Let Sleeping Dragons Lie Read online

  ‘From the earth,’ it told him, as though he had asked a stupid question.

  ‘Stone make you strong,’ said Egda. ‘Darkness clear your sight.’

  The ritual greeting seemed to please the urthkin. ‘Wide be your halls. Tunnels guide you true.’

  The others joined Egda, bowing deeply to make themselves look as small as possible. Among the urthkin, height was deemed a disadvantage.

  ‘What are you doing here, Urthkin?’ asked Odo.

  ‘The earth will offer you safe haven,’ the urthkin told Eleanor, who was the smallest, ‘if you agree to our terms.’

  ‘And, uh, what are your terms?’ she asked.

  ‘This machine must be destroyed.’

  ‘No!’ Old Ryce exclaimed. ‘That is … dark ones … why? I don’t even know if it works!’

  The urthkin leader glanced at Old Ryce, whose head bobbed at a point significantly higher than hers, and again did not reply directly.

  ‘We have tried to ruin this abomination many times,’ it told Eleanor. ‘Always, we have failed. The knowledge of its making and breaking is beyond us, and its key parts lie too high from the earth. But it is not beyond the tall one here.’ Another contemptuous glance at Old Ryce. ‘If he will end its terror, we will help you escape this place.’

  ‘Terror?’ echoed Old Ryce, his mouth hanging open. ‘Has Old Ryce done it again? But there are no dragons this time … I promised!’

  Eleanor soothed him. She didn’t really know what was going on, but she recognised an opportunity for escape when she saw one.

  ‘Could you destroy the machine if you had to?’ she asked him. ‘Would you, if it was hurting someone?’

  ‘Well, yes. But all it does is make rain. If it does. It hasn’t been tested—’

  ‘We know of such things from long ago,’ the urthkin told Eleanor. ‘And the tall one believes.’

  ‘Old Ryce does think it will work,’ said Old Ryce slowly. ‘Old Ryce has laboured very hard, has puzzled out many strange things, has done work such has not be seen for—’

  Clearly it mattered to the old man whether he had succeeded or failed.

  ‘It must be destroyed,’ pronounced the urthkin.

  A louder pounding on the door suggested those outside had found a battering ram of some kind.

  ‘I suggest a fair trade,’ said Egda over the sound of the ram slamming into the door. ‘Let Old Ryce start the backwards weather vane, but not let it continue very long, to see if it works. Rain will also distract our enemies outside, gaining us time.’

  ‘Does it work like that?’ asked Eleanor to Old Ryce. ‘I mean, if you stop it and then destroy it, the rain will also stop?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ replied Old Ryce. ‘Little rain, then more rain, then lots more rain.’

  ‘How about a little rain, just for a few minutes, to see if it works, and then Old Ryce will destroy it,’ Eleanor proposed to the urthkin.

  ‘Very little rain,’ said the urthkin.

  ‘Yes, not too much,’ she told it, wondering why that was so important. ‘Old Ryce will wreck it once the skies open – isn’t that right, Old Ryce?’

  The old man nodded.

  ‘And then you can show us how we can escape,’ she said. ‘How the earth can save us.’

  The urthkin inclined its head, but only minutely. ‘On my name, Shache, I swear it as scortwisa of Ablerhyll, scortwisa-that-was of Anfyltarn.’

  Eleanor blinked in surprise, understanding the urthkin term for leader. ‘You recognise me?’

  ‘Yes, and your champion.’ Shache didn’t glance at Odo, but he knew it meant him. The duel he had once fought and very nearly lost against an urthkin still haunted him.

  ‘Is that why you’re helping us?’ Eleanor asked.

  ‘No.’ Shache bowed. ‘Proceed. Remember, very little rain. Too much, and we will leave you to your enemies. Or slay you ourselves, as oathbreakers.’

  Old Ryce glanced at Eleanor, and then at Egda. They both nodded, so he scampered off to a bank of levers and counterweights that occupied an entire wall. Grabbing the largest lever, he pulled with all his might.

  When it failed to move, Odo joined him and added his considerable strength to the endeavour.

  With a slow grinding noise, the lever came down, down, down, and then locked into its lowest position with a definite click, followed by a sound like thousands and thousands of bees buzzing inside the walls, a sound that slowly faded upwards.

  Old Ryce stepped back and looked around, rubbing his hands eagerly. ‘Hee hee, now we see.’

  ‘What’s going on in there?’ bellowed the voice from outside.

  ‘Stand back!’ Old Ryce called. ‘Big experiment about to begin!’

  Even as he spoke, the backwards weather vane was picking up speed, growing noisier with every second. Potent oils bubbled through pipes. Wooden cogs spun faster and faster, until they began to smoke. Dust rained down from far above, where the axle driving the four blades turned, rapidly becoming a blur.

  Odo gathered the reins of two wide-eyed horses in each fist, stopping them from rearing in fright, the others restraining their horses too. The entire structure shuddered so violently around them that it seemed likely to collapse. There was nowhere within to take shelter.

  ‘Is it working?’ Eleanor asked Old Ryce, shouting over the deafening roar of machines. He was grinning like a madman.

  ‘Let’s find out!’

  He tugged her to the base of a long pipe that snaked up to the very top of the spire and pressed her eye against it. Through it, via a series of cunning lenses, she saw the sky above. It was no longer blue. Thick, black clouds were gathering.

  Even as she watched, a bolt of lightning leaped from one cloud to another with a sudden roar of thunder loud enough to drown out the backwards weather vane.

  Old Ryce clapped his hands and performed a capering dance.

  ‘Any rain yet?’ bellowed Hundred into Eleanor’s ear. She shook her head.

  ‘Wait for the rain. It’ll put out the craft-fire.’

  Eleanor pressed her eye back to the tube, understanding now why Egda had insisted on that particular condition. The urthkin might have driven a stiffer bargain had they known the humans were to gain more than just a simple distraction from the shower. It was so dark outside now that an urthkin wouldn’t have been troubled by the sun. The pounding on the door had ceased as people looked skyward in wonder, waiting to see what would happen next.

  No less than three lightning bolts cracked at once, and the deluge began.

  With a deep-throated roar, torrential rain began to pour on Ablerhyll. Heavy drops fell on roofs and dripped through the spire’s ancient eaves. Long trickles snaked under the barn doors, approaching the hooves of the nervous horses. The air smelled dense and heavy with moisture, and of a stranger tang, like lightning itself.

  ‘Enough.’ A tiny, sharp-clawed hand gripped Eleanor’s shoulder.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Hundred. ‘A few more seconds.’

  ‘Enough!’ declared Shache after the briefest of pauses, its black eyes following a particularly thick rivulet across the floor.

  ‘Yes!’ declared Eleanor. ‘Old Ryce, make it stop – for good!’

  The aged mechanist stopped dancing midstep, looked sad for an instant, then nodded. Crossing once more to the bank of controls, he pulled several more levers and turned the screws on two wide pipes open to maximum. Then he stood back, dusting his hands on his tunic.

  ‘What’ll that do?’ asked Odo.

  ‘Make it go faster,’ said Old Ryce, looking up nervously. ‘Until it tears itself apart.’

  ‘How long?’ asked Eleanor.

  ‘About a minute.’

  ‘Then I think it’s time you met your side of the bargain,’ Hundred told Shache. ‘Or we’ll all die together.’

  ‘The earth will save us,’ said the urthkin. It walked several paces away and slapped the ground with its hands. There was a rumble beneath their feet, the horses shifting nervously, and then the
earth fell away to reveal a wide tunnel that sloped down into darkness.

  The urthkin went ahead, a pale glow emanating from its skin, just enough for the humans to see the way.

  ‘Let’s go!’ said Eleanor, ushering her horse forward. It needed little encouragement, spooked by all the noise above. One by one the party led their steeds into the welcome dark and quiet, even as the rainmaking machine behind them began to shudder itself to pieces.

  Odo had never been so deep underground before. All around him he felt the weight and pressure of stone and earth. It was like nighttime, only a thousand times darker, save for the faint glimmer of the urthkin’s skin ahead and a little light from the room behind. It was noisy, though, very noisy, with the footfalls of many people, plus ten horses, plus the racket of the backwards weather vane echoing from the surface.

  However the urthkin had opened the ground, it closed up behind them, just as the last packhorse made it in. With that sealing off went the very last of the lantern light from the chamber. A minute later, the ground shook and there was a terrific bang from above, the sound of the giant machine rending itself from top to bottom, the pieces falling in on themselves. It sounded like the world ending. Odo stopped for a full ten seconds with his hands over his head, half expecting the ceiling of the tunnel to collapse. Old Ryce stood over him with his hands pressed upwards against the stone, as though prepared to hold it in place single-handedly.

  The ceiling held, but the sound of small impacts echoed through the tunnel for some time. Odo hoped no one had been hurt. When it was over, Old Ryce sighed and sadly let his hands fall.

  ‘There can’t be anything of the spire left up there,’ said Eleanor in awe.

  ‘Good,’ said Hundred. ‘They’ll think us dead, crushed under the wreckage.’

  ‘Hurry,’ said Shache. ‘This road will not remain here long.’

  ‘What is this place?’ asked Eleanor as the procession got moving again. Blinking, she realised in amazement that even though there were no obvious lights, she could still see. As well as the urthkin themselves, there were thin veins of moon-white light snaking through the stone walls, where something like fungus grew. The light was just enough to make out the shapes of those around her, so she could avoid stepping on anyone’s toes, or being trodden on herself.

  ‘You are in our lands … you have no words,’ the urthkin answered. ‘It is the home we have beneath your human home. An undercity, perhaps?’

  ‘You mean you live down here?’ asked Odo in horror. His words emerged as a choked squeak. Although he had known the urthkin lived in the earth, he had imagined vast caverns big enough to hold entire villages, not this narrow tunnel that wouldn’t be here long.

  ‘We live in many places,’ said Shache enigmatically. ‘Many of them are unknown to humans, who are forbidden here, just as we are forbidden in your cities.’

  ‘The ancient pact that has existed between urthkin and humans for hundreds of years allows urthkin to build under our towns whenever they like,’ Egda explained. ‘For the purposes of trade, mainly. It benefits both sides.’

  ‘We would never break that pact,’ Shache told them, ‘but humans sometimes do. Humans like Instrument Umblewit.’

  A strange sound echoed along the tunnel, that of many sets of urthkin teeth grinding together. Eleanor looked back and was surprised to see more than a dozen urthkin bringing up the rear.

  Shache continued. ‘A foolish man brought the device that is now destroyed to Instrument Umblewit, hoping for reward. He had found it, hidden away, with a book that told of its use. Including how the machine could bring drenching rains – not to clean the streets or water the fields, but to drown urthkin, to flood us out of our undercity. This is what Umblewit threatened, because we would pay her no taxes, would not obey her commands to bring gold and gems and precious things of the earth. We, who have only ever brought prosperity to Ablerhyll in fair trade! If we could have slain her, we would have, but she is too cautious, too well guarded. We could only attempt to harm the lower parts of the machine.’

  ‘It was you!’ exclaimed Old Ryce out of the darkness. ‘You’re the reason the machine kept breaking down! Umblewit was going to punish me if I couldn’t get it to work!’ ‘The urthkin had a right to defend themselves, since that device was intended as a weapon,’ said Egda, which seemed to Odo a fair summary of the injustice of the situation.

  Old Ryce harrumphed a couple of times, as though he had something caught at the back of his throat, but a couple of solid pats on the back from Eleanor soon cleared the obstruction.

  ‘We have many machines in the undercity,’ said Shache. ‘Machines for the digging of tunnels and seeking of gems. Perhaps the tall one would like to see them?’

  Eleanor couldn’t see Old Ryce well enough, but she could imagine the look of delight that crossed his face.

  ‘The tall one would like that very much!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘It shall be so,’ said Shache.

  They came to a junction in the tunnel. Odo could hear echoes vanishing off into two directions ahead, and even though he still wasn’t breathing properly, he could tell that the air from the one to the left was much fresher than that to the right.

  ‘Here we part ways,’ Shache told them. ‘Follow the tunnel that leads upwards and it will open on a hillside out of sight of humans … other humans. The tall one will come with us, if he so wills. We will collapse the tunnel behind you.’

  The party split into two unequal parts, and the urthkin made moves to head on their way, deeper into the earth.

  ‘Wait,’ said Egda. ‘Umblewit has broken the pact here, and perhaps others have done so elsewhere, but I would see it fixed in Ablerhyll and throughout the kingdom. You have my oath that everyone who suffers at the unjust hands of the Instruments will receive recompense.’

  ‘With darkness comes wisdom.’ Shache bowed. ‘I see that it is so with you, old one. Tunnels guide you true.’

  ‘Good-bye, Old Ryce!’ called Eleanor. ‘Until we meet again!’

  ‘Good-bye!’ Odo managed to squeak out. He really didn’t like being all closed in. Glowing urthkin veins and thin lines of mould on the walls simply did not compare with a well-trimmed lantern – or, even better, the bright sun.

  ‘Good-bye! Good-bye!’ echoed back to them from Old Ryce, and then they were alone.

  The urthkin were as good as their word, as Odo had known they would be – a fact that gave him great comfort as they proceeded up the twisting, turning tunnel, leading the horses behind them. Within half an hour, there was a hint of greenish sunlight ahead, and then they were suddenly outside, in a stand of dense bushes that hid the tunnel opening from sight. Stepping through the bushes, Odo took a deep breath of deliciously fresh air and reacquainted himself with the vistas of the surface world. The sky was heavy with clouds and the ground damp underfoot, but the rain had ceased with the destruction of the backwards weather vane and the air was still.

  Hundred looked at the sun and declared them slightly south of the road they had intended to follow from Ablerhyll. Despite the turns and winding of the tunnel, they hadn’t ultimately strayed far from their path.

  ‘The sun is setting, sire,’ Hundred told her liege. ‘I would argue for travelling by night, but all are weary, the beasts no less than us. Perhaps a short respite is in order?’

  ‘You are right, Hundred.’ The former king wearily inclined his head. He had been perfectly spry during their troubles in Ablerhyll, but now seemed once again to show his age. ‘We will make camp until moonrise, then continue on our way along the road, for that will be fastest.’

  ‘Why does he call you “Hundred”?’ Eleanor asked as they tethered the horses and began unloading them. She had often asked herself this question, wondering if it was perhaps the number of battles the old warrior had been in, or the number of people she had killed in battle, or the number of ways she knew how to kill people … or some other grisly fact entirely, as befitted a warrior of Hundred’s experience.

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nbsp; ‘I come from a large family’ was all Hundred said on the matter that night, before giving Eleanor a long list of chores to ensure she was too busy to ask again.

  ‘Why is she always so mean to us?’ Eleanor grumbled under her breath as she and Odo hurried to complete their tasks before darkness fell. ‘Aren’t we knights too?’

  ‘I like her,’ said Odo, although he mainly just liked knowing what he had to do. Being a knight had often felt like stumbling around in the dark, trying not to break anything valuable, and it came as a great relief to be told how to behave. Mostly, though, he was glad to be no longer underground – that was something he hoped never to have to endure again. ‘We’re apprentice guards,’ he added. ‘It’s our job to be bossed around.’

  ‘Many great knights have begun their lives as apprentice guards,’ said Biter. ‘Sir Winchell, for instance, spent a year emptying latrines before slaying the Vile Beast of Esceanda—’

  ‘The two tasks were not unrelated,’ said Runnel. ‘One lived in the other.’

  ‘But the fact remains, sister: All must begin their journey somewhere.’

  ‘Swords don’t start out at the bottom,’ Eleanor complained, then snickered at her unintended joke. ‘Like Sir Winchell did. You’re just made … and enchanted … and off you go to see the world. I wish I could be like that.’

  ‘We are more than metal and magic,’ Runnel told her. ‘We learn just as you do.’

  ‘By our deeds are we known,’ Biter added with some finality, suggesting that the time for idle chat was over. ‘As are true knights.’

  Odo sensed that there was a lot more to the story of the swords than this. He knew little about how Runnel and Biter had been forged – but how much did he himself really know about how he had come to be? His father had told him bedtime stories as a young child about the courtship between him and his mother, but they were surprisingly light on details.

  ‘Every day, we see something new,’ he reminded Eleanor, thinking of backwards weather vanes, urthkin tunnels and bespelled ravens.

  ‘Yes, but it would be better if we were learning new things as well,’ she grumbled, disinclined to be satisfied.