They followed the hallway a short distance to a smaller room very similar to the one they had just left, lit by another sugar globe. This room was smaller, completely empty, and like the previous room showing no means of entrance from or exit to the outside world. A single staircase wound up the side of the room into a gap in the ceiling, mirroring the structure of the other room. Guessing that they had entered one of the two smaller towers each side of the central tower they decided to head up the stairs, Siladan leaving the sugar globe to wait for their return. They had seen no bridge or arches linking the smaller towers to the central tower, and their only exit was the grav bikes in the topmost chamber of that central tower, so they would need to carefully retrace their steps to escape, and Al Hamra wanted to take no chances with lights until they were sure they did not need to beat a hasty exit.
They moved up the staircase from this chamber in the same careful order as they had entered, Adam first with his carbine directed up the stairwell, the torch beneath its barrel casting a jerking beam of white along the walls and stairs ahead, with Siladan at the rear and everyone in between hanging a small glow-stick from their belts, advancing up the stairs like a small, dim rainbow. The stairs followed the same pattern as the central tower, circling around the edge of the building without passing any doors or entrances to the center of the spire itself.
“Do you think they have some hidden technology to conceal the doors?” Dr. Delecta asked as they passed the third loop of the rising staircase, her glow-stick casting a weak yellow-orange light along the perfectly smooth wall.
“Must have,” Siladan almost whispered from the rear, where he moved in a small bubble of pale violet light from his own glow-stick, completing the rainbow pattern. “It would explain why there is no entrance to the bottom chambers.”
“Maybe they came and went the same way as the Darkbound,” Saqr suggested, “Like Firstcome ghosts.”
This set them all on edge, and they continued the march in silence until after another five spirals the stairs came to an end, widening slightly and ending in a gulf of darkness. Adam gestured for them to stop, pointing at the darker space ahead, and directing his torch beam into it. Dusty air sparkled in the torchlight, hints of a large, unlit chamber with shapes hanging in space in the middle.
“Here,” Al Hamra whispered from behind him, and handed him three glow-sticks, which the big man snapped to activate with his free hand and cast forward into the gloom. A faint luminescence began to radiate from the center of the room, insufficient to make out details inside. “Let’s go,” the captain whispered, and they moved forward, weapons ready.
Al Hamra and Olivia were both already in the room when Adam’s torchlight picked out the first body, and he gestured suddenly for them all to stop. The body appeared in the sweeping arc of his torch beam suddenly, surprising him so that before he realized what he was doing he fired his gun, pulling his gun back to the target as he did so and peppering the hanging body with exploding Vulcan rounds. The body jerked and spasmed where it hung, ancient dried skin exploding in clouds of dust and dehydrated viscera, and as it jerked the chain from which it hung moved and twitched. They all heard an ominous clanking sound from the shadows of the chamber, followed by the briefest susurration of movement, as if a mechanism of flesh and cloth had briefly stirred. Al Hamra gasped and sank to one knee, and Adam felt the cloying, clinging sensation of the powers of the Dark Between the Stars. The air grew suddenly cooler and they all heard a distant screaming sound, faint as if a large number of people were crying out in pain a very long way away, far beyond the walls of the chamber. Then the clanking and whispering movement stopped and the room returned to still silence, the brief wave of cold air dissipating almost as soon as it had settled on them. Al Hamra remained on his knees, head bowed, and Olivia moved past him with her torch out, pointing it at the walls and crying out in horror as the combined light of the glowsticks and their two torches finally revealed the mechanism that Adam’s gunfire had briefly activated.
They stood in the center of a vaulting chamber large enough to take up the entire width of the tower, obviously situated at the top of the spire where it took up the remaining ten meters or so of the building’s height. There were no windows, doorways or exits from the room and, unlike the topmost chamber of the central tower, this room was completely intact, undamaged by weather or intruders in any way. It was pitch dark, lit now only by the torches and glow sticks the Firebirds had brought with them, and spacious enough that their torches did not adequately illuminate the whole, so that they could only view the parts of the room where they pointed their torches. Olivia ran her torch along the wall now, picking out the strange machinery that had been built into the room, a system of gears and cogs linked together by heavy chains from which the shriveled, dried up bodies of long-dead people hung, clad in fragile ceremonial robes, bound hand and foot where they hung. Some of the bodies hung along the walls of the room while others were suspended in the space in the center, perhaps three meters above the floor, connected through cogs on the ceiling to the pulleys and mechanisms along the walls that held additional bodies. Nine bodies hung in the central space, linked by chains to eight more bodies spread equidistant around the walls, like points of an octagon. All of the corpses hung at different heights on the machinery, swaying slightly now from the movement that had been triggered by Adam’s gunfire, their vertical positioning incomprehensible but the lateral placement of the bodies along the edge of the room obvious: each of the bodies hung against the backdrop of a fading, stylized image of an Icon. The body closest to Olivia, near the door, was suspended over a faded image of the Messenger, obvious from the scroll in its left hand and the raised index finger of its right. Next to that, a few metres around the circle of the chamber, was the image of the Dancer, poised in his classical form with one leg raised and both arms widespread, the body in front of it suspended upside down by both legs. Further around was the Deckhand, so faded by time that it was difficult to discern its gender or the particular tool it held in its outstretched left hand, the body hanging near it secured with many wrappings of thin wire but its hands free, the fingers misshapen as if they had been broken before it had died. Next was the Gambler, perhaps holding a deck of cards, the body hanging low in front of it either beheaded or so long dead that the upper extremities had collapsed. The symbol of the Merchant, next around the chamber, was clearer, the gold plate used to emboss the orb in its right hand still glowing clear and untarnished in the dry air, visible even through the bones of the skeleton that hung before it. Close by that was the Judge, or so they guessed by the sword that had been forced down the throat of the hanging body before it, only the hilt visible in the parched mouth of the cadaver. The final two Icons, the Traveler and the Lady of Tears, were next around the circle but bunched together slightly, whether by arcane design or because of the limitations of space they could not tell. The image of the Traveler was only identifiable by the classical compass-gyroscope it held in its left hand, the gold thread symbolizing the movement of the gyroscope shining in their torchlight. The Lady of Tears was also faded but her tears had been embedded in silver in the wall, and shone like stars when they directed their light past the body that hung before it, the only body among the group that was recognizably female just as the Lady of Tears was the only Icon that was consistently only female.
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There was no place for the ninth, most mysterious Icon, the Faceless One, but the body hanging highest in the centre of the room was hooded and draped in thick black robes, its correspondence obvious.
“Ki-mada!” Dr. Delecta whispered, face twisted in horror, as she stepped into the room and saw the bodies picked out by Olivia’s torch, shining her own after it. The rest of the crew followed her, whispering their own exclamations of awe and horror, until Siladan took the sugar globe out of the bag he had placed it in and allowed its light to fully illuminate the entire horrid contraption. “What is this?” Dr. Delecta demanded in a low, disgusted voice as the brighter light picked out all the details of the room, the cogs and chains glowing in its light and the seventeen bodies picking out complex looming shadows over the pale walls of the room. In the brighter light of the sugar globe they could see that there were complex patterns of mystical writing marked or carved into the walls in rings above the images of the Icons.
“This is sacrilege,” Olivia hissed, pointing at the pictures. “How can anyone defile our Icons in such a way?”
“The Sogoi were right,” Adam replied, shining his torch around the room. “This side of the river is full of evil.” He still wore the Spirit Lenses, and directed his torch into every empty space and shadowed corner seeking threats.
“What is this vile machinery?” Dr. Delecta asked, looking back to Siladan, who shrugged.
“Ask the Mystic,” Olivia suggested, nodding to Al Hamra where he still crouched on one knee, head bowed. “Is he worshipping it?”
“No,” Al Hamra managed to hiss from his crouched position. “Enduring it. I should … retreat.” He struggled back to his feet and backed out of the room, weapon held low. At a nod from Dr. Delecta Olivia followed him, watching him warily.
The rest of the crew stood in confusion in the room, staring around at the horrific mechanism, until Siladan shook off his confusion and pulled out his tabula. “Let’s record this,” he said, and began recording, making voice notes as he did so. He directed Adam to shine his torch on the individual images of the Icons, taking detailed images, and then into the shadowed heights of the room where the cadaverous likeness of the Faceless One hung like a looming threat. Although his voice stayed level and clinical, he worked through the process as quickly as he could, making only perfunctory commentary and trying to avoid walking too deep into the room where the carefully arranged corpses would loom above and behind him.
“By the Blessings of the Judge,” he said finally, as he slid his tabula closed, “Let us be done with this and out of here.”
The others agreed with him and retreated to the hallway, where Olivia stood next to a drawn and confused looking Al Hamra, leaning against the smooth wall of the landing and taking deep breaths. “It is some Mystic device,” Olivia told them, gesturing to Al Hamra. “A huge wave of power.” She reached under his arm and led him away, leaning on her shoulder and stepping slowly down the stairs. Siladan, Saqr and Dr. Delecta followed, with Adam taking the rear. He moved slowly, turning regularly to check behind them, until they were two full circles down the staircase and Al Hamra had recovered his usual poise. From there they moved quickly, back down into the ground floor chamber where Siladan gathered up the second sugar globe and then through the abandoned camping area in the base of the main tower. They ascended the stairs from there to their grav bikes in silence, Adam taking the lead and everybody moving as quickly as they could to evacuate the area.
Finally they stood in the sun-streaked upper chamber, their grav bikes untouched, catching their breath while Siladan packed the sugar globes in saddlebags.
“What was that thing, Al Hamra?” Dr. Delecta asked him finally, when she was confident he had recovered enough of his usual poise to speak clearly.
“I don’t know,” Al Hamra told them, “Some kind of permanent ritual. I think when Adam shot the body in the middle he made the whole machine move, and when it turned I felt it.” Seeing her inquiring expression, he added, “Like you feel when I use my power, I guess. Only it was … in the air. Like a conjuring.”
“So that machine made of bodies conjures Mystic power without a mind?” Siladan asked. When Al Hamra nodded, he added a further question. “Where does it come from?”
“The Dark Between the Stars,” Saqr offered, her voice firm and confident.
“That’s what those creatures were bound to, isn’t it?” Olivia asked, mostly rhetorically, and everyone nodded.
“Were they made along with the machine?” Dr. Delecta wondered, “Or were they lost explorers like our friend down there?” Referring to the body beneath them.
“Maybe if you stay too long in that chamber you are bound to it,” Al Hamra suggested. “But I think they were left behind with the machine. As Guardians. They can move through the towers, maybe, to wherever they sense life.”
“Who cares,” Adam said, voice uncharacteristically loud until he toned it down. “It’s an abomination. And we killed its servants. Let’s get out of here, and leave it for the elements.”
They nodded agreement, fussed with the bikes as quickly as they could until they were ready to leave. Soon they were speeding back across the sun-drenched canopy of the forest towards the protection of flowing water, the intense heat of Kua’s turgid atmosphere more welcome than they could ever have imagined.
Behind them the Towers rose above the forest canopy, their secret mechanism of evil quiescent but not destroyed, a brooding malice waiting for someone to set its gears turning after a millenium of silence, the malignant and ancient evil of the Firstcome waiting to be reawakened.
