The Mask And The Master (Mechanized Wizardry Book 2) (42 page)

Lundin stepped out of the black box and raised his arms high, gasping at the pain the stretch caused.  He froze with his arms in the air when he caught sight of the wolf-faced ‘naut standing nearby, just at the rear corner of their black box.  For once, the man wasn’t pointing a gun-arm at him, but Lundin still felt like their relationship had a lot of growing to do before he could call it comfortable.

He swallowed.  “Where are we?”

“Bring them out.”

“He wants you too,” Lundin said, leaning into the box with an arm on either side of the portal.  Elia was kneeling close to the door, and Martext had leveled himself to a sitting position.  His dark face wasn’t looking good, from the little the obstructed gaslight would let Lundin see.  “Are you okay to move, Martext?”

“I just need a little water.”

“We need some water,” Lundin related to the hulking ‘naut.

“Out.”

“Big guy couldn’t be bothered to
bring
us some water?” Martext groused, keeping pace stiffly with them down the hallway.  If the ‘naut shepherding them forward had heard, he didn’t bother to respond from his position a few paces behind them.

“Guess he’s busy,” Elia said, taking in the white stone passages.  Martext’s dress shoes scraped against the hard floor, sounding thin and out of place in the austere caves.  Lundin’s slippers and poor Elia’s bare feet made no sound at all.

She tapped her knuckles against a buttress as they walked past.  “Konkrii.”

Lundin looked at her blankly.  “It’s a sort of pourable stone,” she whispered.  “We played with it in Masonry and Materials.  Delian architects don’t like it, but some cultures use it everywhere.”

“Like who?”

“Well, uh, it’s all over the place in Svargath…”

The hairs on the back of Lundin’s neck went all tingly.  His mind flashed back to their first day at Campos.  “Didn’t Willl say his family was from Svargath?” he said.

Elia blinked at him.  Her eyes went as wide as her trapezoidal lenses, and she and Martext looked around the hallway with a great deal more urgency.

Lundin cleared his throat and looked to the wolf-headed ‘naut at their backs.  “Excuse me.  Where did you say we were?”

Sir Ulstead stared down at him.  Lundin was sure he was imagining things, but he felt decidedly warmer the longer those golden eyes stared at him.  He flashed a nervous smile and turned back around.

“Could we really be in Svargath?”  Martext said, leaning in close to Lundin’s shoulder.  “I didn’t think Campos was close enough.”

“We drove for a full day.  Who knows how fast we were really going?”

“But the Flinthocks,” Elia said.  “There were ups and downs on the trip, yeah, but it didn’t seem like the elevation got nearly serious enough to take us through a mountain range.”

“What if Svargath has their own version of Fort Campos, on our side of the mountains?” Lundin said.  He pointed down at the ground, his finger bobbing up and down repeatedly.

“Spheres!  I don’t know anything about Svargath, except that they use konkrii,” Elia whispered, her voice picking up speed.

“And that they don’t believe in Spheres,” Martext said, risking a look at the ‘naut.

“Well, whoever these people are,” Lundin said, trying to put calm in his voice, “we know that they’re gadget-heads, just like us.  Their suits?  That vehicle?  That machine shop behind us?  These people are just as good at engineering as anyone in Delia.”

“That scares the flames out of me.”

“Well, yes.  But,” he said, raising a finger and trying to keep his voice down.  “It means we’ve got something we share. 
Ulraexi Pillok Mentatum Est. 
They believe in the power of the mind.  Maybe if we use reason, we can find some common ground.”

“You really think so?”  Elia said.

“Reasonable people don’t attack an Army base to kidnap four civilians.”

“Fair,” Lundin said, rubbing his bare arms.  It was chilly down here in just an undershirt and his thin dress slacks.  Martext coughed after making his point.  There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead, and his steps were looking more labored.  Elia caught him looking at Martext, and the two of them shared a concerned glance.

“How much further?” Lundin called out, trusting his voice to carry behind them.  He didn’t much want to lock eyes with the ‘naut again.

“Stairwell on the right.”

Lundin squinted down the hallway.  Just at the edge of his vision, it looked like there was a pair of lanterns flanking a opening on the right. 
This place goes on and on
, he thought.  It would be another minute or two of walking before they actually reached the stairwell, and it felt like they’d left the vehicle behind them long ago.

A thin breeze made the hem of Elia’s yellow dress ripple.  They looked to the left, and, between two buttresses, saw another hallway pulling away with lanterns as far as the eye could see.  “Sweet Spheres, there are more of them,” he breathed.  “What kind of investment does this look like to you, Elia?  Is this konkrii expensive to make?”

“Laying it like this might take years,” she said, very quietly.  “And if that corkscrew we rode down was a konkrii ramp, which would make sense for the load required, that’s a fortune to design and execute.”

“An advanced underground Svargath fortress, somewhere on our side of the mountains,” Martext said, his voice rough.  “That’s something to celebrate.”

Ulraexi Pillok Mentatum Est.  Ulraexi Pillok Mentatum Est. 
He kept the mantra going in a vain effort to keep his heart rate down as they approached the stairwell.  The twin lanterns left weird, stark shadows on the white walls, and the ‘naut’s heavy boots behind them seemed to be getting louder.  The stairwell went up about two dozen stone steps, with the only light from the lanterns at the bottom.  An arched wooden door was barely visible at the top of the staircase, with a thin crack of light coming from the seam between the two door panels.

Whoever’s up there, you’ll be able to reason with them.  You’re the leader.  You’ll keep your team safe
.

“Senior tech?”  Elia said in his ear as they stood at the base of the stairs.  “I miss home.”

Lundin looked back at her with all the warmth he could muster.  “We’ll get back there, Elia; one way or another.”

She pressed her lips together and nodded, at least pretending to be comforted.  That was a good thing, because as soon as the words were out of his mouth he realized what a bad choice they were. 
One way or another… maybe as cripples; maybe in caskets; maybe catapulted over the city walls one body part at a time…

Lundin blew all the air out of his lungs in a rush and took the first step up the stairs.  Over Martext’s half-hearted protests, he put the man’s arm across his back and pulled him up so they were shoulder-to-shoulder on the same step.  Elia supported the injured tech with a hand on the small of his back as they made their way to the top.  Lundin made the mistake of looking down at one point, and saw Sir Ulstead’s glowing eyes a few steps behind them.  He muttered encouraging nonsense to Martext and kept his eyes fixed on the next step in front of him.  The air warmed up as they made their way towards the wooden door.  Lundin winced as Martext squeezed his aching back a little too hard, and looked up.  The door was comfortably sized for the giant ‘naut below them, made of plank after plank of dark brown lorsh wood.  There was no visible handle on either half of the door.

“Knock,” said the ‘naut.

There wasn’t anything else to be done.  Lundin held his breath, raised his left hand, and knocked on the door.

Nothing happened for a long moment; long enough that he considered knocking again.  Then there was a scraping sound as a deadbolt was raised out of place.  With a squealing of metal hinges, both halves of the door swung away from him.  Lundin caught a quick sight of a square room with an ornately paneled window before the hands took them.

There were at least two hands on either of his arms, propelling him through the tiled room.  Martext was pulled out of his grasp, and he called out wordlessly, looking over his shoulder.  A quartet of soldiers in red leather pulled the tech to the side of the room, quickly but not violently, as a gray-haired woman in the light blue robes of a master of physic came gliding towards him.  Elia was pulled into view through the doorway with an escort on either arm as well.  “What are you doing?” Lundin shouted as his handlers marched him up a short staircase to a much narrower hallway, leaving Martext behind.  Elia was squirming in her escorts’ arms as they half-dragged her behind him.  The two of them were being kept together, at least; but a glance to the impassive men and women on either side of him didn’t give him much confidence in the tender ministrations their master of physic might be attempting on Martext at any moment.

The hallway was composed of rounded dark gray stones, with none of the exotic sleekness of the konkrii construction underground.  It looked positively ancient, in fact, like an old warlord’s keep in the days before city-states and artillery.  Wooden doors showed up sporadically along the walls, with curved tops and thick brass rings for doorknobs.  Tapers in hurricane lamps lit the way here, without a gas lantern in sight. 
What is this place?

One of his silent entourage swung a door open, and the others quickly hustled him inside.  A single candle and moonlight through a pair of windows far overhead gave the room its only dreary illumination.  “Who are you?  What is this place?” he said—to the air, apparently, as none of the red-brown soldiers had the slightest inclination to talk to him or even look him in the eye.  They retreated as quickly as they’d dropped him off.  Moments later, another pair brought a thoroughly wild-eyed Elia into the room.  She rubbed her arms as they let her go, with dull red fingerprints against her skin where they’d been grabbing her.  As that pair left, they slammed the door shut.  An all-too-familiar sound of rattling locks on the outside made their hearts sink, and then there was only the sound of footsteps moving away.

“If this is Svargath, I’m never coming back,” Elia said ferociously.

“Couldn’t agree more,” Lundin said, looking around the room.  The stone in here was a darker gray, or maybe there was just less light. 
Or these stones haven’t been washed as recently
.  He swallowed and continued his inspection.  Three cots, each on its own wall, on the opposite side of the room from the door.   Light from the distant, high-up windows beamed directly on the bed flush with the back wall. 
Three cots.  Maybe that means they’re bringing Martext here after all.  Or maybe that means they were planning to, until they saw his condition
… Other than the beds, there was a plain table in line with the door, an uncomfortable-looking spoke-backed chair in the corner, and—
burn me
— a chamberpot at the foot of one of the beds.  Even Fort Campos had had a septic tank.  Either this structure was far, far behind the times, or prisoners weren’t privy to the modern conveniences.

“At least we can stretch out now, right?” Lundin said, turning back to her.  Elia was rubbing her bruises with vigorous, angry strokes.  “Beats the black box.”

“That’s not a big step up, senior tech,” she said, perching herself at the foot of the nearest cot.

A shuddering metallic noise rebounded through the room.  They looked at the door as a square panel in its lower half swung up into the room.  The hatchway in the door was a relatively thin piece of wood, half a meter from corner to corner, hinged at the top.  A pair of hands appeared through the door flap with a large ceramic jug, stoppered with a cork.  The jug was set on the floor, the hands disappeared, and, after a quick shifting of metal outside, the room went silent again. 

Elia stood up and crossed over to the jug.  She crouched over it as if ready to leap for safety if something dangerous popped out from the cork.  She stuck her thumb through a circular handle by the mouth, lifted the vessel, and unstoppered it.  “It’s that tea again,” she said, taking a sniff.

Lundin’s throat was clamoring for a drink, but he hesitated.  “Are you an herbalist at all, Elia?  Any apothecary study?”

“Animals and vegetables aren’t my field.  I’m a mineral girl,” she said apologetically.

“Me too— so to speak,” he said, waving his hand in an impatient circle.  “I just hate to drink the stuff without having any idea what it is, you know?  There are herbs that make you sick; herbs that make you weak… and, not that I believe it, but aren’t there potions that make you tell the truth to any question?”

“So maybe we shouldn’t drink.”

“Well, but we already drank some of their tea during the drive.  And that didn’t cause any ill effects.  So if this is the same—”

“Okay,” Elia said, setting the jug down on the table.  It wobbled dully against the stone floor; one leg was too short.  “Let’s lay this out.  If we don’t drink, we avoid the chance of ingesting any poisons or potions.”

“We send them a message that they can’t make us do whatever they want.”

“And through that defiance, we encourage them to actually talk with us rather than treating us with silent isolation.”  Elia adjusted her glasses, nodding with a shade of her old energy.  “Compelling positives!  So, to complete the exercise, if we
do
drink…?”

“We stop being thirsty.”

They looked at the open jug.

Lundin gave a long aah as he lowered the jug from his lips, feeling the cool minty liquid pouring all the way down his throat.  He looked over at Elia, stretched out on her cot on the rear wall, and offered her the jug.  She shook her head and kept looking up at the windows far above, and the blue starlight filtering through them.  Lundin lay back down on his cot, setting the jug on the floor.  The liquid sloshed back and forth in the unstoppered vessel, making rude, wet sounds.  He laced his fingers together at his stomach and stared at the dark ceiling, trying to think of what to do next.  It was impossible, with so many thoughts and memories and concerns stampeding in all directions.  His eyelids grew heavy and he started to drift off to sleep, as much in self-defense as from physical exhaustion.