Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) (64 page)

Something snatched Aedan’s attention away. There
was a clatter of chains above, a violent lurch that had everyone staggering to
regain their balance, and the cage lifted and began to rise into the air.

“How did you work it out?” Aedan managed, trying
to mask his terror with interest.

“It was the pit with those crushed skeletons that
gave it away,” said Fergal. “That’s where the counterweight comes to rest. The
dripping water was the clue to explaining the water channels – weight
equalisation. The chain I pulled must open a sluice in a channel above the cave.
Water rushes into what I presume is a hollowed out limestone block until its
weight is greater than ours, and we begin to rise.”

Aedan was pretending to listen while his eyes
searched the ground below.

Fergal continued, “The movement probably causes
the sluice to close so we don’t accelerate as we rise. At the top there is likely
to be another set of chains to adjust the water-level in the ballast block
according to the load going down. Simple, but most good designs are.”

Aedan realised Fergal had stopped talking. He
didn’t want to reveal that he had missed every point, so he asked, “How were
you able to think that out while the soldier was trying to escape?”

“I could not bear watching again. I had to turn my
thoughts elsewhere.”

“Fergal,” said Merter, “I think silence would be
wise. Look.”

At first Aedan didn’t see what Merter was
referring to. The Fire still raged in the distance. Though the light was
glaring, the dark rock and undulating surfaces still hid much in shadow. There
was the lake, its waters beginning to settle, the rows of carved stone columns
– a motionless army – and the dark cave floor, slate-like in the shadows. Apart
from that pronounced ridge about half way along, there were no distinct
features.

Then the ridge shifted.

The simultaneous flinching of every occupant
caused the cage to sway and creak. Aedan looked up and wondered how deeply the
rust had sunk into those chains.

He looked back. The ridge was gone.

They were now a good fifty feet in the air, and an
arch of the cave ceiling began to obscure the view. The steel floor blocked the
lower angle. After a few more feet they were no longer able to see anything
beneath them.

“Weapons out,” Osric wheezed.

Aedan understood, though he had no illusions of matching
Osric’s throw. The look of calculation he had seen in those yellow eyes had
convinced him that such a trick could not be repeated.

They readied themselves, blades pointing out
through the bars like the spines of a hedgehog, but this was an unhappily plucked
hedgehog. With the soldiers disarmed and Osric unable to rise from the ground,
the defence did not look reassuring.

Chains clinked and creaked. The counterweight
appeared from above, passed them not far to the side and dropped away at a
speed equal to their ascent. Aedan was able to glimpse the pool of water in its
hollowed out centre before it disappeared from view.

With the fire light cut off, they rose into a
darkness relieved only by Fergal’s oil lamp. He snuffed it, and all was lost to
the eye but the faintest outlines.

Creak, rattle, clink, clink, clink …

If there was movement taking place beneath them,
the growing noise of the chains masked it. Still they listened, straining their
senses to the limits of that divide between the real and the imagined.

Aedan was just beginning to relax when his ears
were assaulted by a hiss like the spray of a tempest. He gripped the bar in
front of him just as something slammed against the base of the cage and threw it
upwards. For a perilous moment, they hung in the air, the floor no longer
beneath their feet, and then steel and flesh fell as one and came to a jarring
halt as the chains locked taut.

But not all of them.

The cage staggered and listed over to the side as
one of the ancient links broke free and the chain tumbled down onto the roof
bars with a deafening clatter.

Everyone slid over the floor and came to a stop
with arms and legs stuck out through the bars, wriggling, squirming to work
their way back in. Aedan almost impaled himself on his sword. It slipped from
his grasp, but snagged at the edge where he managed to retrieve it. Liru was
less fortunate; hers flew out beyond reach and fell away.

They scrambled to their feet as best they could,
braced themselves, and waited. Aedan’s arm was scratched raw from the rusty
metal surfaces.

The space around them constricted – more heard
than seen in the darkness. Aedan caught his breath, but then guessed that the
cage had entered a channel in the rock. They were nearing the exit. The angle
of the cage, however, was wrong, and the edges caught on protrusions, scraping
and juddering with a harsh metallic din. It was a good thing no limbs still
dangled – they would have been torn off in a blink, and a scream.

The clattering did not relent until a dim light
grew above them and they screeched to a halt in a large storage or loading room
partly filled with stone blocks and mining equipment. Daylight, at last, poured
in through windows and warehouse-sized doors.

The cage did not quite reach the level; it was
still partly sunk in the channel which meant the door could only open partway.
They squeezed out one at a time and climbed up onto the landing platform. Fergal
and Merter remained until last.

As Fergal was stepping up, the cage shuddered and
jumped several feet, launching him up in the air. Tyne and Aedan reached out
and caught him as he dropped onto the edge of the platform. For a moment the
three of them stood tottering. Liru darted in, gripped Fergal’s cloak and
pulled. It was enough to shift the balance and they staggered away from the
drop.

“Hurry Merter!” Fergal shouted. “I think it’s
found the ballast chains.”

Merter was still inside the cage. He tried the
door, but it was now completely obstructed by rock.

He was trapped.

The group stared in horror as the cage lurched
again. This time another chain snapped and the tilt increased. Merter grabbed
hold of the bars and scaled them with wild haste. Clinging to the roof struts,
he traversed until he found a bar that was partly detached at one end. He put
all his weight on it and wrenched. It moved, but it would not give. He reversed
his feet, lifting them and placing them against the roof to push his body
downwards as he pulled on the loose bar again. His face bloomed red, veins
swelled, and his whole frame shuddered with the effort, but still the bar would
not yield.

Chains snapped taut again and the jolt threw
Merter to the steel floor. A link burst and another chain fell slack, dipping
its corner into the waiting emptiness. The cage was now beneath the level of
the landing. Merter was on his feet again and up the bars, straining with
frantic desperation.

“Oh,” said Liru, looking away. “I can’t watch this.”

Aedan glanced to the side and noticed that Tyne
was not there. His eye caught movement from behind and he saw her now,
sprinting back from a tool rack with a sledgehammer. She rushed past them,
leapt, and landed with graceful precision on a small square plate in the centre
of the cage roof. Then she spun, raised the sledgehammer, and struck at the bar
Merter had attempted to loosen.

The first blow glanced to the side. She gritted
her teeth and swung again. This time the bar broke free and spun down onto the
floor. Merter surged up through the gap and leapt onto the outer frame. He
turned back, helped Tyne across and hoisted her up to waiting arms.

Then the last chain broke.

Tyne’s scream was even louder than the clatter of
steel as the cage, followed by the chains, dropped down the shaft, crashing
from side to side as it descended. Merter, who had been standing on the cage
roof, was thrown against the rock walls where he clawed in vain and fell back
onto the bars.

For an instant the structure wedged in the
darkness right at the very roof of the cave beneath them. Aedan felt a surge of
hope, but it was snatched away. There was a creak of metal, a shrill scrape,
and an eerie quiet as the iron enclosure fell away into the void.

The dread silence held them for a moment. It ended
with a crash that boomed up from hollow depths.

“Could he have caught onto the rock when the cage
jammed?” Aedan asked, his voice trembling.

“Merter! Merter!” Tyne screamed.

They all listened. There was no reply. Again and
again they called until their throats ached, but the only sounds that reached
them were the soft collapses of burning timber.

Aedan saw that Liru was crying, then he realised
his own cheeks were wet.

When it was certain that Merter was lost, Fergal
drew them away from the edge and helped Tyne support Osric. They hurried to the
large doors and stepped out onto a broad street. Fergal glanced around, getting
his bearings, then he called Aedan and pointed.

“This road bends but it will eventually take you
past the palace courtyard. From there you’ll recognise the way back.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Aedan asked.

“You need to get word to Thormar, and you need to
get Liru to safety.”

“But –”

“I’ll hear no argument. We will be slow, perhaps
too slow. Your lingering will do us no good. In fact, the larger the group, the
slimmer the hope of remaining unseen. Now go!”

Aedan set off with Liru at a run, the two injured
soldiers following. They kept to the shadowed walls as much as possible,
glancing around every corner before crossing roads.

Coming to a wide open space, they stopped.
Something remained of a few stalls and stands, but otherwise the place was
cluttered with debris. It was the old market. Aedan decided not to attempt a
dash across the middle and, instead, took a course through the long shadows of
the high western walls. As they completed their circuit, they looked back to
see the soldiers entering the market square and running straight across,
stamping and kicking their way through the disorder with enough noise to travel
several blocks down the silent streets.

“Idiots!” Liru said.

They turned and ran on. Twice they had to cross
the road to negotiate once-imposing statues, marks of the city’s former
magnificence now stretched out on their broken faces, and often they danced
between skeletons.

Eventually the leaning gate to the royal courtyard
came into view. They passed through it and ran across the open space. Aedan knew
the crown would be gone, but he looked anyway.

They rushed through the main doors, down the
sleeping banquet hall, along the series of passages still marked by Fergal’s
pebbles, and reached the stairwell.

“No lamp,” Aedan said. “It’s going to be night
down there.”

He looked behind him. The two soldiers had closed
the distance. They were sprinting and the panic in their eyes was fresh.

“Move!” the first shouted.

With a hand on each wall, Aedan led the way down
the narrow stairs. Liru’s light steps and shallow breathing followed close
behind. The soldiers were moving fast, too fast. It wasn’t long before one of
them fell, thudding and wincing until he came to a stop just behind Liru where
he swore freely and struggled to regain his feet. He was lucky. Such mistakes could
be fatal.

“I never saw the snake you woke,” said Liru
between rapid breaths. “Was it small enough to follow us here?”

“The head was as big as a saddle. I think it could
get down this stairwell, but I’m sure it could eat a horse.”

They burst from the darkness into the staging
chamber. A torch flickered with a dark red flame and black smoke, and as he
looked around, Aedan knew they should not have come here.

“Slipped the net did you?”

It was Rork, the heavy soldier with the loose jaw
and slippery, leering eyes. He flung a crossbow down, drew a very bloody sword
and strode towards them.

From behind, a noise of pounding feet grew and the
two soldiers burst into the room, knocking Aedan and Liru to the side and
tumbling into Rork. The first clutched a bleeding head, and the second, a
clotted stump of a forearm.

“Monster!” the first of them gasped. “Quick – we
need weapons.”

“Monster?” Rork said, raising his eyebrows,
smiling slightly.

“Some kind of serpent-dragon thing. Oh yes, you
just go ahead and laugh. It’s real and it’s as big as a whale! It swallowed
Marvyn and Drake like they were rats.”

“Marvyn and Drake
were
rats. And you’re a
gutless, spleenless, brainless liar. What really happened?” Rork shouted, spit
leaping from his flabby lopsided mouth as he shoved the man in front of him.

While the soldiers bawled and cursed, Aedan looked
around the room. Senbert and Holt were on the floor, gagged and bound. Aedan
felt his knees weaken as he recognised Commander Thormar lying in a dark pool.
There was a crossbow bolt protruding from between his shoulder blades, and it
looked as if someone had been hacking at his head and torso.

Aedan turned his eyes to Rork. Only the lowest of wretches
could shoot that big-hearted man in the back and then.… He tried to steady
himself, to keep his anger back and his eyes from misting. Images of a lazy
river and a quiet porch that would now remain empty kept tugging, goading him.
Thormar had not deserved this.

These soldiers would be chased down and hanged if
word ever reached Castath. Their lives would depend on making sure it never did.
Thormar, Aedan realised, was only the first. As soon as the soldiers ended
their argument, he and Liru would be silenced for good.

Aedan noticed Holt looking at him. When their
stares locked, Holt motioned with his eyes and head down the passage. The
message was clear.

Run!

Heading back to the others was not an option – the
entrance to the stairwell they had just left was blocked with jostling soldiers,
and the ascending ramp was an unknown. The long corridor out was the only
escape. With small steps, Aedan edged away from the light, taking Liru’s arm
and keeping her beside him. He had learned that sudden lateral movement would
be more likely to draw attention, so he backed directly away with slow steps.
The black slime still clung to them, so as they neared the end of the chamber
they almost dissolved into the shadows. They could now move to the side. Aedan
drew Liru quietly towards the tunnel.

Five paces.

He felt the ground with his foot before each step.
They could not afford to stumble.

Three paces.

The soldiers fell silent. His grip tightened on
Liru’s arm and he prepared to run. But the lull was brief. The voices grew
again, louder than before. Aedan and Liru slipped into the darkness of the long
passage.

“Shoes off,” Aedan whispered.

The stone was cold, but smooth and dry. A red glow
from behind was just enough to show them where the walls were. They set off at
a run, swift and silent.

After a hundred paces the darkness was complete.
They slowed down but kept jogging, arms held out on each side. Whispered
reflections from their own pattering feet helped them sense their way between
the walls.

Aedan thought they might be nearing the end when
there was a terrific din of shouting. It was followed by the ominous clatter of
hooves as a rider appeared behind them at the far end of the tunnel, flaming
torch in hand. The light was only a spark in the distance, not enough to show Aedan
the incline ahead. He and Liru both pitched forward as they reached it. They
scrambled to their feet and hurried up into the chamber where the wolves had
pressed them.

It was dark in here. Aedan took Liru’s hand for
fear of losing her. He worked his way along the dark walls until he found the narrow
entrance to the stairway he had seen on their arrival.

The thrumming hooves drew nearer, shaking the dark
space with echoes.

Climbing these turret-stairs – far steeper than
anything they had seen in the fortress – without a light would be precarious at
best, but there was no choice. Aedan went first. The stairs were narrow, even at
the outer edges. Each was at least twice as high as it was wide. A fall here
would be much like a fall down a ravine. Bare feet helped somewhat, but the
surfaces were dusty and even bare feet could slip. They climbed at a pace that
was balanced between urgency and caution.

The hooves fell silent.

They climbed on. Though his hands were encumbered
by the boots he was holding, Aedan found it necessary to use both hands and
feet. He whispered for Liru to do likewise. The darkness made it all too easy
for them to topple over backwards. He was sure there would be exits in the rock
at stages, maybe narrow passages that would enable them to loop around a
pursuer, but he found none, only the interminable stairs. He was puffing hard
now.

But then a doorway appeared in the outer wall. A
faint radiance betrayed the narrow exit while the stairs continued on upwards. Aedan
made the decision quickly. He slipped through the opening into a dimly
illuminated space.

It was a long and narrow room filled with racks
from floor to ceiling. Some held arrows and crossbows that were mostly
disintegrated, and the rest held rocks grouped in sizes – hundreds of them. Trolleys
stood beside the racks, many already loaded.

Aedan hurried to the far end of the room. It
opened onto a wide corridor running left and right. Cut in the outer wall were
arrow slits and, between them, slightly larger openings. The featured surface
on the outside of the statue had completely hidden these. Behind the openings
stood compact catapults of a design Aedan had never seen. They were eaten
through with rust and cloaked with moss and ivy, but what remained of the intricate
arrangements of hinges, rails and wound steel looked enormously powerful.

These towering statues did far more than provide
lookouts and archery posts; they were guard towers in disguise. Aedan had no
doubt that the range of the catapults overlapped that from fortress walls; it
meant that a siege force would have been caught in a death zone, fired on from
both sides.

The rocks gave Aedan an idea. “Let’s try and roll
one of these down the stairs,” he said.

They rushed back to the entrance, grabbed the
closest trolley and pushed it, but the ancient wheels were rusted solid. Aedan
grabbed one of the mid-sized boulders, wrenched with all his might and
staggered with it in his arms to the opening. As he rolled it out onto the
stairs, a large hand gripped the corner of the doorway.

The first impact of the boulder was followed by a roar
of pain and anger, but Aedan didn’t wait to find out what the damage was. He
whirled around and yelled at Liru. “Run! Go right. Go right!”

Before he reached the end of the room he caught up
to her, grabbed her arm and led her to the left. He hoped Rork hadn’t seen. They
rushed along the gently bending corridor, weaving between trolleys and
catapults, stumbling occasionally over boulders hidden in the dusty half-light.
After fifty paces they reached a turret stairwell leading up, while the passage
continued to encircle the giant statue. Aedan worried that they might encounter
Rork circling in the opposite direction, so they took the stairs. It led them
up to another level much like the first.

They stopped and listened.

Aedan was unsure now. Could Rork have found
another stairwell? Could he be on the same level, ahead of them?

The silence was broken only by the low hooting of wind
through arrow slits. Then there was another sound. They both heard it – a soft
metallic scrape, like the tip of a sword brushing stone, the sound a man could
make if climbing a turret-stair with his sword held out in front of him. Rork
had not fallen for the trick. He was right behind them.

They ran. The angle of the outer rock here was
slightly different, allowing shafts of sunlight to slice across the passage. It
made the obstacles even more difficult to spot. They both tripped several
times. When they reached the ammunition room, identical to the one below, they
stopped and looked back. This time, there was no uncertainty. Big steps pounded
towards them and a tall figure flashed from the darkness whenever it cut
through a shaft of light.

Aedan hurried past the racks to the doorway that
opened onto the original stairwell. Up or down? There was no time to ponder. He
chose up and climbed a little more than a turn before stopping.

“Quiet,” he whispered.

They heard the scrape of Rork’s jacket as he
entered the stairway. Then he fell silent, obviously listening for his prey.

After the sudden exertion, Aedan found his head
was less than steady, like water slopping around in a recently moved tub. It
made his orientation on the steep, dark stairs uncertain, and for a dizzy
moment he felt as if he were falling backwards.

His fingers were cold from the stone under his
hands when the sound of boots reached him. Rork was moving down. When the impacts
of his large boots had faded to near-silence, Aedan started climbing again. He
remembered the height of the statue and wondered how much of the giant was left
when he thumped his head against something above him. There was a flash of
light, then darkness and pain.

“Ahh!”

“What is it?” Liru asked.

Aedan reached up and pushed. The trapdoor broke
off its rusted hinges and fell away with a clang. He winced at the sound. The
light revealed a movable stone block beside him. He guessed that it could be
slid across to seal off the opening above, but he could not see how to shift
it.

He climbed the last few stairs up through the
trapdoor. As he stepped into the open air and looked out, he immediately
crouched. Liru crawled out and Aedan replaced the trapdoor, hoping their
pursuer would be uncertain about the direction of the sound and abandon the
chase in the darkness. As Liru stood, her knees bent too, and she instinctively
put a hand to the ground.

They were standing on a small circular platform,
perhaps twenty feet across, obviously on top of the giant’s head. A low, ivy-clad
parapet surrounded them. They could now see that the statues on either side had
similar platforms on top, each overlooking the green plain that rolled out a
long, long way below, rich velvet in the afternoon sun. But it was not only the
height that was causing them to stoop, it was the wind.

A thick bank of cloud was barrelling in from the
mountain, and the gusts that swept majestic grassy waves down the hills and
across the plain were almost pushing them off their feet.

Then something extraordinary began to happen, and Aedan
felt a wild excitement.

“Look. Look!” he said, pointing. “It’s the storm
you missed last time. It’s happening again!”

Liru turned and gasped.

Bright afternoon hues began to peel away above the
curiously shaped bank of clouds, revealing the azure of night, and from this
deep blue darkness, stars emerged until they covered half the sky. The western
sun still cast its glow over the land, painting it with copper fire. The wind
picked up and the clouds continued to alter shape in the strangest ways, as if
they were being moulded rather than blown, and then they began to move as one,
as an army charging in formation, though no army ever moved with this speed.
They rushed forward until they were directly above, then they stopped.

And all fell silent.

The wind died, birds hushed, the whole land waited.

It was like a scream in the emptiness of night
when the broken trapdoor slid open.