We were getting closer to the packrats’ nest, a fact I knew because of the amount of junk that started appearing in random places: a broken keyboard here, a bicycle horn there. Soon the tunnels were strewn with it, making us watch where we put our feet. Unease gnawed at me; this far in, we should’ve run into a packrat or two. I had been looking forward to meeting them again, wondering if they remembered me. But the tunnels felt empty and cold, abandoned. And they had been that way for a while.
Abruptly, the tunnel fell away, and we stepped into a huge cavern, with mountains of junk piled farther than we could see. Making our way past the enormous trash heaps, I strained my eyes and ears, hoping to catch a glimpse of the packrats, hear them babble in their funny language. But, in my heart, I knew it was futile. I couldn’t sense any spark of life in this place. The packrats were long gone.
“Hey,” Puck said suddenly, his voice echoing about the cavern. “Is that…a throne?”
I drew in a sharp breath. A chair made entirely of junk sat atop a smaller mound of rubbish in the center of the room. On a whim, I walked over to the mound and crouched at the foot of the throne, and began sifting through the debris.
“Um…princess?” Puck asked. “What are you doing?”
“Aha!” Straightening, I raised my hand in triumph, brandishing my old iPod. Ash and Puck both gave me confused looks as I tossed the broken device on the mound again. “I just wanted to see if it was still here. We can go now.”
“I take it you’ve been here before,” Ash said quietly, nodding to the chair. “And that throne wasn’t empty the first time, was it? Who sat there?”
“His name was Ferrum,” I replied, remembering the old, old man with silver hair that nearly touched the floor. “He said he was the first Iron King, the one Machina overthrew when he took over. The packrats still worshipped him as king, even though he was terrified of Machina.” I felt a faint prick of sadness, staring at the empty seat. “I guess he finally died, and the packrats left when he was gone. I wish I knew where they went.”
“There is no time to wonder about that now,” Grimalkin said, appearing on the throne cushion, looking disturbingly natural gazing down at us. “This room still stinks of powerful Iron magic. It is corroding your amulets faster than normal. We must press on, or they will stop working right here.”
Alarmed, I looked at Ash’s crystal and saw he was right. The amulet was nearly black. “Hurry,” I said, jogging from the throne room with the boys at my heels, back into the endless labyrinth of stone. “I think we’re halfway there.”
A FEW HOURS PASSED, or at least I thought they did—it was so hard to tell time underground—and the fuel in the lantern burned low. We stopped to rest a couple of times, but I found it difficult to stay in one place, becoming restless and antsy until we started moving again. Puck joked that something must be summoning me again, and I didn’t know if he was wrong. Certainly something was drawing me, growing stronger and stronger the closer we got, making it impossible to rest or think until we reached our destination.
And when the tunnels finally ended, dropping away into a monstrous precipice spanned by a narrow stone bridge, I knew I was almost there.
“Machina’s fortress,” I said softly, gazing across the chasm, “is on the other side of the bridge. This is the way I took to reach it. We’re almost directly underneath the tower.”
Puck whistled, the sound bouncing off the walls. “And, you think the false king will be here, princess?”
“He has to be,” I said, hoping my convictions were right. “It ends at the beginning. Machina is the one who started it all.”
I hoped. Back when I first came here with the packrats, the area below the tower was known as the Cogworks, due to the massive iron gears, cogs, and pistons that clanked and ground their way along the walls and ceiling, making the ground vibrate. The noise had been deafening, as some of the larger gears had been three times my size. Now, everything was silent, the giant gears cracked and broken and strewn about, as if the entire Cogworks had collapsed on itself. Some lay smashed under huge boulders, evidence that the ceiling had fallen in, as well. When Machina died, his tower had crumbled, destroying everything beneath it. I wondered what it would look like on the surface, how much of the Iron King’s influence had survived.
Not much, I was afraid.
We made our way over the bridge, where the stone turned to iron grating, and started picking our way through the smashed clockwork, searching for a way up. As I made my way through the rubble, I noticed strange gnarled roots that hadn’t been here before, coiled around the gears and dangling from the ceilings. I could feel them pulsing with life.
“Over here,” Ash said, waving us over. A bent iron staircase spiraled up from the rubble, ascending toward a metal grate in the ceiling.
I felt a surge of excitement and apprehension. Whatever had been calling me was somewhere overhead. Probably it was the false king and we were walking right into his trap, but I had to see what was up there. The boys drew their weapons, and I pulled my blade, feeling my heart pound in my chest, whether in nervousness or excitement, I couldn’t tell. With Ash leading the way and Puck close at my back, we ascended the stairs to Machina’s tower.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE RUINS OF THE IRON KING