Reign of Stars Read online

  Of course, when they reached the site of the wreck a few hours later, Skiver was forced to think: That's me set straight, then.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  "The pillar of glass is at the right angle," Lodger said. "The shape is right—it's the same sort of flattened, blunt triangle." Skiver peered over his shoulder and saw the bit of paper where Zernebeth had sketched the shape of the wreck from her vision. Then he looked up at the hill ahead of him, and he had to admit: perfect match. "I don't think we're going to find a better candidate, Alaeron."

  The alchemist was up on the hill, standing on the east side of the tower, shadowed from the rays of the plunging sun. He stomped down on the ground, then turned and slid back down to the level ground where the crawler and the guards were waiting. "This is it." There wasn't a hint of doubt in his voice. "Let's start digging."

  Lodger hmmed. "It's getting late, we might want to set up camp—"

  "If they're too tired to dig, I have stimulants," Alaeron said. "If they refuse to work, give me a shovel and I'll do it myself."

  "I'll see about setting up camp," Skiver said, patting Lodger on the shoulder. "I'm only good at manual labor in a supervisory capacity."

  Lodger grunted and went to the guards, who picked up their picks and shovels without any noticeable grumbling. They worked for the Technic League, after all—they were probably just happy to be given orders by someone who didn't have a giant metal spider for a face, or who prodded them along with a few lashes from an electrified whip.

  "We could use the Earth-Mover." Lodger lifted something like a metal staff with a greenish crystal on top from the back of the crawler, struggling like it weighed as much as he did. "It displaces rock and—"

  "Not yet." Alaeron shook his head, staring at the hillside. "It may be useful later, but I don't want to risk damaging anything before I see what we're dealing with. Best to begin delicately." He pointed. "Two-man teams, one shovel, one pick, start there, and there, and there, digging down at an angle, about this steep." He demonstrated by tilting his hand. "Come, before we lose the light."

  The workers set to their task, with Alaeron walking among them, occasionally seizing a shovel or pick to do something himself. Skiver busied himself gathering wood for a fire—not easy in a place so barren, but there was enough dry scrub to manage—and setting up the cook pots and other camp necessities. He even walked off a ways and dug a latrine, feeling obscurely guilty that everyone but him was chipping away at the earth. He was nearly done with the trench when Alaeron's hand fell on his shoulder. "Eh?" Skiver said, looking around. "Something wrong?"

  "Something right," Alaeron said. "I think we found a hatch. Care to help us get it open?"

  "Hmm. Are there untold riches behind it?"

  "Without a doubt." Alaeron grinned.

  Skiver tossed down the shovel. "All right, then. Beats digging ditches."

  Chapter Nineteen

  Delving into the Wreck

  After fifteen minutes, Skiver smacked his hand against the exposed hatch—which looked like little more than a raised oval of black glass taller than a man—and said, "This doesn't need a lockpick, Alaeron, it needs a bloody crowbar."

  "Hmm. I hope we have something that can scratch it." The door did have a lock, probably, in the form of six interlocking and overlapping circles all made of the same featureless black glass that rang like metal. The circles were much like the ones Alaeron had seen in his vision, when he touched the bit of black glass Zernebeth had brought out of the Mount—further proof that this was the right location. The circles could be twisted and rotated, presumably in order to open the door, but Skiver had worked through various configurations before giving up in frustration.

  "Sorry, this is just...most locks I can understand. This was made by someone or something who doesn't think like anybody I've ever known."

  Alaeron patted him on the shoulder. It was a shame. He'd hoped to give Skiver something useful to contribute. The truth was, the thief didn't have a lot to do out here. Skiver was a formidable fighter, but they had guards armed with Technic League weapons; the thief was also good at manipulating people and getting the better end of bargains, but there weren't even tribespeople to barter with here—Lodger said there was no sign of humanoid habitation, as if the area were shunned, even more so than the rest of the Felldales. Alaeron wasn't even sure why Skiver had wanted to come along, unless he had hopes for fruitful pillage, which was admittedly the likeliest explanation.

  Alaeron sent two of the guards with their pickaxes to attack the door, standing almost shoulder to shoulder and alternating their swings, focusing on the center of the rings. Their picks bounced off without noticeable effect.

  Time for another approach, then. Alaeron went into camp, opened up the black box, and went inside, sorting through his shelves and drawers until he found his nastiest, most reactive, most explosive compounds. He mixed a flask of acid—it took two tries, since the first vessel he tried melted on the worktable—and took it carefully outside, holding it in gloves laced in adamantine. Lodger and the guards stood at a respectful distance, while Skiver went and hid behind the crawler. Alaeron descended into the hole partway, then hurled the flask at the door.

  It shattered on impact, as intended, and sprayed ferocious liquid all over the door. The viscous acid spattered on the ground, melting instantly through the dirt and doubtless on down through the rock, and the tunnel filled with eye-wateringly acrid fumes...but the door wasn't even marked.

  Alaeron trudged back to the black box, returned with a sack of powder that would neutralize the acid, and scattered it around liberally in the tunnel, thinking furiously. He could make bombs, but would they do any better than the acid? Maybe, and there was no way to tell without trying...but it would be very noisy, very messy, and might draw the attention of the vile beasts said to dwell in the Felldales.

  "Progress report," Zernebeth barked in his ear.

  "We seem to have reached an impasse," Alaeron said. "Could you tell Char to come out where I can see him? I'd just wander around camp shouting for him, but I can't be certain he's lurking within earshot."

  A long silence, then she said, "You noticed him, then."

  "I did, yes, crouched up near the top of the Mount, watching, when we first left Starfall. At first I wasn't sure what I'd seen—but then I thought, I've seen him descend through a roof, so floating to the top of the Mount should be easy enough. Just out of curiosity—how high can he fly? I assume he needs to breathe?"

  "Alaeron, what are you talking about?"

  "Oh, it's just, we know that breathable air becomes scarce the higher one goes, that it's very thin on the peaks of the world's highest mountains, so presumably it disappears entirely at some point if one continues to ascend. But if Char had a potion, like a draught for breathing water, do you think he could go all the way to the moon—"

  "Why would I send him to the moon? What's on the moon that's any use to me?"

  "I've heard there are portals leading there," Alaeron said wistfully, looking up at the sky, deep blue, nearly cloudless, and bereft of visible planetary bodies. "But if you could float upward endlessly at will, you wouldn't even need a portal, you'd only need the time to travel. Aren't you curious what's on the dark side of the moon, the side we can never see? What's hidden in the Moonscar?" It was an article of faith for Alaeron that any secret on Golarion would reveal itself to him if he gave the subject his full attention, but it pained him that there were secrets in the depths of the sky he would never glimpse—except by pillaging any remnants they dropped on the surface here. Which returned him to the matter at hand. "At any rate, perhaps Char can help with my current situation. Why did you send him after us, anyway?"

  "To watch your friend Skiver, mainly," Zernebeth said. "He's a thief and a sharp dealer, and I don't trust him."

  "He wouldn't steal from me," Alaeron said, mystified. "We steal from other people."

  "Has it occurred to you that he might consider me other people?" she asked.
/>   "Ah. Well. There's that. You weren't worried Char would try to murder me again, and endanger the mission?"

  "I told him to keep his competitive impulses in check until you find what you're looking for—or definitively fail to do so. What is it you think he can do to further your goals?"

  "Walk through a wall, I hope," Alaeron said. "We can't breach the hatch—"

  "You found a hatch? You found the wreck?"

  Alaeron blinked. "Oh. Yes. Sorry. Didn't I mention?"

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Char arrived not long after, descending from the sky, a sight strange enough to make even Lodger gasp. Once the incorporeal apprentice was settled on the ground—or hovering near it—Alaeron strode toward him, hands held up in a placating fashion. "I know we've had our differences, but I propose to make a temporary truce until—"

  "My mistress has ordered me to obey you." Char's voice was even stranger than before, full of eerie resonances and echoes; he sounded like a man speaking from the bottom of a well. Alaeron wondered if his condition was worsening. "Her will is my guide. What would you have me do?"

  Alaeron led him down the tunnel dug at the base of the hill and showed him the hatch inside. "I'd like you to go through there, and if possible, find a way to open the door. Failing that, perhaps you can reach inside and destroy the mechanism, pulling out some essential machinery—"

  "You plot my death." The anger in Char's voice was obvious, weird echoes or no. "You know skymetal is poisonous to me—"

  "Hmm. Well. First of all, this black glass isn't any of the seven forms of skymetal I know about. Arguably it is skymetal, since it has some of the properties of a metal and presumably fell from the sky, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's poisonous to you. In fact, are you sure all skymetal affects you negatively? Adamantine, obviously, I proved that to my personal satisfaction, and it's the most common, but have you experimented with all the others?"

  Char scowled and shook his head.

  Alaeron nodded. "Very well. I propose a simple test now. Stick your finger through the glass. If it causes you agony...at least it's just in a finger. In that case, I'll explore other options, which probably involve making most of this hill explode, possibly calling down the wrath of the twisted tribes of the Felldales and any wandering monsters in the vicinity. But I think this is, at least, worth a try—"

  Char pushed past him—except there was no pushing, just a deeply unpleasant tingle as his incorporeal out-of-phase body briefly overlapped Alaeron's, reminding the alchemist that he'd never gotten around to buying or commandeering a skymetal vest.

  Char pushed his hand into the door up to the wrist. He grunted, then stepped through entirely.

  Alaeron listened intently, and thought he heard the tinkle of metal raining down on metal, and then distinctly heard a click.

  Char's head appeared from the door, looking surreal, like a trophy animal mounted on the wall in the lodge at Iadenveigh. "I have removed everything small enough to fit in my hand from the interior of the door."

  Alaeron wanted to ask him what it looked like inside the wreck, but instead he called to the guards, then turned back to Char. "No horrible choking gases inside, I trust?"

  "Not that I noticed. I do still breathe."

  "Hmm. I wonder if the molecules of air that enter your aura or zone of influence change phase to match your reality, too...after all, gas isn't really incorporeal—anyone who has felt the wind knows that—and of course, for your body to extract any value from the air..."

  The guards arrived with prybars, distracting him from his train of thought, and Alaeron pointed out a hair-thin crack that had appeared around the hatch. They wriggled in their tools, leaned with all their weight, and the hatch popped open, falling to the floor of the tunnel with a thud. The door was almost four feet thick—even lying on its side, a dwarf could have hidden behind it.

  "Lights!" Alaeron called. Lodger and Skiver appeared, handing out alchemical lanterns. Alaeron fixed a small headlamp with a mirror behind it to his forehead, so he could have his hands free, and that anywhere he looked would be illuminated. He pointed to two of the guards at random, one with outlandish mustaches and one heavily tattooed woman. "You two watch the camp, and make sure we aren't disturbed. The rest of you, with me."

  "Am I to accompany you?" Char said. Alaeron couldn't tell if he hoped the answer was "yes" or "no."

  "I need all the tools I can lay hands on, so, yes. Lodger, bring the Earth-Mover. It might be useful."

  "This is very exciting," Lodger said. "I never get tired of this part. I remember the first time I breached a wreck—"

  Alaeron stopped listening, and stepped into the darkness beyond the hatch.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  The corridors were human scale, but damaged and canted, making progress difficult. Even if the wreck had been level instead of tilted at an angle, there were strange ridges, ripples, and bumps in the black glass walls, ceiling, and floor—signs of damage, or just the way they were made? The passageways looked almost organic, or at least created by something alive, like tunnels made by worms or holes by gophers. Alaeron had a brief vision of immense gophers with teeth capable of gnawing through black space metal, and smiled a little. Wouldn't that be a disappointment, if this thing turned out to be a cage for rodents from beyond the stars.

  The corridor twisted, narrowing in some places so much that people had to go through single file, opening up in other spots wide enough for three to walk abreast. It seemed like a terribly inefficient way to lay out a building, or a ship, or whatever this was.

  The guards included both those skilled in martial arts and those more talented in the arcane, and bobbing globes of magical light added illumination, with the uneven, reflective walls casting glimmers back at them. There were very few openings in the corridor, just the occasional square hole in the ceiling, and when Char floated up to investigate one, he reported that it was just a small square room, big enough for one person to kneel inside, perhaps.

  "Murder holes," Skiver said.

  "What do you mean?" Alaeron found the phrase equally chilling and mysterious.

  "Oh, it's something you put in castles or fortifications. Holes in the ceiling, so if the enemy breaches your defenses and comes pouring in, you can hide up there and drop hot oil or heavy rocks on them, or stab down with spears. Usually they're covered with grates, you know, to keep people from climbing up. This long, winding tunnel, narrowing and widening, that feels like something you'd put in a fortress, too, make the enemy go the long way around, give you a lot of chances to kill them before they can get anywhere worthwhile."

  "Huh." Alaeron folded Skiver's speculation into his ongoing and evolving theory about what this place might me.

  "It's a bit like volcanic glass, isn't it?" Lodger said, pausing to touch the wall. "Like someone hollowed out a great rock and attached fins to it. Presumably engines of some kind, too."

  Alaeron grunted. The idea had occurred to him as well. There were rocks floating in space, some very large—they crashed into the world sometimes, and left craters. Perhaps this had started life as such a stone. "What's the compass say? It feels almost like we're looping around—or spiraling inward."

  "It's stopped working entirely, I'm afraid." Lodger's weirdly modulated voice was cheerful, as always. "Often happens in the wrecks, you know. Some kind of interference. But I feel like we're curling around ourselves, too."

  "I can walk through the walls," Char said. "Scout ahead."

  Alaeron considered, and for no reason other than the desire to lead this expedition, and be first to see anything there was to be seen, he said, "No, best if we all stay together for now."

  The apprentice scowled, but shrugged, and continued drifting along in Alaeron's wake.

  The tunnel finally branched, and that's when the first of them died.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  "May as well flip a coin." Skiver leaned against the wall, arms crossed, looking half-asleep, which Alaeron knew meant he was more deeply e
ngaged and thoughtful than usual.

  Alaeron sighed. "I've never found a useful protocol for which branch to choose when presented with two equal choices. In the absence of screaming, mysterious lights, or eldritch hums from one direction or the other, we may as well go right. The general trend of the tunnel's directionality has been curving rightward, so if we're curling toward some inner space—"

  One of the guards started down the right branch, apparently taking Alaeron's musing as an order. A clattering noise came from the ceiling, and the man fell, shrieking, as something the size of a large housecat dropped onto his head. Blood spurted, probably from the man's neck, but it was only seconds before his entire head and shoulders were reduced to a ruin. The thing attacking him looked like a blur of needles spinning around a metallic sphere covered in blinking lights.

  "Automaton! Kill it!" Alaeron shouted, and the startled guards lifted their weapons and began muttering spells. But it was Lodger who struck first, aiming the Earth-Mover and pressing the button that activated it.

  The device was a blunt instrument. It operated something like a wizard's spell of telekinesis, but its effects were limited only to rock and metal, and it had absolutely no finesse. If you needed to punch a man-sized hole in the side of a mountain, the Earth-Mover would do it, crushing even bedrock to sand and compressing the shattered particles so intensely they sometimes literally caught fire. The force wave—which looked a bit like a heat shimmer radiating from the crystal at the end of the Earth-Mover—struck the automaton like a giant's fist, without moving the guard's ravaged corpse an inch. The automaton smashed against the curving wall of the corridor and slid down the wall, sparking tiny lightnings and emitting a high-pitched whine that trailed off to silence.

  Alaeron knelt by the guard, though there was no point, really. He was beyond any healing the alchemist had ever heard of; even those capable of raising the dead generally preferred the bodies to be relatively intact, and this man's upper body had been reduced to bloody gruel. Alaeron, of course, didn't know the guard's name—he'd thought of him as "Baldy" because his bare and burn-scarred scalp was his most obvious attribute. Back when he had a head.