The passage was low, shaped like a pointed arch, and its walls were made of human bones. Stacks of skulls, femur lattices, scapulae layered like shingles. Every sort of bone, arranged with architectural precision and an artistic flair. Occasionally there were alcoves containing single skulls or entire skeletons. The only light came from strange lamps hung barely high enough to walk beneath them They burned with a pale, wan flame that seemed to cast more shadow than light. Nikha hadn’t seen anything like them before.
“The convent in Afansk has catacombs, but I never saw them,” said Kemp as he looked around. “It’s…I don’t really like it.”
“Me neither, but it’s what we’re stuck with.” All these bones made Nikha rather nervous, but she had to deal with it. “The faster we move, the faster we’ll be through, right?”
Kemp nodded, still glancing around, and they resumed walking.
The atmosphere was close and silent, as if they wore thick wool hats over their ears, and the air smelled of dry dust. Even Nikha’s boot-heels sounded dull and flat. They rarely spoke and when they did, something in the acoustics made it sound like the other person was talking right into their ear. Nikha glanced around at the bones as they moved. Some few were engraved with familiar religious icons: the Open Circle, the Tree, even the Golden Thread inlaid in its namesake metal. Others bore inscriptions in Old Liturgical, which she could sort of read, or even older Tyrian, which she didn’t.
Now that she thought about it, Annoumenism was oddly focused on death. Its highest saints were the Twin Hieromartyrs of the Tree, and below them were the Saint-Emperor Khrizometos and his Holy Mother-both of whom had been martyred as well. The highest relics of the faith were the mortal remains of holy people- hence the existence of catacombs like this. Surrounded by bones as she was, it all struck her as very morbid.
Nikha’s ruminations were interrupted when they reached a fork in the path. She stopped short, realizing she’d never actually had more than one way to go yet, not really. She stood there frowning for a moment, tapping her foot as she looked back and forth. Just as she turned her head, Kemp spoke up.
“I don’t have any idea which is right either, if that’s what you were going to ask.” His voice was quiet. This place made one want to keep quiet.
She sighed. “It was. So…I suppose we just pick one?”
“Left,” said Kemp immediately.
“How come?”
He shrugged. “My grandma used to say you always keep your left hand outward when you walk around a holy place. And I think this qualifies, right?”
“It does, I would think. But why’d she say that?”
Another shrug. “Old people have funny traditions.”
“That they do,” Nikha grumbled, recalling the way her own grandmother had treated her. “Let’s try it, then.”
The left path twisted and turned, seeming to be in poor repair. The osseous walls were blackened by lamp smoke, the flagstones were cracked and heaved, and often they had to step over fallen bones. Once Kemp accidentally kicked one, sending it rattling across the floor with a hollow sound. Nikha glanced at him and raised an eyebrow, to which he returned a guilty little shrug.
Finally they reached what seemed to be the fork’s end. The hall grew a little wider and taller, and both walls were lined with alcoves. They contained skeletons that had been fixed upright, like suits of armor lining a castle corridor. Each had its hands making a different, strange symbol-and more unsettlingly, none had eyes. Where should have been sockets were just smooth bone.
“What…what is this?” murmured Kemp. He sounded worried as Nikha felt, and she didn’t answer.
Past the alcoves, a bone plinth stood in the center of the hall. At its top, cradled in a pair of pelvises, was a skull. This one had eye sockets, but above and between them was a third hole that didn’t look natural. When Nikha got a little closer, she saw that its edges looked smooth, like they’d healed. “Drilled. While they were alive,” she whispered to herself.
Beyond the skull was….nothing. No light. Blackness so deep it looked solid. She was looking into it, about to tell Kemp to turn around, when she felt it. A chill went up her spine. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Her eyes watered. Every instinct was screaming at her that within that nothing, there was something, and it had seen them. A frantic glance at Kemp showed him rooted to the spot, lips pulled back from his teeth in a fear-grimace older than mankind. She clapped him on the shoulder and yelled in his face: “Come on! Back to the fork, come on, move!”
He did as she said immediately, and the two of them ran as fast as they could. Slate groaned and bones clattered away from their feet. Neither knew what they were running from-but on a deeper, more ancient level they knew they had to get out.
Nikha was dead-set on getting away. Sounds seemed to be growing muffled, quieter. She had looked back once, just once. She’d seen the lamps snuffing out, one by one by one. And past them, in the blackness- No! She wasn’t sure she’d seen anything, or maybe her mind was trying to protect itself. If something had been there, her perception had skidded across it like water dripped onto a hot pan. It was not something she could just shoot, of that she was certain. It was nothing, nothing, less than nothing, and to be caught would be worse than death. Feet pounded, breath rattled through her throat, her pack bouncing against her back, she had to go, go, go-
“Nikha!” Kemp’s frantic shout shocked her out of her trance, and she realized she’d passed the fork and started running back to the cistern. She turned so abruptly that she nearly tripped and ran back through to the right-hand fork. Kemp, bless him, let her catch up.
They tore down the right fork at madcap pace, the bony walls a gray blur. Whatever it was, it was still coming. The tunnel abruptly turned, and then Kemp crashed against a rusty iron gate with a clatter. He yanked frantically at its handle. “It’s stuck!”
“Let me-” Nikha shoved in beside him and tried herself, but had no better luck. “Can you kick it open?”
Kemp lined up and gave it a savage blow with his foot. It rattled, dust sifting down from where it was embedded in the wall, but nothing more. Nikha dared look over her shoulder and saw the lights beginning to dim. “Your knife!” Kemp said desperately. “Try prying it open.”
“That’s so bad for it!” Nikha moaned, but she stuck the bayonet between gate and frame anyway. She hauled on it as hard as she could but got nothing but a metallic squeal. “Here, kick it! Kick it!” She held the handle in position while Kemp lined up. He grabbed the bars to brace himself, then kicked the knife’s hilt as hard as he could.
The gate burst free with a deafening clang and toppled right onto him. Nikha crouched down and heaved it off him with a strength she never knew she possessed, ignoring the pain from her scratched arm. She helped him up and they kept running together, Nikha snatching up her knife.
After a blurred sprint that might have been fifteen seconds or fifteen minutes, they reached a door much like the one they’d entered through. Kemp fairly ripped it open and both piled through. Nikha tackled it shut as Kemp found a bar resting against the wall nearby and dropped it across.
“Can, huff, can it-“
“No,” Nikha replied between heaving breaths. “I-I don’t...think so. Everything...else stopped at the doors.”
Kemp nodded, slowly sliding down the wall until he was sitting on the floor. “What was that?” he asked, catching his breath a little.
“I don’t know,” Nikha snapped immediately. “Sorry,” she continued in a softer tone. “I’m not mad at you. But I don’t know what it is and I don’t want to know.”
Kemp considered this seriously for a moment, then nodded. “With you there, I think.”
They sat by the door for a few minutes, catching their breath. Nikha drank from one of her canteens and passed it to Kemp. She hoped there would be a place to refill it, soon. For all the water she’d been dealing with, none of it had been particularly potable.
After a bit, Kemp stood up. “Ready?”
“Ready.” Nikha shoved herself off the ground and they got moving. This tunnel was as low and narrow as the catacomb, but done all in gray ceramic brick, very modern. Caged arc-lamps provided the light, fixed to the ceiling at regular intervals. Soon they came to another fork, with a side tunnel splitting off at a right angle to the one they were in. Kemp groaned.
“I think you ought to pick, this time,” he said. “My record’s pretty spotty.” It was meant as a joke, but fell flat. It was still too soon.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Mm.” Nikha narrowed her eyes, trying to decide. Then she saw it-a small brass plaque high on the wall of the side tunnel. “Workshop,” it read above a fancy arrow. She laughed and even jumped a little in excitement. “Yes! We’re going this way, Kemp!”
“Why? What is it?”
“We’re back in someplace that’s actually supposed to be here. See that sign?” She pointed eagerly. “This way goes to one of my father’s workshops, I’m sure of it! I told you he might have something to to with the…whatever’s going on, right? We might be able to figure something out if we go!”
Kemp looked unsure, but he nodded. “Let’s give it a try, then.”
Nikha fairly jogged down the tunnel, despite how tired her legs were, and it was very soon that they reached the workshop door. It was a slab of rolled brass with a huge lever for a handle and a keyhole right in the center. Nikha pulled out the leaden key-cast she’d brought with her on a whim and stuck it in. She was worried the soft metal would bend or break, but Papa must have kept the mechanism oiled- for it turned with hardly any effort. She yanked the lever outward, turned it, and shoved through.
She was smiling before she’d even finished stepping through the door. One glance around was enough to know she’d been right. Kemp followed behind her and exclaimed “Martyrs!” as soon as he got a look. “I don’t know if ‘workshop’ is the right word, Nikha. This is bigger than my house.”
“P-my father is a polymath,” she said proudly. “He works on all different kinds of things.”
“I’ll say. I don’t even know what most of these tools are.”
Kemp was right. The room was very large, a great rectangle done up in the same gray brick as the hall outside. It was filled with workbenches, tables, and machinery. One corner held bookshelves and a slate board covered in equations; another was occupied by a forest of chemist’s glassware and a third by what looked like a tiny forge. The last was home to a bulky, tangled-looking machine of unknown purpose. Lathes and end-mills and other machine tools hulked in the middle of the floor, imported from Thurnia and Oestia at what had to be great expense.
“What exactly are we looking for?” asked Kemp after a moment.
Nikha shook her head a little. “I’m not sure. Anything that strikes you as as strange, I suppose?”
“Expect I’ll be bringing you most of the blasted room, then,” he mumbled, but he still went off to look at a workbench scattered with small iron parts. Nikha began her search on the opposite end of the room, by the big, odd machine. Its workings were all cast brass and machined steel, containing an assortment of clamps, rams, and stamps. The low table next to it held a collection of metal plates bent into irregular, curving shapes. Most were brass, copper or iron, a few were a pale, airy metal she thought was aluminium, and one was of a dark gray metal she didn’t recognize-though those pieces were shockingly heavy for their size. All were marked with strange symbols and inscriptions she couldn’t read.
Moving along the wall, she passed by an easel with an anatomical drawing of a hand pinned to it, then a granite-topped workbench scattered with tiny tubes and valves of copper and gutta-percha. Nikha thought they were part of some phlogistic system, but couldn’t be sure. The chemistry setup in the corner was empty and covered in dust; no luck there. More benches held half-empty phlogiston cells, small electrolytic batteries, a model steam engine, a carbide-gas welding rig, and a few notebooks in indecipherable shorthand. There were several filing cabinets as well, all empty.
In the next corner she hit the jackpot. The books were nothing but arcane-in the figurative sense-engineering treatises. The arithmetic on the chalkboard was the sort with far more letters than numbers-and most of them not even from the right alphabet. Sitting atop a cabinet next to it, though, was a Dictavox machine. Yes! Her excitement was immediately tempered by the memory of what she’d found by the last one. Nikha opened the cabinet and her fears were realized.
Most of the recording cylinders within were destroyed. Some were melted, most smashed or cut, and some had just contained pre-recorded music anyway. Quickly, she knelt down and sifted through them, finding a few that might be salvageable- though none were pristine.
“What did you find?” Nikha started as Kemp spoke up from behind her. She stood and brushed off her skirt, for all the good it did. “Something good, I think. What about you?”
“I’m not sure. A lot of mighty fine metalwork over there. Like something out of a clockmaker’s shop, except it doesn’t seem to be for telling time. Stuff like this.” He held up an odd little confection of milled steel, a set of gears and hinged struts that reminded her of the parallel linkage on a steam pump. “Turn it here, and the other end moves, see?”
Nikha nodded. “What do you think it’s for?”
“Scratching your back, maybe?” He shrugged. “I didn’t see any blueprints or anything.” He set the apparatus down on a work table. Nikha noticed him grimace a little and a jolt of surprise went through her.
“Kemp, I’m sorry, I completely forgot! We have to change your dressings!” She felt terrible all over again.
He made an effort to stand up straight and puff out his bandaged chest. “It’s fine, Nikha, really. It doesn’t hurt much at-“
“Oh, I’d make such an awful doctor!” Nikha smacked a palm into her forehead. “Take off your shirt and sit down, and I’ll get those peeled off. I should have just enough gauze left-“
“Seriously, Nikha.” Kemp put up his hands as if trying to placate a madman. “I’ll be okay for a few more minutes. Tell me what all this stuff is, first.”
She squinted at him suspiciously, but acquiesced. “Okay. If that’s what you want. What this is is a Dictavox.” she jabbed a finger and the machine, which looked a bit like a tiny version of the lathes elsewhere in the room. “Heard of it?” Kemp shook his head and she went on. “It’s a machine that records voices. Run it one way and it writes the voice onto one of these cylinders. Run it the other way and it’ll read the voice back.”
He looked rather mystified. “How do you write a sound, though? You mean it writes down what you’re saying for you?”
“No, no, it’s all in this little groove. Let me just show you.” She grabbed one of the half-intact cylinders at random, slotted it into the Dictavox, flipped it to ‘D’ and turned it on.
Kemp nearly jumped out of his skin when the scratchy noise from the bell became a human voice. Papa’s voice, in fact. “The time is thirteen after…on Maruzday the…th of Gu…”
The recording was quite damaged, but Kemp’s mouth still hung open in awe. “Incredible…” he whispered.
“Isn’t it?” Nikha stood tall and crossed her arms, almost as proud of the machine as if she’d invented it herself.
“Words from the past…it’s like listening to a ghost.”
Nikha frowned, not liking the implications of that statement. What if they were too late, and these cylinders were all that was left of Papa? A scratchy voice on wax, whispering unknowing from the past. No. She wouldn’t countenance the thought.
There wasn’t anything noteworthy left on this recording, so she switched to another, dropping the needle at a spot that looked undamaged.
“…work continues apace, despite the continuing supply problems.” The cylinder was slightly warped, giving Papa’s voice a warbling quality. “Damn the roads in this backwards mudhole of a country, if they’re even worthy of the name! Anyway. The wolfram is difficult to work with, and it eats through tooling at a dreadful rate. After a few missteps, though, I think I’ve got the knack. Must send out for more cutting oil. Most of the shell is formed and marked…need fittings added…final trim…” It drifted off into static, and Nikha went to move the needle down to a better section. Kemp gave her a questioning glance and she shrugged. He wasn’t alone in having no idea what her father was talking about.
“…gistic network is nearly ready to be powered up,” the recording resumed. “The diverters and processors are finally working together. Lemiseva’s Ruminations has been a great help, though she stopped short of the real conclusions…’Phlogiston is potential,’ she claims. It is crisis, a substance that inherently desires to become what it is not. We use it for energy, but it is a medium as well, a carrier wave…” The Dictavox coughed as the needle ran over a melted region. Nikha began to switch recordings again. There was only one left.
“I’ll be honest, I’m not picking up on any of this,” Kemp said. “Nobody even has phlogiston in Afansk.”
“It’s okay. I’m not doing much better,” Nikha admitted. “It sounds like he was building something, I just can’t tell what.” She slotted in the last recording and flipped the valve.
“…Monsieur M tells me the volume I requested should arrive within the month, and his correspondence displayed no signs of suspicion. It would seem that my deception remains undiscovered. The Lodge still believe I am theirs body and soul-“
“There!” Nikha quickly flipped the valve to pause the machine. “That woman with the monster hands said something about the Lodge. Like she was part of it.”
Kemp looked serious. “She said your pa betrayed them, didn’t she? Whoever they are.”
“And whoever they are, it sounds like he was lying to them for a while.” Nikha was glad her father hadn’t been working with monsters-though she still had no clue why he’d been talking with this Lodge at all. She flipped the valve again.
“-which is exactly what I need. As much as I detest them, without their expertise the more…esoteric parts of my project would be out of reach. I must take precautions, though…” Here Nikha again had to skip the needle to an intact section farther down.
“…location of the nexus being so important, I’ve just finished an improved version of the pneumophlogistometric pathfinder. More accurate, and small and efficient enough to integrate into my brace. I need to know if another metric shift occurs the instant it happens. The readings I’ve taken agree with the star charts. The nexus would still seem to be at the Felisya ballroom at this juncture…”
Nikha listened closely as the needle went over a runny spot. She’d already known Felisya Hall was her destination, though it was good to have it confirmed. What about this pathfinder, though?
“…nearly cannibalized the old one for parts, but I decided it was better to keep a spare here, just in...hidden with a few other valuables-CRACK!”
Nikha and Kemp had been holding their heads near to the Dictavox’s horn, so both shot into the air like scalded cats when some imperfection in the drum produced a sound not unlike a gunshot.
“Every time!” shouted Nikha, exasperated.
“Saint’s bones, what was that?” Kemp shook his head as he picked himself up.
Nikha flipped off the Dictavox and looked over the wax. “Metal shaving stuck in it. But did you hear what Papa said? There’s a pathfinding machine here, something that can point the right way to the ballroom! We won’t have to wander around blind.”
“I just hope he didn’t hide it too well,” muttered Kemp. “I’ll take this side, you take the other one?”
“Sure!”