The Chamber in the Sky by M. T. Anderson Read Free Book Online Page A

—”
    Then they heard a horrible clomping. Brundish was thundering down the bridge toward them.
    Brian said, “So we’re just going to leave —”
    â€œYes!” exclaimed Gwynyfer. She was heaving up a can of gasoline. “Now this shall be delightful!” She ran out the boathouse door.
    Gregory, standing in the dinghy, stared after her. “Don’t ask me,” he said.
    Gwynyfer stood on the little boathouse porch. The doctor hurtled toward her. She shook the gas to douse the bridge. The doctor slowed up and watched her. He raised his pistol. He fired. She flung the can at him.
    The thin bolt of blue fire pierced the can, and the whole mess erupted.
    The flames were tremendous. Gwynyfer tumbled backward into the boat shed, a strange, triumphant smile on her elfin face. There was another explosion. The end of the bridge was an inferno.
    Gregory, swaddled in life jackets, could only look on in admiration.
    Through the flames, Brian saw the doctor retreat back toward the house. There’d be no way for him to get to the boathouse now.
    So he was stuck there, on the other side, with the wounded hermit. If that final shot inside the house didn’t mean …
    Brian didn’t want to think about what would happen to Darlmore. What might have already happened.
    Gregory was handing Gwynyfer into the dinghy. He said, “What was that? With the gas?”
    She laughed and clapped. “Did you see ?” she said. “The flames ?”
    The boathouse itself was on fire now. Brian crouched low, because the smoke was thick. He couldn’t believe how it dirtied his lungs. He was terrified about the air in the dinghy. It had to hold out for a while.
    He jumped in. They were all secure. They slammed the door.
    In the boathouse, oars hung crossed on the walls caught like kindling. Life preservers split into flame.
    There was a clunk as the dinghy detached itself from the wall.
    Another tank of gas caught, and blew.
    The shed was now nothing but flames on stilts. The fibers around it vibrated with a strange, metallic hum as they heated. The bridge burned.
    Dr. Brundish stood at the back door of Thomas Darlmore’s cabin. He aimed his pearl-inlaid pistol, for no good reason, at the flames. They burned and roiled.
    He didn’t fire.
    He went inside the house.
    The door banged shut on a spring behind him.

T he Imperial palace had finally stopped smoking the day before. Now courtiers combed the rubble. The ramshackle fortress with its turrets and its chimneys lay in four or five huge mounds, messy welts atop the city of New Norumbega.
    On the peak of one of those mounds stood a tall, walking machine that looked like a fortified chair on kangaroo legs. On that striding war-sofa sat several figures: General Malark, a grizzled old soldier with a slice out of his mechanical face; two mannequins from his Corps of Engineers; and, finally, a clockwork troll in the armor of a knight. They looked out over the city.
    New Norumbega did not look healthy in the glaring light of the veins above. It had been bombed by the Mannequin Resistance. Its lopsided palace had erupted and collapsed after the unfortunate explosion of the previous Emperor. The tall townhouses of Wednesday Row had holes torn through their slate roofs. The shanties in the Windings were blasted flat. The bronze dome on theDivine Andraste Theater was crumpled in like green paper. The plywood spire of St. Rugwyth’s Cathedral was in a heap. People ran up and down the streets, shouting, making demands. Jeeps bumbled over the rubble.
    â€œThe fairest of cities brought low,” whispered General Malark. “The walls of chalcedony and gold, the white turrets with their pennants flying, the squares where our masters met and carried on their mysterious trades … so much of it’s in ruins.”
    â€œNever there,” said the troll Kalgrash. He shook his head. “Remember: Never there, never there, never