The Space Between (5 page)

The next time he stopped he was in the
center of a wide clearing. The main green of Grovely was to the
west, several hundred meters away.

"Where are we going?" Meledrin stopped by
his side, bow held negligently. She pushed her fiery hair back from
her face with long pale fingers as she gazed down at him. Not for
the first time, the hidden depths of her green eyes unsettled
Keeble. He had a vague thought that the whole idea of her was
unsettling, but he couldn't grasp the idea fully. When he hurried
on again she stayed where she was. He could feel her watching him
like he could feel the Singing. It was as if she knew all about
him, or was about to find out.

"What is that?" she said a moment later.

"I told you, I don't know, but it's this
way." He flung the words back over his shoulder, silently cursing
her loose tongue while he tried to concentrate.

"No," Meledrin said. "What
is
that
?"

Keeble stopped and looked back at the dwife,
annoyed that she continued to try to distract him when important
matters were afoot. She pointed skywards and he turned to look.

"It's a bird." He turned to continue on.

"Yes. But it's extremely large, is it
not?"

He turned for a moment to look, as if he,
cave dweller that he was, would know more about the subject than
she. "It's still a bird." He started to walk, picking up the
threads of the magic rhythm in his mind again. He passed a house
that was hardly distinguishable from the natural surroundings.
"Ingenious."

"There's another."

Keeble looked again. There
were a lot of birds. A lot of
big
birds. But birds were birds, and the Singing was
etching its rhythms onto his bones. "I once saw an eagle with a
wingspan of about three meters," he said. The birds they were
looking at seemed to be much larger than that, but the Song filled
his mind. "I'm not sure if they are birds," he said, having another
look. "Whoever called them that is crazy. They're bats." Being a
cave dweller, he
did
know a bit about bats.

He turned and walked quickly through the
trees, not really caring if Meledrin followed. He stopped twice
more, senses straining, before he was finally sure of his bearings.
"This way," he said. With the direction of the Singing set in his
mind, he picked up the pace until he was almost running. Dwarves
and dwives were all about, clustered in groups and staring off at
nothing. They seemed to be ignoring him for a change. Keeble
ignored them as well as he wove through the trees. He had more
important things in his mind.

"I once saw a bat," he said, "almost a meter
from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other." The bats flying
over the forest were quite a bit bigger than that. He didn't know
if Meledrin was following him.

As the pulsing of the Song grew in his mind
Keeble decided that it wasn't really much of a Song at all. "The
rhythm is much too complex to follow. If there's a rhythm at
all."

But as he walked forward
some more, he decided that there
was
a rhythm, dancing syncopations
across his nerves. He felt the flow of his steps changing to match.
"There is a rhythm." Or, more accurately, dozens of rhythms. He
counted at least fifteen layers to the Song. "It's like a bar full
of Singers all Singing at once, bringing their magic to bear on one
place."

And that place was a tree.

Keeble stopped at the edge
of a clearing and examined the monstrosity before him. "Whistler's
Mother," he swore. 'Tree' was hardly a fit description. The tree,
of a species he didn't recognize, was enormous. The clearing was
more than a hundred meters across and the tree shaded nearly half
of that area. "Seventy meters high," he said, though he knew it was
not
exactly
right.
For a moment he was horrified by the thought that he wasn't exactly
right. He should be
exactly
right. "And the base has ten meter diameter."
Close enough. He nodded to himself as he continued to examine the
arboreal giant. Smooth, red tinged bark. Leaves slightly larger
than his good hand. And the symphony, the Song, dancing its
impossible rhythms in his head.

Three tall, slim dwives were tending the
tree. One was high up, sawing slowly at a dead branch. Another was
collecting seeds from the ground, seeming to say a prayer over each
before placing it carefully in a woven basket. The third, standing
on a ladder, was reaching up to check the lowest leaves.

"Bugs, probably." Though Keeble found it
hard to believe that any number of bugs could kill such a tree. He
hefted his multi-tool and examined the edge of the axe blade. "A
blunt spot." He sniffed his distaste. "Would you look at that." He
turned to show Meledrin, but she wasn't there. He shrugged and
started to move to the base of the tree anyway. He stopped when he
heard a shout of fear and shock from behind.

Keeble spun about and
peered back the way he'd come. Meledrin
was
there now, not twenty meters
behind, but she wasn't the one who'd shouted. She stood, bow at the
ready, looking back as well. Another shout rang out, and a burst of
flame seemed to erupt out of nothing. Keeble walked back to stand
by Meledrin's side.

"Dragons," the woman said, her emotions held
in check like a flock of sheep behind the flimsy gate he'd seen
earlier.

"No." He licked his lips. "Explosives."

"What?"

"That isn't natural." He sniffed the air.
"There's cordite, sulpher, potassium nitrate, and some other things
I don't recognize. Very dangerous mix. Unless one of those
ingredients I don't know is the control agent, I suppose."

"We must go back and assist."

He turned his glance skywards for a moment.
There were lots of big bats circling overhead. "I don't think we'd
be much help."

The dwives who'd been working on the tree
seemed to have other ideas. The three of them ran past, long
ceremonial dresses not slowing them, hair streaming behind. They
each had an arrow nocked.

Keeble shrugged and turned back to the tree.
The others would have to fend for themselves. He had more important
things to do. He didn't think anything could be done anyway. "I
don't have any explosives and no time to make any." And there was
no stout war party to take up the defense, just dwives and their
bows and dwarves with light swords. He shook his head in disgust.
He hadn't seen a war axe or war hammer since arriving.

"The tree can save us, anyway," Keeble said.
"I'm not exactly sure how, but there's too much power for it to be
otherwise."

The tree was calling to him like a steam
whistle starting a work shift. If only this backward place had
whistles and shifts. Bats were just bats, even if they could shit
fire, as appeared to be happening. But the Song was astounding.

He didn't pause at the edge of the clearing
this time. He didn't look up at the tree in case it distracted him.
Adjusting his mechanical hand, he strode to the base of the tree
and set to work, chopping with strong, economical strokes. He was
going to sing a chopping song but none came to mind.

"Stop."

Keeble did stop, but only for a moment. He
glanced over his shoulder and saw Meledrin staring at him in
horror. She still held her bow, but it was forgotten. He turned
back to his work. A nagging thought about women. "Bloody
women."

Another explosion shook seeds from the tree,
bringing them down like hail. Keeble took one from the top of his
head and examined it for a moment, spinning it in his fingers,
before tossing it away. He set to work again, a smile on his face.
Explosions came more regularly. And they came closer. He could
almost chop with the rhythm of the explosions.

It was only a dozen strokes before Keeble
made a breakthrough. He jarred his good hand badly and almost bent
his mechanical one when a thin wall of wood fell apart. It showed
empty space beyond. At almost the same time Meledrin grabbed his
shoulder and pulled him back from the tree. The woman was stronger
than she looked, but he twisted free and glared at her.

"What do you think you are doing, Keeble?"
Her voice was shaking with rage. "How dare you touch the Ohoga
tree. You profane this sacred place just by being here."

"Do you really think that matters now?" He
gestured to the sky, and there were still dozens of the huge bats
there. Each had an assembly of shining metallic cylinders strapped
to its belly, and they all wheeled about as if looking for
somewhere to land. The clearing where the huge tree was located was
an obvious choice.

The first of the creatures shook the trees
with its enormous wings and settled to the ground even as Keeble
and Meledrin watched.

Keeble had a vague feeling he should be
afraid, but he wasn't. "The Song gives me strength," he said. Or
perhaps it just distracted him.

Fires were sending thick blankets of smoke
through the forest. People were shouting, screaming.

"Perhaps it isn't a bat," he said, cocking
his head to one side as he looked. "It isn't quite a bat and isn't
quite a bird." Either term would probably do.

For a tree, the tree was huge, but the
bat-bird would've crushed it had it tried to find a perch. It
flared its leathery wings for a moment to get its balance, and it
was like a storm cloud had passed across the sun.

"Forty meters across," Keeble said. "It has
to weigh a few ton. Something like that shouldn't be able to get
off the ground. Especially with those cylinders."

But the Song was still echoing around the
corners of his mind, and he'd broken through to a hollow section of
the giant tree, so he didn't want to spend time working out size to
weight ratios. He turned and started chopping again.

Another explosion shook the ground, and
Keeble almost lost his rhythm. The Song kept him working steadily
though, kept his mind focussed.

"Stop." Meledrin's face was even paler than
usual.

"The tree is hollow, woman." He took a great
chunk of the tree away and crouched down to look into the hole.
There was nothing to see.

"Keeble."

The dwarf turned. Meledrin had backed away a
few steps and was pointing her bow at him. An arrow was drawn back
to her cheek. He looked into her green eyes and shivered at what he
saw there.

"Guess you'll just have to
kill me. The tree is
hollow
. Don't you think that's
strange? And there's a huge bat behind you with cylinders strapped
to its belly." What they did to flight dynamics was unthinkable.
Dwarves had been working on flight for a few years. "If anyone had
come up with something like that bat they'd have been laughed out
of the mountain. And quite possibly the forest as well, though who
knows with you strange dwarves."

The bat had crouched and brightly armored
figures were emerging from the two outermost canisters. The first
such person was almost as tall as Meledrin and wore a chunky,
riveted suit of armor with flaking green and purple paint. The
second was the same. They were only thirty meters away.

"There's a huge bat behind you that seems to
be a vehicle for people." His subconscious calculations of flight
dynamics were thrown into the forge, and he began to recast them.
"Can those people move about in the canisters, do you think? Or are
they strapped in? What are they strapped to? What are those suits
made from? They could use a gas that's lighter than air." He nodded
in satisfaction. That idea had been doing the rounds recently in
Tab Cavern. "Has to be it."

"What?" Meledrin still had her bow drawn.
Thankfully it was pointing the other way. It was pointed at the
first colorful figure but Keeble didn't think it would have much
effect.

The ground was moving in a nonstop dance
now. Keeble was having trouble staying on his feet, and he could
hardly even hear himself speak over the hum of giant wings, the
crackle of fire, and the clamor of battle.

"A gas that's lighter than air — hydrogen
for instance. That could alleviate some of the weight problems.
Though probably not enough, really." He started his calculations
again, working on the presumption that the canisters were filled
with hydrogen and the people inside either breathed the hydrogen —
would that make them lighter than they appeared as well? — or
carried oxygen tanks somewhere in their brightly colored armor.

He turned and continued to cut while he
thought. He swung his multi-tool with calm urgency, taking out
great chunks of wood with each powerful blow.

A fire erupted nearby.

After a flurry of strokes Keeble finally
opened up a hole large enough to crawl through. He turned once more
to look at Meledrin and was just in time to see her loose her first
arrow.

The long shaft hit one of the strangers on
the base of the neck and bounced away harmlessly. A second shaft
hit the same place a moment later. And a third.

Keeble liked the idea but didn't think it'd
work. "I don't think you'll weaken the armor like that," he
said.

All she'd managed to do was
draw the strangers' attention, which Keeble
didn't
think was such a good idea.
Three of the figures swiveled slowly in their direction. The armor
screeched in protest.

For a moment Keeble
wondered what to do. Explosions were toppling trees all around
Grovely with casual efficiency.
Attacking
from above: what an advantage.

"Shoot the bat," he shouted to Meledrin. He
was about to say 'shoot the bird' as well, in case she was confused
by the changing names. But, she shifted targets almost instantly,
letting fly with deadly accuracy towards the huge bat's head. She
hit an eye once, twice, eliciting screams from the wounded
creature, then aimed lower, at it's exposed neck. The first shaft
bounced away, but the second bit deeply.