Ross Lawhead (44 page)

Nemain flew half a dozen feet, twisting in the air so that his shoulders took the blow and not his head as he pounded into the hard stone wall. The Faerie collapsed in a heap at the feet of a catatonic grey lady and gathered his breath a while, spitting out some blood that had gathered in his mouth. When he had come to his senses and raised his head, he found himself looking at the metallic head of Swiðgar's spear. Smiling slyly, he flipped himself over gingerly and sat with his back against the wall.

“Well,” the half-Faerie said as he dabbed at his bloody lip with the back of his hand, “that was fun.”

2

“Stay, creature,” Swiðgar growled. “One twitch and I shall ease the world of your burden upon it.”

Nemain slumped to the ground. Freya saw that his chest was moving quickly, despite his calm manner. The awkward way he was sitting favored the left side of his body—he was probably in far more pain than he let on, and she felt strangely sorry for him even though Ecgbryt's blood still dripped from his fingers.

Ecgbryt had not come off much better. He stood with some difficulty and retrieved his helmet from the other side of the vault.

Daniel, seeing that Nemain was not in much of a position to move—but keeping an eye on him anyway—walked slowly over to the large iron door that was covered in gears and wheels of different sizes. Although it looked rusty from a distance, up close he could see the glimmer of grease and oil wherever two bits of metal touched. He gave the largest wheel in front of him a turn; although it was heavy, it moved easily. It was attached to a gear that moved with it and turned three other gears that turned another wheel, which rotated a quarter turn and then stopped. A small steel bolt shifted, locking this wheel into place, making it immobile. Daniel found that the bolt had fallen from another wheel, which was now able to move. He gave this wheel a turn, but nothing happened.

Freya came to stand beside him. “It looks like a puzzle,” she said. “A clockwork puzzle—or a really big combination lock.”

Daniel tried moving some of the other wheels, but most of them were locked. The solution seemed to lay in finding some way to shift the metal tumblers from one wheel to the next in order to withdraw the large metal bolts that fixed the door into the frame.

Freya turned and addressed Nemain, who was still lying against the wall. “This door—how does it open?”

The Faerie smiled slyly back at her. “Why do you suppose I would know?”

“He must know,” Daniel said.

“Do it backwards,” Freya suggested. “Find out which gears are connected to the large bolts.”

They examined the bolts, but they were set far into the door underneath large panels and it was impossible to see where any of them started. They did find that under each one of them was a long rank of thin grooves that indicated a toothed gear might pull it back, and were further encouraged that they all looked well greased.

“If we can't follow it from the end, how can we know where to start?” Freya asked.

“It probably doesn't matter where it starts—like one of those sliding tile puzzles. We just have to make sure that everything's in the right place at the end. Ecgbryt, come over here and help us move this one at the top.”

“Oh, for the wisdom of Ælfred,” the knight muttered, when they had been working the problem for well over an hour. They had just found that the wheels could be moved inwards and outwards to connect with different gear chains, which put a whole other dimension on the problem.

“It's hopeless,” moaned Freya.

“It's okay,” said Daniel, “we're just learning the rules. Once we learn how everything works, then we'll be able to do it. We just need to be patient.”

Freya looked over at Nemain, who was still being guarded by Swiðgar. Nemain gazed steadily at Daniel and Freya. When he saw Freya looking at him, he gave a casual smile. She turned back to the door.

“We're missing something,” she said. “What about these little bolts, these tumblers? They fall from one wheel to the other, right?

What if we're supposed to get them all to the bottom? They can't fall upwards, can they?”

“Maybe. But look.” Daniel stuck his finger into one of the grooves and pushed upwards. “See, they have these little handles that let you move them back. If you turn them, it locks them into place just a little, then you can move the wheels back to how they were. If you do it right, you can move them between the wheels and probably right to the other side of the door.”

“Oh, great. Perfect. When did you find that out?”

“Just now.”

Freya sighed and sank into a crouch. “No,” she said quietly.

“Come on, I'll bet we're on the right track. Maybe we have to get all the bolts up to the top.”

“Or all the way to one side, or both sides, or all the edges, or only just the middle!” Freya snapped.

“We just have to keep trying. I refuse to let this puzzle beat me. We'll get the solution, even if I have to guess a million times.”

“Yeah, okay. Whatever. I'm going to look around. Clear my head. Hunt for clues or something.” She left Daniel standing at the door and turned around, rubbing her eyes.

“What about you?” Freya turned suddenly to one of the silent, motionless women. “Do you know anything about that door?” The figure did not look at her but drew away slightly.

“No, I thought not.” Freya walked around the room, searching up and down for any markings or diagrams—anything that might give a hint on how to work the door, but she found nothing. This search took her near Nemain, who watched her so creepily she made a show of ignoring him.

Then she started to examine the stone dais that the Faerie had been sitting on when they first entered the room. She walked around the edges, then climbed up onto the dais itself. It was a plain, smooth surface with no designs or markings. She felt frustration rising in her chest again. She heard Daniel give instructions to Ecgbryt to turn certain wheels. She thought about the carvings that they had passed to get here. Perhaps one of those had some sort of directions or code for the door. Whoever designed a door lock so complex may well have wanted to keep the solution nearby. Or maybe the room itself was some sort of clue. She gazed around again, but she couldn't see how that could be. She looked up at the rays of sunlight that were being bounced into the room from some distant hole at the surface. Perhaps the door was there only to distract them and they had to climb now. Did the light seem to be getting dimmer? Why wasn't the air fresh?

What if it wasn't a riddle at all?

Weary and frustrated, she rubbed her eyes again and turned around. Her eyes fell on the wooden rack that held the large book the Faerie had been reading. The cover was plain leather with brass corner strengtheners attached to it. She stepped closer and leaned over the book.

“If you're going to touch that,” Nemain said, “please clean your greasy hands.”

Freya rubbed her fingers on the bottom of her skirt to remove the oil smudges from the door gears. Then she very carefully opened the enormous book to the first page. It was the size of a small poster and completely blank except for a short line of cramped writing in the centre. If it was English, she couldn't make out the letters; it looked like a lot of loops and long lines.

Freya started leafing through some of the pages. The first thing she noticed were the colours—bright, lively colours that tore across the yellowing pages like thunderbolts. There was also a mass of detail on each page—details of made-up figures, people, buildings, and landscapes. Each page was filled with pictures and scenes, usually showing people in some action. Words were written in the margins and in the pictures as well. Many of the pages seemed to be telling a story. She paused at two pages that each had six bordered images on them depicting a green-robed figure sitting in a forest glen talking to different groups of people as they apparently passed by. There was a picture of a king and a queen, a group of old men in brown robes, a beggar, the king by himself, two young maids, the queen and another young man, and others, including a demon with sheep's horns . . .

She turned more pages. One of them showed a stocky character in red wrestling with a man twice his size. One page had nine identical faces on it, all of them surrounded with the odd writing.

One page had no writing on it at all—only a picture of two people performing an intricate dance, and the steps they took made it seem as if they were dancing across the page.

She turned the page again and heard a small “wow” from behind her. Daniel was standing there, looking at the book from over her shoulder, his eyes fixed on the two pages she had opened that showed a large, emerald, scaled serpent. It was lying on the ground, resting, its tail curled around its clawed feet. Freya felt her gaze travel along that tail to where it joined the ridged back atop large haunches where enormous emerald scales shimmered with tiny detail. Her eye continued along the back, over the crease in the book, and down the long, tapered neck of the beast to its long, horse-like face and vicious mouth. The beast was examining something that turned out to be a small person holding a torch in one hand and a sword in the other.

The detail was astonishing; each scale was rendered in precise detail. The rocks that the creature gripped were starting to crumble in its mighty talons. The wings looked veiny and tough. The night sky was above and the shadows cast by the moon and torch described massively powerful muscles beneath the thick scales.

Daniel took a step back and turned his face up to Nemain. “What is it?” he asked.

“It is a chronicle of our people—our history, our heroes, our knowledge, our genius . . .”

“It's beautiful.”

Nemain gave a stiff-necked bow.

Freya turned back to the book and to Daniel, who was staring at the page showing the beast, his jaw slack and his face pale.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“How does it end?” Daniel asked.

Nemain didn't respond. Freya turned some more pages, eventually coming to the end and the final spread. On the left-hand page—the next to last page—there were four pictures of a large group of people walking down a long slope, like a mountainside. As they descended, flames appeared. Each picture underneath showed the flames growing taller. There was no writing. The last page was a single image of a massive sheet of fire. Freya looked up at Nemain, whose smile now looked sad to her.

“How long have you been down here?” Daniel asked.

Freya, leafing back through more of the pages, felt her heart ache. It seemed so forlorn. She wished she knew the language the text was written in so that she could read it. She wanted to sit down with it and devour it—to get lost in its glorious pages for days, swim around in it. To find a work of such unimaginable beauty in a place like this, in the possession of a person like
that
. . .

“How should I be able to tell? Four years? Forty? Four hundred? Time isn't important when you're a prisoner.”

Freya held her breath. She tingled with the sudden feeling that she was on the brink of understanding something important and that to move or even breathe might take it from her. She turned her gaze from the book to Nemain and then to the wretched figures standing against the wall.

“And you haven't had anything to read except this book?”

Daniel asked Nemain.

“Why would I want anything else?”

“I—” she started, but choked. “I think I have it.” She looked at the door and smiled. “I think I figured it out!”

3

“Think about it,” Freya said to Daniel and the knights. “The door—Nemain—why would you need them?”

“Need them?” asked Daniel. “What do you mean?”

“I mean—” Freya forced herself to slow down. “I mean, why do you have them
both
? If you have the amazingly complex door that's almost impossible to open, why do you also need Nemain?

If you have a clever Faerie with razor-sharp nails that can move as fast as a cheetah, why do you need an enormous iron door?”

“So?”

“I don't think it
is
a door at all. I think that it's a fake. Everything here is for show. Nemain isn't a prisoner—prisoners don't keep prisoners. And anyway, he can leave through the ceiling, the tunnels we came through, or, even more conveniently . . .”

Nemain's expression did not change; he just stared calmly at Swiðgar's spear point in front of him, raking long, bony nails against the ground. The large knight tightened his grip on the weapon.

Freya moved to the door. “Ecgbryt, hold the door right here,” she said, tapping one of the larger wheels, “and give it a good pull— don't turn it, just give it a firm pull.”

Swiðgar grabbed the wheel and pulled against it with all of his weight. It was a long moment before anything happened, and then, slowly and soundlessly, the whole door started to move.

“Yes!” Freya punched the air. “Ha!”

Daniel's jaw dropped and his eyes bulged as he saw the complex mechanism move away from the large bolts, which were revealed to be just metal stumps set into the stone. “It was never even locked.”