that had fallen in the tracks and demolished them in a rapid series of pops, it started and shivered and so, lost a sliver of a second.

Listening for those sounds, Druadaen neared the juncture where the limb of debris that lined the wall met the slope of rubbish. Ahead, he saw the velene waiting, intently focused on the automaton as it drew closer. One long stride away from the juncture, Druadaen heard what he’d hoped to: a series of larger, ragged snaps as the wheels hit a collection of larger scree that had fallen into the trench that housed the rails. Druadaen spun on his heel and leaped down—to the rear.

Directly at the machine.

Its swift motion had become a series of sharp jerks—almost a stagger—as its wheels ground through the scree in a ragged stutter of sharp blasts that made it buck so sharply that it started to tilt.

Its limbs flashed into new positions to rebalance it…

Druadaen leaped inside the range of the spear as the automaton struggled to right itself. The sai’niin sword gleamed like bound lightning as, both hands on the hilt, he brought it back and put all his power into one cut at the steadying device.

The blade hit the thin neck connector with a screech of metal on metal, punctuated by a ragged, hissing squeal: like white-hot steel being quenched in a bucket.

The head lolled and the artifact tipped in the opposite direction, like a top struggling to adapt its spin before recovering from an earlier push.

A silver streak flashed toward the machine: the velene impacted its inverted-triangle thorax with a sharp clang. The metallic dragonette bounced off; the automaton tipped further…

Just as Druadaen’s back-cut crashed into it, slamming it even harder in the direction it was falling. With a shriek of shearing metal, it came out of its rails. Druadaen jumped back, recovering to a ready stance: panting, damp with rain and sweat, his nicked and much-dimmed sword held high to either guard or strike.

But the automaton’s round, jewellike eyes dimmed and went dark. Sprawled, it was nothing more than a strange, broken travesty of a human form, its discrete sections fallen at impossible angles to each other. He stepped toward it—but as he did, a memory rose up unbidden:

Druadaen was in a different pit, standing over a different slain foe: the mismatched monster that they had narrowly defeated at the Library in Imvish’al. Still furious that Ahearn had dispatched it before he could learn anything from the strange monstrosity, Umkhira had walked up to the body and decapitated it, explaining, “When fighting magical foes, it is best to be sure they will stay slain… ”

Druadaen lengthened his step toward his broken adversary, extending into a swifter, harder stride—which gave his double-handed blow just that much more power. The sai’niin blade flashed blue as it severed the already riven neck connector, accompanied by an overpowering foundry smell. A thick black ichor oozed out of the clockwork monster, along with a new odor; it was as if Elweyr’s alchemical reagents and compounds had all discharged in one, acrid burst.

Only then did Druadaen realize that, despite the comparative quiet in the wake of the battle, the silence was not absolute: a wooden horn was being winded in the near distance. Faint voices—rough, excited, angry, eager—answered it.

As if emerging from a trance, his horse tossed its head in alarm. The saddle blanket flew off; its ears were up and trembling, eyes wide and white. Although it had been paralyzed by the sudden, unfamiliar sounds of Druadaen’s brief combat with the automaton, it had no difficulty understanding these noises: a bestial hunting party.

Before it could move or nicker, he sprinted across the pit and laid one calming hand on its flank. As soon as he was sure the horse wasn’t agitated, he walked briskly to the overhang and opened the small, wood-framed ruck. He studied the marks he’d made on the vials that Lorgan had identified, removed one of the stronger sedatives the Sarmese had provided for use on a captured abomination, and found the tool to deliver it: a short, hollowed awl with remarkably thin walls. Dipping it deep into the thick, almost tarry compound, he walked casually back to the horse, and, resting his hands on the reins, drove the tool into its flank.

The animal turned, startled, but didn’t even have time to whinny in fear, pain, or confusion; it slumped toward the wall, nickered groggily, then lowered itself unsteadily to the ground.

As soon as he was sure it was steady, Druadaen returned to the ruck, found several of the other vials that the viziers had provided for his capture and control of abominations: one each of the kind that sent out gouts of smoke, created a flash that dazzled eyes, and produced fumes that made one’s vision spin. He left his bow strung and arrows at the ready near the overhang, then moved back to the wall.

As he passed his slumbering mount, he was suddenly glad for the chemical reek in the pit; it was still so overpowering that any pursuers, abominations or otherwise, were not likely to detect the scent of the live horse through it…

Or were they? Back home, a snufflecur and certain breeds of dog would probably smell it. And if abominations could have the traits of almost any known animal—

Two minutes later, both Druadaen and his horse were wearing a light coating of the pit’s slurry with a few daubs of the automaton’s ichor mixed in. The stink was so foul that he wondered if its power as a repellent might be a greater defense than all his weapons and alchemical compounds combined. With his sword slipped beneath the saddle blanket, he took the risk of sliding his body back into one of the small openings in that wall, which was drowned in the shadows left by Hystzos’ small moons.


That lightless margin had not moved very far when he heard a group of somethings approach the pit. They were not stealthy in the manner of natural predators; their footfalls—because they were clearly bipeds—were audible. And, as they drew close to the edge, even their breathing—labored and uneven—became obvious.

But what they lacked even more than stealth was patience; only a few seconds after they had gathered just beyond the rim over which Druadaen might have seen them—and vice versa—several voices started muttering. The exchange rapidly became a squabble, and as it progressed, he could begin to make out bits of what might have been pidgin—or precursor—Sarmese, including many words borrowed from its Hystzossian overlords. His language amulet, as he’d come to think of it, didn’t help, so it took a while to untangle the dialects and crude—crippled?—speech to make out the general gist of the debate.

“I smells bad smells.”

“This hole always has.”

“It is shun,” added another voice. It was tempting to imagine the following silence was one of somber, even fearful reflection.

“Go down look.”

“For what?”

“Meat.”

A long pause followed. Druadaen tightened his grip on his weapon. Then:

You look. I go safe. Home.”

“No. You look.”

There was no sound or sign of compliance. A few moments later, a meaty thud was answered by a grunt and surly growl.

“You look,” repeated the voice that had originally given the order. “Or kill you.”

“You kill maybe. But I go down? Mad metal man kill me sure.”

“Is dead. You see.”

“I see one. Maybe more.” The voice paused, resumed in a tone of both resignation and defiance. “Hole is shun, death. You want see? You go.”

The squabbling continued, although after that, it sounded more like annoyed browbeating. In time, Druadaen noticed that it was changing in one other, very welcome fashion: it was growing more distant.

After a few more minutes, it became a dim murmur and was lost in the rush of the rising night wind.


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