“Lot-Ionan!” Tungdil called. “Stop it recharging!”
The magician raised his hands and sent out a bright blue ray of light, missing the monster narrowly as it swerved at the last moment. The beam struck the middle of one of the boilers, releasing clouds of scalding steam from a hole the size of a mill stone.
Flagur and the ubariu stormed forward at Tungdil’s command; Sirka, Rodario and Lot-Ionan followed at a slight distance.
The magus continued trying to zap the monster in an effort to prevent it reaching the platform and taking on more magic. He failed. Some invisible power was deflecting the beams.
Tungdil and some of the troop stepped onto the lift, while the others operated the winding gear. He heartily wished he still had Keenfire. “Let us hope it doesn’t see us coming,” he said to Flagur.
The monster climbed nimbly onto the nearest boiler and leaped from there to land on the platform.
As soon as its feet touched down, greenish flames flickered up and surrounded the armored figure; sparks sizzled along the rods on its glass forearms where the magic force was concentrated, and from inside the hollow glass, light blazed like small suns.
The swaying lift cage arrived at platform level, and Tungdil pushed the door open.
“You shall die!” screamed the beast in fury. “It’s your fault I am stuck down here.” It raised both arms toward the exhausted magus.
“Palandiell, give me strength,” Lot-Ionan prayed, somehow managing to cast a protective spell. The enemy responded by shooting energy beams from its fingers.
Hissing, these beams encountered magic resistance. Lot-Ionan had conjured up a mirror spell, one of the simplest to effect. But even this straightforward incantation seemed to be failing in the face of some incomprehensible power. Was the creature tapping into the entire magic source and directing its power against him? His magic mirror cracked and splintered-with devastating consequences.
The beams were diffused into countless slender rays, radiating out as if from the sun, destroying everything in the cave they touched.
“Lie down!” Tungdil shouted to his comrades, throwing himself flat onto the platform and hoping the special alloy it was made from would absorb the swirling fields of energy.
But nothing was able to withstand the rays.
The pressurized combustion chambers exploded, punching holes the size of a dwarf’s fist into the rock walls; water started gushing in. Two of the ubariu fell victim to the sizzling death rays.
The monster itself suffered the same fate: randomly deflected beams hit him, one penetrating through its teeth into its mouth. Black smoke curled up from the impact spot. It uttered a roar of pain, fell backwards and plunged from the platform, several more deadly beams striking it before it crashed to the ground.
Tungdil stood up and surveyed the havoc all around him. Broad cracks were appearing on the cavern walls. The damaged rock would not withstand the pressure much longer. “Quick, everyone, get down again!” He leaped into the lift cage. “There’s only one way to escape death.”
Before they had reached ground level the roof fell in. A torrent of water cascaded in, threatening to engulf and drown them alclass="underline" dwarves, ubariu and humans.
XVII
Girdlegard,
Queendom of Weyurn,
Thirty Miles Northeast of Mifurdania,
Late Summer, 6241st Solar Cycle
The Waveskimmer raced across the water toward the northern edge of the Red Mountain Range where the monster had said the tunnel entrance lay. The fog had lifted and those on deck were basking now in sunshine.
Sirka kissed Tungdil. “You are a very clever dwarf.”
He relished the sensation of her soft lips on his own. “No, I just used my powers of observation,” he said, watching out for the sandbank.
“Always so modest,” complained Rodario from his hammock, where he was soaking up the invigorating rays. “If you hadn’t had the idea of climbing into the empty boiler, we’d all have drowned.” He shut his eyes against the bright light. “Even Lot-Ionan. Again, my deepest appreciation and heartiest thanks.”
“It was the same principle as with the island. If something is full of air, it’ll rise.” Tungdil smiled and permitted himself a touch of pride.
Flagur, with a nasty cut on his shoulder from the sharp edges of the damaged boiler, nodded in agreement. He was seated on a barrel, naked to the waist, bandages to hand. One of his comrades was stitching the wound. “The actor is right. Things were looking very bad. As it is, most of us have survived.” He did not appear to feel the needle.
Tungdil noticed Lot-Ionan was sitting in the shade on a coil of rope a little way off, near the main mast, and looking extremely ill at ease. He went over to his foster-father. “Revered sir, what is wrong?”
Lot-Ionan raised his white head and attempted a smile. He held out his hands. “Didn’t you see? In the old days spells never went wrong. Never!” He clasped his hands as if he wanted to hide them from sight. “Now all I can do are silly little spells; my memory is playing tricks just when we need it most.” He sighed heavily. “A mirror spell in a chamber surrounded by water and at the bottom of a lake. How stupid of me!”
“It’s Nudin’s fault, not yours,” said Tungdil, trying to console him.
“I know that,” the magus replied, “but it doesn’t make it any better.” He looked at the dwarf. “I am concerned about the future. About what happens after the battle with the unslayable.”
Tungdil tried to guess at his thoughts. “The Outer Lands?”
“No. The future of magic in Girdlegard.” He ran his fingers up the weathered timber of the mast. “The new magic wellspring lies so deep. Without the island nobody will ever get there to use it.” He looked at the cliffs rearing up out of the water four miles ahead. One of them resembled a face, with a promontory like a nose. A giant’s nose. “What’s bothering me most is this: Is there anyone at all, apart from me, able to make use of it?”
“Perhaps one of Nudin’s other initiates?” Tungdil played with the free end of the rope. “Don’t worry about getting to the lake bed. If you can get up to the surface in a boiler then you can get down again the same way. It’s just a question of ballast. We don’t need the island.”
Lot-Ionan asked pensively, “But if any others trained under Nudin, why didn’t they join Dergard and his friends?” He got to his feet and rubbed his back where stabs of pain were still troubling him. “What if I’m the last magus in Girdlegard?”
“They might have seen Dergard going with you instead of following in Nod’onn’s footsteps as a betrayal,” Tungdil suggested. “Dergard located the source. We’ll see if anyone else turns up in Weyurn suspiciously close to the same place.” A call from the lookout warned they were nearing the cliff. “We’re at our destination, venerable sir. Are you ready?”
“I don’t know.” His pale blue eyes seemed very tired. “But I have no choice.” He smiled. “None of us have a choice, do we?”
The Waveskimmer ploughed through the waves toward the vegetation growing on the shore.
Tungdil wished his friend Ireheart were at his side for the coming confrontation. He was not only a good fighter but could lighten even the most critical of situations with a joke or scurrilous turn of phrase.
A squall pattern on the lake surface reminded Tungdil of the last of the rune messages: the one on the armor of the creature now at the bottom of the lake together with the remains of the island.
“ Eight,” he said quietly, mentally arranging the words. “ Your deaths have eight faces.” It was the unslayable’s threat to the elves. Would it prove to have been spoken too soon? He was clear what the number eight meant. Five machine creatures, two unslayables and the alfar from Toboribor. Death in eight forms. Two were still around.
Rodario opened his eyes and got out of the hammock. “Where is the man o’ war the unslayable used to get here? He can’t have made it invisible.”