Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding [60]
He found two small doors, recessed in alcoves, but the Awakeners who ran the hermitage were sensible enough to keep them locked. He considered breaking a window, but they were set high up in the wall and were very narrow. He wouldn’t want to get stuck in one. Finally he found the entrance to a storm cellar, which looked as if it led under the house. A padlock secured a thick chain, fastening the doors to the cellar. Both were stout and new. It looked as if it would take a lot of sawing and hammering to get through that. An intruder would certainly be caught before they gained access.
Frey drew his cutlass and touched its tip to the lock.
“Think you can?” he asked it. He didn’t really believe it could understand him, but as ever, it seemed to know his intention. He felt it begin to vibrate in his hands. A thin, quiet whine came from the metal. Soon it was joined by another note, setting up a weird, off-key harmonic that set Frey’s teeth on edge. The lock began to jitter and shake.
Suddenly, by its own accord, the cutlass swept up and down, smashing into the lock. The shackle broke away from the padlock, and the chain slithered free. The blade itself was unmarked by the impact. Frey hadn’t even felt the jolt up his sword arm.
He regarded the daemon-thralled cutlass that Crake had given him as the price of his passage. Best deal he ever made, he reckoned, as he sheathed it again.
He climbed into the storm cellar before anyone came to investigate the noise. Steps led down to a lit room, from which he could hear the growl and rattle of machinery. He slipped inside, shut the cellar door behind him, and crept onward into the hermitage.
Chapter Fourteen
A GHASTLY ENCOUNTER—INTRUDER IN THE HERMITAGE—A HEARTFELT LETTER—REUNION
rey stepped warily into the dim electric glow of smoke-grimed bulbs. The room at the bottom of the stairs was the powerhouse of the hermitage, dominated by a huge old generator that whined and screeched and shook. It took Frey awhile to persuade himself that the ancient machine wasn’t in imminent danger of detonation, but in the end, logic triumphed over instinct. Since it had obviously been running for fifty years or more, the idea that it would explode just as he was passing would be such incredible bad luck that even Frey couldn’t believe it would happen.
Pipes ran from the generator to several water boilers and storage batteries, linking them to the central mass like the legs of some bloated mechanical spider. The air pounded with the unsteady rhythm of the generator, and everything stank of prothane fumes. Frey’s head began to swim unpleasantly.
He crept forward, his cutlass held ready. He always preferred blades in close quarters. The powerhouse was shadowy and full of dark corners and aisles from which someone could emerge and surprise him. He hadn’t discounted the possibility that he might run into a mechanic down here, or maybe even a guard, although they’d need lungs like engines to breathe these fumes for long.
The generator banged noisily and he shied away, threatening it with the tip of his cutlass. When nothing calamitous happened, he relaxed again, feeling a little stupid.
Just get out of here, he told himself. Abandoning caution, he hurried through the room with his arm over his face, breathing through the sleeve of his coat.
If there was anyone else down there, he neither saw nor heard them. A few stone steps led up to a heavy door, which was unlocked. He peered in and found himself in an untidy antechamber full of tools. Dirty gloves and rubber masks with gas filters hung on pegs. Frey shut the door behind him, muffling the sound of the generator. There was another door leading to a room beyond, and now he could hear loud snoring from the other side.
Snoring was good. Unless it was a particularly cunning decoy—Frey briefly imagined a sharp-eyed assassin waiting behind the door, dagger raised, snoring loudly—it suggested the enemy was unaware, unarmed, and at a massive disadvantage, which was the only way Frey would fight anyone, if he could help