'A remarkable achievement,' said Keyspierre, his mood improving now they had hope of a landing. 'The Kals surely must have organized themselves as a commonshare and laboured mightily to achieve such a network.'
When it came, the final meeting with the ground was blis-teringly fast. The craft tore through the barrage of rolling dunes with whip-cracking explosions of red sand as each impact slowed Starsprite a little more. Then there was a long tearing sound as her belly caught the sand, sliding for what seemed hours before they stopped. Molly was shaking as she got to her feet. She hadn't realized how terrified she had been during the long fall towards Kaliban and now the shock of their arrival was catching up with her. For a moment she wondered if the impact had affected her eyes – everything seemed to be turning red. But it was Starsprite. Their craft was changing the colour of her hull, the texture becoming grainy red rather than silvery smooth – camouflaging her lines – blending in with the sand in which she had settled.
'Open the door,' said Molly. 'Let's see where we are.'
'I haven't ordered that,' Rooksby practically shrieked, his nerves in shreds.
Molly pointedly ignored him and jumped out of the hole rippling open in young Starsprite's stern, landing ankle deep in the ruby sands. She felt light on her feet, springy. The pull of this world was only two thirds what she was used to back home. Then the intense wall of heat struck her. It was like walking into an oven, thick, cloying. Circle's teeth! Molly noticed how near they had come to a canyon drop starting only ten feet away from the Starsprite's nose. No hint of this in Kyorin's memory of the landscape. Ten feet from a plunge to – she looked over the edge – the walls narrowed down to an impossibly deep death, as if Kaliban was an apple and someone had run a knife around its circumference in an attempt to cut it open. The floor of the ravine was filled with a stream of dark thrashing flesh. No accident of geography, then – she was looking at more of the Army of Shadows' slave machines. Mining worms.
Molly turned away from the foul sight, allowing herself a brief snatch of exhilaration. They had actually done it. All the times Molly Templar had written of explorers landing by airship on one of the moons, finding bizarre alien lands, and now she was actually following in her literary creations' footsteps. Molly looked around, drinking in the strange sights. No greens, no blues, everything tinted by the colour of blood, a wasteland of endless deserts. Her euphoria dwindled. How she wished one of her novels' clever, fast-thinking heroes or heroines were here instead of her. Jack Riot or Emma Cochrane. Either of them would have been able to make a much better bid of their desperate last attempt to save the Jackelian people than her.
There was a thump behind Molly as Coppertracks and the commodore exited the craft. The steamman slipthinker's two wide caterpillar tracks made for an effortless passage across the fine sands.
Commodore Black peered over the edge of the ravine and shook his head in repugnance. 'Look on the canyon floor down there. Those are the black slug machines of the Army of Shadows, the same wicked things I saw infesting Quatershift. Thousands of the foul creatures wriggling around down below like a river of terrible worms.'
'There's nothing left,' said Molly, sadly. 'They must be cutting new ravines like this all across the world, but they've sucked the place dry. No more minerals, no more gases and oils, no more deep-water aquifers. Kaliban really is dying.'
'We see before us how our world will look in a couple of thousand years,' said Coppertracks, 'if we fail to turn back the Army of Shadows.'
'Then we won't fail, Aliquot,' said the commodore. 'For even a Cassarabian tribesman would turn their nose up at this wicked empty heat-blasted land. It's certainly no place for any honest Jackelian.'
Duncan Connor swung out of the craft followed by the two shifties and Lord Rooksby, the latter strangely reluctant to examine the landscape for all of his protestations of the right to command their expedition.
'How does this compare to the deserts of Cassarabia?' Molly asked Duncan.
'The scale of things was a wee bit more humble in the caliphate,' noted the uplander. He was standing with his back to the canyon and staring towards the carving. The great face of Kaliban rose out of the dunes, as high as a mountain that had been levelled straight by the hand of gods.
Interesting, thought Molly. You could only see the features of the face from above, but the angular rise of a thousand flat terraces, some as tall as Middlesteel's pneumatic towers, demonstrated that the carving was no freak of geology.
'An idol, sir, of the natives' gods,' said Lord Rooksby, dismissively.
Molly shook her head. 'Those terraces used to be hanging gardens, I think, and this desert a great forest. There hasn't been water to run through its sluices and waterfalls for many hundreds of years.'
So strange. Seeing all this for the first time, but not for the first time. Everything carried with it the strangest sense of deja vu and it wasn't even hers.
'Pah, it shows very little sophistication,' said Lord Rooksby. 'Compared to the noble proportions of Jackelian architecture such a barbarous carbuncle only demonstrates the superiority of the race of man.'
'I disagree with your conclusions,' said Keyspierre. The Quatershiftian handed his daughter a folding telescope that he had secured from the supply crates. 'It was clearly a high civilization, and that we stand here in the ruins of their world certainly does not bode well for our mission to uncover our invaders' supposed weaknesses.'
'The people must persevere,' said Jeanne, clasping her fist to her chest. No doubt one of the many sayings parroted by the children of the revolution.
'There is no other course,' agreed Keyspierre.
Molly indicated the carving's lee side, to the west. 'That's where the last great city of Kaliban lies. Half a day's walk from here.'
'Does it have a name?' asked Duncan.
Molly's head was throbbing more than ever with the weight of memories. 'Iskalajinn. Not that the locals speak it with their lips, only up here.' She tapped the side of her head. 'It is the Kal word for the end of all dreams.'
'Ah, lass,' said the commodore. 'I have no trouble speaking my mind, but I've never talked with my mind before. I'll happily paint my face blue, but the first time I talk with my thirsty lips I'll give the game away.'
'Blue face or no, you'd only ever pass for a Kal in the dark of night,' said Molly. 'You're far too tall and broad. You too, Duncan. There are no Kals with muscles like yours. You'll have to keep watch on the city from outside.'
'And I presume I would be correct in thinking there are no steammen on Kaliban, Molly softbody?' asked Coppertracks.
Molly shook her head, sadly. 'I don't think the Army of Shadows' masters trust the life metal. They prefer their slaves organic and pliable. You should stay here with the ship.'
Duncan shook his head. 'I'm the only one who knows how to survive in a desert, lassie, and there's a good reason why Cassarabians travel in caravans across the sands. It's how you stay alive. We go together. Me, the old steamer and the commodore will hole up outside the city. Close enough to come and get you if you're discovered.'
And that left the three people she least wanted to infiltrate the last stronghold of the Army of Shadows on Kaliban with. Rooksby and the two shifties, none of whom showed any inclination to trust the instincts she had inherited from Kyorin. She barely trusted them herself, thanks to the unforeseen canyon they had nearly tumbled into. But right now, the runaway slave's decaying ghost was all they had to keep the expedition alive in the heart of the enemy's fastness.
Of all of the expedition members, Molly quickly realized that Duncan Connor demonstrated the most proficiency at moving through the fine soft sands in the white robes that Molly had dredged from Kyorin's memories and had made up in Middlesteel. There seemed to be a knack to travelling across the sands in a steady way without letting your boots be sucked down – without making each step a struggle to withdraw the sole. But then, Connor of Cassarabia had surely gained enough practice during the years when he had earnt that moniker. He had told them the Cassarabian name for the fine, sapping dunes they were wading over; melah. One of at least fifty names the warring, fractious tribes he had held the southern frontier against possessed for sand. And Duncan's knowledge stretched to more practical purposes, too. Tying up the belts and laces of the undulating
