They continued scaling upward, working within the relative shelter of the vertical three-sided chimneys. They were too high now for Hadrian to see anything except the tiny lights of the port city. Everything else below was darkness. They rested for a time in the semi-sheltered niche and then climbed upward again.
Higher and higher, Royce led the way. Hadrian’s hands were sore from gripping the rope and burned from the few times he had slipped. His legs, exhausted and weak, quivered dangerously. The wind was brutal. Gusting in an eddy caused by the chimney they followed, it pushed outward like an invisible hand trying to knock them off. The sun came up and Hadrian was nearing the end of his endurance when they finally reached the bridge. They were slightly more than two-thirds of the way, but thankfully they did not need to reach the top.
What appeared from the ground to be a thin bridge was actually forty feet thick. They scrambled over the edge, hauled up their ropes, ducked into a sheltered archway, and sat in the shadows, catching their breath.
“I’d like to see Derning scale that,” Royce said, looking down.
“I don’t think anyone but you could manage it,” Hadrian replied. “Nor is there anyone crazy enough to try.”
Dozens of men guarded the great gates at the base of the tower, but no one was on the bridge. It was thought to be impossible for intruders to enter from the top, and the cold wind kept the workers inside. Royce gave the tall slender stone doors a push.
“Locked?” Hadrian asked.
Royce nodded. “Let’s hope they haven’t changed the combination.”
Hadrian chuckled. “Took you eighteen hours last time, right after you told me, ‘This will only take a minute.’”
“Remind me again why I brought you?” Royce asked, fanning his hands out across the embossed face of the doors. “Ah, here it is.”
Royce placed his fingers carefully and pushed. A hundred tons of solid stone glided inward as if on a cushion of air, rotating open without a sound. Inside, an enormous cathedral ceiling vaulted hundreds of feet above them. Shafts of morning sunshine entered through distant skylights built into the dome overhead, revealing a complex world of bridges, balconies, archways, and a labyrinth of gears. Some gears lay flat, while others stood upright. Some were as small as a copper coin, and then there were those that were several stories tall and thicker than a house. A few rotated constantly, driven by steam created from the volcanically superheated seawater. The majority of the gears, particularly the big ones, remained motionless, waiting. Aside from the mechanisms, nothing else moved. The only sounds were the regular ratcheting rhythm and the whirl of the great machine.
Royce scanned the interior. “Nobody home,” he said at length.
“Wasn’t last time either. I’m surprised they haven’t tightened security up more.”
“Oh yeah, a single breakin after centuries is something to schedule your guards around.”
“They’ll be kicking themselves tomorrow.”
They found the stairs—short, shallow steps built for little feet. Royce and Hadrian took them two and three at a time. Ducking under low archways, Hadrian nearly had to crawl through the entrance to the Big Room. This was the name Hadrian had given it the last time they had visited. The room itself was huge, but the name came from the master gear. It stood on edge and what they could see was as high as a castle tower, but most of its bulk sunk beneath the floor and through a wall, leaving only a quarter of the gear visible. Its edge was ringed with thick teeth like a castle battlement, only larger—much larger. It meshed with two other gears, which connected to a dozen more that joined the dwarven puzzle.
“The lock was at the top, right?” Royce asked.
“Think so—yeah, Gravis was up there when we found him.”
“Okay, I’ll handle this. Keep an eye out.”
Royce leapt up to one of the smaller gears and walked up the teeth like they were a staircase. He jumped from one to the next until he reached the master gear. Harder to climb since the teeth were huge, but for Royce it was no problem. He was soon out of sight, and a few minutes later a loud stone-upon-stone sound echoed as a giant post of rock descended from the ceiling, settling in the valley between two teeth, locking the great gear.
When Royce returned, he was grinning happily.
“I’d love to see the look on Merrick’s face when this place doesn’t blow. Even if the Ghazel take the city, he’ll be scratching his head for months. There’s no way he can know about this master switch. Gravis only knew because it was his ancestor that designed the place.”
“And we only know because we caught him in the act.” Hadrian thought a moment. “Do you think Merrick might be nearby, waiting for the fireworks?”
Royce sighed. “Of course not. If it were me, I wouldn’t be within a hundred miles of this explosion. I don’t even want to be here now. Don’t worry, I know him. The fact that this mountain doesn’t explode will drive him nuts. All we have to do is drop the right hints to the wrong people and we won’t have to look for him—he’ll find us. Now come on. Let’s see if we can find what’s blocking the vents so we can put this back in place and cook some goblins.”
CHAPTER 22