Stephen Hunt - The rise of the Iron Moon

'Hell's teeth,' howled Ganby. 'It's repairing itself, the beanstalk can repair itself!'

'Strike now!' shouted Jackaby. 'Strike, my queen, while you can.'

'Believe in yourself,' whimpered Ganby, making himself small on the ground as bolts of fire spun past from the dark, splashing against the beanstalk.

Purity swung the maths-blade over her head, trying to use the cold bite of the snow against her bare toes to focus, concentrating on the anchor line's alien material, altering it, allowing her sword to slice deep. She struck. The sword stopped, held tight by the anchor line – the blade was stuck. She tried to yank it out, but the anchor line's material was flowing over it. Repairing itself. Purity's sword was as stuck as it had been before she first drew the blade from the stone circle back in Jackals. But Purity couldn't afford to fail. The entire nation was riding on this. The lives of all the people she had led here sacrificed for… nothing?

Ganby was still on his knees, weeping. 'We can come back. If we just escape now. We can come back and mount another attack later, factor in the healing time of the anchors, maybe come up with a way to stop the mooring lines repairing themselves.' Then the terrified druid was on his feet, lunging out of the shadow of the beanstalk, trying to escape.

'Ganby!' bellowed Jackaby Mention. 'Come back here, you craven druid's whore.'

Jackaby tried to grab at the fleeing bandit's back but fell over, the cramps in his muscles toppling him moaning into the snow. As the druid was swallowed by the snowstorm there was a succession of thumps, the volley of slat rifles slapping into a soft human form.

Ganby's smoking corpse appeared a minute later, dragged forward by a line of slats. The Kal at the front of the line looked at his soldiers picking through the slumped bodies of the last of the kingdom's raiders, taking in Purity Drake, shedding cold tears as she lay collapsed over the anchor line, her hand still resting on the grip of the embedded maths-blade. Jackaby Mention lay semi-paralysed on the snow, gazing hatred back at the line of the Army of Shadows' fighters.

Smirking, the Kal went over to Purity and pulled her up by the hair. Then he breathed on her icy cheeks through those monstrous fangs, meeting her eyes. 'When, many generations hence, your ancestors are penned up, soiling themselves in their food cages, the suffering you experience for this day's trespass will still be legendary among them.'

The last legend told by the Jackelians.

Molly recovered her senses with a start as she was dragged out of the tight confines of the tunnel. There was a clear, pain-free lucidity to her thoughts. The realization that she appeared gloriously free of the burden of Kyorin's memories battled for attention with the fact that it was one of the giant ant's forelimbs currently dragging her out of the dark shaft.

Then she was free on the chamber floor and about to go hell for leather as the ant pulled back, but she heard a familiar voice calling from behind the insect. Sandwalker! The Kal nomad, still in his white sand robes. Molly's eyes danced between the nomad and the insect, and as Sandwalker rested a hand on the ant's thorax, the dim chamber began to lighten. Molly realized that these walls were far too smooth to belong to any ant colony worthy of the name.

'We are deep within one of our mountain shelters,' said Sandwalker. 'And as I promised, the great sage has cured you. Kyorin's memories have been taken out of your mind. It was an operation of great sophistication to unentangle your patterns.'

Molly raised a confused hand to point at the giant ant calmly watching her through its compound eyes.

'Machines shaped in the form of our predators. What better place to hide from the slats' long-range patrols than a false ant colony in the side of a mountain.'

'I thought I was about to be eaten,' said Molly, finding her voice.

'For that I am sorry, although I believe you now know what it has been to live as one of my people for the last couple of thousand years,' said Sandwalker. 'Come, Molly Templar, my tribe's sage is eager to meet you and your friends.'

The nomad led Molly through empty corridors and chambers that had the reek of ages about them. Dusty machinery lay about the place – instruments as large as buildings – most looking scavenged, with plates removed and cables hanging out like torn intestines.

'This was a centre of science, once,' said Sandwalker. 'Built very far from the inhabited lands of my people – to protect against the exotic nature of the experiments that were once conducted underneath our feet.'

Molly was escorted into a large circular room where her friends were waiting and overjoyed to see her recovered, Commodore Black pumping her hand while Coppertracks sped past Keyspierre and Duncan Connor to speak to her. Molly was a little overwhelmed by the greeting so soon after waking. Surreally, bright panels displaying scenes and sounds of Kaliban as it had once existed surrounded them. Lush green forests filled with the familiar blue faces of the Kal, as well as long-extinct creatures she didn't recognize; nothing like the killers that were stalking the wastes now. Images so realistic she might almost have been looking through a window.

'I told you she would be fine again,' said Sandwalker, proudly. 'The medical devices we still have here date back to before the occupation.'

'So you say, lad,' grinned the commodore. 'And you've lived up to your word right enough. You're blessed lucky to still be with us, Molly. Your heart stopped out there in the desert during your last few minutes. How do you feel now?'

'Clear headed.'

'As you should,' announced a voice behind her. Molly turned. More mind-speech. So, this was him! The great sage, Fayris Fastmind, as old a creature as Molly had ever seen. A pale blue body borne along on a floating ceramic carriage, his legs hidden, his face covered in silvery metallic tattoos that glowed with energy pulses as he spoke. 'The magnetic resonance scanner I used to operate on you is the last functioning one we have in this facility. Probably the last one on Kaliban, now.'

Coppertracks looked at the Kal, the energy waves under the steamman's transparent skull circulating in excitement. 'Why, you are a metal-flesher, a man-machine hybrid.'

''Pon my soul,' said the astonished Kal, returning the steamman's gaze. His mind-voice was like the unrolling of an ancient parchment. 'And you are sentient? Self-aware? After all these years, a self-replicating machine entity. I haven't seen such as you for two millennia.'

'People similar to mine once existed on Kaliban?' asked Coppertracks.

'Oh yes,' said the great sage, his carriage gliding around the commodore and Molly. He gestured to the far wall and a panel shifted view to a lightless hall full of black cabinets. Something told Molly she was seeing one of the chambers under the mountain, a view of dust and decay now. Row after row of dead machines.

'Artificial life that was pure intellect, crushed by the Army of Shadows. Burnt out by the machine plagues the masters sent before they invaded in force.' The Kal pointed to the silvery etching glowing around his face. 'It was hard to tell where your kind began and ours ended, once. Now both our races have ended our days on Kaliban. How sad.'

'You are the intellect that was signalling to my world from Kaliban?' asked Coppertracks.

'Not I,' said the great sage. 'We dare not send such messages for fear of being tracked down. We still have a few ancient communication devices in orbit, broadcasting the original warning of the Army of Shadow's invasion out to anyone who might be able to help. You must have heard one of those.'

'We've travelled a long way to reach you,' said Molly. 'I owe you my life for healing my mind, but I have an entire world still to save.'