Chapter sixty-three

Inside Quiena’s Vault

 

Viola saw them first, attempting to sneak into the vault – they were clearly human spies, presumably part of an advanced guard from Tlaxaca. They were dressed in black, and were moving almost silently, but they weren’t as good as she was. Potentilla saw them a split second later.

‘Enemies! Enemies!’ Potentilla shouted as she bounded up the stairs, short sword unsheathed and with her bow strung across her shoulders. As soon as she moved forward the spies slid back into the darkness.  They were carrying bows too, and they already had them readied.

‘Arrows! Beware of arrows!’ she yelled, throwing herself down on the floor.

A rain of arrows came through the entrance and bounced off the middle part of the stairs, just below where Potentilla was sprawled. None of the spies were able to get a good field of view for shooting. The elf lifted her bow off her shoulders.

Hardacre pushed Kath back into the vault.

‘Stay there!’ he commanded. He bent down low and peered up the stairs. ‘Time for a bit of light’

‘Chyneua’ he whispered.

 The entire stairwell was illuminated in a bright white light. At the top of the stairs he could see four figures. Potentilla fired into the group. One of the figures crumpled and yelled. The spies all cowered away from the light.

Potentilla ran up the stairs towards them, clanging her sword on the wall and shouting out Visneorian curses. Hardacre looked on astonished. This wasn’t the most subtle close combat fighting tactic he’d ever seen. However, by the time she’d reached the surface, the spies were gone.  However, they could see numerous lights beyond the city walls: an army was on its way.

Hardacre and Rem climbed the stairs cautiously – Viola was still stranded at the bottom on her limping foot. Fred and Kath were standing at the entrance to the vault.

Hardacre looked down at them.

‘You three – get into the vault and wait’ he commanded, ‘if necessary close it. We’re going to have a very brief look around’

Rem sniffed the air.

‘Only Humans’ he said, ‘They come to look’

Potentilla peered into the night. It was dark and moonless – there was no sign of the intruders. The magical light began to dwindle around them.

‘What do you want us to do?’ asked Potentilla.

Hardacre sighed – why did everyone assume that he was in charge.

‘I’m just a valet you know’ he muttered almost inaudibly.

‘What?’ said Potentilla, looking confused.

Hardacre focused again. This wasn’t a good time to be trying to explain anything.

‘Do you think we’ll get back to the Armoury Vault?’ he asked Rem.

Rem shrugged and then shook his head.

‘Too risky’ he said

‘This’ll be swarming with gremlins in the morning’ said Potentilla, ‘the spies were just seeing if there’s any substantial opposition, I imagine’ 

 Hardacre stared round at the rapidly diminishing circle of light.

‘We’re probably better off in the Quiena Vault, anyway’ he said without much conviction.

‘If we can get out once in’ said Rem

There was a brief moment of gloomy silence.

‘Let’s go back then’ said Potentilla, ‘before we run out of light’

They backed down the stairs until they arrived at the door. Viola was standing in front of it, making sure that it didn’t close prematurely.

‘What’s the plan’ she said, looking at Hardacre.

‘We shut ourselves in’ said Hardacre, ‘and then we make a plan’

‘One like those dead dwarves had?’ said Fred from the other side of the door.

‘No, no!’ said Potentilla, ‘of course not – we clearly need a much better plan than that!’

Hardacre’s rolled his eyes   – at least metaphorically, and he ushered them all into the vault. Then, with general trepidation, they shut the vault door behind them.

‘You know how to get out, do you Kath?’ said Fred, about ten seconds after the door had shut. Fortunately Kath could find nothing nearby that was worth throwing at him.    

 

***

 

While the others huddled bleakly at one side of the vault, Kath and Hardacre went to have a good look at the corpses and the elephant.  They were the only ones with anything useful to do and that energised them.

The dead bodies were unmistakably dwarves. They seem to have died at some sort of task – one had a wrench still resting in its dead hand. There was no sign of a struggle – they just appeared to have stopped working and died.  Hardacre picked up the papers that were strewn round the dead dwarves and began to study them.

‘Perhaps it’s time for you to have a look at the elephant, Dr Fielding…’ he said.

Kath knelt next to the back foot of the elephant and laid her tools out on the floor. She looked up at the enormous bulk of the massive mechanical beast. It was articulated almost exactly like a real elephant (or so she imagined) and each section was beautifully finished in a white metal. Was it silver? She scraped the foot closest to her – if it was silver then it had very different properties from any type of silver that she’s seen before.   She began her ritual of tapping and listening, her face a mask of concentration.

Hardacre leafed through the papers one at a time. There were lots of strange diagrams and scrawled notes, in several hands and probably two languages.

‘It’s an automaton’ he said to Kath, ‘I think…’

Kath turned from her investigations and nodded.

‘Yes, I’m sure it is’ she said, ‘but it’s not working at present. There’s no power running through it and no obvious way to power it up. Look up there…’

Hardacre looked up to a platform on the back of the elephant. On it was a green seat and what looked like a flat glass table in front of it.

‘Shall I climb up?’ asked Kath

Hardacre frowned and shook his head.

‘Not yet’ he said, ‘let’s look at the papers first’

‘What do they say?’ asked Kath 

‘They say that it’s called the Autelephas and it’s clearly some sort of offensive weapon – a seek and destroy weapon, perhaps’ said Hardacre, ‘but the rest of this is seems very technical. I think that these dwarves must have been engineers’

Kath came over and looked at the papers.

‘Yes, these are technical engineer’s drawings – I can probably decipher them given time’ 

 ‘I can see that it is in Archaic Elven, mostly’ said Hardacre, ‘is the other language some form of Dwarven?’

‘Yes’, answered Kath, frowning, ‘I was never very good at it though – it’s a difficult language’

While they pored over the papers the others sat together miserably; they had nothing to do but wait and stare at the strange stark elephant in the room – there was nothing else except the dead dwarves. They all hoped, above all, that they would be able to get out again. No-one had said anything, but Rem had been glancing at Potentilla from time to time, not particularly obviously, but obviously enough for Potentilla to notice eventually.

‘Oh no - Have I got food on my face?’ she asked

‘No’ mumbled Rem, ‘No food’

Potentilla stopped brushing her face hopefully and smiled.

‘Where are you from, Rem?’ she asked

‘From the Southern Plains’ he replied

‘I don’t really know where that is’ admitted Potentilla quite happily, ‘but then my knowledge of Geography isn’t too good at all, to be honest’

‘You are from West?’ asked Rem

‘Yes – stationed in Visnea’ explained Potentilla, ‘Imperial guard…’

‘You help Kath a lot’ he said.

Potentilla just grinned.

‘Of course I do’ she said.

Rem looked at Potentilla and then at Viola, and then back again. He shifted his position uncomfortably – sitting for too long at one angle was always a trial for him.

‘I’m glad that you help us’ he muttered, ‘even though you elf and Rem not usually like elf...’

He paused for a second, looking even more thoughtful than usual.

‘...at all’ he finally concluded

Rem said all of this in such a way that neither of the two elves knew which of them he was talking to and so they just both nodded vaguely. Viola went back to rubbing her foot. There was no other conversation for a while.  

 

***

Once they’d rested and eaten some food from Hardacre’s special bag, Potentilla volunteered for the exciting job of listening at the door. No-one else seemed to want to do it.

She stuck her ear against the door, listened, and then looked puzzled. She pulled away and repeated the process.  She looked even more puzzled and then stepped back towards the rest of the group.

‘Sire’ she said.

Hardacre looked round to see who she was talking to. He realised rapidly that, sadly, it appeared to be him.

‘Sire?’ he queried.

Potentilla looked slightly embarrassed.

‘Isn’t that what humans call their masters?’

Hardacre shook his head, partly to say ‘no’ and partly to check that his brain was working properly.

‘No – it’s not. Well, not unless you’re in an acting troupe…’ he said

‘Oh’ said Potentilla, blushing ‘I’m really sorry. What should I call you then?’

Hardacre was at a loss.

‘I mean you are in charge aren’t you?’ said Potentilla rather loudly

Everyone murmured their enthusiastic agreement. 

‘Apparently…’ said Hardacre with no enthusiasm at all. He had a lovely brief vision of a pile of ironing, but then it faded.

Potentilla, who was now completely distracted from what she had originally meant to say, thought for a few seconds.

‘What do you call someone who’s in charge?’ she asked the humans, ‘…a civilian, I mean’

Kath laughed and said, not really thinking properly.

‘Boss’

She immediately regretted saying it, but not as much as Hardacre.  He grimaced.

Potentilla smiled.

‘Ooh – that’s good!’ she said. 

She returned to where she’d been several seconds earlier.

‘Boss – ‘she exclaimed eagerly, ‘I don’t think that I’ll be able to hear anything through the door’

‘Sorry Tillie,‘ said Kath, holding a hand up to her,  ‘I should have thought. All you can hear through the door is the Dwarven Magic code-noise’

Hardacre walked up to the door and tried listening himself. He found, just like Kath and Potentilla before, that from inside the door there was a continuous, not unpleasant, buzz of noise. The buzz prevented any sound from permeating through.  

‘I don’t think anyone will get in, anyway’ he said, ‘well, not for a while, anyway’

Potentilla sat down next Kath, but facing the opposite way to the human, and looking towards the door. She had her bow on her lap. Rem sat nearby facing the same way and nursing his club. Viola had been persuaded to take some of Rem’s sleeping draught and was dozing off. Fred sat a little way away from all of them chewing some bread. They all felt calmer and safer in the vault and Kath sensed that this might be because the pink noise of the door seemed to diffuse through the whole room.  She knew that they couldn’t stay here for long though, not without working out what the Autelephas was for. She stared at the elephant and then back at her papers, desperately trying to remember her Dwarven vocabulary.  This would take some time.

Hardacre got his quill and paper out of his bag and returned to writing his letter to John, which had been interrupted several times.  Every now and then he stared up at the door and then over to the Autelephas. Then he would go back to the grey mail paper.

Eventually the letter was finished. He placed in on the floor and signed in the air above it with his witch mark. The grey paper sat for a little while unchanged. Then it began to pulse with a blue light, of a kind that Hardacre had never seen before. He arched his eyebrows – this was really interesting, but also profoundly worrying. It could only mean that Mr Ismay was outside the normal world. There was a flash of bright white light and then the mail paper finally disappeared. Hardacre smelt the air for the familiar stench of brimstone, but there was none. Instead there was a sweet-sour smell, very like rotting apples.