The Golem City (Complete)

Chapter Sixteen

"Dorothea, wake up."

Dorothea rubbed her eyes and focused on Herrera before looking down at Turner, who lay beside her. His eyes were closed, his face peaceful. The ship was canted at an odd angle, as it continued to rick in the dragon's grip.

"He hasn't stirred. I would have woken you if he had."

"Are we landing?"

"It was our hope you could tell us. It is rather important."

"Why?"

"Our saving grace appears to be falling apart."

Dorothea got to her feet and peered out one of the portholes. There was just enough moonlight to see where the dragon had lost a claw. The stump that remained bore a gaping lesion that was haemorrhaging sand. She looked up and spotted hundreds of holes mottling the dragon's dark pink wings, pinpricks of moonlight shining through them as if the membranes had been drizzled with acid that was slowly eating away at them. Hairline fractures along its scales were forming tiny new appendages.

Looking at it, Dorothea was reminded of what Kritzinger had said earlier, that constructs like the dragon were only temporary, unlike true golem. Perhaps the spirit animating their flight was reaching the limit of its lifespan.

"It might be of some comfort to know when we might land."

"And if you aren't sure," added Gorso from the helm, "maybe you could ask it to land? You know, before it crashes?"

"We're over the ocean," Angeline pointed out. "There wasn't time to weld on the Tartaruga's new panelling, remember? We'll sink faster than a sack of bricks if we land in water."

"Well, there's a mountain up ahead. Maybe we can land there and do some repairs."

Sure enough, the moon was squatting behind a cold grey mountain that soared at least a thousand feet above the deep blue sea. Huge sprays of foam rhythmically shot into the air, their white froth luminescent in the pale light.

"Where exactly do you think that's a good idea?" asked Angeline. "The face of it is nothing but sheer stone."

"I spy a crack in it!" Collin cried.

"A crack?" Herrera and Gorso said in unison. "Where?"

"Midway down the mountain, dead centre. You see?"

The dragon approached the peak and entered the dark depths of one of several fissures that split the face of it, descending willingly into its long and cramped embrace. As they dropped, the walls narrowed. When the tips of the dragon's wings grazed the granite on either side, Dorothea's breath grew short and her chest tight. Her hand reached for the absent pouch and she felt her heart sink.

Just as it seemed like they were about to be lodged irrevocably in an impasse, the walls opened into a profound excavation carved out of the heart of the crag. The ceiling was dome-shaped, perfectly curved, with great shafts of moonlight falling through several jagged openings overhead. The fissures looked like silver bolts of lightning caught in the stone, positioned in such a way that the sun and moon could find their way through them no matter the time, day or night. The ceiling was embedded with countless crystals, each reflecting a celestial lustre, countless as the stars in the night sky.

As they continued their descent, everyone gasped. Below them lay a city that rivalled any other in size and beauty. It spread like a dense weave over a rounded plane some hundred miles far and wide, an expanse of expertly fashioned stone, steel, and glass that could comfortably house hundreds of thousands of people. Roads and canals plaited the hidden metropolis, its outer rim traced by a channel of water funnelled from a distant reservoir fed by a large waterfall.