BuccaneerBass

Viridian’s hands went to her pistols, but Matthias stood and put a hand on her arm before she could throw down. Honour’s own hand went to her sword and she pulled the blade forth an inch before addressing the monks of the Nine Dragons. Although she kept her eyes on the blind monk in front of her, it was clear from her tone that she spoke to all nine.

“We desire no violence, but our need is great,” she said in a loud voice. Birds took flight at the sound so that soon there was nothing for the monks to listen to but the paladin’s words. “Beyond your temple is a great evil and it imprisons a dear comrade. We mean to rescue her and your temple is the only passage we know of. We must pass through; we cannot accept any denials.”

“She cannot accept,” said one of the monks.

“Impatient on the journey,” said another.

“She is just like the god she worships,” said Na So, the nun. “As he leads, so she follows.”

“Morrow is impatient?” asked Honour, so confused by the claim that she did not think to be offended by the criticism of her deity. She looked at Matthias for clarification. He nodded slowly.

“Before he ascended to divinity Morrow studied here with the Nine Dragons,” he explained.

“What? No!” Honour could not believe what was being said.

“Argument cannot dissuade the truth,” said No Den. “What is, is.”

“But it’s heresy,” she began but stopped as she remembered Matthias was standing beside her.

“You did not think they excommunicated me for my dress sense, did you?” he asked with a wry smile. She stared at him.

“You believe them?”

“We know that Morrow and his sister traveled many places in their life,” said the Warlock with a shrug. “They both studied many things from many sources in their quest to rise. There is no reason why they could not both have studied here.”

“But that would mean this temple has stood for centuries, for over a millennia!”

“Then it is dedicated to Menoth?” Honour’s grip on her sword tightened as she asked about the god of the ancient faith. Behind her Garreck groaned as he returned to the temple entry, rubbing his head and straightening his leather jack. With suspicious eyes, Viridian and Honour scanned the nine mystics. When her eyes finally returned to Matthias, the gunmage shook his head gently.

“It was dissatisfaction with the worship of Menoth that led Morrow to consult these monks,” he explained. “Or so they say.” Honour lowered her eyes, thinking.

“Wha’s goin’ on?” asked Garreck, his voice softer and lower than before.

“Apparently these monks trained Morrow and his sister when they were still mortals,” Viridian whispered.

“These monks? Them some old buggers?”

“We have waited here since before the Orgoth crossed the seas,” said one of the monks.

“Perfecting what we know,” said another.

“Never teaching without learning as well,” said No Sa.

“Guarding a path which we will only walk twice.”

“What path?” asked Viridian. Her hands had long since fallen from her pistol butts and she watched the monks in fascination. Her mind struggled to fathom the notion of people who were over a thousand years old.

“Our path,” said Matthias. “Down into the belly of the beast.” The conversation stopped for a moment and the sound of birds could be heard from the aviary above. The pagoda creaked in the wind.

“How can the Church not know these things?” asked Viridian.

“Prob’ly do,” said Garreck. Honour scowled at him, looking up as if awakening from a daydream. The dwarf only shrugged his shoulders. “Jus’ coz they don’t teach it, don’t mean they don’t know it!”

Honour looked at Matthias who met her eyes for a moment and then looked away gently, as if he did not want to hurt her by confirming the difficult story with his glance. She looked down to the floor again and shook her head, trying to make what she was learning fit with her faith.

“What then?” asked Honour. “If you are so ancient and mighty that you could teach Morrow, how can we satisfy you? What must we do to cross your temple? I will pay any price, I promise you!”

“As Morrow promised, so does she,” said a monk.

“He fulfilled his promise,” said another.

“She cannot,” said a third.

“No, she cannot pay,” said No Den in his soft voice.

“Do you doubt me?” Honour demanded. There was an edge of desperation in her voice. “You cannot deny me! I have traveled too far! I will not be left out in the night! I will pay whatever you ask, only open the door…” Tears began to flow down her cheeks and her hand twisted on the hilt of her sword, as if she fought to keep herself from drawing it. “I have seen your skill and do not doubt you would defeat me in combat, but if you force me, I will fight to win through to the other side! I will die before I turn back!”

“As will I!” declared Viridian.

Honour looked back at her comrade and the two shared a smile of loyalty and commitment. Next to Viridian, Garreck did not share the smile, but shrugged and looked away. She had not expected his support. Turning back to Matthias she looked to see if he would stand by her. He did not say anything but looked at her with a piercing gaze that seemed for a moment to block out the rest of her vision. She shivered as he looked into her and in his eyes she read something she did not understand at first. With a rush of surprise she realized it was admiration, honest and unabashed. He smiled and in spite of the difficult circumstances, she smiled back.

“You cannot pay us in any currency we would accept,” No Den said. Honour was thinking about his words when Matthias surprised her a second time.

“I can, can’t I?” he said. No Den nodded.

“What currency?” asked Honour.

“One may walk a path one thousand times and learn nothing more than was learnt the first time the path was walked,” said a monk.

“Then on the thousand and first time, discover something that had remained unseen all the previous times,” said No Sa.

“We guard the path we will only walk twice,” said another monk.

“We must learn all we can before we walk the path again!” said No Den.

“What does that mean?” Honour demanded. She looked down and saw that next to her Matthias hand unslung his duffle bag from his shoulder and was removing the box with the matched pair of pistols inside. She looked back to No Den. “That is all you want? Pistols?”

The monks ignored her, but Viridian thought she understood.

“Not pistols,” said the pistoleer. “Magelocks.”

“Will you give them the guns, Matthias?” Honour asked.

The gunmage paused and looked at her.

“You called me Matthias,” he said, as if using his name had some special significance. Then he shook his head. “They do not want me to give them the weapons.”

“Well what do they damn well want?” Garreck demanded, losing grip on his patience once more. As his angry voice echoed around the temple floor he glanced at No Den who met his gaze with calm. In spite of the monk’s apparent blindness, something in his expression unnerved Garreck and the dwarf lowered his head. He muttered something unheard under his breath and rubbed at his chest where the monk’s push had landed.

“I will teach you of the art of the gunmage and the magelock if you will open the way to my companions,” Matthias offered out loud, holding the inlaid box under one arm

“Thank you, Matthias,” said Honour and Viridian clasped his shoulder, to show her own gratitude. There was a long moment, as the monks seemed to consider the Warlock’s offer, though they did not speak a single word to each other.

“We will accept this offer,” No Den declared finally. “The way is opened to you and to the companion you hope to return with. Walk the path ahead and return.” He stood to one side and the line to the doorway on the other side of the temple was open and clear.

“Thank you! Thank you!” said Honour. She looked to Matthias. “How long will it take you to show them?” The gunmage shook his head and smiled. Honour had a sense that she had missed a vital point.

“The way is opened to you, not to me.”

“What? Why not?”

“He will not ever leave,” declared No Sa.

“Why?” demanded Viridian and Honour at the same time.

“It has been decided.”

“Decided by whom?” asked Viridian. The monks did not answer. No Den stood as impassive as a statue.

“I cheated,” said Matthias finally. The others all turned to look at him. “I dragged Marsendat up that damn path and when I got to this temple I thought for sure I was delivered. The Nine Dragons would not let me pass. I begged and pleaded with them, all the time terrified that the cephalyx would come and drag me back to their laboratories, turn me into a drudge. Marsendat raved and drooled and I debated with the masters here. When at last I understood what they wanted, to learn of new methods of combat, new weapons or new techniques, I nearly despaired. I was a novice, I knew nothing new or original. At last I proposed a deal, if they let me pass with Marsendat I promised to learn a new art and return with the knowledge. I meant it when I struck the deal; I even began my study of arcane guncraft so that I could fulfill my commitment. Then the Church cut me off and I stopped caring. I never thought to come back here.”

“You have known this all along,” said Honour. “You’ve known they would not let you leave once you returned?”

“I knew my own treachery; I did not imagine they would trust me twice.”

“But you still led us here. You didn’t look for another way.”

“There is no other way.”

“I never…never thought…” Honour’s voice trailed off. Matthias smiled gently.

“I left thirty friends and comrades here,” he said. “I try to forget them, but I cannot. I did not want to help you, did not want to have to, but the truth is…I would not leave a rat to those monsters. Go, save her and get back here.”

Honour stared at Matthias for a long time, until Viridian began to shift quietly towards the opposite side of the temple. Garreck also headed across the wooden floor, his heavy footsteps causing the boards to creak. Viridian took hold of Honour’s hand, but the paladin would not move.

“Honour,” said her friend. “We have to go.”

Honour turned to follow for a moment and then stopped. With sudden speed, she strode to Matthias and grabbed the front of his robe. Twisting it in her grip she pulled his face towards hers and kissed him passionately. When she was finished, she drew back but did not let go of him.

“I think I would have liked more,” she said. “But I’ll be damned if I’m going to leave you without at least having that!”

The three of them crossed the temple and just before he walked across the other bridge Garreck asked one last question.

“I don’t suppose you have a plan for getting us off this little rock, should we actually manage to get this little filly out of her prison?”

“Do I have to think of everything?” quipped Matthias. “One thing at a time. You just get her back here.”

Somehow the wind was even stronger on the other side of the Nine Dragons temple and as Honour led her last two companions down the path following the ravine wall, she thought she could feel the breeze blow past her in pulsing rushes, like the air from a smith’s forge or the puff of a vast steam engine. She sniffed the air for any scent of steam or smoke, but could not find any. Looking over her shoulder at the two behind, she noticed Garreck walked with his head down, ignoring his companions, his hand always on the hilt of his fighting blade. Viridian caught Honour’s gaze and the two of them looked back one last time. Behind them the impossible pagoda rocked and vibrated in the wind while birds circled and swooped. There was a sound that might have been the retort of a gun, but the wind snatched it away before it could be recognized.

Soon enough the path began to turn inward to the wall and the temple passed from sight. The trio was confronted by an iron gate, with bars so ancient it had turned completely red and scabrous with rust. Near where the gate met the rock floor of the path, three of the bars had been bent out of the way, to create a small gap, enough for a man to squeeze through. This was where Matthias had escaped five years before and the exit had never been repaired. Honour thought that it boded well; it was possible the cephalyx knew nothing of this weakness in their defenses. She face the other two once more.

“Well this is it,” she said. “We have made it this far and beyond this gate is the comrade we came to save.”

The other two nodded grimly.

“Who’s gonna save us though, eh?” asked Garreck.

“Put your faith in Morrow,” urged the paladin. The dwarf was not impressed. Viridian was likewise uninspired by her old friend’s urging.

“This isn’t the time to be making converts,” she said.

“I am not proselytizing,” said Honour. “But I tell you truly, Morrow led Matthias out of here five years ago and we were led to find him so that we could rescue Tarleen. I am certain of this fact! I am surer now of the truth of my vision than ever before! We are here to rescue a priest of the faith.”

“But we aren’t priests of the faith!” Viridian protested. “We aren’t faithful or holy! Matthias is a heretic; Garreck’s a street thief! I am…I was a whore!”

“And I am the castoff bitch doxy of a noble family,” said Honour, naming her shame openly. “I was abandoned to the night and the wolves, but I have found such allies and comrades as few have ever enjoyed. If this is not Morrow’s blessing, then what is? And if such as we do not need Morrow’s mercy, then who does? Trust in his care and the true vision he sends!”

“This true vision?” asked Garreck. “Does it ‘appen to show you anythin’ ‘bout a mature and wordly but nonetheless ruggedly ‘andsome dwarf survivin’ to escape this bloody rock?” Viridian and Honour both smirked in spite of the circumstances. Honour put her hand on Garreck’s shoulder.

“I will make a pact with you, Three Fingers Short,” she said and then she looked past him to Viridian. “We will all make a pact. Before Morrow and Katrena we swear that none of us leaves unless we all do. So if Morrow’s going to get me off this island, he will have to take you too! How does that sound?”

“So at least I won’t die alone, is tha’ it?”

Honour smiled, shaking her head.

“It is all I have to offer,” she said. Viridian smiled as well. Garreck shrugged and bent down to look at the gap in the bars.

“Tain’t a big ‘ole! Looks as the gunmage ‘as gained some weight since ‘e went through ‘ere.”

“Can you make it?”

“I can,” said the dwarf. “I don’t fancy yer chances though, not wi’ that armour.”

“Easy enough,” said Honour and she began unbuckling the straps of her pauldrons and other armour pieces. Garreck and Viridian pushed themselves into the gap, one after the other. By the time they were through Honour had removed all of the bulky parts of her protection, leaving her breastplate, the greaves on her lower legs and her gauntlets. Her only other garment was a pair of moleskin leggings. Laying herself flat against the ground, she squeezed through the gap under the bars, pushing her sheathed war sword ahead of her. In spite of her efforts to fit the gap, the back of her breastplate still dragged against one of the bent bars and the metal squealed loudly in the close darkness of the tunnel beyond. Viridian and Garreck watched the dark path ahead with weapons at the ready. With every screaming inch of Honour’s passage they waited for the silently floating figure of a cephalyx or the thudding footfalls of a drudge, coming to catch them at the gate, but no monsters emerged from the shadows.

“Who leaves a hole in their defenses after a prisoner has escaped through it?” asked Viridian in disbelief as Honour finally pushed herself to her feet and hooked her sword to her belt once more.

“Why question our good fortune?” asked Honour with a shrug. Their dwarven companion had a different thought.

“Ye don’t waste time searching for every little ‘ole a rat can climb through,” Garreck answered Viridian’s question. “Ye send a ratter out ta kill ‘em.”

“Maybe so, but once you know it’s there, it serves you well to block the hole if you can.”

Three Fingers Short said nothing further. He looked past Honour to the pieces of armour she had left on the other side of the gate.

“Ye want ta pull them bits through?”

She shook her head. “On the way back there’s a good chance we will want to move with haste,” she explained. “I may not have time to disrobe again. Better to leave it for now.”

Garreck moved forward into the darkness, his Rhul-born senses requiring no light to see by. In only a few short paces the two women lost sight of him in the inky shadows while they stood by the gate. He returned and reported.

“The passage turns to the right about twenty paces down,” he told them. “Around the bend it goes straight some ways. There’s some sort o’ light comin’ from the other end o’ tha’ tunnel! It ain’t much ta see by exactly, but if ya keep yer hands to the wall ye should make yer way sound enough, least ‘til the light gets stronger.”

“Well, this is what we came for,” said Viridian. “We’re here now.”

“Short both of the two mages who would have been more than a little help,” Honour said wryly, her face recognizably sour, even in the shadows. “Without Dokor; without the extra weapons and equipment we brought with us on the Bey.”

“I thought you had faith in your vision?”

“I do,” she affirmed. “But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like this to be a bit easier!” She gave them both one last shadowed look. “No one gets left behind!”

“No one gets left behind,” they agreed. Garreck led them down into the uncertain darkness.

Groping for the dry rock wall of the tunnel, Honour crept forward by inches. In spite of Garreck’s claim that there would be some light to see by, the paladin found only pressing blackness. The tunnel seemed a physical manifestation of the recent passage of her life, a hesitant and inexorable crawl into unending darkness, pressing on in the hope of finding the light.

There’d better be a light at the end of this tunnel, Morrow! she prayed silently.

Even only a month ago she would have chastised herself for taking such a tone with her god, but too much had changed. Somehow she knew that the god she had believed Morrow to be was a false image. She was learning something new of him, something more intimate and true. Morrow was not like Menoth, the hard and unyielding taskmaster. She had treated him that way, lived in fear of him, as though he waited for the least excuse to fall upon her with brutal judgment. Now Honour saw that she was wrong and that her god had drawn her out into this quest to reveal more of himself.

That was why the gunmage had been along too. Matthias Warlock was everything that Honour thought Morrow despised, but under his rakish charm and angry heresy, he was as devout as any she had known, believing the truth of Morrow’s teaching even as he was shut out from the church that did the teaching. As she stepped ever forward, grasping for the coming light, Honour realized that there was more to holiness than miters and chaunsels, than robes and rituals.

The tunnel wall curved away to the right and the paladin traced the wall with her hand. Rounding the turn she finally began to see the light Garreck had reported. It began as a gentle radiance, so soft that it was little more than an undertone to the black darkness. By slow steps, the radiance grew to a discernible purple glow, so that soon the tunnel’s opposite wall became visible. Looking over her shoulder, the paladin nearly started as the reflected radiance made Viridian’s normally green eyes momentarily glow a deep violet colour.

“Eyes like a wolf,” she whispered. When Viridian cocked her head with curiosity Honour explained, “Your eyes are reflecting the light, like a wolf’s.”

“Elvish eyes,” said the pistoleer with a shrug. “They all do it.”

“I never noticed.”

“If you ladies could finish this little chat ano’ver time,” hissed Garreck from behind Viridian. Honour nodded and crept forward once more.

Ahead, the tunnel turned tightly to the left and the purple light came from around the corner. Sneaking up to the turn as quietly as she was able in her armour, Honour could hear mechanical sounds that seemed to echo loudly, as if in a large chamber. She crouched down, her back leaned against the tunnel wall, and the other two joined her. For a time the three of them merely listened to the noise. They said nothing but communicated their fears and uncertainties with silent glances. At last Viridian signaled that she would take the risk and she stepped softly around the corner.

“Saint’s tits!” she swore openly and both Garreck and Honour rolled their eyes in exasperation. Viridian stepped back around the corner and waved to her companions. “You have to see this!”

With a shrug, the two followed her around the corner and both realized immediately why she had not bothered to attempt stealth. The tunnel opened out onto a circular shaft that dropped into the earth and out of sight. The shaft was easily fifty paces across and it was sealed by a roof of rock no more than a dozen feet above them. The tunnel opened onto a ledge that ran both ways around the circumference of the shaft. Almost out of sight around to their left an iron ladder mounted to the wall let down to another shelf-like ledge ten feet below. That ledge was followed by another and by still more, evenly spaced down the wall of the shaft until the detail was lost in darkness.

Looking downward though, all their eyes were drawn to the source of the light. Suspended, apparently in the air, fifty to sixty feet below them, was a vast sphere of glass, easily thirty paces across. The sphere was bound inside a network of curved ironwork, as if caught in a net. Inside the sphere a cloud of glowing purple mist swirled in an ever-shifting maelstrom, like a storm trapped in a bottle, unable to blow itself out and raging eternally. The light from the cloud bathed the entire shaft in purple, defying the eyes to find bright colours. Though it lit the darkness, the radiance seemed to crush the soul and standing in its presences felt vaguely sickening, like the nausea of a boat rocking on a choppy sea.

Looking past the strange device, the companions could see further ironworks and glass conduits that siphoned away zephyrs of purple to machines and devices further down the shaft. Looking at first like swarming flies, dark leather-clad shapes of cephalyx floated around the machinery, tending to their arcane functions. At a distance the cephalyx seemed genuinely insectoid, often possessing too many limbs. It took Honour some time to realize that the humanoids had mechanisms attached to their backs, which furnished them with further limbs. These mechanical appendages reminded the paladin of arms of steamjacks, moving by means of pistons and gears, but they were of finer manufacture than Honour had ever seen.

As they watched, the companions began to pick out other figures lumbering around the sides of the shaft and along iron bridges that ran between the alien devices that hung in the shaft beneath the globe.

“What keeps it up?” whispered Viridian.

“Magic,” said Garreck. Viridian rolled her eyes. Beside them, Honour was holding onto the seeker amulet that she used to know the location of their comrade. Her eyes glazed over and she stared down into the shaft. At last she returned her focus to her companions and she nodded.

“She is here,” said Honour and she grimaced. “Somehow, we have to get down there without being seen. It will not be easy.”

“Of course it won’t be easy,” said an unexpected voice behind them and they turned with a start. Standing beside them in the tunnel was Jonneran, a look of cold self-importance in his eyes. Honour could not suppress a shiver as she met his eyes. She had not expected this.

The three companions stared in disbelief as the eldritch purple glow lit Jonneran’s mocking gaze, his Fraternal Order robe seeming to enfold him in dark shadows. Honour felt her chest constrict, as if the pit of her stomach was an endless fall and hanging over it, her heart shrank back in fear. She watched him with fixed gaze, fearful of his previous hold over her. For his part, Jonneran did not appear to register her presence. He was equally disdainfully of them all.

“How’d you git ‘ere?” Garreck demanded.

“Honestly, did you think the hedgewizard would be the only one capable of finding a way in?” Jonneran asked in reply. “It is no great challenge.” He paused and looked about, as if suddenly noticing that something was missing. “Where is the heretic? Did the fool got himself killed?”

Honour looked away, reminded of Matthias’ sacrifice, the complex emotions still fresh in her mind. Viridian and Garreck glared at Jonneran and reading their expressions, he came to false approximation of the truth.

“Don’t tell me he abandoned you?” he said with a low chuckle. “Oh the coward! How delicious!”

“He did not abandon us!” Honour declared reflexively, then looked away again. Jonneran gave her a scathing glance.

“No? So what happened then?”

“He made a necessary sacrifice,” said Viridian. “He gave a lot to get us here! More than you.”

“And yet I am here and he is not,” mused the mage. “One has to wonder how necessary his sacrifice really was.”

“Arrogant shite!” declared Garreck.

“Shut up dwarf!” Jonneran spat back.

“Shut up the pair of you!” Honour ordered. She fixed each of the others with a hard glare. It was possible that a tear rolled down her cheek, but the uncertain light made it difficult to tell. “I am here for Tarleen, not to discuss our shared past. If you can help us Jonneran, then by all means rejoin us. If not, then stop wasting my time. We need to make our way down and I will not risk giving us away just to bandy useless words with you!”

Jonneran nodded with an oily smile.

“I know a way,” he offered. “With a simple mix of minor magic and genuine cunning, I’ll bring you to where you need to be.” He pointed along the ledge to the iron ladder and led the way. Honour followed next, with Viridian and Garreck bringing up the rear. The dwarf held his loaded pistol ready and glowered.

“I don’ trust ‘im!”

“Silence, fool!” Jonneran hissed back from the top of the iron ladder. “No one cares whether you trust me and your fool whispering will give us away!” Before anyone could say any more, Jonneran swung out onto the rungs of the ladder and clambered downward. With no other choice, the others followed.

On the next ledge, Jonneran led them further around the circumference of the shaft to another ladder. He paused at the top, watching down to the third ledge where a drudge was making its slow way around to a spot where an iron strut anchored itself to the wall. The surgically modified slave stopped and appeared to perform some kind of maintenance on the footings. While it was focused on its task, Jonneran quickly made his way down and led them at a dash to the next ladder.

Through several more levels they moved like mice, alternately hiding and scurrying. Soon they were on the level of the globe of glass with its entrapped magical storm. Here they passed their first cephalyx, the shadowy, leather-clad figure floating in the air between the conduits that siphoned away wisps of the arcane tempest for incomprehensible purposes. Jonneran pressed everyone back into the shadows near one ladder as the cephalyx drifted past. The creature’s face was entirely masked in leather, with two glass lenses for its eyes. There were no openings for mouth or nose and watching, Honour wondered how the thing might eat or even breathe. Gradually it floated away to the other side of the huge, glass orb and Jonneran led them once more on their scurrying course to the next downward ladder.

With each further level down the numbers of cephalyx and drudges constantly increased. Dodging the seemingly mindless slaves, the comrades witnessed such scars and vile modifications to the flesh that it beggared the imagination. No violation of the body was beneath the minds of the alien chirurgeons; flesh and metal were interchangeable. Bolts held helmets in place. Screws, stitches and rivets crisscrossed flesh as naturally as hair, nails or bone.

In spite of the increased numbers, Jonneran led the party unerringly, picking just the right moments to wait and to go. He found a clear path without a single misstep until they were deep in the shaft, with the globe glowing far above them. Honour forced them to pause in an alcove so she could check her amulet. By its magic she felt that her comrade Tarleen was still far beneath them. Jonneran waited impatiently for her to finish and when she nodded he turned in a rush from the alcove to lead off, stepping straight into the path of a marching drudge. Although the figure’s pale skin suggested that it had once been human, its limbs were swollen in size and musculature so that they were like an ogrun’s. Jonneran stared up at the slave’s faceless glass and bronze helmet, as it stood unmoving in front of him. After a pause the creature simply turned in its path and walked away. The unfortunate monster turned a corner into a tunnel and out of sight.

“That was lucky,” Jonneran said to his companions and moved off again. Behind her Honour heard Viridian release a tense breath. The elf pressed against her battle-sister’s back in her eagerness to follow on, but Honour would not be moved. She stared out into the shaft at the floating cephalyx and the marching drudges, apparently all busy about their arcane tasks. She did not believe it. Sheathing her sword, Honour drew her dirk and rushed after Jonneran. Seizing him by the collar of his robe, she threw him back against the rock wall and pressed the dagger’s edge to his throat.

“When’s the ambush?” she hissed.

“What are you talking…?” Jonneran began to argue, but she shook him to silence. They stared at each other for a moment and Honour felt herself wondering how she could have ever loved this man. His lips twisted upward in a contemptuous smile of pure evil. “You always were a fool.”

Sensing the danger, Honour looked over her shoulder into the shaft. Floating in the air all the cephalyx now turned from their tasks to look at the party. Lidless eyes of glass stared through the purple shadows and as surely as rain knows it must fall, the companions knew they were trapped.

Jonneran chuckled and Honour turned back in rage. She thrust her hand forward to slash open his treacherous throat, but her arm refused her mind’s command. Her head was suddenly crowded with the touch of noisome thoughts. She tried to remember herself and regain her will, to recall the healthsome touch of the sun or the sweetness of fresh air, but all of that was pressed out of her. Her mind was bathed in a cloud of dark and fetid shadows, as if she had been immersed bodily in a cesspool. Her skin crawled and nausea clawed up her throat. Worst of all, in the midst of the violation, she knew that she was being examined, studied. The cephalyx were reaching into her mind like dispassionate thieves, heartlessly searching for any valuable they might take for their own ends. This was the mind rape about which Matthias had warned. Honour felt dirtied to the depth of her being, as if filth were pouring over her in a cascade and she wondered if she might ever feel clean again. If she had known it could be like this, she wondered if she would have had the courage to face this enemy, even to rescue her friend. It had taken no small amount of bravery for Matthias to risk this evil once more.

The telepathic voices of the cephalyx echoed through her mind as they discussed her in the same way goodwives would discuss fish and meat in the market, comparing quality and usefulness. Though she could not turn her head to see them, Honour knew that her companions were being likewise violated. Forced to face Jonneran, unable to move, she could see by his eyes that he too was not immune. The look of disdain had been replaced by one of unfocussed terror. She wondered if he could even see her, or if the mind rapists had robbed him of any sense of his surroundings.

Though it pleased her to think of him trapped in his own treachery, a sense of the wrongness of it also grew inside her. Justice must be clean and pure. He deserved no better than to be abandoned to evil, but somehow she must not let that happen. Justice must not ever benefit the plans of evil. The light should banish the darkness, not merely abandon the fallen to the shadows. Another thought rose up with this sense of justice, a warm, healthy certainty. It was her commitment to her deity and his commitment to her. The shadows entrapped her, surrounded her and washed through her like deep sickness, still the truth of her place in Morrow remained. She was his and he was hers. Katrenna, patron of paladins and women warriors, was as a sister to her. In the depths of darkness, Honour realized that she was not now alone and would never be again.

Like a dawning sun pressing back the night, the presence of Morrow pushed back the minds of the cephalyx. Honour knew she could not fight them, not beat them in their own fortress at the height of their power. Instead she resolved to resist them, to deny them to the fullness of her meager strength. Better to die on her feet than to bend the knee to vileness. Digging her fingers like claws into the folds of Jonneran’s robe, she pushed backwards into the void. The blackness of the shaft rushed upward as she and her erstwhile fiancé fell. Telekinetic fingers pulled at her armour, but slid off, unable to grip. Falling to her death, Honour wanted to weep for her two comrades still on ledge, left to the mercy of monsters.

I am sorry I cannot save you, she thought. Then she looked into Jonneran’s terrified eyes. And this is a better end than you deserve, bastard!

Then the darkness enfolded them and nothing more could be known.

The dark night was starless, but Honour could see the approaching dawn in the purple shift in the sky’s blackness. She lay on her back and waited for the sky to lighten and the day to come, then she would rise from her bed. For a long time the dark did not lift and she began to wonder why. Then it occurred to her that she could not remember where she was camped or what she planned to do with the day. From the cold discomfort of the ground beneath she guessed that she must be out on the march somewhere, but her company’s orders eluded her. What was their mission?

She tried to rise, but a hand pressed her down. A woman’s voice told her to rest and Honour smiled when she realized it was her comrade Tarleen speaking. She let her head relax against the ground. It felt good to hear Tarleen’s voice again, after such a long time. The promised dawn still refused to banish the night and Honour slipped back into unconsciousness before she remembered why it had been such a long time since she had heard Tarleen’s voice.

Honour woke to the sound of prayers and it felt pleasant to hear. Slowly she realized that she was lying underneath some kind of makeshift shelter made from twisted iron and other scrap metal. She turned her head to look about and retched violently. Bile washed through her mouth and drooled out smashed lips onto her face. Pain staked a claim on her limbs and shut out clear vision. The noise of someone clambering across the ground heralded the arrival of gentle hands and she felt herself pushed onto her back once again.

“Careful sister,” said Tarleen’s voice, though Honour’s vision did not yet clear enough to see her face. “You’re safe here, but not ready to move yet.”

“Tarleen,” Honour whispered. “We found you.”

“Indeed, you did, but I can’t believe you came looking.”

Honour tried to reply, but found it difficult to express her reasons for searching for her lost comrade. Finally, Matthias’ words rose from her memories and they seemed the most appropriate; “No one gets left behind.”

Tarleen said something in reply that Honour could not understand. The paladin’s vision refused to clear as Tarleen began to pray. Soon droplets of fresh, sweet water dripped over Honour’s lips and she opened her mouth to receive them.

“Drink as deeply as you can,” said Tarleen. “It will refresh your flesh and draw you into deeper healing. You must rest. Your wounds are dire, but the mage’s are worse. He requires more of my attention.”

Honour realized to whom Tarleen was referring and nearly laughed in disgust, but the water’s healing properties washed away her agonies and sleep enfolded her once again.

When she awoke the third time Honour rolled over on her side and looked around to get a sense of where she was. The scrap metal shelter was open all along one side and barely high enough for her to lie on her side without her upper shoulder scraping the metal roof. The space was only just long enough for her body laid flat and for a moment she felt as if she had been laid out on a burial shelf in some junkyard catacomb. Looking away from her metal shelter, she could see another similar shelf-like space facing hers not a dozen paces away. The shelf was hidden under the mound of a pile of junk metal that was higher than she could see from where she lay. Jonneran’s body was laid out in the other shelf, asleep or insensible. A woman with straggling, ash-blonde hair sat with her hand on his chest, her back to Honour’s shelter.

“Tarleen?” Honour asked and the woman turned her head between hunched shoulders. The sight of the woman’s face shocked Honour and she nearly recoiled. The Tarleen that Honour knew was a vibrant woman of faith, full of the life and passion of her god. The woman before her was so drawn and desperate that Honour would not have recognized her if they had passed in the street in good light. Looking at her through dim shadows with only the eldritch glow of the cephalyx machines far above, Tarleen might easily have been a shaft wight, like the pitiable monster Maggot. Her cheeks were sunken with near starvation; her skin was sickly and pallid. Looking into her hazel eyes, Honour wondered if she saw fear, weariness or madness. Whatever else, they told of a life haunted and lived continually in the shadow of death.

“You’re looking much better now,” said the long lost priestess and her voice was still the sweet sound that Honour remembered.

“Thanks to your ministrations,” she said. The two watched each other for a long moment, each aware of the immense weight of their now shared circumstance, but neither able to find ready words to talk about it. At last, Honour opted to follow her curiosity. “Where are we?”

“At the very bottom of the shaft,” said Tarleen. “In amongst the convene’s detritus and discards.”

“The convene? You mean the cephalyx?”

“You know their name?”

“Yes,” said Honour, nodding slowly. “A…friend…told me.”

“Convene is what they call themselves in such numbers,” Tarleen explained. “It means something similar to clan or family, but those words carry all the wrong connotations. They have no knowledge of the deep bonds we would understand in such words.” Honour nodded again; having seen the cephalyx at close hand, she had no doubt Tarleen’s words were true. She chewed her lower lip in thought for a moment and realized that it was now healed, no doubt by her comrade’s priestly ministrations.

“Have you been hiding down here all this time?” she asked at last. Tarleen cast her gaze over the small space that Honour now realized was a cleft dug in a deep mass of discarded junk.

“It’s a strange place to call home, but it has preserved my life for such a long time that I feel a kind of affection for the place.”

“And they do not know you are here?”

“The convene?” asked Tarleen and she looked up as if she could see them from where she hunched beneath their garbage. “They come here rarely, even less lately. They tend to their perverse machines and vile trade and leave the garbage to itself.”

“What is it all for?” asked Honour. Tarleen cocked her head to one side and smiled a wry smile.

“Many of their devices service the convene or its slaves,” she said.

“Yes. Others of their machines are so old that they themselves probably don’t remember the functions or purposes. They have been here a very long time.” Tarleen stopped in her explanation and became soberly thoughtful, as if she could remember for herself all of the years of the cephalyx convene and their underground colony. At last she smiled again. “But the main machine, that great glass orb? It exists for the sole purpose of gathering the blighted energies of these islands for themselves.”

“Blighted energies?” asked Honour, troubled by the term.

“The power of the dragon,” said Tarleen. Her eyes glittered with a dark knowledge that made her friend shiver involuntarily. “The blight of Lord Toruk himself. It spreads from his throne across these islands, blighting flesh and land with equal vehemence. And the convene collects what it can of that power, using the umbral magic for their own fell purposes. They gather it in vast amounts, but I cannot discern the purpose they store it for.”

“You have garnered so much regardless,” Honour said and the two became silent once again. Honour lay back once more with a strained sigh. Though most of her wounds were healed, her body had not yet regained its strength. “All this time, Morrow has preserved you down here, in the darkest of holes.”

“Not quite, dear sister,” said Tarleen. There was a strained quality in her voice. Honour gave her friend a worried look.

“What do you mean?”

“I have left Morrow’s service, dear Honour,” Tarleen said. “I no longer follow the god of our fathers.” Her words chilled Honour to the marrow.

Honour’s head swam as she struggled to grasp the full meaning of her friend’s words. This was Tarleen, the most devout woman Honour had ever met; scholar, theologian, healer. How could she have relinquished her faith? What was it about this umbral pit that drained all the certainties from one’s life? Since she had begun her quest to this island Honour had lost her fiancé and fallen in love with a heretic, an outcast from the church. She believed that her god walked with her but now she was in a hole deeper and darker than any she had imagined. Even if she were granted the strength to climb from the pit, the shaft’s monstrous denizens would only capture and enslave her. Every time she felt her balance regained, an axe was laid against another pillar at the foundations of her faith and her identity. She wondered if this latest blow would take the keystone, collapsing the house of her mind to ruins.

“How could you leave Morrow, Tarleen?” she whispered. Her eyes pleaded for a wholesome answer.

“Do you remember the campaign against that Protectorate butcher Garoloth?” Tarleen asked, absently picking at the ground with a piece of rusted wire. It seemed to Honour as if she was writing something in the dust but the word was never finished.

“I remember,” said the paladin. Her voice trembled slightly. “He was marauding through frontier settlements, butchering villagers and calling it ‘purification’. We said he was the Mad Mennite!” Honour swallowed at the memory. The sight of whole families tortured to death by the scrutators had unmanned even the most hard-bitten veterans on the campaign.

“Remember how you gave me your shield?”

“Yes, of course,” Honour answered, surprised at the memory. “It was your first true campaign march and your shield came loose fording that fast flowing river.” Tarleen nodded with a gentle smile.

“You gave me yours, because my need was greater,” she said.

“My armour was better quality than yours and I fought with a pistol in my off hand anyway.”

“The gods do the same, you know.”

“They’re all on campaign,” Tarleen said, returning her eyes to her writings in the sparse dirt. “There is war in the heavens and we are some of the weapons they bring to bear.”

“What are you saying?” Honour’s concern was overtaken by confusion. “Do you think Morrow has given you up? Lost you in the river, like a shield?” Tarleen shook her head.

“Not given up, dear sister, given over, to one who needs me more than he.”

“Cyriss,” said the priestess, the corners of her mouth turning up in an impish smile.

“The clockwork wench? Oh you must be joking!” declared a male voice from the shadows behind Tarleen. The two women looked to see Jonneran lying in his niche, listening to their conversation. He barked a derisive laugh. “You have some taste in friends, Honour! Whores, heretics and monsters!”

“Traitors too, it seems,” Honour retorted and Jonneran glared at her. “It was too much to hope that you would die if I did not!”

Honour’s words surprised Tarleen who raised an eyebrow.

“Isn’t he your fiancé?” she asked. Jonneran hissed angrily, but Honour made no answer. “Perhaps I made a mistake saving his life.”

“All life is precious,” Honour said without enthusiasm. “But I would not have cared if you had not.”

“No, of course you wouldn’t you murderous slut! You tried to kill me.” Jonneran’s voice echoed angrily in the confined space.

“You dare?” demanded Honour, raising herself up on her elbow once more. “You planned to surrender us to the cephalyx! To trade us for your own life! Or did you trade us for some magic knowledge? It is your greatest love, after all!”

“What would you know?!”

“That’s it? That’s all that you can think to say to defend yourself?”

Tarleen raised her hands one to each of them and hissed to quiet them. Honour fixed her ebony eyes on Jonneran, continuing her argument wordlessly. The mage shrugged his shoulders and turned his back on both women. Honour looked to Tarleen but the priestess kept her hand up for quiet while she listened to sounds from above the trio’s hiding place. In the quiet the sound of metal scraping against metal crept along the edge of hearing. A shower of iron filings fell from the roof of Honour’s cleft shelter. She froze as the ferrous cascade was followed by a set of long, steel fangs mounted in a jaw of cast iron. As if a chain of gears had grown into a living creature, the iron coils and ratchets of a gear wyrm slithered, snakelike into the space between the two women. Coiling like a serpent and scraping like fingernails on a slate, two yards of metal body dropped into sight.

Eyes made of coils of copper wire looked first at Honour and then at Tarleen. Honour looked to her friend but the priestess did not spare a glance from the monster. She met the monster’s strange gaze and slowly reached out her hand towards its head. The mechanicka creature swayed slightly, snapping its jaws at the approaching fingers. It had no true throat and so could not hiss nor make any other sound, but the grinding of its gears somehow gave it a voice of sorts and Honour wondered how she would fight the thing if it suddenly attacked her friend. For a moment she was sure the creature would bite Tarleen, the iron fangs tearing her flesh and crushing the fragile bones of the hand. With a sudden flick of her wrist Tarleen slapped the creature’s metal head and it sank gently to the ground like a chastened puppy. For a time it lay flat before slithering up out of the hole and away over the pit floor.

“What was that thing?” asked Honour.

“A gear wyrm,” explained Tarleen. “An animaton created from the confluence of magic energies and mechanicka scrap. They are known all over, isn’t that right master mage.”

Looking to Jonneran, Honour noticed that his skin was pale and sweat soaked the collar of his robe.

“You look terrified.”

“Well he should,” said Tarleen when Jonneran remained silent. “Animatons are immune to conventional magic. There isn’t a single spell known to the entire Fraternal Order that could even scratch that serpent.”

“But you can control it?” asked Honour. Tarleen shook her head.

“Influence,” she said. “Not control.”

“A conjurer’s trick,” said Jonneran. His lips twisted in a sneer. “No more than any market square snake charmer.”

“Yet you could never do it,” Tarleen replied, with a smile of gentle amusement, like a mother with a cross toddler.

“Why would I care?” Jonneran snapped churlishly. He rolled over once more, turning his back to the women. The pair shared a smile at his willful anger, but Honour was careful not to laugh out loud, in case the gear wyrm might return. A happy moment with Tarleen brought back many hopeful memories for Honour and she sighed gently. Tarleen clambered to Honour and checked on her wounds.

“We must escape, Tarleen,” Honour said quietly. “There is a path out through tunnels in the mountain. We left a guard at the other end. We can do it!”

“Hush sister,” said the priestess. “We’ll leave soon, I promise, but now is not the time. There are other things we must wait for first.”

“I have seen a vision of the path out, but we will only escape when the cephalyx are destroyed.”

“How?” asked Honour. Tarleen’s touch was soothing to her still healing body and she felt sleep coming on her like a warm blanket.

“In my vision the cephalyx are thrown up out of their deep pit,” Tarleen explained. “And their bodies are cast out to feed the wolves.”

“Wolves?” Honour whispered and she fell asleep.

They waited in the dour shadows at the bottom of the pit, with only hunger and thirst to mark the passing of time. Periodically Tarleen fed them with food and water provided by prayerful magic. The three ate and drank and waited in darkness. Honour felt the strength return to her limbs and soon began to chafe at the inactivity their hiding forced upon her. She asked Tarleen if they could find her sword, but the priestess already knew its fate. The long fall had bent the blade at the tang; it could not be repaired without reforging. Honour sat measureless hours with the ruined weapon in her hands, praying and contemplating. At first her frustrations goaded her to take action, but soon she found her prayers brought her a kind of calm that made the murky light and endless waiting more bearable.

From time to time Tarleen left their cleft in the mounds of detritus to conduct the unknown business of her new divine patron. She left quietly and returned with nothing, no piece of evidence that might point to what she did when she was gone. For all Honour knew the woman moved no more than a few paces out of sight and sat there for an hour before returning. Even so, even if that was all that happened, the paladin found she was envious of her friend.

Jonneran was harder to bear. Watching him in his little niche across from her, Honour could not bring herself to hate him. He lay mostly with his back to her and sometimes she could hear him whispering to himself. Occasionally he would speak to either of the two women and his words would pick at them cruelly. It was as if he was continuing the one long conversation with them, falling silent for hours, so that Honour would wonder if he had finally given up. Then he would begin again, chastising her and sometimes Tarleen. He lashed them with long discourses of venomous contempt and self-pity, heaping blame and anger together. While her anger rose periodically listening to his diatribes, Honour eventually came to marvel at how vile it must be to be Jonneran, so full of poison was his mind and heart. She would never again love him, but she found she pitied him, in spite of herself.

They were eating a meal of prayer-conjured bread, which for all its nourishment tasted like wet paper, Tarleen suddenly turned her head and raised her ear to listen. Reaching out, she took up a short handled flail with two mace-headed chains. As the other two stopped eating they began to hear a scraping sound coming from nearby. The sound began to take on a regular form and soon it resolved itself into the clear repetitions of footsteps. Honour tensed, her hand twisting around the hilt of her useless weapon. Their eyes scoured the junkyard edge of their hiding place, searching to see the source of the sound before it was upon them. The footsteps ceased just as they seemed as near as they could possibly get. Honour swallowed and readied herself to flee if forced. She would have prepared to confront any enemy, even in the face of certain death, but with no weapon and only the battered remnants of her armour, she found the fear in her chest hard to control. The silence stretched out in the darkness. Just when they began to doubt their ears and to hear phantom sounds farther away, a dark-clad figure dropped into the cramped space of their hiding place. The three scrambled away in surprise, pushing their backs into the jagged surfaces. Tarleen raised her weapon to strike the new arrival when he spoke in a friendly voice.

“Well look at that!” said the figure. “You are here!”

Tarleen hesitated and Honour nearly burst out laughing.

“Matthias!” she whispered, a smile broadening on her face in defiance of tears that welled in her eyes. The gunmage smiled at her and she pushed herself onto her knees to throw her arms around him as he crouched in their midst. For a long moment she pressed him to her, not speaking, with her eyes screwed shut. She breathed in his smell and luxuriated in his embrace, which he gave to her with equal vigor. At last she pulled back to look into his eyes. In the ethereal half-light his steel blue eyes were nearly shadowed beyond sight, but nonetheless and searching the soul behind them, Honour found herself in the first unguarded moment she had ever felt completely safe with a man. A moment’s doubt lashed her with the stinging fear that he might not feel for her what she was feeling for him but as she searched for withdrawal or hesitancy in his expression, he smiled and she knew she was safe.

“I have missed you!” he said with deep warmth. Then he looked at Tarleen and finally at Jonneran. “You, not so much!” The Fraternal Order mage sneered.

“Oh, of course,” he hissed. “Now the peasant hero can rescue the strumpet and this village farce will be complete.”

“I can rescue you too, if you like,” said Matthias in his mocking tone. “Or you can stay; do not feel obliged on my account.” Jonneran’s eyes grew wide with rage but before he could say or do anything more, Tarleen interrupted.

“Who is this, Honour?”

“Tarleen, dear sister, this is the man who guided us here; the survivor of Marsendat’s expedition to this forsaken island,” Honour explained.

“The heretic monk, Matthias?” asked the priestess.

“Matthias Warlock now,” answered Matthias.

“But a heretic, nonetheless,” spat Jonneran. Matthias nodded.

Tarleen smiled, not as openly as Honour, but in welcome. “You’ll find heresy doesn’t set you quite so far apart in this company,” she said and Matthias’ brow wrinkled in confusion. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

“Indeed?” Matthias was plainly surprised, as were the other two.

“Yes,” said Tarleen, straightening up and standing so that her head was over the lip of the cleft. “Now, we must hurry. There is much yet to do.”

“If you say so,” said the gunmage. He stood as well, looking to Honour for an explanation. She rose beside him and shrugged.

“Of course,” said the priestess. Honour was astonished to see her friend infused with a new energy, like the embers of a fire suddenly stirred to a conflagration by oil or fresh fuel. “You have only a short time before the attack, do you not?”

“An hour or two to find you,” Matthias agreed.

“What attack?” demanded Jonneran in a too loud voice, any caution swallowed in his uncertainty. “Who is attacking? Are we being rescued? Is it the Order?”

“Your brotherhood doesn’t know where you are and couldn’t rescue you even if it wanted to,” Tarleen told him in motherly condescension. Jonneran’s fists balled in rage. The priestess ignored him.

“Follow me,” she said and slipped out of the cleft into the shadows. Matthais and Honour glanced at one another for a moment and then the Warlock followed Tarleen. As he crested the lip of scrap, Honour realized he was no longer wearing his mage robe. Instead he wore a tunic coat of gunmetal grey tied with a new sash of a dark colour she could not make out in the half-light. He wore a pair of fine leather gloves, but shockingly, no guns or gunbelt.

“Where are your pistols?” she whispered as he reached down and helped her from the hole.

“Close to hand,” he said with an enigmatic smile. While she was puzzling over his words, he looked past her at Jonneran still down in the hole. “Come with us. No pride, no fight, nothing is worth staying in this place over.”

For a long moment the mage stared out from the hole with his arms folded and his face set like flint. Finally, he too reached up and Matthias helped him out as well.

“Besides,” said Matthias as Jonneran icily followed after Tarleen ahead of the gunmage. “There will be no point seeing me get my comeuppance if you do not live to gloat about it with your brethren.”

Like roaches cringing from the sight of a homeowner, the four of them crossed the bottom of the pit with swift stealth. From moment to moment they cast their eyes upward, fearful and hopeful. Only Tarleen seemed disinterested in the activities of the cephalyx convene and the insane workings of their machines. After her long imprisonment there was little left she wished to see. Rather the priestess led the other three on a confident path to the pit wall, where metal rubbish was heaped in great, random drifts against the native rock. Tarleen was clearly in haste and she began to ignore any noises made by the ruined landscape that she crossed. She clambered over bent iron girders and between steel plates twisted and crumpled like screwed up pieces of paper. Then one by one they followed her scrabbling across the surface of a metallic sphere larger than a horse drawn carriage, their feet slipping on the alloyed surface. Finally they arrived at a set of rusted rungs, hand holds embedded in the wall and leading into the shadows above.

“Here,” said Tarleen. “This is where we must go.”

“Where does it lead?” asked Matthias.

“Up, into places we must go.”

Matthias frowned doubtfully and Honour shook her head. Seeing their displeasure, Tarleen sighed.

“I have been here so long with only my mistress for company,” she explained. “I forget that not everyone knows what I know! This great shaft is only the middle of the cephalyx home; the axle down the centre of the machine. There are tunnels and rooms that lead out from this into the rock like pistons, or the spokes of a wheel. Many of the lower chambers are storerooms, where only the drudges go.”

“What is in these storerooms?” asked Honour. Tarleen smiled.

“Toys?” repeated Jonneran breathlessly. He had fallen behind on the climb and only reached the others in time to hear Tarleen’s last word. Seeing the rungs in the wall he looked up and then down again at their priestess guide. “This is it? How can we be sure it’s safe?”

“The rungs will hold!”

“How do you know?” he demanded, his tart voice full of mistrust. “And how long have you known about this?”

“Well if you knew how to get out, why didn’t you escape before now? Why just squat all this time at the bottom of a hole?”

“The timing wasn’t right,” said Tarleen, her mystical demeanor finally beginning to show ruptures of frustration. “Now the time is right and we must hurry!”

“How do we know you aren’t leading us into a trap?” asked Jonneran.

“Like the one you tried to put us in?” snapped Honour. Jonneran hissed at her angrily.

“It would have been much less effort to simply let you die from your fall,” Tarleen explained. “However, I saved you and waited for the right moment, as I was bid. To do otherwise would have resulted in failure. If the timing is wrong then things misfire, the engine seizes. Smooth running requires the right timing.”

“Shut up Jonneran!” said Honour. The two turned on each other for a moment but before a full argument could bloom between them Matthias placed his gloved hand on the first rung pulled himself up. Perhaps to escape the confrontation or simply to be not shown up by the gunmage, Jonneran pushed forward and was second on the ladder. The two women followed.

The simple ladder clung to the living rock, the dark metal of the rungs all but invisible against the black stone. They counted sixty three rungs hand over hand until the ladder stopped at a narrow ledge. Clambering onto the ledge they found themselves besides the shadowed entrance to a tunnel that ran deep and straight into the rock. One after the other they moved into the entry and waited for the others behind; last of all came Tarleen. When she gained the ledge she pressed past the other three and wordlessly made to lead them into the dark tunnel. Before she could, Matthias caught her by the arm and held her fast.

“Just a moment,” he said. “I realize that we all feel a certain sense of urgency, but there are some things that need to be discussed before we go any further.”

Tarleen gave him a confused look, as if his interference was more perplexing than offensive. There was a moment's silence where she seemed be trying to think of something to say. Before she could speak, Matthias looked to Honour for support.

“I am not trying to be difficult,” he explained. “But we have a number of goals now and we need to decide the process and order in which we will attempt them.”

“What 'number of goals'?” Jonneran demanded. “Escape is our goal! What other possible goals could we have!” Matthias and Honour both silenced him with cold glances that pierced even the shadows of the pit.

“Viridian and Garreck,” said Matthias and Honour nodded.

“You must be joking!” scoffed the mage. “They're dead, surely! They were lost the moment she abandoned them to get her petty revenge on me!” Honour scowled but did not respond to the insulting accusation.

“They are not dead,” said Tarleen, her voice having a faraway quality, as if she were distracted by sights long distant. “But they are lost to us. We can find them again, but other things must first be accomplished.”

“What other things?” Matthias asked.

“We do not have the time for long explanations. If we are to do all that must be done before your comrades assault the convene, then we must hurry. I assure you all will be lost if we are late, the machine will stall! You must trust me!”

Now Tarleen looked to Honour for support. The paladin nodded; inside her she found her new confidence was strong, born not of the exhausting walls of self protection she had built around her inner wounds, but anchored in the certain trust that comrades share, truer even than many lovers know. She smiled and turned to Matthias.

“Tarleen is my battle-sister,” she said. “She saved my life in that pit and waited a long while in the darkness for the chance to do it. I do not understand her new faith, but I trust her. Can you? Can you trust to someone else's faith?”

“My own faith has not always been the best guide,” Matthias replied with a shrug. “Someone else's could scarcely steer me worse.” Honour smiled and there was a wicked glint in her eye.

“If you can trust yourself to my faith, perhaps it will lead you back to Morrow.”

Matthias rolled his eyes. “Saints forfend!”

“Oh spare me,” said Jonneran.

Dokor wondered if he should try to struggle again but did not bother. The three drudges carrying his body would no more release him now than when they first caught him. Their strength was extraordinary. As an ogrun, Dokor had little experience of being physically outmatched. After years of military service among humans and dwarves, elves and gobbers, the ranger had come to rely on his superior strength so much that he took it for granted. Faced with foes he could not overpower, the uncommon experience rankled. It was true that after several days of exhausting cat and mouse over the forested slopes of the island's mountain, lacking food and sleep, Dokor was not in peak condition, but he allowed himself no excuse. He was a ranger, living off the land should not be a privation. He was captured because he had been beaten, there was no other explanation.

At first he had enjoyed being hunted, dodging drudge patrols was an enjoyable way to relieve the boredom of his vigil at the tunnel mouth. Gradually though the stupid monsters had begun to come more frequently and with increased awareness. Dokor suspected that the cephalyx masters could sense his presence and were coordinating their servitors' activities. As days wore on the number of drudges in the forests increased so that it was not possible to run from them and the ogrun's size made it too hard to hide. After a few skirmishes with the gauntleted monsters Dokor finally fell into a trap he could not escape. Any hopes of a death and glory stand were dashed when he found himself caught in the mental grip of a black-garbed cephalyx. The ranger had stood still on the leaf strewn ground, his eyes fixed on the alien creature, as three drudges simply walked up and seized his disobedient body. Once the three had a solid grip, the cephalyx returned control of his body to him; it had felt like icy needles being withdrawn from his brain. The sensation had made him retch at first, but then he fought his captors and discovered the limit of his might. They carried him, in spite of his struggles, to an iron door hidden in a grotto somewhere on the mountain's south side. As the long journey into darkness continued, Dokor had finally despaired of wrenching free of his captors and now let them carry his inert form to whatever imprisonment they thought to bestow him. The memory of the cephalyx grip in his mind and the despairing sense of having failed his companions in his sentry duty so enshrouded the ranger's mind that by the time he realized the drudges had released him, he was already chained to a table in a cell cut from natural rock, with no door and lit by a flickering purple light coming from the passage beyond the entryway. The drudges that brought him left the cell, but a sentry remained, standing away from the stone table where Dokor was laid.

A metal collar had been placed about his neck, but twisting his head from one side to the other as much as he could, he made out the spindly black arms of strange devices which seemed to sprout from the nearby floor like trees of wrought iron. At the ends of the branches of these 'trees' were tools such as those that he had seen on the end of the spider-like arms the cephalyx fitted to their own bodies. Viewing the tools up close, the hooked and bladed implements reminded Dokor of the instruments used by battlefield chirurgeons to extract musket balls from the body and to sew wounds closed.

The manacles about his wrists and ankles felt every bit as unyielding as his captors' grips had been; after a number of attempts to break them or pull them from their housing, Dokor stopped wasting his energy. For want of anything else to do he twisted his head so that he could see as much as he could of his attendant, the sentry drudge that stood near the entrance, neither moving nor speaking. Even pushing his head around so far that the collar about his neck threatened to choke him unconscious, the ogrun could make out no more than the sentry's head and one shoulder, covered as they were by the ubiquitous brass helmet that characterized all drudges. In the dim light, he could make out a little of the shoulder beneath the burnished collar and was astonished at the thin limb underneath. The top of the sentry's arm was distinctly less muscular than that of other drudges Dokor had seen. Thinking about it, he decided that it must mean the sentry was some other specialist form of drudge, used for duties related to the surgical purpose of the room. He lay his head back in a more comfortable position and, thinking to conserve his strength, wondered if he could risk sleeping for a time.

The sentry drudge was slender, not for reasons of specialization, but because it was relatively new and the final processes of its conversion had not yet swelled its body with the excessive musculature which it would eventually acquire. Had Dokor been able to twist a little further he would have seen that the newly made drudge still wore the garb it had possessed in life, studded armour of red dyed leather, fashionably cut to suit a woman's form.