Dig-claws, thought Limbeck, and began to climb up the sides of the pit. It was easy going. The coralite offered numerous hand- and footholds, and Limbeck reached the top in moments. There was no use putting on his spectacles-the rain streaming over the glass would have blinded him. And he didn’t need them anyhow. The dig-claw, its metal gleaming in the incessant flashes of lightning, was only a few feet from him.
Glancing upward, Limbeck could see other claws dropping out of the sky, descending on long cables lowered from the Kicksey-Winsey. It was an awesome spectacle, and the Geg stood staring, headache forgotten, his mouth gaping wide open.
Made of bright and shining metal, ornately carved and fashioned to resemble the foot of some huge killer bird, the dig-claws dug into the coralite with their sharp talons. Closing over the broken rock, the claws carried it upward as a bird’s claw grasps its prey. Once back on the isle of Drevlin, the dig-claws deposited the rock they had mined from the Terrel Fen into large bins, where the Gegs sorted through the coralite and retrieved the precious gray ore on which the Kicksey-Winsey fed, and without which-so legend had it-the Kicksey-Winsey could not survive.
Fascinated, Limbeck watched the dig-claws come smashing down all around him, biting into the coralite, digging down deep, scooping it up. The Geg was so interested in the procedure- which he’d never seen-that he completely forgot what he was supposed to do until it was almost too late. The claws were shaking free of the coralite and starting to rise back up when Limbeck remembered he was to put a mark on one of them to let Jarre and her people know where he was.
Broken bits of coralite, dropped out of the rising claws, would serve as a writing tool. Grabbing up a chunk, Limbeck made his way through the driving rain, stumbling over the rock-strewn ground, heading for one of the claws that had just come down and was burying itself in the coralite. Reaching the dig-claw, Limbeck was suddenly daunted by his task. The claw was enormous; he’d never imagined anything so big and powerful. Fifty Limbecks would have fitted comfortably inside its talons. It shook and jabbed and clawed the surface of the coralite, sending sharp shards of rock flying everywhere. It was impossible to get close to it.
But Limbeck had no choice. He had to get near. Gripping his coralite in one hand and his courage in the other, he had just started forward when a bolt of lightning struck the claw, sending blue flame dancing over its metal surface. The simultaneous thunder blast knocked Limbeck off his feet. Dazed and terrified, the Geg was about to give up in despair and run back to his pit- where he figured he would spend the remainder of a short and unhappy life-when the claw came to a shuddering stop. All the claws around Limbeck stopped-some in the ground; others hanging in midair on their way back up; others with talons wide open, waiting to descend.
Perhaps the lightning had damaged it. Perhaps there was a scrift change. Perhaps something had gone wrong above. Limbeck didn’t know. If he had believed in the gods, he would have thanked them. As it was, he scrambled over the rocks, chunk of coralite in hand, and cautiously approached the nearest claw.
Noticing lots of scratch marks where the claw dipped into the coralite, Limbeck realized that he would have to make his mark on the upper part of the dig-claw, a part that didn’t sink into the ground. That meant he had to choose a claw which was already buried. Which meant there was every possibility that it would start up again, yank itself out of the ground, and spill tons of rock down on the Geg’s head.
Gingerly Limbeck touched the side of the dig-claw with the coralite, his hand shaking so that it made a ringing sound, like the clapper of a bell. It didn’t leave a mark. Gritting his teeth, desperation giving him strength, Limbeck bore down hard. The coralite screeched over the metal side of the claw with a sound that made Limbeck think his head would split apart. But he had the satisfaction of seeing a long scratch mar the claw’s smooth unblemished surface.