“I came also upon part of the answer to the problem: the exact whereabouts of the machine which will… turn them off, so to speak.
“Now, I gather from your conversation here that the dwarf has been given information I was unable to obtain. In short, I need him to do the business for me. I could not take him from you without killing him. Persuade him that it is in the best interests of all of us that he work for me in this matter, and I spare you. The Queen, too.”
Throughout this monologue, Tomb had remained sitting on the edge of the tarn. Now, he unlimbered his axe and got to his feet. Norvin Trinor’s wolves stirred uneasily. Their blades flickered. The dwarf stretched to the full eleven feet his armour lent him and stood towering over the traitor.
He raised the axe.
He said: “I was born in a back alley, Trinor. If I had suspected at the battle for Mingulay that you would do this to three men who fought alongside you, I would have put a baan between your ribs while you slept. I will do your job for you because it is the job I came to do. Afterwards, I will cut off your knackers and stitch them into your mouth.
“Meanwhile, Methvet Nian remains unharmed.”
And he let the axe fall to his side.
“Very well. We declare a truce, then: precarious, but it should not stain your finer feelings too much. I will allow you to keep your weapons.” He smiled at Cromis’s start of surprise. “But a man of mine stays by the Queen at all times.
“I have an airboat parked on the southern edge of the city. We will leave immediately.”
Later, as they entered the black ship, its hatch opening directly beneath the crude, cruel sigil of the wolf’s head, Cromis asked:
“How did you discover us? You could not have followed us through the forest, or even through the barrens without being seen-”
Trinor looked puzzled. Then he gave his crippled smile.
“Had you not realised? It was pure luck: we were here before you entered the city. That’s the beauty of it. We had stopped for fresh meat. At that time, I anticipated a long sojourn in the desert.”
And he pointed to the great heap of carcasses that lay beside the launch, their white pelts stained with gore, their myopic eyes glazed in death. Crewmen were preparing to haul them into the cargo hold, with chains.
Cromis looked out at the tangled landscape of Thing Fifty.
“You are an animal,” he said.
Norvin Trinor laughed. He clapped Cromis on the shoulder. “When you forget you are an animal, my lord, you begin to lose.”
11
Brown, featureless desert slipped beneath the keel of the drifting airboat: the Lesser Waste, in all respects similar to the great dead region north of Duirinish, the spoliated remnants of an industrial hinterland once administrated from Thing Fifty. tegeus-Cromis, Birkin Grif, and Tomb the Dwarf, locked in the cargo hold with the dead megatheria, paced restlessly the throbbing crystal deck. With a power-blade at the neck of Methvet Nian, Norvin Trinor had forced the dwarf to give up his armour, although he had allowed him to keep his axe. He looked like an ancient, twisted child.
“A chance may come when I breach the defences of the organic brain,” he said. He fondled the axe. He shrugged. “Indeed, I may slip, and kill us all.”
The boat lurched in an updraught: white carcasses slid about the hold. Cromis stared from the single porthole down at the desert. Unknown to him, his fingers plucked at the hilt of the nameless sword.
“Whatever is done, it must not involve a fight. You understand that, Grif? I want no fighting unless we can be sure the Queen will remain unharmed.”
Grif nodded sulkily.
“In other words, do nothing,” he said.
As he spoke, the bulkhead door opened. Norwin Trinor stepped through, two of his wolves flanking him. He pulled at his drooping moustache.
“A commendable plan,” he said. “Most wise.” He looked at Grif for some moments, then turned to Tomb. “Dwarf, we have arrived. Look down there and tell me if this place was mentioned in your information.”
Tomb moved to the porthole.
“It is a desert. Deserts were indeed mentioned to me.” He showed his rotting teeth. “Trinor, you are displaying a traditional foolishness. I can tell nothing for sure until we land.”
The traitor nodded curtly, and left. A few moments later, the airboat began to descend, bucking a little as it entered a low level of wind.
Trinor’s pilot settled the ship on a bare shield of black rock like an island in the rolling limbo of the dunes. The engines ceased to pulse, and a soft, intermittent hissing sound commenced beyond the hull. Time is erosion: an icy wind blew streams of dust across the surface of the rock. It had been blowing for a millennium.
They stood in the lee of the vehicle, eddies of wind wrapping their cloaks about them. Dust in their eyes and mouths, Cromis looked at the thin, hunched shoulders of the Queen. We are nothing but eroded men, he thought, wind clothing our eyes with white ice. Benedict Paucemanly flew to the earth. It is we who live on the barren moon.. ..
“Well?” said Trinor.
A hundred yards away reared the curving flank of a dune. From it poked the ends of broken and melted load girders, like a grove of buckled steel trees. They were bright, polished, and eroded. Cromis, eyeing the desolation silently, became aware that beneath the muted cry of the archaic wind was a low humming: the rock beneath his feet was vibrating faintly.
Tomb the Dwarf walked about. He bent down and put his ear to the rock. He got up again and dusted his leather leggings.
“This is the place,” he said. “Begin digging at the base of the dune.” He grinned cockily at Cromis. “The wolves become moles,” he said loudly. “This would have taken us weeks without them. Perhaps we should thank Lord Traitor.” He strutted off to examine the girder forest, his long white hair knotting in the wind.
With surly grunts, the Northmen were set to work, and by noon of the following day, their labours had exposed a rectangular doorway in the flank of the dune: a long low slit sealed with a slab of the same resistant obsidian stuff as had been used to construct the Birdmaker’s tower.
The maker of the door had cut deep ideographs in it. Time and the desert had been unable to equal him in this respect: the slab was as smooth and the ciphers as precise as if they had been made the day before. It seemed a pity that no one could read them.
Trinor was jubilant.
“We have a door,” he said, pulling at his moustache. “Now let us see if our dwarf can provide a key.” He slapped Tomb jovially on the shoulder.
“You forget yourself,” murmured the dwarf.
He stood before the door, his lips moving silently. Perhaps he was recalling his apprenticeship on the fifth floor. He knelt. He passed his hands over a row of ideographs. A red glow sprang up and followed them. He murmured something, repeated it.
“NEEDS YOU,” intoned the door abruptly, in a precise, hollow voice: “NEEDS YOU. BAA, BAA. BAA. OURO-BUN-DOS-”
The gathered Northmen dropped their spades. Many of them made religious signs with their fingers. Eyes round, they clutched their weapons, breathing though their open mouths.
“DOG MOON, DOG YEARS,” moaned the door. “BAA, BAA, BAA.”
And to each ritualistic syllable, Tomb made a suitable reply. Their dialogue lasted for some minutes before silence descended and he began again the process of moving his hands across the ancient script.
“GOLEBOG!” screamed the door.
A brief, intense flare of white light obscured the dwarf. He staggered out of it, beating at his clothes. He chuckled. His hair reeked, his leggings smouldered. He blew on his fingers.
“The door mechanism has become insane over the years,” he said. “It”-here, he said a word that no one knew-“me, but I misled it. Look.”