* * * * *
They went, like the very devil. Since all were professionals in their
own line they didn't make any more fuss than so many leaves falling.
The hermit followed silently. His pale eyes went to the shining monster
in the pit at every opportunity.
He was fermenting some idea in his shaggy head. Ciaran had a hunch the
safest thing would be to quietly trip him off into space. He resisted
it, simply because knifing a man in a brawl was one thing and murdering
an unsuspecting elderly man in cold blood was another.
Later, he swore a solemn oath to drop humanitarianism, but hard.
Nobody saw them. The Kalds and the people below were all too busy not
breaking their necks to have eyes for anything else. Nobody came down
behind them--a risk they had had to run. They were careful to keep a
whole section of the descent between them and the slave gang.
It was a hell of a long way down. The metal monster grew and grew and
slid up beside them, and then above them, towering against the vault.
It was beautiful. Ciaran loved its beauty even while he hated and
feared its strength.
Then he realized there were people working on it, clinging like
flies to its white beams and arches. Some worked with wands not very
different from the one he carried, fusing metal joints in a sparkle of
hot light. Others guided the huge metal pieces into place, bringing
them up from the floor of the cavern on long ropes and fitting them
delicately.
With a peculiar dizzy sensation, Ciaran realized there was no more
weight to the metal than if it were feathers.
He prayed they could get past those workers without being seen, or at
least without having an alarm spread. The four of them crawled down
past two or three groups of them safely, and then one man, working
fairly close to the cliff, raised his head and stared straight at them.
Ciaran began to make frantic signs. The man paid no attention to them.
Ciaran got a good look at his eyes. He let his hands drop.
"He doesn't see us," whispered Mouse slowly. "Is he blind?"
The man turned back to his work. It was an intricate fitting of small
parts into a pierced frame. Work that in all his wanderings Ciaran had
never seen done anywhere, in any fashion.