World-Ripper War (Mad Tinker Chronicles Book 3) (29 page)

Pulling the lever, Gederon changed the viewframe from image to passage. The gathered advisors’ eyes widened in awe as they stared into Korr. “Welcome, esteemed guests,” Gederon said as he stood from the controls. “I am Gederon Ironvein, nephew of Kezudkan.”

Kezudkan swept a hand toward the world hole. “After you, Your Majesty.”

“King Dekulon, I must insist on checking the stability of the portal before you traverse,” said the Pillar of Runes.

A wry smile appeared on the king’s lips. “No, I think not. I shall be the first of our kind to set foot in this new world.”

Wasn’t new this morning,
Gederon joked privately.

“It is, of course, your decision,” said the successor with a bow.

“Now
that
ought to worry me more than Zepdaan’s misgivings,” said King Dekulon. “Were I the suspicious sort, I might wonder what deal you had made with our Korrish friend.”

“Then I am indeed fortunate that you are not,” the successor replied with a wink and a smile. Gederon knew few daruu as jovial as these seemed. Most of them were so stiff you could use them as anvils.

King Dekulon stepped through first, decked out in gold chain regalia and a crown set with eyeball-sized rubies. Gederon found himself wishing he had worn a clean shirt. He muttered his way through polite introductions, trying to at least remember the titles of their guests, if not the landslide of unfamiliar names.

“So this is Korr,” King Dekulon said once both feet were on the poured-stone floor of the workshop. “Remarkable. And this must be the great machine.”

“Uh, yessir,” Gederon replied. “This is it. I work it. My uncle showed me how.”

“Is it very complicated to use?” the king asked as Kezudkan and the royal advisors filed through into Korr.

Gederon rubbed one hand with the other as he shrugged. “Naw, it’s not so bad with a little practice. Knobs do all the hard work. These switches turn it on and off; knobs aim it.”

“Show me, if you please, some of these kuduks I have heard about,” said King Dekulon.

Gederon looked to his uncle, leaning to catch his eye past the Veydran king.

“Go find him one of Draksgollow’s workshops,” suggested Kezudkan. Gederon’s eyes grew wider, prompting for clarification. “The old Cavinstraw workshop is still running.”

Gederon and his uncle knew that Draksgollow had done as the two of them had and had relocated to an undisclosed location. The lesson of the ambush on Erefan and the attack on his base in Tellurak had been that both men regarded secrecy as their primary defense.

Gederon flipped through Kezudkan’s notes, scanning the pages until he found where the coordinates were scribbled. Of course, Kezudkan’s scribbling was still immaculate, nearly as good as Gederon could manage with concentration. He returned the viewframe to just an image, and began dialing in the workshop as its target.

The daruu gaped as they watched the view shift through the swirls of the aether until it was showing Korr instead of Veydrus, then dart off for the distant city where the kuduk tinker had once kept his primary workshop.

“Breathtaking,” said King Dekulon. “I should commission a statue of this moment.”

“Who could possibly do it justice?” asked the Pillar of History. “Even Tarferen can’t sculpt stone to shift in such a dizzy blur, and that seems to be the predominant sensation of this display.”

“We should have brought a poet, not such prosaic minds as ours,” said King Dekulon. “A poet could find a way to convey the sensation without its presence. A sculptor could carve what he feels.”

“What is this piece doing?” asked the Pillar of Runes. He had wandered over and was standing by the dynamo, eyes inches from the crackling spark that was being fed to the world-ripper.

“It is called a dynamo,” said Kezudkan, “and it is one of those missing bits from the text that I had to create for myself. It provides spark, which is the primary power source for the machine.”

“These are kinetic runes,” said the Pillar of Runes, squinting for a closer look. “I don’t see anything that accounts for the lightning.”

“We call that spark,” said Kezudkan. “We create it by moving lodestone rapidly through loops of conductive wire. It is a recent advance, only coming into common use in the past fifty years or thereabouts. The possible uses are unlimited.”

“Why not use lightning runes directly?” the Pillar of Runes asked.

Gederon perked up. He had asked this same question once. “Because my uncle doesn’t know—”

“It’s a very efficient system,” said Kezudkan. “We avail ourselves of science to get more from our efforts than we put in. It is also adaptable to other means of rotation, such as hydraulic pressure or steam turbine.”

Gederon caught a subtle glare from his uncle and kept his mind on his task. He homed in on the workshop, trying to keep an ear on what proved to be a historic conversation. Not that Gederon had any particular fondness for
reading
history, but this was different—he was about to
be
history.

“Got it,” he reported. The delegation from Veydrus turned their attention fully to the viewframe. The workshop was larger than the one they stood in, with far more ancillary machinery for the processing of metals into crafted products. The world-ripper there looked the same as the one Gederon was operating, but it was inert at the moment. Of greatest interest to the Veydrans were the kuduk workers.

“They … look like humans,” the Pillar of History remarked.

“More like humans than like us,” said Kezudkan. “But they aren’t built like axe-handles, the way humans are, and they don’t bleed all over the place like humans do when they get injured.  If you look at the faces—Gederon, bring us in closer on one—you can see the bone structure is more similar to our own.”

“I see it,” said King Dekulon, squinting at the viewframe. “I’ve met with humans, and they are a bit thinner in the face and limbs—and look at the noses.” The king turned away and put up a hand to shield his view. “That’s enough. Return the machine to where we departed.”

“So soon?” Kezudkan asked.

“Indeed.”

Kezudkan nodded to Gederon, who set to work on the dials once more.
And a setting where we could maybe pull a lever for a place, and it would just go there, instead of having to do the dials every time. Save us a lot of work, that would.

“Is there some problem?” Kezudkan asked, his hands spread wide.

“Citizen Graniteson, it is you who has the problem,” King Dekulon said. “One of these marvelous machines is in the hands of those mongrel creatures. This, I cannot allow.”

“They’re well-armed,” said Kezudkan, “and if I must say, skittish. And they’ve got guns. We can go back there and I can show you what I mean.”

“We have been made aware of the goblin style weapons,” said King Dekulon, “but we cannot allow a machine that can penetrate our defenses to remain in the hands of creatures such as those.”

Kezudkan shook his head. “They don’t even know you exist. I haven’t told anyone but my nephew.”

King Dekulon rested a hand on Kezudkan’s shoulder. “I believe you, and I believe that you could and would keep this secret. But I am king, and sworn to protect the daruu people. Nowhere in my oath did I limit my protection to the daruu of my own world. I will not sit by while my people live under the rule of those monstrous abominations. So to start with, we are going to confiscate that copy of your machine.”

Kezudkan raised a brow. “How do you plan to do that?”

By the time they had returned the viewframe to the council chamber in Veydrus, the aspect of the room had changed. The Pillar of Defense stood proudly at attention, still as stone while he awaited the return of his king. Arrayed around him were sets of museum-quality armor, standing in ranks. Kezudkan had seen similar suits on display as antiquities, harkening back to ages long past. Historians had said that they were ornamental, meant to be worn in celebrations and ceremonies. Too impractical. Too ornate. No one would have made armor so beautiful if they intended it to see battle.

Yet here they were. The Iron Guard, King Dekulon had called them. Twenty doughty warriors, covered helm to boot in steel. No two were adorned alike. Some bore spiked protrusions at the elbows and knees, others backward curved blades along the forearms. The helms bore all manner of decoration, from stylized bestial faces to tiered fortifications that looked like siege towers. Colors ran amok among the ranks, with enamels and precious metals mixed together producing artwork fit for formal dinnerware or decorative vases. The shields they carried varied in heraldry, but were alike in size and shape, each tall enough to cover from floor to shoulder when set down, and broad enough to span shoulder to shoulder of the widest among them. Each of the Iron Guard carried an axe forged from an alloy Kezudkan could not immediately identify. The blades were curved like a crescent moon, and the back was formed into a squat hammer, lending the weapon heft behind its strikes.

“These are the greatest warriors of my kingdom,” said King Dekulon, waving his hand toward the image in the viewframe. “You will find none better. If you would, open the portal.”

Kezudkan nodded to his nephew, who obeyed without hesitation. There was a tiny flinch from the Pillar of Defense, but not a single one of the Iron Guard budged from his spot. King Dekulon stepped through into the council chamber to address his troops.

“Men, I have called you here for a unique defense of the daruu people,” said the king. “We have just discovered a new world, one in which our people are sorely beset. They are ruled by a race devolved from a sinful mixing of human blood with daruu. Now, our new friend, Citizen Kezudkan Graniteson, has come to us for aid. We will not fail. There is a device, much like the one you see behind me, in the control of this mongrel race. You will follow me into this new world, and from there to where this device is located. You will wrest control of this device from the mongrels and aid Citizen Kedudkan in relocating it under our control. Is that understood?”

“Yes, King!” twenty voices responded in unison.

Kezudkan felt a tremor in his innards; it worked its way up his spine and into his head. It was glorious. Days long past, returning to Korr with a promise of vengeance, of justice long overdue. Some vague worries gnawed at him, but in the moment, he was swept up in the martial spirit of his kin.

King Dekulon stepped back into Korr, and with a few small gestures, cleared a path in Kezudkan’s workshop. The Iron Guard fell in behind him, marching through in lock step without hesitation. The Pillar of Defense was the last one through. “Close the portal,” King Dekulon commanded. Gederon complied. “What you see in this gate is now just an image. Watch, as the view changes, and we will see your destination in a moment.”

The Iron Guard stood silent save for the occasional scrape of metal as heads turned to watch the swirling images fly past. They smelled of oil and polish, up close. Neither agile, nor stealthy, Kezudkan clopped around the assemblage with his cane and sidled up beside the Pillar of Defense. “Might I have a quiet word aside with you?” The Pillar nodded.

Eyes followed them out the door and into the hall beyond, but no one made mention or objected to their departure. That measure of trust buoyed Kezudkan’s spirits. He hoped that the results of his discussion would not dash them.

“What is it?” the Pillar of Defense asked.

“These look like fine lads,” said Kezudkan. “Disciplined, impressive, fearless. I just … I wonder if we might be digging a bit too deep without checking our supports.”

The Pillar of Defense smirked. “You’ve probably never seen a true warrior.”

Kezudkan closed his eyes. “Warrior? Oh, I fear my world might have made warriors obsolete. Technology does most of the fighting now. Guns that can punch holes in armor stopped us making armor hundreds of years ago. Those kuduks have steam tanks as well, rolling machines that are armored thicker than those soldiers of yours, with the strength of gears and pistons pushing them. Without even runes on that armor, I don’t see how they’re going to survive. I don’t want their blood on my conscience.”

“You needn’t worry about runes,” the Pillar of Defense replied. “I’m no expert on their creation, but all that armor is runeforged.”

Kezudkan’s brow furrowed. “What’s that now?”

“The runes are carved and imbued as they are forged, and the runes end up inside the metal. No work of simple, carved runes can be so powerful. Same goes for their axes. If these kuduk things think as you do, they are in for an unwelcome surprise. Come. Watch.”