Mike Wild - The Clockwork King of Orl

There had to be a way of narrowing it down. Kali looked at the symbols on the podium again, reasoning that not even the League's mages could reasonably be expected to remember every combination, and that maybe they were subdivisions — some kind of cataloguing system. Instead of pressing it this time, she replicated the first symbol on the podium with arm movements, feeling what she had missed before, some kind of receptive magical field slightly thickening the air, and a second later a box not dissimilar to the first she had summoned assembled itself. Kali took a gamble and tried waving it on, and to her surprise the gesture worked — another curiosity assembling itself in its place. But she was clearly in the section for artefacts when what she wanted was manuscripts. She replicated the next symbol — spells — and the next — ancient relics. Only on the fourth and last did she find what she was looking for, or at least a place to begin.

Kali's gesticulations increased in pace and she began to summon, study and dismiss manuscript after manuscript, growing more and more adept with the practice until she looked as if she were conducting some complex symphony. She found she was able to pull writings towards her for closer study, turn them around or upside down to seek hidden illuminations and, in the case of actual tomes, flip from page to page with ease. The number of ancient documents stored astounded her, but her joy at discovering such a treasure trove was tempered by the knowledge that she had no time to truly study any but those she sought. Having still not found them and increasingly aware that the forgetful mage could return at any time, her efforts became more urgent, a degree of frustration creeping in as she hurled each document on with a snap of her hand.

Then suddenly, there. Images similar to those Slowhand had described from Makennon's archive in Scholten. There, on the first manuscript she saw, and on more following, diverse and variously decomposed references presumably collected here from different sources and different times.

Kali stopped cycling, hands moving slowly so that she could fold back and forth between the most telling documents, an illuminated manuscript, a map, and what appeared to be some ancient bard's tale of events. It was all there just as Slowhand had said. The hellsfire, the damnation, the vast horde marching under what appeared to be the crossed-circle banner of the Final Faith — not to mention the people kneeling before the horde in apparent worship. Also, looming over them in the background, a figurehead that could have been a representation of the Lord of All — what Makennon believed to be the horde's leader — but to less subjective eyes could equally have been anything else, including, troublingly, a gigantic and stylised version of your typical — how could she put this? — small, warlike person.

In fairness, Kali could see how Makennon had inferred what she had, but there were things here the woman must have been blind not to notice, that leapt off the pages and were simply wrong. For one thing, as had occurred to Slowhand, it seemed to her that the kneeling figures were not human, their physiognomy, though stylised again, more Old Race, elf and dwarf. For another, it struck her that they were not kneeling in worship but in supplication, praying to the marching horde and its leader, not for their help in divine ascension but for their mercy.

All of this, of course, was a matter of perception, but as Kali studied the text of the illuminated manuscript and then cycled to the bard's account, it became more a matter of interpretation. She was fluent in neither dwarvish or elvish — hells, who was? — but she had over her explorations picked up enough bits and pieces to recognise key words and put together the bones of a story.

The… middle times? A war between a clan of dwarves and a family of elves… dwarven defeat… no, near-annihilation. Survivors… and a sorcerer. Belatron? Belatron the Black? The Butcher? Anyway… a war machine… a leader… built to avenge… no, to satisfy?… the dwarven dead. But something wrong. Yes… something gone horribly wrong… a massacre. More death than in the war itself… genocide for both elf and dwarf… and a desperate alliance to stop it…

Kali blew out a breath. That, as far as she was concerned, clinched it — mostly. Everything here tallied with what Merrit Moon had told her, and was, in turn, totally at odds with what Katherine Makennon believed. The only thing she couldn't understand was why the symbol of the Final Faith and its prominence was on not one but two of the manuscripts she studied? Surely this was no representation of the Final Faith's future, it was a warning to everyone on the peninsula from the past.

So much for the history. Merrit Moon had wanted her to stop this thing and what she needed to do was find the information relevant to the here and now, to the threat they faced. She cycled to the map and studied it. The old man had said that between them the elves and the dwarves had built four containment areas for the keys, and there they seemed to be, marked in four widespread locations by two circles and two crosses, each with a representation of a key drawn in above. Why they were not marked by four circles or four crosses, instead of both, Kali wasn't sure, but she supposed the differing symbols were simply elven and dwarven equivalents of X marks the spot. Yes, she thought, remembering the runic circles at the Spiral of Kos, because as one of the circles here lay in the Sardenne Forest at the approximate location where the Spiral had been, that had to be what they were. Knowing that, even though the map was old and parts of the peninsula coastline looked different, she should be able to extrapolate the locations of the other keys from there. Only one thing confused her — the small amount of text on the map made passing reference to five keys not four. Had the old man been wrong and there was actually another, missing location? No, that didn't make sense — the map itself contradicted it. What, then, if there was a fifth key needed to access Orl itself? Yes, that could be it, even though there was no indication of a location for a fifth key on the map. Dammit, she thought, looking at the text again, she wasn't that good so maybe she'd just interpreted it wrong.

She had to concentrate on the matter at hand. She possessed the rough locations for the four keys but, for insurance, she needed the location of Orl itself. If this map, for whatever reason, had been meant to be some kind of overall guide, then it had to be here. Somewhere.

Kali took a deep breath and studied the map again, something nagging at her. Suddenly she pulled it towards her for a closer view of the key in the Sardenne. The whorls in the ornate head of the key looked familiar, and with good reason — the drawing was a stylised map of the topography of the area centred on the Spiral of Kos, a more detailed map of its location! But important as that was, there was something else — some of the whorls on the key seemed extraneous, nothing to do with the local topography and seeming to belong somewhere else entirely. Her heart thudded as she realised she was looking at part of a map within a map.

She waved her hand, flipping the document from side to side and slightly up and down, pulling it towards her to zoom in on each key in turn. For the moment she ignored the locations of the containment sites each gave, concentrating instead on the extraneous whorls, overlaying each set in her mind. Together, they formed a topography she recognised, part of the peninsula far to the west.

Kali zoomed to that part of the map. There did appear to be some kind of site marked, but the map was damaged around it, barely legible, and the marking could apply to anywhere within a number of leagues. But what she could make out appeared again to be the symbol of the Final Faith.