Of Machines & Magics (13 page)

“Well…” Calistrope began as he straightened up. He felt a tug at his collar and shoulders. His coat tightened under the armpits, his feet left the ground.

“They baked calamares in a black sauce made of the squid’s own ink,” Ponderos continued without a backwards glance. “
That
was a dish worth waiting for! I took it rarely so it would never become too commonplace to me.”

There was a sigh of wind over membranes, and then the feel of wings dipping and thrusting. Calistrope looked up at the underside of the huge moth which was bearing him up and away from his comrades.”

“Ponderos!” he called, his voice weak with surprise.

Chapter 11

Calistrope’s heart pounded and his breath came in short gasps; vital seconds came and went before the shock abated. He cried out and more time passed before either of his friends thought to look upward. At last, they finally spied him—a black silhouette against the sun’s magenta sprawl.

Calistrope could see them pointing and gesticulating. Perhaps Ponderos attempted some magic but with no effect—the ether was as empty and as flat as stale beer.

The moth’s huge wings—an ell or more in length—beat steadily, the ground dropped away, Ponderos and Roli were minuscule smudges, smudges with pale dots for faces. Then Calistrope was alone, hanging by the shoulders of his coat beneath the insect. The air sighed past him, growing thinner and the hum from the creature’s tracheal bellows deepened.

Soon the cold began to eat into Calistrope’s body and his autonomic systems closed down one by one, conserving heat and energy. The last to go was vision, a black space which swallowed the last of consciousness.

The great expanses of dirty snow glittering with a hundred shades of dark vermilion went unseen as the moth rose above the continental edge. Here was the litter of eons: crumbling mounds which had once been ancient cities, wandering furrows ploughed by long-dried rivers, great blocks of ice shining like monolithic rubies. Far to the southeast was the sugar loaf shape of a mountain with its tell-tale plume of vapor, clear in the thin air: Schune, where the world’s engines were.

The moth, struggling a little with the weight of its prize, flew parallel with the rift until it reached a place where one of the old rivers had once poured over the continental edge, a hanging valley notched deep into the southern wall. The moth relaxed its efforts and lost height, gliding into the high valley with no more than a twitch of wings.

As the air thickened, Calistrope revived and began to shiver violently. He recalled his predicament and looked down in time to see the greater rift disappear as they swept into the breach cut into the southern wall. The floor of the new valley sped by beneath his boots; a silver watercourse wound along its length with great cushions of moss and pockets of brush and small trees to either side.

Where they had entered the valley, the walls were half a league apart at the top, narrowing to a chain or so where the river leapt into space. The moth headed up the valley which closed in rapidly, its sides becoming rocky and precipitous, lined with cracks and fissures. The insect slowed and dropped towards one of these, alighting clumsily on a ledge before a narrow entrance, it dragged its catch inside. Calistrope was still half frozen and numb, incapable of movement, he could do nothing when he was lifted and suspended from a rocky projection by a cord around his chest.

He hung there, turning slowly as the insect backed away to inspect its work. With a tremendous effort, Calistrope raised his arms and fumbled awkwardly with the silk cord securing him. The movement alarmed the moth and it reared up, with its forelegs it clasped Calistrope’s body to it, he felt the creature’s ovipositor slide forward. In a fit of revulsion, despite the cold and stiffness, the Mage found the energy to writhe in the stick-like embrace.

The insect clung to him, legs hooked into the clothes below his arms, its wings vibrating to maintain balance. The long sharp tube sought for purchase, found it, thrust, plunged home. Calistrope knew total horror as he felt the pressure against his side, felt the pulse of eggs being expelled.

The moth shuddered with the ecstasy of procreation and the tube was retracted. One last task—Calistrope’s body was made to spin, silk threads jetted from the moth’s clustered spinnerets and wrapped him from chest to ankles. The moth left him to hang, twisting first one way then the other.

Calistrope felt physically sick. Somewhere inside him a cluster of eggs nestled, a few days from now, ravenous grubs would hatch and feast upon his insides. His end would be indescribable, a hollowed out husk filled with wriggling worms. Merciful oblivion overtook the Mage; his mind, unable to contemplate such a revolting fate, such stark horror, simply withdrew.

The cocoon conserved the Mage’s body heat, and so from numbingly cold he grew uncomfortably hot—and in this state he awoke again with sweat streaming down his face and trickling along his limbs, torturing his nerves with its tickling. At least he could move easily now and his arms, he discovered, were still unbound. Calistrope knew hope, at least he could take his own life before the brood did it for him,

The silk covering was quite loose, and with a little struggle, Calistrope pushed the cocoon downward until he could reach into a pocket. He drew out a small clasp knife, opened it, and began to cut. The silk strands parted easily and when he was free of the cocoon, he braced himself before cutting the cord which suspended him.

The drop was rather less than he had expected and he landed awkwardly, spraining an ankle before rolling down a steep slope onto a pile of brittle bones and debris. Calistrope hobbled towards the cave mouth and looked out. No insect guardian, he was free to go and even though he was determined to kill himself, Calistrope preferred to do so in such a manner that his remains would not be food for grubs. Perhaps near the small river, so his body would be swept over the edge to the floor of the rift a league or more below.

A new thought struck him. Where had the eggs been laid? Even now, warmed and with restored sensibilities, he could feel no wound. Presumably the insect secreted some sort of anesthetic, if so and if the eggs were near the surface or in some non-vital part of his body, then it might be possible for him to cut the clutch out. A risk but any risk was worth the attempt in this case.

Calistrope stripped himself naked and with some effort, contrived to touch every bit of his skin. Nothing. No cut, no incision, no sign of violation. Puzzled and not entirely at ease with the discovery, Calistrope dressed himself and picked up his bag, still with him after all the leagues, through all the adventures the three of them had shared along the way. He slung the bag from his shoulder and there was the
clink
of something falling to the floor.

The Mage stooped down and looked for whatever might have fallen. A tiny gleam caught his eye, a key! The key to his manse, tiny but imbued with surprising power. Calistrope dropped it back into his bag and discovered where the moth had deposited its eggs—in the side of the bag was a finger sized hole, within were seven round yellow-white eggs.

With grim amusement, Calistrope limped across the cave floor and clambered down outside. He gathered dried twigs and tinder along the base of the cliffs and presently found a place to set a fire. The Mage took out a small pan from his bag, and certain condiments; the eggs, he decided, would be best scrambled.

Feeling surpassingly cheerful and light headed now that the awful prospect of death by ingestion had receded, Calistrope considered his future. A trickle of water dripped from a stony point on the cliff nearby, he washed his pannikin, filled it and set it to boil for tea.

First, there was his injured ankle to take care of; he bound it and wished for the barest breath of magical power—time was the only physician for the moment.

Second on the agenda was his future. Here, time was irrelevant, he supposed. Ponderos had a copy of the map, he and Roli would go on to complete the task. Unless he could climb down the almost sheer sides of the rift valley amazingly quickly, he would simply be left behind. However, left behind or not; he would have to take that route if it took him a week.

Over the next day or so, Calistrope explored his surroundings. For a person of hermetic leaning, the place was idyllic. A lacework of streamlets wove their ways across the hummocky valley bottom, cascading over rocks, sliding beneath stunted alders and willows until they emptied into the main watercourse through the valley. This was almost a small river, by turns splashing over shingle and small boulders or running deep and tranquil through still pools where lazy fish sucked drowning flies from the surface.

Patches of scrub wood—oak, alder, hazel—punctuated its course and threw shade where fat eels swam idly against the current. Fishing was easy, turning over stones exposed succulent crayfish and larvae; silver fish could be driven into the shallows and picked out of the water and eels might be taken with a basket woven of reeds and willow.

He saw the moth which had brought him here—or its fellow—at regular intervals. The pair of them carried smaller insects or more occasionally, reptiles or a rodent, back to the cave which even now, Calistrope could not pass without a shudder. Neither of the moths showed any interest in him although he was always wary of them.

If only man had been given wings
… came the thought and took him back to the half-joking comments he had exchanged with Ponderos about training wasps to carry them. Here was the germ of an idea; could he capture one of the moths responsible for his being marooned and persuade it to return him? Calistrope imagined bridle and saddle, coercing the insect into wearing them, learning to guide it as if it were a land-bound dray-beetle.

The task would be a daunting one even when his ankle was strong again but he continued to plan the attempt until the lizard landed in his dinner.

The lizard appeared to be fat and baked in clay, would provide a succulent meal. Calistrope’s impression was wrong, however. When he caught it, the lizard was as thin as a snake, the appearance of plumpness coming from the large flaps of skin stretched between fore and hind legs. Calistrope tossed it away and was surprised to see it take flight or, to be more exact, to glide away and land on an outcrop where it spread its pseudo wings to soak up the sun’s meager warmth.

The Mage sat by his fire for a long time after that, feeding sticks to the blaze and looking from his cloak to the basking lizard. At length, he got to his feet and hobbled over to one of the numerous streamlets to collect several large leathery leaves and a handful of thin pliable willow twigs. He sat down again and began to fashion a model.

That first one did not work well; not at all, in fact. But as his ankle healed, Calistrope persevered and by the time he could walk without limping, he had constructed seven experimental models; each one more successful than the last.

Satisfied with his progress, Calistrope went down to the river and walked along its bank, searching each patch of trees for poles which were long enough and straight enough for his purposes. There was enough line in his bag and—probably—enough material in his cloak to make a gliding machine.

Aha!
A willow tree with tall, straight growth springing up from its roots. Calistrope used his fighting knife to cut five or six lengths and a bundle of springy withes which could be woven into a framework. He set off back to his camp with vigorous step.

Perhaps, with the thought of escaping this eyrie, his mind was less cautious than usual. He was alerted by the flap of membranous wings above him but too late to avoid being seized by the coat in exactly the same way as before.

This time, the outcome was different. This time it was less of a shock and he had a weapon: the willow poles. Calistrope dropped everything except for one pole and with this he delivered a series of crushing blows to the insect’s thorax. The chitinous cage which protected the wing muscles split. More blows damaged the creature’s vitals and insect body fluids leaked from the casing as Calistrope continued his attack. The moth eventually dropped him and flew on, its wing beats no more than reflexive spasms until it came to the ground, wings outspread, ten or twelve ells from where Calistrope had tumbled to earth. It twitched and struggled for some time before expiring completely.

Calistrope went back down to the river to wash himself and his clothes free of the bitter and sticky fluids which had escaped from the moth’s viscera. Shivering violently but cheerful after the defeat of the insect, he went back to his fire and used most of his stock of firewood to build up a warming blaze.

Once warmed and dried, Calistrope went back to gather up the poles and withes he had dropped. He stopped at the side of the insect and studied it and realized this one was male. It possessed remarkably complicated procreative organs at the rear end and it was noticeably smaller than the moth which had abducted him. Perhaps this was another reason for his successful escape from its clutches.

As he stood there, looking at the creature and at the breadth of its spread wings, Calistrope had the distinct impression that his inner, subconscious mind was struggling to make itself heard. What did these tantalizing half images mean?

A slight wind was tugging at the moth’s stiffening carcass and rather than seeing it blown away, Calistrope placed stones on the tips of the wings and on the thorax to anchor it down in case he wished to study it later.

He collected up his materials and returned to the sheltered niche and his fire. He set out the poles and trimmed away the stubs of branches, he measured and marked where the great semicircle of his cloak would have to be cut. The final stage lay before him and Calistrope decided to see to renewing his wood pile and collecting for his larder so he could work on undisturbed by bodily needs. Later, when he had cooked his meal and the air was redolent with the odors of food, the flying lizard returned. It nosed about, searching out fragments of food and ignoring Calistrope’s presence entirely.

Calistrope observed the animal closely, this would be his last chance to learn the art of flying from nature. He noted how the thin folds of skin were attached close to the creature’s feet and how the long muscular tail had a raised ridge of cartilage along its length. This, surmised Calistrope would steer the reptile in flight. He had assumed that steering would be controlled by posture while flying but this way might be easier, he wondered how to emulate the feature in his own design.

The Mage suddenly stood, his cooking pan rattling off the hearth stones and frightening the lizard off. His forebrain had just caught up with what his unconscious had been trying to tell it for hours.