“There’s something in there!” Haplo hissed beneath his breath. “Move back! All of you!”
More alarmed by the tension in Haplo than by the half-heard sound in the room, Bane and Limbeck obeyed, edged back against the wall. Jarre joined them, looking scared and unhappy.
“What—” Bane began.
Haplo cast him a furious glance, and the boy quickly shut his mouth. The Patryn paused, continuing to listen at the crack of the partially opened door, puzzled by the sounds he heard within. The clanking metallic jingle was sometimes a rhythmic pattern, sometimes a chaotic clashing, and other times completely stilled. Then it would start up again. And it was moving, first near to him, then advancing away.
He could have sworn that what he was hearing were the sounds of a person, clad in full plate armor, walking about a large room. But no Sartan—or Patryn, either—had ever in the history of their powerful races worn such a mensch device as armor. Which meant that whatever was inside that room had to be a mensch, probably an elf.
Limbeck was right. The elves had shut down the Kicksey-winsey.
Haplo listened again, listened to the clanking sounds move this way and that, moving slowly, purposefully, and he shook his head. No, he decided, if the elves had discovered this place, they would be swarming around it. They would be as busy as ants inside this tunnel. And there was, as far as Haplo could determine, only one person making those strange sounds inside that room.
He looked at his skin. The sigla still glowed warning blue, but were still faint.
“Stay here!” Haplo mouthed, glaring at Bane and Limbeck.
The boy and the dwarf both nodded.
Haplo drew his sword, gave the door a violent kick, and rushed inside the room, the dog at his heels. He halted, came near dropping his weapon. He was dumbstruck with amazement.
A man turned to meet him, a man made all of metal.
“What are my instructions?” asked the man in a monotone, speaking human.
“An automaton!” cried Bane, disobeying Haplo and running inside the room.
The automaton stood about Haplo’s height, or somewhat taller. His body—the replica of a human’s—was made of brass. Hands, arms, fingers, legs, toes were jointed and moved in a lifelike, if somewhat stiff, manner. The metal face had been fancifully molded to resemble a human face, with nose and mouth, though the mouth did not move. The brows and lips were outlined in gold, bright jewels gleamed in the eye sockets. Runes, Sartan runes, covered its entire body, much as the Patryn’s runes covered his body, and probably for the same purpose—all of which Haplo found rather amusing, if somewhat insulting.
The automaton was alone in a large and empty circular room. Surrounding it, mounted in the room’s walls, were eyeballs, hundreds of eyeballs, exactly like the one eyeball held in the hands of the Manger statue far above them. Each unwinking eye portrayed in its vision a different part of the Kicksey-winsey.
Haplo had the eerie impression that these eyes belonged to him. He was looking out through every one of these orbs. Then he understood. The eyes belonged to the automaton. The metallic clanking Haplo had heard must have been the automaton moving from eyeball to eyeball, making his rounds, keeping watch.
“There’s someone alive in there!” Jarre gasped. She stood in the doorway, not daring to venture inside. Her own eyes were opened so wide it seemed likely they might roll out of her head. “We have to get him out!”
“No!” Bane scoffed at the notion. “It’s a machine, just like the Kicksey-winsey.”
“I am the machine,” stated the automaton in its lifeless voice.
“That’s it!” cried Bane, excited, turning to Haplo. “Don’t you see? He’s the machine! See the runes that cover him? All the parts of the Kicksey-winsey are connected magically to him. He’s been running it, all these centuries!”
“Without a brain,” murmured Haplo. “Obeying his last instructions, whatever those were.”
“This is wonderful!” Limbeck breathed a sigh. His eyes filled with tears, the glass in his spectacles steamed over. He snatched them off his nose.
The dwarf stood staring myopically and with reverent awe at the man-machine, making no move to come near it, content to worship at a distance. “I never imagined anything so marvelous.”