Edge of Destiny (9 page)

Even as she ran, leaping small cracks in the ground, Caithe shrugged. “You two were trying to kill each other. That’s what charr and men do. But then, you were trying to save each other. That’s not what they do. I was . . . intrigued.”

Logan asked, “Are you still intrigued?”

“More like baffled.” Just then, the voice of a hyena ripped the air, and more yipping followed. “They’ve seen us.”

“Half a mile back,” Rytlock huffed, glancing over his shoulder. “We’ve got—what?—a minute?”

“Just keep running.”

The three did for the first forty seconds, rushing side by side across the grasslands while hyenas bounded after.

“I wouldn’t be in this mess if it weren’t for you,” Rytlock snapped.

“You wouldn’t be in this mess if you’d left Ascalon to us,” Logan replied.

The hyenas were snapping at their heels.

Rytlock drew Sohothin and backhanded two of the beasts right behind him. They squealed and fell away.

Another peal from the ogre horn announced that the brutes had sighted their quarry. The ground shook with the footfalls of the ogres.

Logan hoisted his war hammer. “We have to turn and fight. The hyenas will drag us down.”

“No! Just keep running!” Caithe shouted.

“What’s the point?” cried Rytlock. “You got some secret fortress hidden in your pocket?”

“Yes!” Caithe said, suddenly dropping away into a narrow cleft in the ground.

Eyes wide, Logan ran up on the same cleft and skidded to a halt in front of it. The steep crevice plunged away into unseeable depths, and the sylvari had vanished into it.

“Look out!” Rytlock shouted, running a hyena through with his flaming sword.

“Thanks,” Logan replied, pulping the head of another.

As they fought the snarling beasts, both warriors backed toward the deep crevice.

“You think she did that on purpose?” Logan asked, mowing down another hyena.

“Of course!” Rytlock growled through clenched teeth. “She’s sylvari!”

More hyenas converged out of the grasses, their fangs snarling.

“I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt,” Logan said as he leaped into the gap, sliding away between walls of stone.

Rytlock rolled his eyes and killed another hyena. “I’m not going to be outdone by a human and a twig.” He sheathed Sohothin and jumped down the crevice, too.

HEADS OF THE MILITARY

E
ir stepped back from carving another huge basalt head. It showed Snaff’s face—the quirky rumple of his brow mirrored below in a slight smirking lip, the wide and happy eyes, the long nose, and those ears like milkweed pods.

“How do I look?” Snaff asked, posing nearby.

Pacing across the stone chips that littered the floor of Snaff’s laboratory, Eir said, “You look good.”

“Good?” Snaff said dejectedly. “Not dashing?”

“I’ve never seen you dash. . . .”

“How about brave?”

“Sure,” Eir said as she brushed rock dust from her hands. “Brave.”

Snaff waddled up beside her and stared at his likeness. A smile crept onto his face, and he said,
“Brave.”

“Well, that does it for the second head,” Eir said. “What about the body?”

“Oh! Zojja’s been working hard on my design,” Snaff said enthusiastically. He grasped the norn’s hand and led her over to a short drafting table covered with sketches. All showed a spherical cage with a leather harness suspended within. “The cage is for protection, of course, like your rib cage, because inside it is where the driver will be suspended. These straps will hold the person secure within the center of the cage, with side straps to stabilize in case the golem falls over.”

“Ouch,” Eir said.

Snaff nodded. “Yes, and you see that there’s plenty of clearance for flailing arms and legs.”

“Show me how far we are.”

Snaff led Eir to the worktables that held the metal golems. From the belly of Big Zojja, a blinding light flashed, and acrid smoke whiffed into the air. The light ceased, and Zojja’s head popped from the opening, her hair slightly singed. She set smoking hands on the golem fuselage.

“Have you been welding by hand again?” Snaff asked.

“It’s fastest,” Zojja said dismissively. “But I’ve got to make sure my eyes are shut.”

“How are the cockpits coming?” Snaff went on.

“Nearly done. Both are welded to the frame. Then you can hang your rigs.”

“Ingenious,” Eir marveled.

Zojja huffed. “Only if you trust metal over magic.”

“Eir,” Snaff interrupted, “I don’t think I’ve shown you the laurels. . . .”

“Wait,” Eir said, staring at Zojja. “What did you say?”

“I said I don’t know why the two of you are putting more trust in golems than in magic.”

“They’re
magic
golems,” Snaff volunteered with a weak smile.

Eir waved him off. “No, wait. This isn’t about magic or metal. This is about Zojja disagreeing with the plan.”

Zojja nodded tightly. “Exactly.”

Eir folded her arms over her chest. “So you don’t think your master’s designs are good enough?”

Zojja’s eyes flared. “Of course they are!”

“So you don’t think your
welds
are good enough?”

“My welds are rock solid!”

“So you don’t think
my plans
are good enough.”

Zojja pointed at her. “
There
you go.”

Eir nodded. “Well, your reservations are noted, but the plan goes ahead.”

“Then we’re all going to get killed.”

Eir laughed angrily, shaking her head. “No, we won’t. I promise you, we will kill the Dragonspawn, and every one of us will walk out of there alive.”

Zojja cocked her hips. “If I die, it’ll be too late to say I told you so.”

Eir towered above the asura. “Your master is a kind man. You could have much worse. In fact, every asura I have encountered would make a much worse master.”

“Thank you very much,” Snaff said. “And now, about the laurels—”

“But he has one fault,” Eir continued, never looking away from Zojja. “He lets you pretend
you
are the master.”

“That’s because he recognizes that I am a genius,” Zojja said archly.

Eir shook her head. “You
work
with a genius, and yet you disdain everything he does. He treats you with respect, and you act as if he is your enemy. One day, you will be without him, and then you will see who the true genius is.”

Zojja rolled her eyes. “Nice speech.”

Eir clenched her hands, gritted her teeth, and turned away.

Snaff smiled and blinked placidly. “Let me show you these wonderful laurels.” He retrieved a pair of golden torcs from a nearby table and brought them over. Powerstones in red, yellow, purple, and green gleamed in settings of gold. “Beautiful, aren’t they? The stones are selected to map to the activation zones of our minds.”

The word
minds
cast a pall over Eir’s face. “Yes. Minds. There’s the flaw in my plan.” She glanced over her shoulder, then looked back down at Snaff. “The Dragonspawn takes over minds. He corrupts them. His power infuses them, tempts them. He turns those who want to kill him into those who want to serve him. These machines are no good unless we can block his mind powers.”

Snaff grinned like a boy who had studied well for a test. “He can’t. That’s why I’ve placed these here,” he said, tapping a powerstone embedded in the shoulder piece of Big Zojja. “The gray stones repel mind auras. Out here on the shoulders, they’ll create a field that will block the Dragonspawn’s mind. He can’t reach us, and he can’t take over our golems.”

Eir slapped Snaff on the back, a move that shuffled him a few steps forward. “You
are
a genius. But could you put some gray stones in a necklace for me and a collar for Garm?”

“Of course,” Snaff replied offhandedly, but then said, “You know,
nobody
else has this technology. Everybody else is making golems
without heads
!”

Eir feigned shock.
“No!”

Snaff nodded deeply. “Their golems fumble around, while mine combine the genius of an asura with the power of a titan!
Nobody
can do this stuff!”

“They all think he’s cracked,” Zojja explained flatly as she jumped down from the belly of her golem. “I agree. Sometimes.”

Eir laughed ruefully. “So, is everything ready?”

“Everything except the head of my golem,” Snaff said. “You can put that into place while I get your gray-stone necklace and collar made. Then we’ll have a meal and a rest, and tomorrow—”

“We march on the Dragonspawn.”

She headed back toward the worktables, lifted the huge head of Big Snaff, and slid it into position atop his metalwork body. When the stone base contacted the metal frame, loops of steel rose to engage the stone shoulders and clamp down tightly. Then Eir had only to set a powerstone in the head of the creature. It fused with the basalt, sinking in and rooting.

Big Snaff sat up.

Eir set the other powerstone, and Big Zojja rose, too.

Garm and Eir stood between those towering creatures. Snaff and Zojja wandered over to join them. They stared in wonder at what they had wrought.

“There is a certain sick calm before battle,” Eir said. “The panic of the heart that something has been left undone, that we are not ready for this.” She looked at the two asura, only rising waist high, and at her wolf, who rose only to her ribs. “We
are
ready.”

Snaff clapped his hands once and then rubbed them eagerly. “Then let’s feast.”

A pig turned on a spit within the laboratory’s ironwork forge, and among the coals below, potatoes nestled in chain-mail sleeves. Wild onions and butter-soaked leeks simmered in iron skillets. Cornflower cakes rose on the hearth, and little pitchers of honey and gravy warmed there, as well.

The four warriors lined up along the hearth and loaded pewter plates with this bounty. Then they gathered around the great stone table where Big Zojja had been built. Even Garm had a place. Though their plates were heaped with smoked pork and caramelized onions and leeks and cornflower cakes, they sat in silence, unsure what to say.

At last, Eir spoke. “Spirit of Wolf,” she breathed, her voice husky in the hot jungle air. “Spirit of Bear and Snow Leopard and Raven, we eat this meal tonight in preparation for war tomorrow. We fight not just for the norn but for you, for all races. Be with us. Help us prevail against the Dragonspawn.”

With those words, the spell of regret over them all was shattered. They ate and talked and laughed but did not speak of what the dawn might bring.

•     •     •     

The first red glow of sunrise filtered through the skylight of Snaff’s laboratory and shone across his two massive golems: a twenty-foot-tall Snaff and an eighteen-foot-tall Zojja. Both stood with their cockpit hatches open, ready for their drivers to climb in.

“Well, my dear,” Snaff said, “let’s take them for a spin.”

Zojja gave a rare smile and clambered up the leg of her golem, into the cockpit.

Snaff climbed up as well, pulling the cockpit hatch closed behind him. He stepped into the spherical cage and strapped himself into the leather harness. Leaning toward a speaking tube, he shouted, “Can you hear me?” His voice rang through the metal.

A tinny reply came: “Yes.”

“Make sure you fit the straps securely. We’re going to get jostled. And make sure your laurel is tightly in place.”

“Yes, Father,” Zojja said sarcastically.

Snaff slid the laurel onto his head. The jewels on the gold band glowed to life, and the metal affixed to Snaff’s skull. He blinked as his eyes lost focus in the cockpit. They regained focus above, staring through the red pupils of the golem. “I can see! Through the golem’s eyes! Well—hello down there, my norn friend!”

Servos whined, and Big Snaff’s giant hand waved beside his giant head.

Eir waved back a little sheepishly.

“It’s spooky to be so big.”

“Yeah, spooky,” Zojja replied in a metallic voice.

“All right! Gang’s all here,” Eir said as Garm loped up beside her. “Let’s get this attack going.” She led the way, striding up the stone steps that led from the laboratory. Garm followed at her heels, and behind him came the two Bigs.

Rata Sum had never seen such an odd procession. The norn warrior Eir Stegalkin marched down the side of the ziggurat, followed by her dire wolf, Garm, who was taller than two asura stacked. Behind came two asura who were taller than five—the wide-eyed Big Snaff and the intense, young Big Zojja.

They climbed toward the city center, the switchback stairs shaking with their footfalls.

That morning, even the geniuses who loved to sleep in rolled out of their beds to gape at the procession.

Master Klab, for one, staggered up from within his workshop and stood beside his ruined puffball, which was unceremoniously lashed to a stone curb. He blinked in annoyance at the mechanical parade, saving a particularly deep scowl for “Master” Snaff. “Bit of rubbish,” Klab snarled, though he couldn’t quite turn away from those strange stony heads, those carefully engineered trusses, those expertly aligned welds. Yes, Klab had recently been saved by that very golem, looking so much like Snaff’s own apprentice, but no genius wants to be beholden. Zojja showed how beholden he really was—and how much of a genius Snaff really was.