While they could still make out the crashing of the waves outside, the sound was for the most part overlaid by the noise of the great black pipes that curved into the cowl from under the sea. Actually, they weren't strictly pipes any more, but tubes, each the thickness of two men, their casing after they entered the cowl changing from rough and barnacled metal to smooth, if age-grimed, glass. What could be seen inside was a murky detritus and seaweed- filled brine that glowed slightly and, agitated by the outside motion of the waves, slopped back and forth within. Bladed fans also stirred lazily along their length at regular intervals, their purpose, for the moment, unknown.
The steps that had led the way down the cliff continued down and down, and in the light from the betubed sea — caused by algae, Kali guessed — they could be seen in more detail than had been possible above. They were less weatherworn, too, and this extra factor drew Kali's gaze to their risers.
'Look at this,' she said, kneeling and brushing away grime.
'Erm, what exactly?' Slowhand queried.
'There are more runics here. Carved into the fronts of the steps.'
'So?'
'So…' Kali said. She frowned as she studied them. For once, the runics were easy enough to understand, common words in the dwarven language. 'I don't like what they say.'
'And what do they say?'
Kali pointed at each of the runics in turn. 'Death. Kill. Destroy.'
'Oh, that's nice. So I take it the people who lived here weren't very pleasant?'
Kali frowned. 'I'm beginning to think no one lived here at all.'
'What?'
'I don't think this was any kind of settlement, Slowhand. I think this was some kind of military outpost. An army barracks.'
'An army?' Slowhand said in mock surprise. 'Should have seen that coming the first time you mentioned the word 'dwarf'.'
'Maybe, but — ' She paused and stared at the steps again, at the same weight-induced cracks in them that she'd seen above. 'I think this one was a very unique army.'
'Oh?'
This time, Kali stared down the stairs. 'What's more — I think it might still be down there.'
Slowhand stared. 'Okaaaay, now you're starting to worry me. Hooper, this place has got to be how old? A thousand years?'
Kali rose. 'I know,' she said in a tone which despite the circumstances was clearly excited. And with no further explanation she began to skip down the stairs. 'You coming, or what?'
Slowhand stood where he was for a second. Why does she never tell me anything? he thought. What am I? Lackey? Hired hand? Someone to just stand guard and shoot things? Hells — am I a sidekick?
He sighed. Yep, that's about the longbow and the shortbow of it. Gods, what was it about this bloody woman?
He followed.
It was obvious now that the steps were continuing far under the sea — actually under the seabed, unless Kali missed her guess — and it was a feat of engineering that only dwarves could ever dream they could achieve. But the steps were only the half of it, and as they came to the bottom of their present flight, the true scale of what they had achieved here became awesomely clear. A long corridor stretched away before them, and one after another in rows against both walls, there were statues of dwarves. Each the height of five men, the bearded, behammered likenesses, posed in various battle-ready, grimacing positions, were clearly meant to be warriors, and despite being awed by the fact that she was for the first time looking upon faces from another age, Kali also shivered at the impression they gave. The runic messages on the stair risers, and now this — it seemed as if the entire exit from Martak had been designed to provoke bloodlust, to incite a hunger for violence and war.
Kali and Slowhand proceeded, coming eventually to another, shallower set of steps, and Kali sensed they were near now to the main area of the complex. The first sign of it was when they came up the rear of Makennon's carnival, her people having reached the base of the steps but having had their progress halted there by the largest pair of doors Kali or Slowhand had ever seen. Sighting them, Kali flung out a blocking arm, slapping Slowhand in the face.
'Ow! Hey!'
'Shush!'
Both of them crouched on the steps, observing what was going on. The reason that Makennon and her people could not get the doors open was clear, and seeing what it was Slowhand stared at Kali, his expression questioning and concerned. But the expression on Kali's face told him that exactly the same concerns were running through her mind.
The huge doors had been sealed shut with a massive, glowing rune. A rune in the shape of a crossed circle.
'Hooper, isn't that — ?'
Kali swallowed. Pulsating slowly with a red fire, the giant rune was the symbol of the Final Faith, all right, but she could not believe that she was seeing it. There had to be another reason for its presence here, because otherwise all of Makennon's babblings about the Final Faith's destiny threatened to prove right. No, there had to another reason. Had to be!
One thing was clear. If it was the symbol of the Final Faith then Makennon was nevertheless having problems bending it to her will — and it was obviously not going to be wiped away with a wave of the Anointed Lord's hand. As they continued to watch, Makennon gestured to the mages in her party and the men and women congregated in front of the rune, beginning to weave their magical threads that would dispel it.
Makennon and company had clearly reached a temporary impasse and, as they worked out how to get the doors open, Kali realised it was her and Slowhand's chance to get ahead of their party. She looked around for a way to do so, certain with the knowledge of experience that there was always a way past these things, if you looked beyond the obvious. Her gaze fastened on one of the higher seawater tubes that ran along the corridor close to the ceiling. Where the tube met the wall in which the door was set, there was a small crawlspace around it. She nudged the archer, indicated it.
Slowhand knew what she had in mind. Quietly, he unslung his bow and took a roped arrow from his quiver, aiming upwards. The arrow flew and arced perfectly over the tube, taking the rope with it and wrapping it round and round until it was fixed firmly. Slowhand tested its grip and then indicated for Kali to climb.
She did, and he followed, and the two of them moved silently along the top of the tube in a crouched position, high above the oblivious Makennon and her people. There, they ducked into the crawlspace and through the wall. They passed through about twenty feet of darkness carved from the rock beneath the seabed and emerged finally into a space that was detectable only by their sudden freedom of movement as it was almost totally devoid of light.
Then their eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness, and they both gasped out loud.
Because the scale of the statues in the corridor outside was nothing compared to the scale of this room.
The first people to do so in over a thousand years, they had just entered what they, and Makennon, had journeyed to the edge of their world to find.
The throne room of the Clockwork King.
Chapter Seventeen
The throne room was vast. That such an excavation could exist here, hewn from rock beneath the waves, was mind-boggling enough, but made even more so by the fact that as they stared around it in wonder the sea hung above them like a sky.
This — a bit to Kali's disappointment but to Slowhand's huge relief — turned out to be an illusion, the huge, stone buttresses of the throne room walls reflecting and magnifying the glowing seawater in the tubes, so that it seemed to ripple and shift in kind. But Kali's disappointment was mollified by the fact that the glow served a useful purpose, providing an effective, if haunting, illumination, bathing in a blue-green light this marvel of dwarven
