No, she thought, not quite darkness. What appeared to be some kind of small, cramped cabin lay within, illuminated very dully by the same strange glow that had brought her to this part of the cave. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she noticed that the glow seemed to be emanating from a number of places within, each of them small — panels, perhaps, with levers. Some kind of control cabin then? But controlled by what?
Oh, she thought suddenly, my Gods.
The panels were not so bright as they might have been, not because they were actually dim, but because something was blocking their glow. There was a figure within, just sitting there, staring straight ahead. Kali swallowed, knowing that if it moved she would very likely have a dicky fit.
But it didn't, of course. How could it? Who knew how long this machine had been stranded here, within the rock. Anything within it could not have hoped to survive. Hells, what a lonely, lonely death it must have been. But what nagged at Kali more than that morbid thought was, why had no one come to help? She wondered for a second whether it was possible that the inhabitant of the machine had died here because there was no one to come to help — that perhaps he had died here at the time the Old Races had gone away? And if that was the case then it begged the obvious question. What was she looking at?
Swallowing again, Kali leaned in and the figure emerged from the shadows before her eyes. Squat but, by the size of the ribbed uniform enclosing its now shrunken frame, once well-muscled and powerful. It remained utterly still. Dry, eyeless sockets stared straight ahead, gnarled hands gripping levers on the panel before it that had not moved since before the land was young. Though the body was completely mummified there was no doubt at all what it was she was looking at.
A dwarf.
Kali realised she had been holding her breath, and she let it out now in an exhalation that almost turned into a laugh. This was incredible! Something she had always hoped, but never thought, she would find!
The discovery was a momentous one and Kali took the appropriate length of time and appropriate reverence to appreciate it. After all, after Gods knew how long stuck in this hellshole a few more minutes would make no difference at all. But then, with a deep sigh, she moved forward, grabbed the desiccated corpse by its shoulder and turfed it out of the cabin onto the mine floor. The dwarf's remains crumbled under her touch — clothing and all — and while the arms and torso hit the rock, they left the legs behind, half sitting on the seat. Kali heaved them off with a grimace and dropped them onto the collapsed torso — and only then realised she hadn't a clue where the head had gone. She scanned the cabin, peering into its shadowed recesses, and then spotted the missing appendage lying in the far corner, out of her reach. The head was looking right at her, its empty eye sockets baleful and reproachful, but Kali ignored them — what else could she do? — because her friend had been sitting in the driving seat of something that was still working. She slipped into the empty seat, thinking: Sorry, my friend, but I have a lot more need of this thing than you do.
Whatever this thing was.
Kali peered down at the panels and the levers and realised that she didn't have a clue how to use them even if she knew what it was they did. So what followed, she thought, was going to be interesting, to say the least. She did, though, have one starting point — a button marked with the same rectangular symbol she had seen on the outside of the machine. Humming softly to herself, she pressed it. With the same judder and sliding motion that it had opened with, the hatch closed and sealed itself.
Kali felt as if she were trapped inside a metal coffin.
But she just knew this thing was her way out of here. So, it was time to see what it could do.
Chapter Three
Dolorosa considered she had better things to do than chase a herb up and down the hillside. The preparations for Kali Hooper's memorial evening — a drink-till-you-drop session which all the Flagon's regulars considered the most appropriate way to remember her — had taken the best part of two days. The last of them, a surprise stew for the evening — which was, of course, no surprise to the regulars, though none of them had told Dolorosa that — was all but done. But the hunt for one of its more vital ingredients was proving to be difficult. Said task had occupied her for the past half hour and, in that time, something of a murderous glint had appeared in her twitching right eye.
"I will 'avva you, you leetle red bastardo!" she threatened, her arm swooping down to grab the skittering bunch of macalorum.
But once again the leafy herb evaded her clutches, bouncing and flapping away down the hill towards the Flagons and causing the tall, thin woman to lose balance on the slope and flip heel over head, her skirt flapping after her and enveloping her like a tent.
"Bastardo!" she hissed again, from beneath the cloth.
A group of drinkers outside the tavern stared open-mouthed at an exposed pair of skull and crossbones bloomers and — possibly as a release of tension at the bad new they had all received — there was much pointing and loud and raucous bursts of laughter. Dolorosa's head popped out of the bundle of cloth and she flipped her skirt back over her dignity and squinted at them, hard. It was a squint that some said could kill — some even said it had killed — and the laughter stopped. Dead.
Dolorosa straightened, then squinted down at the tavern again. The drinkers had disappeared inside but she could still see their faces pressed up against the tavern's windows and she strained to listen for the merest titter from them. But there was none and they seemed only to be checking that she wasn't striding down the hill after them.
Lucky fora them, she thought, because if they hadda tittered, I would havva to keel them horribly and withouta mercy.
After she had keeled the bastardo.
Dolorosa span as she saw that the macalorum had taken advantage of her unexpected halt to turn around and bounce back up the hill, chittering as it passed her. Once again she made a grab for it, and once again missed. What had made this essential ingredient of her surprise stew quite so skittish she wasn't sure — it was normally such a docile little herb — and she wondered whether it had anything to do with the reports of strange creature sightings to the west. These things nicknamed the k'nid. Certainly macalorum wasn't the only thing around here that was uneasy at the moment, as most of the smaller wildlife in Tarn seemed to be that, or worse. Whatever the cause, the macalorum's determination to avoid becoming an ingredient only made her all the more determined to catch it.
Dolorosa bent and slid her fingers into the rim of her right boot, then rolled up her sleeves and began to stomp after the herb.
The stiletto she had extracted from her footwear gleamed viciously and the woman grinned evilly and tossed it in her palm, weighing it up, before flipping it so that she held it by the end of the blade. All she had to do now was time her moment right. And there it was, she thought, where the herb was about to hop over that small ridge into the trees beyond. The macalorum tensed it roots and Dolorosa threw.
Victory issa mine! she thought, and began to scramble up the hill towards the impaled and struggling herb.
She was almost upon it when she found herself staggering backwards. The sky above her tipped dizzily, as if she were going into a swoon.