Engines & Demons - The Undestined

Chapter 3iii

This chapter is dedicated to R McNeary, for reading, supporting and commenting. I cannot thank him enough for finding all the little inconsistencies in this work (Horrible POV shifts being chief among them) I have done some extensive re-writing, thanks to his eagle eye.

His work includes Unbroken and The Path of Fire, both of which I can highly recommend taking a look at. Also new this year from Rob, is Dragon and Phoenix, the next book in the Path of Light and Fire series.

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As Tahlia climbed the road between the first of the fortress-bailey's war-engine batteries, she started panting in a fashion that Mistress D'almeria would have considered most unladylike. She had a mind to clamber down into one of the battery's trenches, behind its thick wall of stone and metal plate, and squeeze her way beneath the comfortingly sturdy wooden beams that made up the machines' great turntables. It would have been nice to rest there for a while from the sun, but she knew she could not afford the time, and so ran past the network of silent machines and on towards the temple.

She kept to the softer grass alongside the road, but soon the road began its steeper climb up to the ridge of land, towards the temple. She stopped to let her breath catch her up. As she stood there gasping, she reached into her pouch for her flask of water, but then remembered that, in her haste, she had left it lying between the barns at the karabok-field.

"Oh, khlith spawn!"

She began to climb again, slowed to a dry, breathless walk. The ridge rose more abruptly to her right, broken upwards into sheer angled rock faces that formed the natural pedestal where the access-keep reared, but to her left the land was more gentle, rising and widening into a flat area where the temple stood. As she laboured up the road, she had time once more to marvel at the building's splendour.

Its outer walls were rounded and beautifully smooth, made of dark blue-grey stone, so that it looked like the complex shell of some massive creature, with the tall spiralled horn of the ascension tower rising from the middle of its curved back. Its narrow windows were tinted blue and were so artfully incorporated into the design of the building, they were almost indiscernible. The exception was the vast half dome window at the temple's high south point, its arching curve made from hundreds of panes of wedge shaped glass that always cast a pattern of shimmering rainbows into the chapel beneath it.

Countless crak were perched about the building, wherever their claws could find purchase on its architecture, and their red feathers were bright against the dark stones of its walls. One of the birds was squatting on the path ahead as she reached the low crest of the ridge, and as she approached, it snapped its vile beak at her and hopped away, croaking in consternation.

Tahlia ignored the cantankerous bird, and stopped to take a few panting breaths. From where she stood, a wide path led from the road and crossed the face of the round hill, up to the temple's towering metal doors, beneath their curving portico. Two Templars guarded the open doors, each one wearing patched plain armour covered with a black tabard, the curving sun symbol of Fortak emblazoned on their breasts. Her breath recovered, Tahlia climbed the path,  but when she finally reached the temple's doors, she looked around in annoyance at the empty hillside.

Her mother was late!

The two Templars stood impassive and unmoving and did not stir, even when Tahlia gave a loud indignant sigh and threw herself into the shade of the temple's portico. Once the breeze had cooled her a little, she began to grub out small stones from between the thick grasses and throw them at the heads of dried flower grass that were growing nearby, decapitating each one with deadly accuracy. There was very little going on in the surrounding fortress-bailey, and the only people to be seen, apart from the two silent Templars, were the specks of guards patrolling its distant walls, and a farmer driving an empty masdon cart down the spiral of the access-keep's road.