The last of them scrambled to his feet and drew a knife before Nyam could get to him. He raised it to kill the pilot. Vaddi made to deflect the blow, but another sudden lurch of the ship thwarted him and his dirk clanged harmlessly against the ship. For a moment it seemed that Vaddi himself would perish as the mercenary swung round on him, blade inches from his neck, but Cellester’s sword struck the hand off at the wrist at the same moment that Nyam ran his own weapon through the mercenary’s neck.
Vaddi rolled over and up, shaking his head in relief.
Cellester was beside the pilot, whose face was a mask of agony. “Can you get us down?”
The man’s side pumped blood where the knife had opened him, possibly fatally.
“We’re being drawn into the mountains. Air currents here are dangerous. Like whirlpools. The elemental wants to be free. Too strong for me. My control is weakening. I think they … ring was damaged in the attack. I can feel the elemental struggling to break free.”
The ship was dropping, parallel with the lower slopes of the massive range. The pilot was trying to turn the prow back out toward the desert, though it was a gradual process. Too steep a turn would flip the whole ship over.
“I can’t hold her,” he said, sagging back, eyes closing against the pain.
“She’s turning,” Cellester encouraged him, watching the rocks below coming ever closer. “Just keep to …” But the cleric realized that the man’s life had leaked out of him. Cellester swung round to look up at the ring of fire.
The elemental, freed of the mental link with the pilot that bound it to its task, flared. For a moment a face shaped itself in the flames and gave an exultant roar, then the being tore free of the encircling metal frame and soared away in a shower of sparks. The Cloudclipper was propelled forward like a bolt from a crossbow, bouncing over the airstreams from the mountains.
“The desert—!” cried Nyam.
The words were ripped from him as the ship dropped lower, its prow dipping dangerously. The three men had to scramble back into the central deck and grip its rails for fear of being hurled out into the ether. Above them the metal arms that had banded the elemental pulled loose, snapping with a loud crack. The frame tore backwards behind the ship, lost overboard. Whole sections of the hull rippled and split. The wing-sails to either side of the ship caught the air, but bereft of propulsion they were still falling at an alarming rate.
The prow dipped, pointing itself at a narrow gorge between two towering peaks at the very edge of the mountains. They were close to the ground now but skimming through the air at a dangerous speed.
The ship’s lower keel crashed into the tallest trees and shrubs, funnelled along the gorge, bouncing and bucking, more sections ripped from it, catapulting backwards. Deep into the trench the airship went, the hull completely folding. Clouds of dust shrouded her as she ground to a halt, wedged among boulders and felled trees.
Vaddi and Nyam were flung forward, draped over the last of the pulped spars, coughing as the dust clouds enveloped them, Vaddi lurched to his feet, wiping blood from his nose.
“I feel as though every bone is broken,” he gasped.
Nyam, also thick with dust, rose beside him.
“Sovereigns, Vaddi, are we alive?” he said.
He had retrieved his feathered hat from the wreckage and began dusting himself down with it. They watched in amazed relief as Cellester emerged from another jumble of wood and debris, shaking himself.
“We’d better get off the wreckage,” said Cellester. “It’s about to fall apart completely.”
They clambered through the mangled carcass of the groaning ship, crossing on to the rocks and scree of the mountain foot, watching the ship as she collapsed under her own broken weight. A few bent fingers of superstructure poked up from the remains as silence fell again on the remote gorge.
Cellester indicated a rough passage through the boulders. “That way is south. We can travel until nightfall and then set up a camp. There should be water.”
Nyam reached inside his voluminous robe and tugged out a small sack. “And food. I thought we might need this.”
Vaddi chuckled. “You had more presence of mind than I did.”
“I’ve spent my life scavenging,” Nyam said. He showed his teeth in a vivid smile. “No point surviving a disaster like that and then starving to death.”
“Try and keep undercover or in shadow,” said Cellester. “We have a long journey if we’re to try for Valenar, but there’ll be no allies here. There are worse things than marauding halflings in these mountains.”
They followed the broken course of the gorge out into a wider one, trying to avoid any path that would drive them eastward up into the lower mountain slopes or westward into the desert. Zigzagging through endless boulders and sharp rocks, they made slow progress but for the most part were heading southward. It was exhausting work, made even more so by the oppressive atmosphere, for apart from the occasional muttering of a stream as it chopped down from the heights, swallowed up by the rocks, all was silent. There were no birds, no hint of wildlife.
Eventually, sharing some of Nyam’s food and a brief drink from a stream, Vaddi commented on this. “Is this place cursed? There’s a strangeness to it.”
“I’ve seen regions like this.” Nyam sniffed and tossed aside a well-chewed bone. “Results of the War. There are numerous places where warped magic has wrought its evils, spells that have clashed and released energies that have torn out the heart of the land. This is one such place. It is like a canker. I’ll wager if you tried to grow something here, it would either die or turn into a sick mutation.”
Vaddi shook his head. It was no way to buoy the spirits, though Nyam had spoken honestly enough.
Cellester nodded. “The sooner we cross to healthier regions, the better.”
They moved on as quickly as they could, in shadow now as the sun had dipped low towards the western edge of the plains. There would be no more than an hour of daylight left to them.
Cellester stopped again, squinting up at a low ridge to their left. He studied it for a while. “There may not be any life here now, but it seems that was not always the case.”
Vaddi craned his neck, but all he could make out was a scone landscape, tiers rising up into the higher foothills. “What can you see?”
“The bones of an ancient city, but it must be so old that it has long since passed from the records of man. I know of no city in this wilderness.”
Vaddi turned back to say something to Nyam, but the man had stopped in his tracks, his eyes wide, as though he had seen something his companions had not.
“Nyam, what is it?” Vaddi asked.
“There is one old legend, no more than a fragment,” Nyam muttered, almost to himself. “If there is any truth in it, we must leave here with all haste.” He could not disguise the sudden look of horror on his face.
Cellester came down to him. “Don’t babble in riddles,” he snapped. “What legend?”
“A city built by creatures that were here long before man, from the age of demons. A city called Voorkesh.”
Cellester’s eyes narrowed at the name. He swung round to study the outline he had seen. “Voorkesh does not exist,” he said. “It is a legend, and whatever place that is up there, I sense no life in it.”
They wasted no time in picking their way back down the incline toward the lower slopes of the valley. An eerie silence clung to the terrain.
“What is this legend?” Vaddi said to Nyam.
Without slackening pace, Nyam told him. “I’ve heard of Voorkesh from a number of sources. It was raised by demons that sought human form. They tampered with dangerous sorcery, taking human form and creating monsters to serve them and a legion of blood-hungry warriors, eager to raise up their long banished masters. In Voorkesh they were said to sacrifice their victims. Who knows what tunnels sink down from Voorkesh into the very heart of Khyber itself?”