Agatha H. And the Clockwork Princess (52 page)

This had brought them to what could only be called a town. It was in a large cavern, stone facades and galleries were carved from the living rock, with the occasional incongruous wooden building. The rooms, as well as quite a lot of the rock wall, had been carved into sensuous, flowing designs, which had been painted in a variety of colors.

Most of the space seemed to be either communal living quarters or animal pens. A large central courtyard contained a fountain, which was adorned by a statue obviously representing a long-haired woman cuddling a child.

Ognian appeared at the entrance to the courtyard. “Okeh,” he announced. “Hy followed dem a lonk vay down. Dey din’t even leave a rearguard, and dey vas collectink all de lemps as they passed.”

Maxim nodded. “Voteffer dey din take, hit looks like dey burned.” He indicated a score of smoldering heaps littering the yard. “Hy dun tink deys cummin’ beck.”

Lars appeared. “Not only that, but it looks like any tunnel that might go upwards has been collapsed.”

“They didn’t collapse
everything,
” Sturvin said pointing upwards. Small holes could be seen in the ceiling. “The smoke from these fires is gettin’ sucked up somewhere.”

“Effen if ve got op dere, Hy dun tink ve’d fit.” Ognian scowled. “Mebbe ve better follow der Geisters.”

“That’s our last resort,” Zeetha retorted. “It looked like they were heading deeper underground, and we’re lost already.”

Sturvin agreed. “We are so off our maps.”

“Maybe we should just pick a direction,” Lars suggested, pointing to a number of dark openings. “I mean how big can these tunnels be?”

Maxim let out a guffaw. “Hey, Oggie? Remember de Unseen Empire?”

The other Jäger’s grin lit up the darkness. “Yah! Dose guys vit der lava cannons! Jeez, dot vas vot—a hunnert years ago? Mebbe more…”

“Ve vas mit der Red Heterodyne den,” Maxim reminded him.

“Goot fighting!” Oggie remembered.

“Yah, but hit took uz two years to get outta dose caverns.”

“Two
years?
” Lars gasped.

“Vell, hit should have taken vun,” Maxim conceded, “But de Master, he develop a taste for bat sammiches.”

“Dot nut,” Ognian smiled wistfully.

“Hey!” Kalikoff called from another doorway. “Get over here! We found something!”

The “something” proved to be a large door. It was blocked off by a pile of broken furniture and other debris. “It was hidden behind all this junk,” Kalikoff explained. “But there’s a strong breeze coming from underneath it. I’m thinking it’s a way out that they closed off.”

Lars frowned. ”All the other ways out they collapsed.”

Dimo grinned. “Jah, but dis schtuff haz been here qvite awhile. Hy tink dey pile dis schtuff up here an’ forgets all about de door.” He shrugged. “Dey used to lose rooms and guests in Castle Heterodyne like dot all der time.”

In short order, everyone had dragged away enough of the blocking material that Maxim and Ognian was able to drag the door open with a rusty squeal. Maxim wrinkled his nose. “Fregh! Veird schmell in here,” he reported.

The large stone chamber was filled with tall rusting metal pots, each of them easily two meters tall and several meters in diameter. The outer walls were coated with a layer of slime. Various tables and benches covered with bottles and dusty bits of machinery instantly identified the room’s purpose.

“Iz an old Spark’s lab,” Maxim said.

“You think so?” Lars eyed it skeptically.

“Ho yez,” Maxim assured him. “Hit’s got dot feelink uv bad krezy.” Lars looked at him. Maxim shrugged. “Hyu learn to recognize it.”

“Man,” Sturvin complained. “This place smells like a swamp.” His foot crunched on a pile of broken glass. “Someone really trashed it, too.”

Ognian frowned as he looked around. “Hy dun see nottink vorth barricading dis place over. Not ennymore, ennyvay.”

Dimo stepped through a doorway. “Dere’s anodder whole cavern back dere. Fulla more machinery, too… uh oh.”

Instantly Ognian was at his side. “Someting is moffink out dere,” he sang out.

From a large vat, a glowing bubble arose, it continued to expand until dozens of eyes cleared the lip and focused on the Jägers. When it saw them, tentacles slid over the edge and began to advance. Several similar creatures arose from nearby containers.

“And that’s why the door was barricaded,” Sturvin pronounced glumly.

Ognian eyed the slowly moving creatures skeptically. “Dose tings? Dey dun look like moch.”

Maxim smacked him in the back of the head. “Oh now hyu iz just askink for it,” he snarled.

“And he’s got it,” Krosp yelled. The group spun to see that the vats they’d strolled past were now disgorging swarms of smaller glowing creatures. They looked like small, fat, gelatinous pillows, with two stumpy legs. A single pale stalk sprouted from their heads.

“Aww,” Ognian protested, “Dey iz cute.” All the stalks swiveled towards him.

Zeetha moved away from him. “They closed the lab off rather than fight them,” she reminded him in a soft voice.

“Hey! Hey!” Sturvin called out from the corner. “An elevator! Since the room was sealed off, it looks like they didn’t disable it!”

“But…” Lars looked up the shaft. “Where does it go?”

“Anywhere but here is looking mighty good,” Krosp snapped. “Everybody! Get on!”

Dimo watched as the creatures wobbled slowly in their direction. “Listen to der kitty. Hy dun like dese tings!”

Kalikoff examined the control panel and swore. “The controls are locked!” He snapped open his knife and attacked the panel. “Gimme a second.”

Dimo looked back at the creatures. One of them shuffled ahead of the rest. It swiveled its stalk towards the worried Jägermonster. Instinctively, Dimo raised his left hand in front of his face, which was why the thin, barbed tentacle that shot from the stalk stung his hand, and not his face.

Astonishingly, Dimo screamed, and stumbled backwards aboard the elevator, just as Kalikoff wrenched a restraining bolt free. A fat spark jumped, and the entire elevator shivered.

“Everybody better be on,” Sturvin yelled as he threw a lever, “’Cause we’re going up!” With a jolt, the elevator cage began to rise. There was a soft pattering, as several dozen of the little barbed tendrils smacked into the bottom of the lift.

Ognian leaned over a kneeling Dimo, who looked up at him with agony on his face. “Dat ting got me mit poison,” he spat.

Ognian bit his lip. “Iz bad?”

“Very bad,” Dimo spoke through clenched teeth. “Hy ken feel it moffink op my arm! Hurry!”

Ognian stood up. With a flick of his fingers, the gigantic halberd spun in place, faster than the eye could follow. He then stopped it instantly, held out his hand, and caught Dimo’s arm as it dropped from above.

Dimo’s eyes closed and he let out a strangled scream before collapsing to the ground.

“You cut his arm off?” Lars asked horrified.

Ognian examined it critically. “Dis vas der correct vun, jah?”

Suddenly his face twisted as the severed arm began to liquefy, oozing out of the sleeve onto the floor. Ognian dropped it with a look of relief. “Yop. Dot vas it.”

Meanwhile, Maxim was already applying a tourniquet to the stump of Dimo’s arm. Ognian leaned in solicitously. “How hyu doink now, brodder?”

With a hiss, Dimo tentatively released the death grip he’d maintained on his upper arm. Maxim eyed the wrapping he’d applied, and gave a nod of approval. Dimo managed a shaky grin. “Better, Oggie, tenk hyu. Dot vas a goot cut.”

Ognian let out a deep gust of breath and grinned back.

“Remind me,” Lars said in a weak voice, “to never tell you guys I have a headache.”

With a groan, the elevator came to a stop. Everyone looked out. A faint chemical light flickered, revealing an empty platform, and what they realized was—

“It’s another elevator,” Kalikoff declared. “This is just a transfer stage. We must be really deep if one elevator wasn’t enough.”

“Does it look safe?” Krosp tentatively patted a paw on the new elevator’s dusty metal floor.

“Hy suppose ve ken dizcuss it vile ve vaits to see if doze poison-tings ken climb,” Maxim said archly.

“Everybody get on!” Sturvin ordered.

“Let me give you a hand,” Zeetha offered, then looked stricken. “Uh—sorry.”

To her surprise, the Jäger laughed. “Ho! A joke!” He saw her distress and waved his hand. “Dun vorry, dollink. Hy iz not dead. Efferyting else ken be fixed!”

Sturvin threw the lever, and with a squeal, the lift began climbing upwards past endless walls of blasted rock.

“Fixed by whom?” Zeetha asked. “Lars once said that the Jägers don’t let doctors near them, even if they’re wounded. He says that you’re waiting for a Heterodyne to fix you up.”

Dimo eyed a preoccupied Lars. “Huh. Dot vun, he knows hiz stories,” he conceded.

Maxim waved his mechanical arm. “Iz true. Sum uf uz have vaited for a very lonk time.”

Ognian draped an arm over Dimo’s shoulder. “Yah! But lucky for Dimo, ve got—”

Zeetha didn’t see Dimo’s arm move, but suddenly his fist was buried in Ognian’s midsection. The Jäger gasped and dropped to the ground. “Hokay!” Dimo said brightly, “Right arm? Schtill feelin’ goot! Tenks, Oggie!”

From the floor, Ognian wheezed, “S’okeh, brodder.”

Sturvin called out. “Pay attention, people. We’re nearing the top. We don’t know what’s up here.”

As it turned out, there was disappointingly little. It was evidently just another platform stage, but the other elevator had been disabled by the crude, but effective, method of filling the shaft with large rocks.

“No way we can clear this,” Kalikoff declared with finality.

“But—but we can’t go down again,” Lars said. “The lift is too noisy. Those things will be waiting.”

“Ve could climb down,” Maxim suggested.

“But Dimo—”

“Aw, he bounce pretty goot.”

The subject of this discussion slumped to the floor, and gingerly rubbed his shoulder. “Eediots,” he muttered. “Ve must find anodder vay. Miz Agatha—”

“—Is a Heterodyne?” Zeetha asked quietly.

Dimo froze, and then gave a forced chuckle. “Vot? Dot’s krezy tok.”

“One of you is always near her,” Zeetha said flatly.

Dimo rolled his eyes. “She safe uz. Ve gots to pay her beck.”

“And so you did. On the bridge to Passholdt.”

Dimo frowned. “Dot vas for me. Maxim and Oggie gotta vait for dere turns.”

Zeetha snorted. “Good one. You remind me of some of the people I knew back home.” She crossed her arms. “I know you don’t work for the Baron. Lars says that you wild Jägers are still looking for a Heterodyne heir. I think you’ve found one.”

The two eyed each other. Finally, Dimo let his head thump back against the wall. “Iz hyu gunna expose her?”

“Of course not,” Zeetha huffed. “She is zumil. My student. I protect her. So you can tell those elephants sneaking up behind me to relax.”

Ognian and Maxim froze, looked at each other and then straightened up with embarrassed looks upon their faces. “Dose vere prime goot sneakin’-op moves, lady,” Ognian muttered.

Maxim rolled his eyes. “Brodder? I vould just drop it, hokay?”

“Hey!” Krosp caught everyone’s attention. He held his paw up and motioned for silence. “Does anyone else hear… singing?”

(It is here, with great reluctance, and a full awareness of how a chronicler should
report
a story without
being
the story itself, that one of your professors enters this narrative.

Surely the tedious whys and wherefores of how he came to find himself in this particular prison at this particular time have no significant relevance to the greater story, and thus, shall be ignored
⁶⁸
.)

Anyway, it was shortly thereafter, that a lone prisoner, who had been attempting to lighten his pitiable fate by engaging in some heartfelt balladeering, was started when one of his cell’s floor stones suddenly flew upwards, propelled by a hirsute green fist.

A few more stones disappeared, and an unshaven green face emerged. “Hello dere,” it said cheerfully.

“Good grief,” the prisoner replied in astonishment. “You’re Jägerkin! Nov shmoz ka pop
⁶⁹
?”

“Oho!” Dimo exclaimed as he hoisted himself up. “A home boy! So vere iz ve?”

Another Jäger appeared. The Professor offered him a hand up. “We’re in a cell somewhere under Sturmhalten castle.”

Dimo eyed the thick iron-bound door and nodded. “Vell—hit’s been fun—” He reared back and with a vicious kick, smashed the door from its frame. “But ve gots to go.”

The Professor stared at the door, and only slowly registered the parade of people climbing up from the floor and heading out. His attention was caught by a large white cat in an elegant coat, which paused long enough to poke him in the stomach. “I’d get moving, if I were you,” he advised.

‘I’ve just gotten excellent advice from a cat,’
he realized. “At least the day can’t get any weirder,” he muttered.

This was when a large clawed hand swept him up in a hug, and a distressingly familiar face roared out, “Great-great Grandson!”

The crowd in the square shouted out a final sustained “Huzzah!” and then began a series of cheers that Anevka allowed to wash over her for several minutes before she pulled back into the room and closed the French doors. Even through the glass, the susurrus of the crowd could be heard, and Anevka hugged herself in glee as she gracefully stepped around her container’s attendants.

“I could get used to this,” she confided to Lord Selnikov. She looked at the list he was perusing. “And that crowd was the last of them?”

He looked up. “Oh, yes, your highness. The entire town should be under your sway.”

Anevka hugged herself again. “Lovely. When the Baron’s man sees how loyal the townspeople are to me—” She looked over and saw her uncle staring at the castle and frowning. “Why, whatever is wrong?”

Selnikov looked at her. “I fear for your brother.”

Airily, she waved a hand. “Oh do relax. I promise I shall forgive him immediately.” She thought for a second. “Almost immediately,” she amended.