“Whatisthat?” Rayna whispered.
Anders had never seen anything like it in his life. The room was large, as big as one of the shops back in Holbard,or perhaps the living room of a house, though Anders hadn’t been inside many of those. It was completely full of what he could only assume was... machinery?
His heart sank as he took it in.
Wires stretched between the walls like a wild, tangled spiderweb. Some were strung with beads, others in motion, turning on little pulleys, carrying small buckets back and forth. Beneath them were huge cogs and wheels and gears, altogether comprising a strange machine that took up the whole of the floor. As he watched, a marble traveled along a small track set into the wall to his left, then plummeted down a long slide, dropping into a container that rested at one end of a seesaw. With the addition of the weight, the container slipped, slowly lowering itself and lifting the other side of the seesaw, which tapped another bucket in turn, setting it in motion.
Every part of the machine seemed to be connected to every other part. But why?
“Sparks and scales,” Rayna muttered. “There’s no way this can make living at Cloudhaven easier. I don’t even know what thisis, let alone how to use it.”
“Maybe it controls the sorts of things we want?” Anders guessed. “Water, heat, that kind of thing? But if we use it wrong, who knows what we could break.” He leaned against the doorframe, not daring to set foot inside the room.
His heart was thumping in his chest, and his lungs felt too small, like he couldn’t get a proper breath. Everyone was depending on the twins to get them past the great door—to somewhere they could hide, to somewhere they could eat and sleep. To somewhere better than the big, cold, drafty entrance hall. And he and Rayna were stuck here looking at this tangle of cogs and wheels and wires that could take a lifetime to figure out.
He made a soft sound of frustration, and Rayna buried her face in both hands, her shoulders slumping. Anders felt like his very bones ached after the battle above Holbard, and the seemingly endless trip they’d made around Vallen before it, to gather the parts of the Sun Scepter.Whycouldn’t just one thing be easy?
It was a dejected pair of twins who closed the door to the machinery room once more and made their way back to their friends. As they approached the circle of firelight, nine faces turned hopefully toward them. But their hope dropped away at the sight of Anders’s and Rayna’s expressions.
Jai rose to their feet, red hair and pale skin glinting in the firelight as they walked over to offer each of the twins half a sandwich—all there was for dinner. Then, a hand on each of their shoulders, Jai steered them back to take their places around the fire.
Anders made himself comfortable, and Kess climbed down from his shoulder to take herself off on a circuit of the group, as if making sure nobody else had done anything interesting while she was away. The dark-brown bread of the half sandwich was turning stale, and the filling had gone soggy, but it still felt amazing to bite into anything at all. Anders tried to keep his bites small, so it would last longer.
As they warmed themselves, he and Rayna recounted what they had seen, and everybody else was as baffled as they were.
“One thing’s for sure,” Lisabet said. “We’re not going to guess the answers to these questions. We need more information, and the sooner, the better. Right now, none of the adults will be expecting us to show up hunting for any, so it’s the best time to go.”
“Go?” Mikkel protested, almost choking on his sandwich. “Gowhere? To Drekhelm, where the dragons are waiting for us to come and fight for them? Or to Holbard, where the wolves think we attacked them?”
“Well, we have to do something,” Anders said. “We can’t just sit here.”
“All right then, what do you suggest?” Mikkel pressed.
It was Lisabet who answered. “Both. We should try for the records at Drekhelm, and we should go to the Ulfarlibrary.” She paused. “Or whatever’s left of it. We need to find anything that can tell us about how this place was built.”
Theo nodded. “We have to look this up,” he said. “None of us knows enough to figure it out alone, and we can’t just ask someone. But Lisabet knows that library inside out, and I specialize in the records at Drekhelm. Between us, maybe we can understand enough about Cloudhaven to learn how to live here.”
“Well,” interjected Viktoria, as the group began to murmur about this idea, “as the only trained medic here, I’m banning anyone from trying to go anywhere tonight. We’re exhausted, and it’s not safe.”
“I couldn’t fly even if I wanted to,” Ellukka admitted, and Anders, Lisabet, and all the dragons knew what she was really saying—that she was the strongest, and ifshecouldn’t fly, nobody could.
But Anders wasn’t sure that was the only reason Viktoria was grounding them all for the night. He saw the way she glanced at Sakarias, Det, Jai, and Mateo, and the way they looked back at her. He could see they wanted to talk. The wolves and the dragons might be stranded here together, but despite having taken the first steps, they were a long way from trusting each other.
“Let’s sleep,” said Rayna. “And be ready to leave at dawn.”
Nobody could object to that. The wolves transformed so they could sleep in a pile by the fire—and, Anders was sure, so they could talk without the dragons understanding them.
The dragons stayed in human form, settling themselves in the small circle of firelight.
Anders stayed where he was a moment longer, hesitating. Should he transform as well and join the wolf conversation? Or should he let them talk without him? His friends might have risked their lives to protect him back in the battle, but that had been a decision made in the heat of the moment. It didn’t mean he was completely forgiven, or that they completely trusted him.
Rayna was curled up beside Ellukka, but he realized Lisabet hadn’t transformed either—she was busy building up the fire so it would last for the night, perhaps as an excuse to give the others some space. So with a soft sigh, he rose to walk one last circuit of the hall.
He made his way to the arch that led out onto the landing pad, to stare out through the ever-present mist and wonder what was beyond it. There was a weight on his shoulders he didn’t know how to shake.
He felt responsible. Everyone here had trusted him, and now they had no food, no defenses, no allies, and they were being hunted by wolves and dragons. They had no hope, either, except to dig through the rubble of Holbard, through a disaster they had caused, or perhaps to sneak into Drekhelm in the hope of learning something about their hiding place.
He wondered if they should try somewhere other than Cloudhaven, but this was where their mother had last been, and where she still was, if he was to believe the glowing paths.
