Crovax really has him rattled, she decided. Her options were shrinking hour by hour. Ertai captive, Greven immobilized, even the rebel leader Eladamri was no longer a threat. Crovax stood alone on the field, waiting for Belbe to place a crown upon his head.
She must find Ertai. Once she knew he was safe, she would go to her last resource. If he didn't help her, then every living being on Rath was doomed.
Kireno and Shamus, still attired like soldiers of the Fourth Company, boldly walked out on the open causeway connecting the prison to the map tower. Two sentries were posted on the bridge between the buildings, one on each side, facing each other. Kireno and Shamus approached in measured step.
"Halt!" the Vec rebel shouted, hoping to sound military.
"What's this?" asked the sentry on the right, nearest Kireno.
"We're your relief."
The rebels waited tensely. The guards relaxed their stance.
"About bloody time," one guard groused. "We should've been relieved two hours ago!"
"There's trouble in the Citadel," Shamus said. "That's why they sent for the Fourth Company."
"Oh yeah? You guys talk a lot, but what makes you so great?"
"We captured Eladamri," Kireno said.
The sentries couldn't top that, and they didn't try. They shouldered their polearms and prepared to march back to the Citadel.
Then one of the guards stopped. "Hey, how do you plan to stand guard without any weapons?"
Shamus and Kireno exchanged quick glances. "Uh, they wouldn't let us through the palace armed," said the Dal rebel.
"What? In a general alarm?"
Kireno dodged the sweep of a poleax and charged in before the guard could recover. He hit the man high, carrying him along until the reached the edge of the bridge. The Vec gave an extra shove, and the guard toppled backward over the rail. His scream faded as he fell, and it was soon drowned out by the constant background rumble of the factory energy beam.
Shamus had more trouble with his man. He avoided the guard's spearhead, but the back swipe of the shaft caught him behind the knees, and down he went. That would have been the end of him if Kireno hadn't jumped on the guard's back, knocking the Rathi soldier's helmet off in the process. They fell in a tangle on top of Shamus and rolled over and over in a flurry of fists and kicking feet.
Eladamri and Takara came out of hiding at the prison tower gate. By the time they reached the scuffle, the unfortunate guard was hanging by his hands over the side of the bridge. Shamus was out cold, and Kireno was bleeding from a busted lip. "Help! Help me!" yelled the guard.
Eladamri and Takara stood over him. The Rathi soldier stopped shouting.
"Please help me," he said.
The elf held out his hands. "Thanks to Greven il-Vec, there's not much I can do," he said. "Lady, please help!"
Takara looked around. She spotted the guard's poleax. In her weakened condition, she couldn't fully pick it up, so she dragged it by the butt end to the edge of the causeway.
"That's it," said the guard. "Hand me the shaft, and I'll climb up."
Takara said nothing, but held the poleax shaft over the guard's head. He regarded her quizzically until she let go. The stout shaft connected solidly with the soldier's bare head, and he disappeared with a screech. The poleax tipped up and followed him into oblivion.
"A waste of a good arm," Kireno said. He knelt by Shamus and patted his face roughly to revive him.
Eladamri leaned on the rail, looking intently at Takara. "That was cold."
"I learned from an early age, if someone gets in your way, put them aside," said Takara.
They cleaned up the bridge of all traces of trouble and hurried to the map tower. The door was locked, but Takara claimed she knew how to circumvent the mechanism. She fearlessly thrust her hand into the flowbot jaws and manipulated the lock inside. Eladamri and the rebels waited to see if the jaws would bite off her slender arm.
"My father taught me this," she said. "Good for sneaking in where you're not allowed… I hope Volrath hasn't changed the locks since he threw me in prison."
With a loud clank, the doors spread apart. Takara carefully withdrew her arm from the lock.
"After you," said Eladamri.
The interior of the map tower was suffused with wavering green light, which fostered the odd sensation of being underwater. It came from the tower cone, glazed entirely with heavy, irregular panes of jade-green glass. The upper half of the map tower was taken up by some kind of complex machinery, all gears and cams and glowing powerstones. Takara led Eladamri and the rebels into an amphitheater, which filled the bottom quarter of the structure. This single room was over three hundred feet wide and featured two concentric seating platforms, focused on a central column of intricate design. A set of wide steps descended to this column, and overhead, a segmented gantry curled above the central pillar like the tail of a huge metallic scorpion. As they entered the vast, empty chamber, their footsteps rang hollowly off the green glass walls.
"Welcome to the Map Room," Takara said. Her voice was still weak from privation, yet the acoustics of the map room enabled her voice to be heard easily.
"I don't see any maps," said Shamus, still groggy from his fight on the bridge.
"I'll show you."
She descended a staircase to the inner ring of seats. At the foot of the steps was a panel, covered with strange glyphs and symbols. Takara stood before this arcane altar, hands poised. Then, as if playing a musical instrument, her fingers flew over the controls, touching the symbols in a complex sequence.
With a deep hum, the enormous machine awoke. The broad descending column, covered with brazen cog wheels and bundles of tubing, retracted ponderously into the ceiling. It left behind a thick stump, serrated with large angular flaps. These flaps folded outward and stopped. When the column was about thirty feet up, it locked in place.
"Now what?" Eladamri asked in a hushed voice. "Here." She stroked a single glyph.
The air between the column and the serrated base shimmered. A swirl of gray and green fog formed, whirling on both axes. It darkened, became opaque, and assumed the shape of an oval spinning globe. More definition developed, and the rapid rotation slowed. In seconds, the globe settled into a mottled gray egg, turning slowly on its vertical axis. "Rath," Takara said.
Eladamri looked on, fascinated. "This is Rath?" Takara nodded. "For years I've heard philosophers debate priests about the shape of the world. Most of the holy ones taught the world is flat, surrounded by a void, like a stone lying in a stream. Some philosophers claimed it was round, like an egg." "Which did you believe?"
"I always considered it unimportant. Since no one can see the whole world at once, what difference does it make what shape it is?"
"It's with knowledge like this that the evincar can locate and strike his enemies."
"Show me the Skyshroud Forest," he said. Takara toyed with the controls, and the gray globe was instantly replaced by a flattened half-sphere. Centered in the portion facing Eladamri was a broad, irregular patch of dark green.
"This is Skyshroud as seen from a height of 100,000 feet," she said. Punching a button made the green patch treble in size. "From 20,000 feet." Takara touched the panel once more, and the image swelled to cover the entire hemisphere.
"From 10,000 feet," she said. "This is how it looks from Predator."
Eladamri looked for the Eye of Korai, his village, and other features he knew. None were discernible. There was texture to the image, made up of taller and shorter trees, but the canopy was as featureless as the sea.