The Crucible of the Dragon God

beneath him as the gondola swung beneath the canopy. It swung so far, in fact, that as the dirigible went into its turn, the side of the hull and the airbag scraped against the face of the rock. The air was filled with a wrenching that sounded as if the gates of the hells themselves were opening.

Jenna's manoeuvre had been executed perfectly but there had to variables — the prevailing wind, air pockets — in an airship such as this, and what had been executed perfectly in theory did not necessarily turn out so in practice. It wasn't her fault, then, that the hull sounded to him like it was in danger of tearing itself apart. Despite being told to stay out of the way, Slowhand couldn't help but feel like the protective brother and raced to the guard rail, unslinging Suresight as he went and then using the bow to push off from the rockface. Slowhand staggered back, yelping, as he was punched in the face and then spun away from his position. He glared into the angered face of Jenna.

'What in the almighty hells do you think you're farking doing? You're tearing this ship apart!'

'Am I, brother?' Jenna shouted again. 'Look! Look!'

Slowhand did, and suddenly realised his mistake.

The ship's impacting with the rocks hadn't, it seemed, been a miscalculation on his sister's part, but a carefully calculated strategy to remove their troublesome visitors. As he watched, those k'nid that were working their way towards them were scraped away from the dirigible's bag as they were caught between its surface and the rock. The screeching things tumbling away into oblivion. However, it only removed those k'nid that clung to that section of the hull. Slowhand was opening his mouth to point this out when he realised, once again, that Jenna was way ahead of him.

'Swing her round! One eighty degrees full rudder!'

The deck lurched beneath Slowhand as the order was instantly acted upon, and he was forced to cling to a handrail to prevent himself stumbling. Jenna, however, strode the tipping deck with ease, clearly practiced with her 'airlegs' and still barking orders as she went. Slowhand watched as she executed a series of manoeuvres that made him swell with pride, making the airship do things it was clearly not designed for. Despite the fact that the airship collided with the rocks around it on a number of occasions — and the faces of its crew were clearly concerned about the battering it was taking — they nevertheless continued to obey without question, until the last of the k'nid had been ripped away. Only then did Jenna sigh with relief.

'Resume course. Steady as she goes.'

Slowhand was about to move towards her and congratulate her on the flying display when Fitch strode towards her instead, whispering something in her ear.

'Dammit,' Jenna said. 'How bad?'

'The orb has purged energy.' Fitch said. 'We need to replenish it, enter Waystation One, or we will not reach Gransk.'

'We can't afford to lose the time, but I suppose there's no choice. All right, prepare to take her in.'

The orb, Slowhand thought.

Presumably the pulsating orb that seemed to drive the airship, but the waystation, what was that? And what and where the hells was Gransk?

'Problem?' he said, moving forward.

'Nothing that can't be rectified.'

'Where, in this… Waystation One?'

'That's right, in Waystation One.'

Slowhand was getting a little tired of being left out of the loop, even if, strictly speaking, he had no place in it. 'What are you doing here above the clouds, sis?'

'Where did this ship come from? What the hells is going on?'

'All hands,' Jenna said. 'Prepare to bring us around.'

'Yes, Captain Freel.'

Now Slowhand said nothing. Instead he simply stared at his sister instead.

That she had effectively ignored him — was ignoring him — after all this time spoke volumes for the depth of indoctrination the Faith had instilled in her, but that wasn't what disturbed him the most. What was with the Captain Freel bit? That wasn't her name. What was going on? He perhaps couldn't blame her for adopting another name but what he didn't understand was why Freel? It wasn't an assumed name like his own. So, unless she had become really boring in the intervening years, did that mean she had the name Freel for a reason? Had she been adopted? Gods, had she married? Whatever the reason it hinted at a history he knew nothing about, and considering that she was his twin sister, that simply wasn't right.

One thing was clear, however. The two of them were not going to be playing catch-up right now.

'Three degrees right rudder. Orb to half power. Ready a pulse on my mark.'

'Aye, Ma'am.'

'Half degree correction and… mark! Steady as she goes, Mister Ransom. Prepare to take us in.'

Responding to Jenna's commands the Final Faith crew — with the exception of Fitch who simply stood with his arms folded, staring at him, which Slowhand most definitely didn't like.

'This… civilian should not be seeing this.' Querilous Fitch snapped.

'What would you have me do, threadweaver. Throw him overboard? He's my brother, dammit.'

'No. I am your brother now.'

That was it as far as Slowhand was concerned. He was about to go for Fitch when something took his mind entirely off his intent. Because Jenna's commands had turned the airship back towards Thunderlungs Cry — or rather back and beneath it — and what he saw there he was immediately convinced was what had made Thunderlungs' lover falter and fall all of those many centuries ago.

Beneath the Cry was a huge cave mouth that was not a cave mouth at all — at least not a purely natural one. It appeared to have been bored out of the rock and led deep inside it. All along its sides — leading inward in two neat rows — were lines of great, glowing tubes set inside rune-inscribed arches. Tubes which pulsed in sequence as if designed to guide an airship in. And that, it seemed, was exactly what they did, because the airship passed between them and was swallowed by the huge cavern mouth.

My Gods, Slowhand thought, gaping upward. This is Old Race — the biggest Old Race thing I've ever seen. Pits of Kerberos, Hooper would have given everything to see this.

He only hoped that whatever Old Race ruin — for it would have been nothing else — had claimed her life at last was as awe-inspiring as this one, because then at least his lover would have died happy.

If not, well, knowing Hooper, right now she'd be spinning in her grave.

Chapter Two

'Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhhh!'

The cry of fury, of pain and of sheer frustration, that boomed from beneath the ground was sudden and startling, shattering the desolate quiet of the dusty canyon and causing the strange black birds that nested there in twisted trees to take to the air with a chorus of haunting caws. The cry reverberated out of the canyon and across the landscape beyond. But there was no one out there to hear it — no one for leagues — and after a while, as its echo died down, the birds returned to their trees. There, they did not snatch up the dropped carrion on which they had been feasting but, instead, regarded each other with furled wings, cowed heads and darting, beady eyes. Troubled by this latest disturbance to their long abandoned, isolated piece of the world, their gaze turned along the canyon, past the rusted, age-warped rails of metal and the overturned, skeletal frames of the carts which once had rode them, and towards the dark and forbidding mouth at the canyon's end. And they wondered what it was they had done to offend the angry-spirit-who-had-come-to-live-beneath-them this time.

Ever since the spirit had arrived on its strange, armoured steed and gone into that dark mouth — there first announcing its displeasure with a deep rumble, an unknown curse and a great cloud of dust that had erupted from it by sunset that day — they had struggled to understand its subsequent outbursts, no doubt intended for them, but each time they had neared their answer another outburst had come and they had fled to the skies in panic once