The Longsword Chronicles: Book 03 - Sight and Sound Page 12

  On they poled, the heavy barge drawing closer to the lock, and apart from a gentle lapping of water alongside, they moved smoothly and silently. The horses eased themselves to the sides, watching the land recede on the one side and the waters sliding by on the other. The main decking was below the waterline, and the walkway on which Gawain and Jaxon poled, not much above it.

  The third time they returned to Allazar he called a halt, and all eyes turned towards the gates. Arramin seemed to be struggling with a large metal wheel, and as it slowly revolved, a crack appeared in the middle of the gates, growing larger. A stream of water began to spurt through, then settled into a steady flow, and as the opening between the gates grew wider, a ripple surged gently into the mooring lake.

  “The waters of the lock are slightly higher than in the lake,” Allazar explained, “Those gates have not been opened in a very long time.”

  “Not since the city was destroyed,” Gawain nodded. “Do you think many survived, Allazar, do you think many took barges to Ostinath and to safety?”

  “I do not know,” Allazar sighed, “Though it is my fervent hope they did.”

  But Gawain knew no matter how great the hope, the screaming horror behind them would continue, every day, until whatever wizard-made device was responsible for them finally died, and allowed Calhaneth to rest in peace.

  At a signal from Arramin, Jaxon and Gawain took their positions and heaved on the poles again. Once they’d found their feet, and got the rhythm of it, the work seemed to become easier, the progress quicker, though just when familiarity was quickening their pace, Allazar called another halt.

  The wizard shifted the lever a little, the bow of the barge swung a little to the left, and they coasted through the immense gates, marvelling at the hidden mechanisms which had allowed the elderly Arramin to open them, and now that they had passed through, to close them again. Ahead of them lay another pair of gates, identical to the first, and Gawain finally understood their purpose. He laid the pole down on the deck, and climbed up on the walkway to jump onto the side of the lock.

  “I’ll close the gate, Arramin, is the wheel the same at the other?”

  “Aye, my lord,” the elderly wizard puffed, and flexed his bandaged hands.

  “You shouldn’t have done this alone,” Gawain chided.

  “Oh dear, well, my lord, it is as you said, the elven unguent is powerful stuff indeed, and there is no discomfort but an itching.”

  Gawain cranked the wheel rapidly. “The itching will drive you mad for a day, unless you apply more. You should use it two more days though, so I was told.”

  “Aye my lord, I shall. Thank you.”

  In truth, little effort was needed on the wheel other than the stamina to keep it revolving through its large circumference. Gawain could feel nothing of the mechanisms driving the gates, just a slight resistance to his cranking of the wheel. When, with a deep thud, the gates closed and locked, he stood back and cast a last glance across the lake towards the city. Nothing but trees, of course, blocking his view of all that lay to the south.

  “What did they do?” he whispered, as much to himself as to the wizard.

  “I do not know, my lord. I do not know.”

  They walked the length of the lock and up the steps leading to the wheel of the canal gate, and at the top, both paused, and stared.

  “The Canal of Thal-Marrahan,” Arramin whispered, in awe.

  And awesome it was, stretching away arrow-straight due north, confirmed by the astonished wizard’s compass needle. Some forty feet wide, wide enough for two barges to pass each other in safety, perhaps six feet deep, perhaps a little more or less, the water sparkling in the sunshine. The canal stood perhaps two feet higher than the level of the water in the lock below them, and water gushed in when Gawain turned the wheel and cracked the gates.

  “A great water road indeed,” Gawain agreed. “My compliments, Serre wizard.”

  “Let us be on it, my lord, I beg you.”

  “Yes.”

  When the gates were opened, Gawain stepped aboard the barge and together with Jaxon poled it clear of the lock. Then he returned to close the gates. When he’d done that, he offered to help Arramin board the barge, but the elderly wizard shook his head.

  “There is more to do, my lord, more to do. Did you think you and our friend Jaxon would have to push the vessel all the way to Ostinath?”

  Gawain frowned. “I did wonder, come to think of it.”

  “Then now comes a moment of trepidation, for it is now we shall discover if the wonders of engineering which flourished under the patronage of Thal-Marrahan yet function. Though there is of course the tow-path of blue-stone, which was laid for convenience and to keep the forest at bay, rather than of necessity. Come, my lord.”

  A tall and narrow hut of blue-stone brick, no bigger than a farmyard outhouse, stood back from the path, a dull grey metal door closed against them. Arramin gingerly pulled on the door’s handle, and Gawain stepped forward, easing the wizard aside. It took more effort than the gate-wheel, but with a loud click the handle gave a little, and the door swung open. Within was a single lever, a smaller lever mechanism on its handle.

  “My lord, you must first squeeze the smaller lever on the handle, and holding it compressed, heave back upon the larger.”

  Gawain did as instructed, and this took much more effort. He felt something heavy moving beneath him, and had a sense of immense machinery beginning to move for the first time in centuries. Finally, with a soft click, the lever reached the end of its travel.

  “Now release the smaller lever, quickly!” Arramin urged.

  Gawain promptly let go, and the wizard sighed.

  “Excellent, my lord, excellent! Observe the water!”

  Gawain turned and looked along the canal, seeing ripples racing across the surface.

  “Come, my lord, quickly!”

  Arramin slammed the door of the strange building and trotted quickly to the barge, where Gawain helped him aboard.

  “Push away gently now!” Arramin urged, and so Gawain, with Jaxon’s help, simply leaned over the low gunwale and shoved against the smooth stone of the canal wall.

  “Now, Master Allazar!”

  In the small deckhouse at the stern of the barge, Allazar cranked a wheel, and then heaved on a lever.

  There was a sudden clunk from below the deck, and the barge gave a slight shudder, and with a gentle lurch which had men and horses quickly bracing themselves to hold their footing, the vessel began moving forwards, quickly picking up speed.

  “Dwarfspit!” Terryn exclaimed.

  “My thoughts exactly,” Gawain exclaimed, watching the trees beyond the tow-path passing by at a fast walking pace.

  After about thirty yards of gliding north along the great water road there was slight clunk from below the deck, and the barge began to slow a little. Then there was another clunk, a slight shudder, and the barge picked up speed once more.

  “What was that?” Gawain asked, echoing the alarm he saw registering on other faces.

  “Oh, we have picked up another chain,” Arramin said, sitting on one of the hard metal bench seats under the roof of the rear deckhouse.

  “A chain? Is it broken?”

  “No, my lord, it is a part of the great mechanism which propels us, a part of the wonder that is the canal.”

  There was another clunk, and the faint rumbling below their feet ceased, before once again a clunk as another chain was taken up.

  “Will that happen every thirty yards?”

  “Thirty-three, my lord, the length of an elven chain is thirty-three yards. The canal was built long before the D’ith Hallencloister began its work of standardising measurements, or trying so to do. The canal is filled with the waters of Avongard, and it is the waters of Avongard below us which powers the immense and ingenious mechanism of the canal. Great wheels, turned by the flow of subterranean waters, driving smaller wheels which in turn drive the chains.

  “Below the bar
ge is a mechanism, operated by the lever and wheels here, and that mechanism engages with the chain, thus we are towed along. The same chain passes around other wheels, across the canal and back in a southerly direction, thus any barge from Ostinath would be propelled to Calhaneth.”

  “Dwarfspit, what happens if the chain should break?”

  “We simply pole the barge to the next working chain, my lord. Finally, at the approach to any lock gates which we may encounter, the last chain is disengaged a goodly distance from the gate, allowing the vessel to slow to a halt. It must then be poled into the lock. There, the chains in the foregoing length of canal may be halted to spare the mechanism, and the chains in the next section activated once through the lock to continue the journey.

  “A good watch must be maintained, my lord, for obstructions ahead as well as for any other threat. It is not inconceivable that trees, felled by age or lightning or disease, might lay across the canal. To collide with such an obstacle would not be pleasant for men or horses.”

  Gawain grimaced, eyeing the metal deck-plates and Elayeen sitting upon the forward deckhouse with Kahla.

  “It is astonishing,” Tyrane announced, sitting too, and dragging his helmet from his head.

  “Yes, Captain, it is, and when first I read of the wonder of this feat I could not believe it. Now, to find myself travelling upon the great water road… it is astonishing. The canal was built before Calhaneth.

  “Indeed, it had to be. The stone needed for both the canal and the city was cut and shaped from quarries to the north west of Ostinath. Ostinath itself, and The Toorseneth there, were built from the same stone. They built a length of the canal, sealed it, flooded it, and proceeded. More than a thousand miles, almost arrow-straight, from Ostinath to Calhaneth.”

  “Must you keep saying that name?” Rollaf suddenly blurted, his face the image of agony, “I’d give an arm never to hear that Dwarfspit name again!”

  The scout slid down the gunwale to sit upon the bare decking, wrapped his arms around his knees, and buried his face in them, his shoulders shuddering as he wept. Terryn’s expression was a mirror of his friend’s, and he sat next to the taller man, lightly pressing his shoulder against his comrade’s in a gesture of support.

  When Gawain looked around the deckhouse he saw the dampness in Allazar’s eyes, and when Tyrane gave a choking sob and walked away to sit amongst the horses in the middle of the barge, Arramin too began to weep. Looking towards the bow, and Elayeen sitting there placid and unfeeling, the memory of the horrifying sounds of Calhaneth pressed suddenly to the forefront of his mind once more, and Gawain found himself envying the Sight, and fervently hoping he too would never hear the name of that city again. Some of the names they had all heard in those screaming ruins were their own, or the names of those they loved.

  Water lapped the hull, the deck rumbled and clunked on the chains, birds flitted from tree to tree in the forest, chirping gaily in the afternoon sunshine, but only one person aboard noticed any of it, and she really didn’t seem to care.

  oOo

  9. On the Chain

  When darkness began to fall, Gawain and the others were really in no mood to trust their fate to the wonders of ancient elven engineering, and he asked the wizard Arramin if it would be possible to halt the vessel and go ashore.

  “Of course, my lord. We must simply disengage from the chains, and once the vessel has slowed, guide the craft to the edge of the tow-path. It would also be possible simply to drift in the middle of the canal, should you wish to keep a measure of water betwixt us and the land.”

  “Land?” Gawain asked quietly, and received sufficient hurried nods to make his decision. “Land.”

  He watched Allazar crank a wheel, and then push a lever forwards towards a panel, and there was a clunk from below. The barge at once began to slow, and Allazar nipped out of the deckhouse to operate the steering-lever now that it was free to move once again. It seemed the wheel he had cranked served as some kind of brake, locking the steering-levers, tillers, Arramin called them, the chains taking care of the barge’s direction straight along the canal.

  When the craft had bumped alongside the tow-path, Gawain jumped onto the dry land, and caught the mooring chain Allazar tossed to him. Arramin opened a panel in the deckhouse and took out a large metal spike and hammer, and passed those to Gawain. It was a simple thing to poke the spike through a link in the chain and then hammer it into the soft earth bank beyond the stone of the tow-path. This was repeated at the bow of the craft, and then the ramp for the horses was lifted into position.

  Gawain didn’t know which seemed the happier to be on land, men or horses. Gwyn was certainly more than happy to stand on soft earth and grass after hours aboard the barge and she whinnied and pranced in delight. They left saddles and provisions aboard in the shelter of the deckhouses, and once Eldengaze had asserted that ‘nothing dark’ was within range of the Sight, they fed the horses, and settled together on the grass to eat, Elayeen with her back to them all, of course.

  They’d had no lunch, none of them had possessed the appetite for it after the horrors of the city, but once cheese and meats had been broken open, and a keg of wine, hunger got the better of all of them. Even Gawain eschewed the frak in his pocket and gratefully accepted salt pork and a hunk of cheese.

  “Provisions may become something of a concern later, my lord,” Tyrane said softly, and everyone stopped eating. “By later I mean four or five days. Most of the sacks the packhorses have been carrying are feed for the horses. I didn’t know if grass would be found in the forest, in such poor light.”

  “It’s only growing sparsely here because of the width of the canal,” Gawain agreed.

  “I had thought there would be boar and larger game for us.”

  “We can thank the Kiromok for the lack of game. Perhaps when we’ve travelled far enough away from… the city, life will return to normal in the woodland.”

  “Do you think it likely we shall encounter more of those things, my lords?” Arramin asked, his voice still quavering a little from the shock of Calhaneth.

  Gawain shook his head, swallowing, and filled a wooden beaker with wine from the keg. “No. I think our encounter with them was probably our misfortune rather than their planning. I think we were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “How so, Longsword?”

  After a long draught of the weak Callodon wine Gawain took a breath, and looked away into the forest. “I think they were sent long ago, ages ago. Perhaps even hundreds of years ago, the three of them. I think Morloch learned somehow of the dread power lurking within the dome of that roundtower and wished to claim it for himself once his invasion of the southlands was complete. He had the Kiromok sent to deny the ruins to all save his own dark forces.”

  “But why, Serres?” Jaxon stared aghast, “What use would such a terrible thing be?”

  “To one who would destroy the lands for his own twisted purposes it would be a weapon of immense power,” Allazar explained. “But misfortune, Longsword, how could it be simple misfortune on our part to encounter those creatures at the baths?”

  “There was nothing larger than birds in the woodland, once we’d gone a day or more into the forest, remember? No wolf, badger or boar? The Kiromok despatched to hold the city needed to eat, and with nothing living within the outskirts were forced to hunt ever wider of the centre of the catastrophe for their food. In time, the animals were culled beyond the point of survival, or learned of the threat and fled, and so the Kiromok had to move closer and closer to the borders of the forest in search of food. It was just our misfortune, or perhaps good fortune given our success in destroying them, that they were hunting near the baths when we arrived there.”

  Allazar seemed unconvinced, but Gawain’s explanation did seem to match recent experiences.

  “And,” Gawain continued, “Do you remember, before we entered the forest, my lady first looked up to the northeast, then later the northwest? And again during our p
rogress through the forest?”

  “Yes, I do, and though it was alarming, nothing came of it.”

  “I suspect it was something dark on the wing, at the limits of her ability to see it, circling, perhaps aiding the Kiromok in their hunt, or perhaps alerting the Kiromok to our presence. In any event, if those creatures had been hunting miles to the north of the city we would not have encountered them until we ourselves arrived in that place.”

  It didn’t bear thinking about, Kiromok attacking in the midst of the ruins, or worse, in the midst of the horror.

  “How’s such a dreadful thing possible, milord? The noises… after so long…?”

  “I do not know, Rollaf,” Gawain said softly.

  “It was as though the last minutes of the city were impressed into the very stones of its construction, the sounds recorded in them, as words are recorded by ink on paper,” Allazar sighed, staring at the grass in front of him. “I think Longsword was right, whatever the mightiest of mystic minds created in the dome and unwittingly unleashed, it takes power from the sun, drawing it through the day as noon approaches. Then, shortly after the sun has passed its zenith, the dread discharge occurs, and the sounds of that catastrophe are replayed. Only to be repeated, day after day, for so long as that power remains, for so long as day follows night.”

  “And if you approach too close, you’ll be destroyed.”

  Allazar exchanged a glance with Arramin. “Longsword?”

  “There was a bird. A pigeon, flying fast. It would’ve crossed above the tower, but some instinct gave warning and it tried in vain to turn away. The moment it neared the pillars on those blue-stone steps, it was destroyed by a streamer of lightning from inside the dome. It was gone in an instant, nothing but smoke remained. It was what made me cry out to you both.”

  “Aye. Pigeon. Saw it too,” Terryn announced softly.

  There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of horses ripping grass from the bank.

  “A clear night, no rain,” Tyrane sighed.

  “Aye. We should make use of the last of the light for a quick look around, and then settle for the night. If we’re to reach Ostinath as quickly as predicted, we’ll need to sleep on the barge and travel through the nights. That’ll mean look-outs, and all of us learning how to stop that thing in an emergency.”