D. MacHale - The Pilgrims of Rayne

I was really touched by how hard everyone worked. More and more volunteers joined when they heard who they were working for. Some even volunteered to come with us and help in the fight, but there was no way I could accept that. Eventually there were enough miners to split into shifts, so there was always someone working during the daylight hours. I felt sure that if there was tak to be found, we would find it.

It was great being with Alder. He gave Siry pointers on fighting. He demonstrated the art of using the long, wooden stave that he and Loor were such experts with. Siry was an eager student, but there was no way to turn him into a fighter in such a short time. It was more for fun, which was almost as important. It had been a long time since we had done anything that was even close to fun.

Watching those two spar with the long staves gave me an idea. After digging a new mine shaft with the dygo, I drove the vehicle back up the mountain to the flume. I didn’t tell the others I was going, because I wasn’t planning on being gone long. I parked outside the cave, entered, and stepped into the flume.

“Quillan,” I announced, and was quickly pulled toward a territory that held nothing but dark memories for me.

I arrived at the gate and quickly changed into the gray, nondescript clothing near the flume. I didn’t run into any of the mechanical spider-quigs. No surprise there. This territory was done. I left the vast warehouse that held the gate to the flume, and climbed up to the incredible gaming arcade that had been my first taste of Quillan. I’m sorry to say that the arcade was rocking. The Quillan games were back, and busier than ever. It hurt to watch.

On the street nothing had changed. I didn’t know how much time had passed by Quillan standards, but the territory looked the same as when I had first seen it. The city streets were jammed with people moving like lifeless zombies. The huge screens on the buildings above showed the same geometric patterns, broken up by the occasional announcement given by a nameless reporter. It killed me. Blok had won. Saint Dane had won. I had failed miserably on Quillan.

My destination was the abandoned underground mall where I spent time with the members of the small resistance that called themselves “revivers.” I knew the route well. I found the building that was built over the forgotten mall, descended through ancient stairways, walked through a twisting series of corridors, and finally came to the break in the cement wall that was the entrance the revivers had created.

I never saw a reviver. Or Elli, the Traveler. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t there to learn about Quillan. I came for weapons. I found them in a long-forgotten store deep within the mall. It hurts me to say that no revivers were there to guard them. It was another sign that the revival had failed. They no longer needed their weapons.

But I did. I found a stack of the six-foot-long, black metal rods. Dado killers. I didn’t know what they were made out of, or why they worked. All I knew was that when you impaled a dado with one of those rods, it neutralized its power source. The result? Dead dado.

I stood looking at the pile of weapons, wondering why I had bothered to come. We were about to fight a war against thousands of dados. If it came down to using those rods, the war would be lost. Still, using weapons like those was all I knew. Seeing Alder instructing Siry made me realize that. I guess you could say that having them was a confidence builder. I needed all the confidence I could get. I grabbed a dozen of the lightweight weapons and headed back for the flume.

I knew getting them back to the flume would be risky. If a security dado spotted me, I’d be done. I camouflaged the rods as best I could with a rotten old blanket that had been tossed aside by a reviver. With luck, people would think I was carrying lengths of wood. Or brooms. Or skis. (Yeah, right.) Or anything besides dado-killing weapons. When I got to the surface, I kept close to the buildings, trying to be invisible. At one point I saw two security dados marching toward me. My stomach fell. It suddenly felt like a very stupid idea to have gone to Quillan. I had risked the entire battle just to give myself an ounce of comfort. I held my breath.

The dados walked right past me.

My trip back to Denduron was uneventful. I changed back into my leather clothing at the gate and jumped into the flume. In the cave on Denduron I placed the pile of weapons at the side of the flume, got right back into the dygo, and made my way down the mountain. In all, I was gone for only a few hours. Nobody knew I had left. Not even Alder and Siry. I had taken a big risk going to Quillan, but I was glad I did it.

I didn’t know how to measure time exactly on Denduron. If I were to guess, I’d say we were on that territory for about three weeks. I was beginning to think it was going to be for nothing. If the tak was deeper than the shallow tunnels we had been digging, it meant we had to create a much more complex mining operation to get the miners down deep. It would also mean spending lots of time down there, and I didn’t want to risk poisoning these hard-working guys. After weeks of coming up empty, I started to face the possibility that we would have to battle the dados without tak…

When we saw the first telltale streak of red. The miners gathered to inspect the possible find. Rellin dug out a piece of the red dirt with his fingers and rolled it into a small ball. He walked back to the mouth of the tunnel, and with everyone watching, he flung it at a rock ledge. Boom! The rock disintegrated, creating a small avalanche of stones. It was so loud, my ears rang. When the air cleared, Rellin turned to me and smiled. I in turn looked to Siry.

“That,” I said, “is tak.”

Siry looked stunned. “Maybe we really do have a chance.”

The process of mining the mineral was even more dangerous. If hit the wrong way, it could explode. The miners took their time, which was fine with me. They only had the crude tools they hadn’t used since the days of mining glaze. The vein turned out to be the mother lode. They dug cautiously, filling rough bags with the mineral and hauling it out of the tunnel. It took several days, but every wooden crate was eventually filled. We could have filled more, but I wasn’t sure how much the dygo would be able to pull. The crates were then sealed with wax to make them watertight.

Finally the job was complete. The dygo was fitted with heavy ropes that were attached to the sled and the crates were loaded aboard.

“You sure this won’t blow up on the way up the mountain?” Siry asked.

“No” was my honest answer. “I don’t know what’ll happen when we go through the flume, either.”

“I didn’t need to hear that,” Siry said soberly.

After many thank-yous and good-byes, we were ready to go. I told Rellin that he and his men had done an important thing that would hopefully ensure peace to Siry’s home for a long time to come.

“I do not doubt you, Pendragon,” Rellin said. “Tak helped bring peace to the Milago. I trust it will be as useful again.”

Alder, Siry, and I climbed into the dygo. It wasn’t built for three people, and we had to avoid one another’s elbows and knees. Siry was the smallest of the three, so he sat in the middle, wedged between the two seats. We were all happy that it wasn’t a very long trip… for a lot of reasons.

“Slowly,” Alder cautioned. “Avoid the bumps.”

Yeah, no kidding. I engaged the dygo. With only a slight strain from the weight of the tak, we moved forward. The trip was nerve-racking. We were hauling enough explosives to level the entire mountain. One rough jostle and we’d be vapor. I wondered how protected we were inside the steel sphere of the dygo. That thing was built to withstand some pretty intense pressure. I guess I don’t have to say that I hoped we wouldn’t find out.