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she thought suddenly, my Gods .
    The panels were not so bright as they might have been, not because they were actually dim, but because something was blocking their glow. There was a figure within, just sitting there, staring straight ahead. Kali swallowed, knowing that if it moved she would very likely have a dicky fit.
    But it didn't, of course. How could it? Who knew how long this machine had been stranded here, within the rock. Anything within it could not have hoped to survive. Hells, what a lonely, lonely death it must have been. But what nagged at Kali more than that morbid thought was, why had no one come to help? She wondered for a second whether it was possible that the inhabitant of the machine had died here because there was no one to come to help - that perhaps he had died here at the time the Old Races had gone away? And if that was the case then it begged the obvious question. What was she looking at?
    Swallowing again, Kali leaned in and the figure emerged from the shadows before her eyes. Squat but, by the size of the ribbed uniform enclosing its now shrunken frame, once well-muscled and powerful. It remained utterly still. Dry, eyeless sockets stared straight ahead, gnarled hands gripping levers on the panel before it that had not moved since before the land was young. Though the body was completely mummified there was no doubt at all what it was she was looking at.
    A dwarf.
    Kali realised she had been holding her breath, and she let it out now in an exhalation that almost turned into a laugh. This was incredible! Something she had always hoped, but never thought, she would find!
    The discovery was a momentous one and Kali took the appropriate length of time and appropriate reverence to appreciate it. After all, after Gods knew how long stuck in this hellshole a few more minutes would make no difference at all. But then, with a deep sigh, she moved forward, grabbed the desiccated corpse by its shoulder and turfed it out of the cabin onto the mine floor. The dwarf's remains crumbled under her touch - clothing and all - and while the arms and torso hit the rock, they left the legs behind, half sitting on the seat. Kali heaved them off with a grimace and dropped them onto the collapsed torso - and only then realised she hadn't a clue where the head had gone. She scanned the cabin, peering into its shadowed recesses, and then spotted the missing appendage lying in the far corner, out of her reach. The head was looking right at her, its empty eye sockets baleful and reproachful, but Kali ignored them - what else could she do? - because her friend had been sitting in the driving seat of something that was still working . She slipped into the empty seat, thinking: Sorry, my friend, but I have a lot more need of this thing than you do .
    Whatever this thing was.
    Kali peered down at the panels and the levers and realised that she didn't have a clue how to use them even if she knew what it was they did. So what followed, she thought, was going to be interesting, to say the least. She did, though, have one starting point - a button marked with the same rectangular symbol she had seen on the outside of the machine. Humming softly to herself, she pressed it. With the same judder and sliding motion that it had opened with, the hatch closed and sealed itself.
    Kali felt as if she were trapped inside a metal coffin.
    But she just knew this thing was her way out of here. So, it was time to see what it could do.

Chapter Three
     
    Dolorosa considered she had better things to do than chase a herb up and down the hillside. The preparations for Kali Hooper's memorial evening - a drink-till-you-drop session which all the Flagon' s regulars considered the most appropriate way to remember her - had taken the best part of two days. The last of them, a surprise stew for the evening - which was, of course, no surprise to the regulars, though none of them had told Dolorosa that - was all but done. But the hunt for one of its more