Chapter eleven

Outside the Great Wall

 

They huddled in a copse a few hundred yards from the Wall. Night had fallen and they were at a loss. None of them wanted to sleep, but none of them wanted to act either. So they talked, mostly round and round in circles. A number of plans were proposed that involved ‘distracting the green sphere’, but they could never fix on exactly who would do the distracting. They also considered a direct assault, but that idea failed for a similar reason. Eventually they fell asleep, one by one, collectively hoping that the morning would bring some better ideas.

Kath lay under the sky listening to her companions sleeping. She had started to feel guilty about Lucius: he was an exceptionally annoying person, but she didn’t wish him dead. In addition, she was meant to be the Dwarven Magic expert and this, the first opportunity she had had to investigate the art, had left her hiding, helpless, behind some scraggy trees.

She got up quietly and rummaged around in her backpack. She had a number of useful tools in there, but she was looking for something else, something that she’d hoped to use under less dangerous circumstances. After a few seconds she pulled out a rod, about the length of a man’s arm, made of a very dense dark wood. It was on loan from the tiny collection of Dwarven Magic artefacts in the Eth City University Museum. There had been some debate about its purpose, but she had thought that she recognised it from a dwarven technical manual that she had once studied – it was a control rod. The engineers appeared to have used such rods to stop, or affect the behaviour, of Dwarven Magic objects. However, she had no idea if it still held any power and she also had no idea how to control it. But, she felt, now was the time to try it, and if it didn’t work, at least she would be the only one in danger.

Kath tiptoed over to Maxilius, carefully removed the gate key from his pack, tiptoed out of the copse and crept towards the Wall. It was nearly dawn and there was just enough light to stumble along by. It was cool, but the clear sky above promised a hot day later.

As she approached the gate Kath stopped to look again at the rod. It was smooth except for a faint archaic elven inscription, which read   ‘theonumos, anthroponumos’. That seemed to translate as ‘god name, elf name’.  Those words must be a clue to the trigger phrase, but she had no idea what that phrase could be and she had had no reason to try and work it out before. Now she wished that at some point she’d found a reason.  

‘Maybe it will become obvious when I try to use it’ she thought, unconvinced.  However, there was no way that she could go back now without admitting defeat. She continued to walk forward, very slowly and increasingly scared. Her heart began to beat loud in her head and she could hardly move. She was now shuffling towards the gate, eyes half closed.

The metal surface of the gate was about ten feet in front of her. She pulled the key out of her pocket and held it up in her left hand. With her right hand she grasped the rod. The key glowed again, and the answering hum started up inside the wall. She slipped the key into her pocket and brought the rod up to her nose and held it there, in both hands, uncertain as to what to do next. The gate evaporated again.  The green sphere was there just in the gateway, buzzing and humming.  Kath raised the rod towards it and waited. The globe floated towards her, apparently unaffected by her actions, but this time not attempting to pull her in. She pointed the rod at it again, this time with a desperate flourish, but still nothing happened.  Terrified, she threw herself to the ground, her eyes shut tight.

‘Kath!’ shouted a voice. She opened her eyes to see a stone fly past her forehead. There was a whir of green ahead of her and then the sphere moved away from her and towards whoever had shouted. Looking back she was unsurprised to see Potentilla, poised to throw another stone. The sphere was now between Kath and the elf.

Kath stood up and shouted back.

‘Tillie! Why did you do that? Stupid fool! You’ll get yourself killed!’

Potentilla threw another stone. This one hit the sphere bang in the middle and there was a strange splintering sound as it penetrated the green mass. Kath gulped.

‘Run away, quickly, please’  

‘Not yet – you still need to get inside’, shouted Potentilla.

Potentilla waved Kath forward with her hands. Then she took aim again.  

Kath looked behind her. The gate was still open and she could see a wide metallic tunnel leading back from the entrance.  That was the way through, but how would they ever get there?   She wasn’t planning to go on her own.

Kath’s mind raced. Perhaps the rod could be useful. The trigger phrase must be something that would be known to a dwarf. What names could there be? The names of a maker, perhaps, but then how would she know that? What were the names of the eleven engineer dwarves? Her mind was filled with their names, but how should decide which one?  The only name that came clearly into her head was Quiena, who was behind the whole thing. Maybe that was it? After all, she did have two names.

Potentilla had been sucked into the air and was careering towards the sphere. She let out a yelp of surprise. Kath would have to try something.

 ‘Ophia!  Quiena!’ she shouted out, her hands trembling.

Instantly, a pure dark green light began to grow out of the rod, like the rapidly dividing branches of a slender tree. It grew against the sphere, caressed it and halted it abruptly. It stopped rotating.

Potentilla was suspended briefly in mid-air, still throwing stones. Kath wondered if she were entirely sane. By now the tips of the light branches were spread evenly over the surface of the sphere. Kath pulled the rod back a little way. The sphere was pulled back an equal amount. Potentilla fell, quite softly, to the ground. She cheered and waved at Kath.

‘That’s fantastic!’ she said. Kath stared at her.

‘Go away Tillie! You’re making things worse!’

The elf took no notice at all – she was too busy staring at the sphere. It now looked like a huge children’s ball trapped in the branches of a great green tree.

Kath felt the sphere trying to escape from the pull of the rod. She moved steadily closer to it, so that the branches holding the ball became broad and strong.  She then took a small experimental step backwards. The web of light holding the sphere flexed and the sphere jerked a few inches towards her. She sighed with relief. At least this would give them some time. But, what should she do next?

Potentilla ran up to greet her. She squeezed her shoulder, laughing.

‘That’s so good! How are you doing it?’

‘It’s an old Dwarven Magic construction tool. I didn’t know what it did before just now’.

‘Now you’ve got the hang of it, though’ grinned Potentilla. She reached across. ‘Now – hand it over and you can nip inside the gate’

‘What?’ How would that help?’

‘I’ll sort things out here – and we’ll catch up with you later’

Kath yanked the rod away from Potentilla’s grasp. The sphere wobbled.

‘That’s about the most stupid idea I’ve ever heard,’ Kath said, sweat breaking out on her brow.

Potentilla thought about this for a moment.

‘No it’s not. You should go now – it’ll be fine!’ 

Kath groaned. This was rather a dilemma: a deadly sphere on the one hand and a lunatic elf on the other.

She began to ease the sphere back inside the gate. As she walked towards the entrance she could throw the sphere forward a few feet. Three big steps later and the sphere was nearly inside. As she manoeuvred the sphere it became clear to Kath that they couldn’t get any further this way – it was all just too dangerous. And now she didn’t trust Potentilla not to do something stupid. They would have to find another way.  Or give up.

Potentilla surged forward and grabbed the rod. There was a brief tussle, which sent the sphere flying backwards and forwards across the sky. Then the elf, by far the more agile of the two, yanked the rod away from the human, in triumph.

‘Go!’ she shouted, with blazing eyes. ‘Go!’ She yanked the sphere back, inexpertly, so that it loomed out in front of Kath, blocking her way back to camp.

‘Why are you doing this?’ shouted Kath, terrified.

‘I’m trying to help!’ replied Potentilla. ‘Really – I am…’

Potentilla was struggling to control the sphere; it began to rotate ominously.

Kath ran. At first she thought it was in no particular direction, but she soon realised that there had been only one way left to run, and that she was now inside the metal tunnel. She glanced back, but all she could see was coruscating light and green haze. Angry and terrified, she ran down the tunnel blind. The gate closed behind her.  She threw her hands out in front of herself and staggered along in the pitch black.

 

She crouched and listened. There was no noise and no light. It was slightly warmer than the air outside, and the feel of it inside was greasy. She couldn’t make progress except through feeling her way, step by step. Kath had no idea what to do, but she knew that she couldn’t go back unless she wanted to find out, first-hand, exactly what had happened to Lucius.

She stumbled on slowly. At every step she groped with her hands and listened. All she could hear now was a double hum, one from behind and one from in front. For a moment she was too terrified to continue, her heartbeat roaring in her ears. But then she convinced herself that the hums were getting louder – she’d have to move. She struggled on, whimpering in the darkness.

The tunnel carried straight on for about two minutes and then she forced herself to stop and listen. The hum in the direction she was heading was definitely getting louder. What on earth was in front of her now?

 She leant forward and felt around in a delirium of terror.  Eventually, her fingers brushed against something. It was strangely fluffy. She put her hands up to touch it properly; it felt like an enormous woollen ball. She knew exactly what it was, but why wasn’t it attacking her?

She shrunk back. There was a glow, lighting up the tunnel. At first she had no idea what was producing it and she peered around in the darkness. Then she realised – the light was coming from her jacket pocket. It was the gate key.

It was an agonising struggle, in the strange half-light, to remove the key from her pocket.  As her fingers finally closed on the key she heard a hum behind her, and almost instantaneously there was an answering call – much louder and just in front of her. She held her breath and pulled out the key; it was pulsating slowly.  In the slightly brighter light that it now cast she could see that the two spheres were so close to each other that they were almost crushing her.  She held the key up and prayed that the gate would open.

A second or so later, and to her huge relief, the gate disappeared. She ducked down, and crawled, sprawling, under the sphere right in front of her. Out from under the sphere she sprinted, running with the blood hammering in her ears, over stones and logs and through puddles and streams, with the deathly hsum still in her ears.

Eventually she had to stop. She turned around, but all she could see was the Wall, looking just as it had before; except that she knew that this was now the other side, the east side. She sat on a boulder and looked back. She had succeeded in the first part of her quest, but now she had no possessions, food or companions. Cursing her luck and her choice of friends, she forced herself to rise, turn, and look eastwards.