Mike Wild - The Clockwork King of Orl

Slowhand pulled a quiver from the compartment too, lined an arrow against the shaft, pursing his lips and nodding in approval. Then his expression darkened. "Yes, well… After Andon I'd had enough of killing. Everyone had." His tone lightened once more. "But times move on. Let's go."

"Hold on," Kali said, looking around. "If Makennon's in the habit of keeping souvenirs, maybe…"

She rifled through a nearby chest and with a cry of triumph pulled forth her toolbelt, removed from her prior to her interrogation. She also found her torn and tatty old outfit, and as she held it up to examine it, wasn't sure what disturbed her more — the fact that Makennon had felt fit to keep it, or the fact that Dolorosa had been right in her observation that it did indeed steeenk.

She left the remains of the garment where it was and they continued on to their original destination, moving down out of the cathedral and into its sub-levels once more. This time, they avoided all the guards they could, having no wish to announce their return to the lower depths.

There was only one problem. The bridge across the cavern had been retracted to the other side, the wheel there locked. What was more, two guards paced back and forth in front of it.

"Dammit," Kali said. "They've battened down the hatches."

"Not a problem," Slowhand said.

He unslung his bow.

Kali stared at the distant wheel and guards. So far they hadn't been spotted but…

"What the hells are you doing?" she whispered. "Take one of them down and the other will sound the alarm before you can hit the second. Oh, and even if you could get the second, then there'll be no one to activate the wheel. We need to think this through."

"No, we don't," Slowhand said. He primed an arrow and hefted the bow. A nerve in his jaw twitched as he waited, but then, at the exact moment the pacing guards crossed paths, he let fly. The single arrow pierced both of their necks, dropping them instantly, then carried on to impact with the wheel clamp with a solid thud, releasing the lock.

"Hells, you're good," Kali said.

Slowhand smiled, patting his bow. "It's good to have the old girl back."

Kali brought the bridge to their side and the two crossed, sneaking their way through the remainder of the complex until they neared the shafts that had so aroused Kali's curiosity what seemed now an age before. This time, they weren't guarded, but with the bridge supposedly retracted they didn't really need to be.

"Hooper, why here?" Slowhand asked. "I mean, an Old Race structure on this site, and then, centuries later, the cathedral built here too, presumably with the Final Faith not then knowing what was beneath it. Can that just be coincidence?"

"Maybe," Kali replied. "Or maybe this has always been a site of some significance, sociologically, historically or religiously. Maybe people, whoever they are — or were — are simply drawn here. Actually I've come across a few old manuscripts that suggest there may even be a number of nodes located across the peninsula, nodes that could be part of a network of — "

"Enough, Hooper," Slowhand said. "What do you expect we'll find down there?"

"Oh, that's easy. Something deadly."

"Something deadly," Slowhand repeated. "Right, fine, thanks for sharing that with me."

"My pleasure." Kali gestured towards the lift. "After you."

"No, no, I insist. After you."

"Slowhand, get on the bloody lift."

"You are getting quite domineering, you know that?"

"And you love every minute of it."

The lift was hardly the engineering marvel that Kali had ridden at the Spiral of Kos but it did the job, creaking on a rope as it descended a shaft that had been roughly cut from rock and felt strangely warm. The marks of modern tooling suggested to Kali that the shaft was the work of the Final Faith, which likely meant that the site to which they were heading had another — original — entrance elsewhere, but what or where that was she didn't know. She had never come across anything resembling an entrance in her explorations of the countryside surrounding Scholten, so maybe it had become blocked over the years by rockfalls or subsidence, or maybe had even been deliberately sealed. It didn't really matter because they were heading where they wanted to go.

The question was, where was that? The lower the lift descended, the less the creaking of its supporting rope could be heard, the sound overwhelmed by a growing hissing and pounding coming from below, as if machines were at work in the rock. As the sounds became so loud that the shaft itself began to vibrate, Slowhand looked to Kali for some kind of explanation, but she could only shrug. It was only when — at last — the lift reached bottom and they negotiated a small tunnel that their source became clear. Staggeringly so.

"My gods," Slowhand said. He, like Kali, was staring into a natural cavern in the bedrock far beneath Scholten that was bigger than the Final Faith's distribution centre, looming above them into shadow and dropping away beneath them to a bubbling lava lake some hundred feet down. The lake surrounded an island of rock that rose out of it to their eye level, and on that island — connected to where they had entered by a narrow and recently suspended bridge — stood a structure that was far from natural and could only be the secure location of the fourth and final key. Looking something like a cross between a kiln and a furnace, its width that of seven men and its height of five, the stone dome sat solidly on the island perch, pistons positioned all around its circumference pumping out great bursts of black smoke while, in the centre of its roof, a round hole, some kind of chimney, belched out thick clouds of steam. If, Kali reflected, the Spiral of Kos had had a distinctly elven feel about it, then this site had dwarf written all over it in letters bigger than the dwarves themselves.

She wondered what kinds of traps dwarves favoured.

As if on cue, a piercing scream emanated from somewhere within the stone dome, and a few moments later Makennon and a bunch of cronies stormed out of the single entrance. Kali and Slowhand hid as the group passed, Makennon clearly cheesed off, and Kali presumed that she had just lost another of the tomb raiders she'd apparently been throwing at this thing.

This was her chance. The trouble was, she couldn't risk using the main entrance because Makennon had likely left guards behind and, as far as she could see, that left her with only one choice.

Slowhand saw her staring at the chimney, timing the gaps between its eruptions of steam.

"Oh, no. No, no, no. No, Hooper, no."

"Don't worry. You aren't coming with me."

"Of course I am. But not that way."

"There is no other way, Slowhand. But no, I need you to stay here. Watch my back in case Makennon returns."

"You think I'm letting you go in there alone?"

"Listen, you just said — "

"I know what I said — "

"Slowhand, listen. Think back to the night of my escape. Now look at those belches of steam. There's no time for us both to go."

Slowhand couldn't argue the point, and sighed. "Fine, I've got your back. But Hooper, this is still suicide."

"Since when did that ever stop me?"

Kali moved across the bridge, clinging to its cabling and staring down at the bubbling red lake below. Lava, she thought, luvverly. Reaching the dome, she worked her way around the outside rim of the structure until she had moved completely behind it, she wondering idly if this dwarven thing had remained active since the day it was built. That seemed unlikely. It was far more probable that Makennon had either accidentally triggered its mechanisms in her efforts to recover the key or one of the less than capable tomb raiders she'd hired hadn't been able to resist pulling some nice, shiny lever on the wall.