Mike Wild - The Clockwork King of Orl

As Slowhand had no hesitation in pointing out, the water was farking freezing, and even right next to the shore Kali could feel strong, swirling undercurrents tug at her and try to pull her away into the darker depths, but she fought against them, keeping to the jetty's side and clinging to it with cold, wet hands. As Slowhand followed, she inched her way along the stone, and the further she went, the more uneasy she began to feel — a feeling that was difficult to explain, almost as if they were sharing the water with… something. But she saw nothing.

At last they drew even with the two sentries, waiting for a particularly strong gust of wind before continuing, lest the smallest ripple give them away. They pulled themselves perhaps another twenty yards along the jetty before deeming it sufficiently out of view to climb out, but just as they were about to do so, a series of clatters and rumbles from the shoreline made them plunge back into the water.

"Dammit, Makennon!" Kali hissed.

"Too late to make a run for it," Slowhand advised. "Stay down."

They did so, heads bobbing as if decapitated on the surface of the water, and watched as Makennon and her retinue rumbled slowly along the jetty towards their position. The woman had brought everything with her down the steps, including the wagons on strangely articulated wheels, and staring up from the water at the torchlit procession of horses, mages and soldiers — not to mention Munch and his cage containing the ogur — both Kali and Slowhand felt like small children watching the arrival in town of some bizarre carnival. The trouble was, it looked as if this particular carnival would be pitching tents just ahead of them, blocking the path to the cowl.

Or would they? As Kali and Slowhand watched, the procession reached the far end of the jetty and then continued on into the cowl-shaped structure, each of the wagons disappearing into the maw until the rear of the last seemed to tip and was gone. Slowhand stared at the front of the cowl, craned his neck to stare at its rear, and worked out that there was no way it was deep enough to take them all.

"Now there's a turn-up for the books," he said. "Like that magic trick where you pull worgle after worgle out of a hat." He paused. "Only in reverse." He paused again. "And with wagons instead of worgles."

"Make more sense if it just continued down, eh?" Kali said. She looked at Slowhand's bemused expression and found she had to explain by waggling her fingers. "More steps," she said. "It must be underwater. Orl must be underwater."

The concept was clearly difficult for Slowhand to grasp, and she couldn't blame him — she had never seen anything like it either. "Underwater? Hooper, you are sure this is Orl, aren't you? Not some forgotten tunnel under the Stormwall? Maybe they are taking the ogur on holiday, after all."

His question was half-rhetorical and, in truth, he expected an answer like: "Of course I'm sure," but what Kali actually said was: "No."

"No?" he repeated.

"No," Kali echoed. "The scrolls in Andon were… a little contradictory in places. Oh, don't get me wrong, this is Orl all right, I'm just not sure that it's called that. But now that we're actually here there may be a way to find out. Come on."

Kali heaved herself from the water and a confused Slowhand followed, shaking his leg to rid his pants of water. Kali had already reached the cowl and was examining it when he caught up.

"Old Race sites sometimes have identifying runics," she said, "particularly if they're of dwarven origin. I think it was a clan thing."

Slowhand smiled. "You mean they gave their houses names? Like Dunhammerin'?"

"Something like that. Should be one just about — ah."

Kali knelt by a rough inscription, brushed away seasalt and grime with her hand, concentrated and frowned. These carved runics were never completely decipherable — there were far too many cryptographic elements she simply didn't have knowledge of — but in general she was able to get the gist of what they were saying. And the gist of this one confirmed what she thought. This place wasn't called Orl, it was called Martak.

No, wait, she thought. The runic contained too many characters, there were gaps where they shouldn't be, and the emphasis was wrong…

Hells, Martak wasn't a word, it was a -

Kali's mind filled again with the images and accounts from the manuscripts in the Three Towers. Yes, what she read fitted with them, made sense. But if that was the case — if this place wasn't called Orl — then why the reference to the Clockwork King of Orl, a phrase that even the old man himself had used? Could it be he was mistaken — that Makennon and her people were also mistaken — and it was again a reflection of how difficult it was to decipher the Old Race language? That, or perhaps even some of the old manuscripts themselves were wrong, that somehow, over the long years, the phrase had become misinterpreted, corrupted? What she would need to do in that case was put the phrase in context, think about it in the overall terms of the accounts she'd read…

Unbidden, her second vision leapt once more into her mind, the desolate landscape, the pounding, the figures rising over the horizon.

My gods, she thought, what had happened here at Martak? What had driven the dwarves here, to this lonely place at the edge of the world? What had become of them?

Exactly what was the Clockwork King?

Questions, again. And only one way to find out the answers.

Kali peered into the cowl, making sure their way was clear. They were going in.

"Well, this is a new one," Slowhand said, gazing uneasily up at the shadows that enveloped them. He felt as if he were indeed entering some giant maw.

"What are you talking about?" Kali said, her voice echoing slightly in the dark.

"You — actually going in through a front door."

"Hey, there's a first time for everything."

They might have been going in through the front door but that didn't make them welcome guests — just the opposite, in fact. While there was little danger of their being confronted by the original inhabitants of Martak, there was no way to tell if Makennon had stationed any men on the steps down. They could also hear the clattering of her convoy further below — sound travelled easily inside the cowl — and they took care to move slowly, making no sudden moves whose echoes might alert the Faith to their presence behind them.

Thankfully, as they proceeded down more of the huge steps, the sea baffled most of the sound for them. While they could still make out the crashing of the waves outside, the sound was for the most part overlaid by the noise of the great black pipes that curved into the cowl from under the sea. Actually, they weren't strictly pipes any more, but tubes, each the thickness of two men, their casing after they entered the cowl changing from rough and barnacled metal to smooth, if age-grimed, glass. What could be seen inside was a murky detritus and seaweed-filled brine that glowed slightly and, agitated by the outside motion of the waves, slopped back and forth within. Bladed fans also stirred lazily along their length at regular intervals, their purpose, for the moment, unknown.

The steps that had led the way down the cliff continued down and down, and in the light from the betubed sea — caused by algae, Kali guessed — they could be seen in more detail than had been possible above. They were less weatherworn, too, and this extra factor drew Kali's gaze to their risers.

"Look at this," she said, kneeling and brushing away grime.

"Erm, what exactly?" Slowhand queried.

"There are more runics here. Carved into the fronts of the steps."

"So?"

"So…" Kali said. She frowned as she studied them. For once, the runics were easy enough to understand, common words in the dwarven language. "I don't like what they say."