The First Book of Ore: The Foundry's Edge (12 page)

he woven surface beneath their feet was unstable, forcing them to cling to the slimy walls for support. The feeble light from Phoebe's Trinka did little to keep her from stubbing her exposed toes, so she stepped carefully to avoid any jutting metal slivers.

They soon found their path blocked by a membranous curtain stitched together from tattered sheets of translucent foil that might have been some kind of hide. Bracing herself for something lurking behind it, Phoebe whisked the curtain aside. Beyond it was another drape of the same material, and past that another. As they crept through the tunnel of veils, the stench became overwhelming, like boiling blood and burning garbage.

At the end of the seeping passage, their legs turned to jelly.

The opening looked out upon the pipe-work tree's cavernous heart. Every creak and drip was amplified with a tremulous echo. They could feel a steady draft of warm, pungent air wafting up from the depths with a low ambient drone. A cable bridge was strung across the chasm, leading to a nest suspended like a spiderweb in a smokestack. It looked ancient and distressed, a cocoon constructed from fragments of shattered trunk, bound together by tangled cable. Bent branches and shards were lashed around the outside of it, curving to form a dome.

“Not good,” Micah mumbled.

Phoebe gulped hard. “Come on,” she whispered. “Let's find a way out.” She searched around the opening of the hollow, but the inner walls of the tremendous tree were featureless and slick with sap. There was nowhere to climb, up or down. The only way was across.

She steeled herself and took a step onto the narrow bridge, clinging to cables along the sides. Phoebe kept her eyes locked dead ahead, willing herself to not look down into the perilous void, and though it only took her a dozen cautious steps to cross, it seemed to take forever.

The floor of the nest felt sturdier beneath their feet. A fine gray dust coated every surface and hovered in the air, choking the meager clusters of torch blooms. The kids crept along the perimeter, holding their noses to keep from gagging on the stink. Piles of refuse buzzed with clouds of metal insects that looked like tiny fluttering wing nuts. Skins and hides hung from spiny branches, and a collection of what looked to be mummified mechanical creatures were propped up in perverse poses like an audience waiting for the show to begin.

They heard a scuffling sound. Phoebe and Micah looked for the source, their hearts racing, but the echoes were confusing and the shadows impenetrable.

Standing in the center of the nest was a cracked table made from a slab of broken tree. Decorated with an elaborate assortment of decrepit talismans and bowls, it looked part altar and part…tea set? Fragile-looking metal cups sat on a frilly foil mat beside polished bric-a-brac as if arranged by a meticulous granny. A boiling pot steamed nearby, a vessel that might have been the petrified head of a mechanical beast.

Confused, Micah reached out to inspect the weird gathering of trinkets.

“NO, BLEEDER! NO TOUCH-UCH!”

The kids jumped. The screeching voice seemed to come from everywhere, but they looked around and saw no one. Then came that scuffling sound once again, this time from directly overhead. A skeletal figure skittered across the top of the nest like an emaciated metal lizard.

They screamed, and it screamed back at them.

“Stick-icky fingers
rahkazess
, NO! No touch-uch!”

The creature swung across zip lines, seizing the cables with knobby clamp hands as he emerged from the shadows. His head was a grinning human skull, yellowed and cracked with age. A deep fissure ran across the cranium, stained with brown crust that must have been dried blood. A crest of broken rib bones sprouted from the top of the skull, flaring out in a crown.

“Talky
rha'khalor
, bleeder lies-eyes. Come to Mehk. Choking Chokarai, crushing Chokarai, bring all to RUST-UST!”

The creature let out a horrid screech. He pounced.

But instead of the agile landing they expected, he clattered to the ground in an awkward heap, flailing like an overturned tortoise and knocking his skull mask askew. The kids now saw that he was the same as the other tree dwellers that had captured them, only ancient and withered. His body was wrinkled and peeling like scorched foil, and his frail form was a constellation of tattoos and carvings.

“Gah! No-no looky!” he squawked. The creature tried to hide his face—filmy eyes veiled in cataracts, and a bent jaw bearing a few lonely teeth.

“Pfffew, he's just a geezer!” Micah breathed in relief. “Here I was thinkin' we was in serious trouble.”

“What do we do?” Phoebe asked.

For a moment, they just watched the wizened thing struggle. He looked so pathetic that Phoebe stepped forward to help him up, but he shrieked and drove her back. He scrambled for his mask and tried to slip it on, but his clamp hands were too arthritic and clumsy, and he kept dropping it.

Phoebe saw wheels inset in his palms, like blackened pulleys. Again, that familiar feeling needled her, though she could not put her finger on it.

“
Krazomakish nhar-ark
, Dollop. DOLLOP!” he snarled.

A nervous, lopsided creature shuffled out from a dark corner. Though he walked on all fours, the kids could tell right away that this “Dollop” was not like the others. He was about waist-high to Phoebe, hobbling on back legs that were too short, and front limbs far too long. Dollop's body looked cobbled together from different kinds of metal, like a toy model made from several kits. His head was triangular and maybe a bit oversized for his body, and his two huge eyes bulged out at either side, giving him the appearance of a hapless bug.

“H-h-halt, cruel and evil b-bleeders,” Dollop stammered in a voice that was much more polite than commanding. “We'll be just one m-m-moment.” He hurried over to the ancient one and helped him fasten on his skull mask.

“You speak our language?” Phoebe gasped in relief.

“Why y-y-yes! Your f-f-filthy Bloodword is quite e-easy. But, um, the Ascetic…” Dollop motioned to the withered old creature. “H-he pretty much only speaks Rattletrap. He's a little, er, slow in his advanced age.”

The elderly creature scrambled back to his feet. “Bleeders,” he growled, chattering the mandible of his skull mask. “Angry killing-ing, hacking Chokarai, bones to mash, bloods to eat. WHY kill-ill Chokarai?”

“We didn't kill no one!” Micah protested.

“We're sorry to offend you,” Phoebe pleaded, “but who is Chokarai?”

“This!” the Ascetic snapped. “Chokarai
ahz vil'ott
. Chraida praise-aise to Chokarai.”

“I don't understand,” she said.

But the Ascetic was lost in his train of thought, his words becoming an indecipherable purr as he waved his arms in the air and began to sway and dance slowly in place.

“Sorry. He, um, h-he does that sometimes,” Dollop explained as he cooed to the shriveled old creature in quiet, reassuring tones. But the Ascetic broke away from Dollop and leaped onto the altar. He turned his gaze upon the kids and pointed at them with a gnarled finger. His voice bristled with malevolence as he barked harshly.

Dollop cleared his throat with a tinny cough and raised his voice to speak over the Ascetic's guttural pronouncements. “The Ascetic c-condemns you and all bleeders,” he translated. “His people, the chraida, c-curse you for killing the Chokarai. That's umm, that's their name for the fo-fo-forest.”

“But we haven't done anything wrong,” Phoebe explained.

“Where's he get off, cursin' us?” Micah blustered. “Tell him that ain't fair!”

Dollop hastily relayed the message, and the Ascetic cackled in response.

“He says F-Foundry doesn't know, um, fair,” Dollop squeaked. “He s-says it isn't f-f-fair you bleeders slaughter mehkans and, er, k-kill chraida.”

“Hold your horses there, Goggle Eyes!” Micah strode toward Dollop, who took an anxious step back. “We ain't got nothin' to do with the Foundry.”

Phoebe held him back. “We didn't hurt anyone,” she said.

In a spastic fit, the old chraida wrenched the kids by their collars and yanked them close. They struggled to break free, but he held them fast.

“Chokarai brings-ings bleeders,” the Ascetic gurgled wickedly as Phoebe and Micah pulled back from his putrescent breath. “What to do-do-do? Read Splinters, shavings, and slag, Chokarai will choose-ooze your
gro'thsylah-ha-h
a
!” The Ascetic burst into a convulsive fit of laughter and shoved them away.

“Uh, he says that the t-t-tree will decide your f-fate,” Dollop translated.

“Gimme a break!” Micah said with a roll of his eyes.

“Dollop, please,” Phoebe implored. “Please ask him to let us go. We haven't done anything to the Ascetic or his people. We shouldn't be here. We're lost, and we don't have much time. We need to find the Citadel and—”

The Ascetic's maniacal laughter choked into a high-pitched squeal. Dollop fell backward with a mortified gasp, trembling and hugging his body as if trying to hold it together.

“N-n-no,” Dollop chattered. “Nuh-uh. N-never speak of it! It's a v-vile thing.”

“You've heard of the Citadel?” Phoebe asked.

“H-how could we forget?” He ducked under a pile of rubble to hide. “It is an ancient ab-b-b-b-bomination. A sc-scar from which Mehk may never heal.”

“Cool! So how do we get there?” Micah chimed in.

Without warning, the Ascetic burst into wailing, uncontrollable tears. The withered chraida crawled over to one of his grotesque mummified companions and laid his weeping head on its lap. He was inconsolable, his metal shoulder plates shuddering with every sob. The kids looked at each other, unsure what to do. Phoebe reached out to touch his wrinkled arm.

“TEAAAA!” the Ascetic hollered abruptly, followed by a flurry of shrill giggles that echoed throughout the nest. He bolted upright and blasted past the kids, galloping on all fours toward his altar and kicking up a cloud of gray dust in his wake. Micah twirled a finger around his temple.

“Please,” Phoebe said, following the old chraida. “You have to tell us. We're looking for someone important and—”

“Shush-ush, no talky, bleeder,” tutted the Ascetic. “Let spilling Splinters speak-eak.” He whispered some grinding words and stirred his boiling pot. Dollop sprinted to his side and busied himself by adjusting the little knickknacks on the altar. But the Ascetic shooed him away and corrected the arrangement of the curios with great precision. He dipped two cups into the cauldron, gingerly wiped the rims clean, and offered them to Phoebe and Micah, an enthusiastic grin visible beneath his skull mask.

“Uh, thank you,” she said, taking the hot cup in her hands. “Will you tell us where the Citadel is if we drink this?”

Dollop whimpered again, peering fearfully from behind the altar. The Ascetic nodded vaguely at the kids and pointed to the cups, the jaw of his skull mask clicking eagerly.

“So…what kinda tea is this exactly?” Micah asked.

“You go first,” Phoebe instructed him.

“Pffft, in your dreams!”

“Don't be rude.”

“I don't like tea. 'Specially not crazy spider monkey tea.”

“Fine, we'll go at the same time, okay?”

“Whatever.”

They raised their clinking cups in unison and looked at the contents. It was a translucent brown fluid with a hunk of something hard and dark at the bottom. It looked exactly like…well, tea. They eyed each other suspiciously and brought the steaming cups to their lips. The Ascetic leaned in anxiously.

The kids took a sip. Their eyes popped wide. This was the smell they detected when they first arrived—blood, chemicals, rot, garbage, all boiled down to one concentrated, obscene taste. Micah gagged and rubbed at his tongue to scrape away the foul residue. Phoebe covered her mouth so that she could spit more modestly.