Oran bent over, red-faced, wringing his hands.
“The angel knows it is indestructible,” Mina explained. “Paradoxically, it's that very belief that makes it so. This whole…” She swept a glassy hand across the room. “… construction, this machinery, the engines, they're all functionally meaningless. They exist solely to create an illusion of power and strength for the soul to adhere to. The golem sees itself and believes that this physical form requires a power source, and so Menoa has given it simple engines, pistons for muscles, and chemical blood to move its hideous limbs. None of this is actually required, and yet none of it can be physically destroyed. The whole creature is a bizarre paradox of faith and form and uselessness.”
Oran scowled at her. “Your witch-speak means nothing to me, woman. My men are out there now binding the creature's limbs with rope.”
“A complete waste of time.”
“Then what do you suggest? Exactly what are you doing in here?”
The thaumaturge looked away. “I was trying to plant doubts in its mind, to challenge its faith in itself and thereby weaken it. I attempted to persuade it that it could be defeated.” She lifted her gaze back to him. “But I failed, because its master has corrupted its will.”
Oran growled, “What about its instincts?”
“What do you mean?”
He grunted. “In conflict, a warrior follows his instincts, woman, and those instincts are driven by naked fear and rage, not by wits or will. A charging aurochs can rout armed forces easily strong enough to take it down. The death of a leader destroys morale and hope. It all stems from fear. Most battles are not won by skill alone, but by the control of men's instincts.” He spat at the glass sphere. “Hasp could have told you that. If you want to defeat that thing, scare it out of its wits.”
Rachel nodded. “He's right, Mina. Its soul is naked before us in there, and that makes it vulnerable to fear. If it perceives danger, it might react instinctively. Menoa might control its consciousness, but-”
“All right,” Mina snapped. “I get it.” She glared at Oran. “What do you suggest, then?”
The woodsman crouched and examined the lower curve of the globe. It stood upon four small crystal pedestals. He rose and walked around it, then kicked one of the supports. Then he dragged a hand across his stubbled jaw and said, “Burn it. Cook the fucking thing in its own pot.”
So his men brought jars of lamp oil and animal fat from the Rusty Saw's own supplies. They filled the arconite's mouth with firewood collected from the surrounding forest. They built a pyre under the soul sphere and drenched it with the oil and fat. And then they lit it.
Flames licked the glass. Black smoke pooled under the concave ceiling and soon began to fill the whole chamber. And within its glass globe, the arconite writhed and mouthed screams in silent terror.
Rachel watched in horror. “Can it really feel heat through the glass?” she asked Mina.
“No,” she said. “It merely thinks it can. But that's good enough for us.”
They retreated back along the crawl space before the air became unbreathable. Oran's men came last, piling more wood and oil into the soul room as they backed out. Soon the whole chamber blazed like the belly of a kiln. Back in the jaw Rachel stood with the others and watched the entrance to the low passageway through which they had crawled, while the fierce red glow cast their shadows high across the interior of the arconite's maw.
They climbed out into the cool night.
At Rachel's instruction, Dill released the automaton. He shifted his great bulk, moving his knees slowly from the fallen giant's back.
“It's working,” Mina said. “As long as that fire keeps burning, its Icarate master can't relay its thoughts through the angel's soul. The arconite can't function.”
“We're torturing it,” Rachel said.
“Technically it's torturing itself. We're just giving it the means to maintain its own illusion.”
Rachel turned away in disgust. “Don't even start that shit with me, Mina.”
The thaumaturge laid a hand on her arm. “We need to keep it burning, Rachel, for as long as it takes to get away from here.” She turned to Oran. “Two or three volunteers should be enough to keep the fire stoked. If we allow the flames to die, that thing is just going to get up and come after us again.”
The woodsman chose three volunteers from the men who had assembled around them. They would be paid in gold and left with enough provisions for a week. Only after that length of time would they be permitted to abandon the fire. They asked for whisky but Oran refused to give them any. “You'll get drunk and fall asleep and the fire will die. Keep it burning until we're long gone. When we see you next, every last man of us will be buying you a glass.”
The men clasped arms and Oran left them to their hellish cave, where they had promised to keep the soul of an angel in agony for the good of their fellows.
Now, with one plan under way and the majority of Oran's people returning to the Rusty Saw, the assassin and the thaumaturge turned their attention to Hasp.
The god still sat within the bone cage of Dill's fingers. Mud stained his ragged cassock and spattered his glass bracers and greaves. His coalred eyes seemed unable to focus on anything but the empty bottle in his hand. Rachel noted with irony that he had merely passed the cheap liquor from that glass container into another. He looked old and sick, perilously close to death. Yet some of the earlier rage had now left him.
“Hasp?” Rachel said.
He closed his eyes and his head slumped forward. “Let me out,” he moaned.
“We can't do that yet.”
Hasp gazed down at his bottle. “I don't…” He sniffed and rubbed his forehead. “… feel compelled to do anything violent.”
“How do I know that? The last order you-”
His head snapped up. “The last fucking order urged me to kill the women within the arconite. But you're not inside it anymore.” He took a heavy breath and then his head fell back into his hand. “All the whisky in the world,” he said, “doesn't dull the fucking thing's claws. I would have broken your necks.” His fingers made vague shapes in the air and then he let out a miserable sigh. “And I would still be trying, if the parasite had any wits of its own. If you've any sense, the pair of you should kill me now.”
Mina's brow creased. She looked at Rachel.
“Let him go, Dill,” the assassin ordered.
Dill hesitated.
“Let him go!”
Dill lifted his hand, freeing Hasp. The god remained on the ground for a moment, then picked himself up. He didn't look at either of the women, but slouched back towards the tavern with his head held low. Ranks of Oran's men parted before him, falling silent as the glass-skinned warrior passed.
Anchor fell from the Midden and into the strange, gulping funnel. He sensed pressure on his chest as the living iron constricted around him, but then it released its grip, and he plummeted.
The spirits who had been guided here by the Non Morai reacted fearfully to the big man's presence. A gale tore at him, full of their rushing whispers. Golden motes of light and curved metal walls flashed upwards.
He dropped past windows and portholes through which he barely glimpsed rooms. They passed in the blink of an eye, like sudden memories.
Anchor came to an abrupt halt as the rope attached to his back snapped taut, a sudden jarring that tore the breath from his lungs. Somewhere overhead the Rotsward had come to rest against the mouth of the funnel. The big man hung there for a few moments, gazing down at the horizontal beams of light that crisscrossed the dark shaft below. He could not see the bottom. He glanced up and spied a similar sight: Light from many windows cut across the narrow space, illuminating dust motes and lozenges of the rusty shaft interior.