Achaeos began waving his arms, a flick of his wings took him up onto the rail, then either the wind or his own volition whisked him off, and he was airborne. The shimmer of his wings ghosting from his back, he circled the gasbag, gesturing and shouting, while the rest clung to whatever they could find, waiting for their flying machine to begin its plummet to the ground.
Allanbridge laughed at them. ‘One arrow?’ he called. ‘Even your worst ship can take a dozen before it falters, and Collegium kitted me with Spider-silk! See, arrows just stick in her!’
‘But will they stick so happily in you?’ Thalric yelled in return.
Then Achaeos was back, clinging to the rail doggedly until Tynisa helped him on board. Looking pale and exhausted even from that brief flight, he pointed towards the mountains.
‘Mount Tornos,’ he announced. ‘Take us there.’
‘Your fellows going to shoot any more arrows at us?’ Allanbridge asked. Beside him Gaved shrugged his sleeves back a little, freeing his hands for his stinging Art.
‘I convinced them not to cut your machine open,’ Achaeos said. ‘No more than that for now. Bring us in, and I can talk to them further.’
In the wind-whipped air they saw glimpses of several hooded grey figures, strung bows raised at the ready. It was impossible to say how many there were in all. Ahead, an entire mountainside seemed to have gone ragged. What had seemed sheer rockface at a distance was now revealed as intricately worked and carved, hundreds of hands over centuries cutting the face of the stone with statues and carvings, scripture and frescoes, story-sequences of a thousand images telling the minutiae of the Moth-kinden mythology. Even Thalric, who had seen so much, took a moment to appreciate the vast scale and to realize how the carvings went on deeper into the mountain itself, leading to darkness that only the blank eyes of the carvers could penetrate. He wondered if he was the first Wasp ever to set eyes on these wonders.
He would not be the last, he knew. The Empire’s hand had not yet risen against these carved rockfaces and these stepped slopes, but there were imperial armies in nearby Helleron, so this visit might prove his only chance to see Tharn as its makers had intended it.
It took a surprising time for Allanbridge to find a mooring he felt happy with, one that would not see his ship dashed against the mountainside by high winds. The city’s makers had not foreseen such a need, of course.
When they were lashed securely, and had disembarked onto the perilous narrow walkways that were all the stone offered them, they finally met the Moth-kinden. The natives’ greeting was delivered from the air, and comprised of pure hostility: a dozen grey-clad forms with arrows set to their bows, white eyes narrowed in anger. Achaeos took off into the air again, winging over towards them. Allan-bridge and the others just waited, clinging precariously to the mountainside. If the Moths decided to make this intrusion a fatal one, then only the Wasps would have much chance of survival.
Still, Allanbridge began chuckling slightly, and when Gaved raised an eyebrow at him he said, ‘Waste me if I’m not the first Beetle aviator ever to tie up here. There’s a story to earn me a drink or two.’
‘Not at all,’ Thalric snapped. ‘Beetles being what they are, I’ll wager a dozen have already tried this trip. It’s just that none of them were given the chance to return home and brag about it.’
Allanbridge shot him a dark look, but then Achaeos was back with then, dropping into their midst and stumbling on his landing. Tynisa held him up, as he took a moment to catch his breath.
‘They will let us in,’ he got out. ‘I can’t vouch for the warmth of your welcome, but they say they will not kill you.’
‘Popular everywhere we go,’ Allanbridge muttered. ‘They realize, I hope, that I’m Collegium, not Helleron, right? I never went near a mineshaft in my life.’
‘Don’t think that would make a difference, even under normal circumstances,’ Achaeos told him. ‘Our coming was foreseen, though. At least, my coming was foreseen. The Skryres are expecting to speak to me.’
‘Foreseen, expected, whatever,’ the Beetle muttered. ‘You just get your business done with, so we can be gone from here. Those lads with the bows aren’t looking at me any nicer than before you went to speak with them.’
There were rooms set aside especially for foreigners in Tharn, providing one comfort that the natives did not require, which was light. Heating was not part of the Tharn hospitality, it seemed, or at least the stone hearth remained conspicuously empty. As the light was by way of a stone wall carved into an intricate fretwork that let directly onto the icy air outside, they remained bundled in their thick clothes. The room was rich in elaborate engraving, poor in furniture, so they sat huddled about the walls and waited.
Achaeos himself had been given no chance to attend to their comforts. The moment that they had stepped in from the outside air there had been a messenger waiting for him, a girl of no more than thirteen.
‘You are Achaeos,’ she stated flatly.
‘I am.’
Her blank stare was horrified yet fascinated. ‘The Skryres send for you, right away. You have to come with me, now.
‘You were ever a troublesome boy,’ the Skryre chided, as she drifted through her private study. Four carved stone lecterns supported open books and she paused at one to read a few idle words in the utter darkness. She turned her head sharply, catching Achaeos in the midst of shifting his footing. ‘By questioning what we did not wish, failing to question that which was given you to investigate, you always showed yourself a far from diligent student of the greater arts. Furthermore, clearly a man of poor judgment when it came to choosing his companions. Your tastes have changed, I see, and not for the better. For now, as well as the Hated Enemy, you bring us Wasps.’
‘Renegade Wasps,’ Achaeos explained.
Her expression remained disdainful. ‘The very kinden that you yourself warned us of, and now you bring them to spy out our halls. It must be some perversion of spirit that, every time you return home to us, you court banishment. Banishment at best is what you deserve.’
‘I require your aid,’ Achaeos persisted.
‘You have no claim on it,’ she reprimanded him. ‘Your last crusade left many fools amongst our people dead, merely to cripple some single mechanism of the Hated Enemy. Now the eastern Empire holds the city of our enemies, and raises a fleet of flying machines. Their soldiers are coming here, Achaeos.’
‘I…’ Achaeos’ mouth was suddenly dry. ‘I had not realized, so soon…’
‘Oh, this is no great campaign for them,’ the Skryre said acidly. ‘This is a winter pastime for them, a mere diversion, to send a fleet of flying ships up here and install themselves as lords amongst the savage mountain people.’
‘But what will you do?’
‘What we have always done: husband our knowledge against the storm, pry our minds into the cracks and shelter in the darkness. Do not measure us by your crooked standards, Achaeos. The Arcanum has a long reach, and we have found our path to survival.’
‘What is it? Tell me!’
‘I tell you nothing,’ she snapped. ‘You have lost our trust, Achaeos – a son of Tharn and yet your allegiance hangs by a thread. When last you came here, you carried a taint; now you are utterly rotten with your embracing of the enemy.’
He swallowed, hoping that to be just a poor choice of words on her part, but knowing it was not.
‘Why have you come here, Achaeos?’ she demanded.
‘I must have your aid,’ he repeated. ‘No matter what you think of me, I must have it. You have to know that someone has found and freed the Shadow Box of Darakyon. Surely it cannot have escaped your notice.’
‘I have felt its passing,’ she admitted, seeming abruptly subdued, wrapping herself tighter in her robe.
‘I shall retrieve it,’ he said simply. ‘It was stolen for the Wasps, but now it is loose, and I shall find it. And then…’