Free Of Machines & Magics by Adele Abbot

lending them some skill. Calistrope, leading the group, stopped abruptly after stepping around a cracked column of rock; he move forward a pace or two to give the others space to stand on and pointed.
    All three of them could hear a constant hum, just audible above the sound of the rushing waters below them.
    “What is it?” Roli asked.
    “A nest?” Suggested Ponderos.
    “A wasp nest,” Calistrope shook his head. “I don’t care to get any closer than this. If only Valdemar had been a little more circumspect with his improvements.”
    “Valdemar?” asked Roli.
    “Valdemar?” Repeated Ponderos in the same tone.
    “Valdemar the Entomophile.”
    “Entomo… Insect lover? The improver? Ah! I thought that was Nimilick?”
    “Nimilick favored crustaceans.”
    “I never heard of intelligent lobsters.”
    “Just so.”
    They stood and gazed at the gigantic pear shaped nest which hung over the water and at its largest girth almost filled the gap between the cliffs. It was suspended from the trunk of a tree which had fallen—or had been felled—and lodged between the two cliff faces. There was an entrance near the bottom where great black and yellow furred insects came and went. Guards were posted at strategic positions around the nest, on ledges, on tenaciously clinging shrubs, in cracks in the rock walls, wherever possible.
    “It’s bigger than the Inn,” Roli ventured.
    “The Raftsman’s Ease? By the Lake?” Ponderos rubbed his chin. “Perhaps you’re right.”
    “Bigger. Much bigger.” Calistrope was firm. ‘There is room for several man-sized stories in there. Nine perhaps, or ten. There will be thousands and thousands of insects inside.”
    “So what shall we do?”
    “That settlement. Surely people need to leave the valley now and again. Perhaps they know of another way out.”
    “It may not be all that old an obstruction,” Ponderos observed. “It does not take long to build something like that. A swarm could construct it in, what, forty, fifty hours? Perhaps they aren’t aware of it yet.”
    Calistrope shook his head. “It is quite mature, I’m certain. Look at the stains on the rocks to either side, observe the rubbish which has accumulated on the banks underneath.”
    “I’ll wager there will be someone who would take us down river in a boat,” said Roli, his eyes shining with excitement. “I’d wager someone will shoot these rapids just for the fun of it.”
    Calistrope looked at the white foam swirling between jagged limestone teeth and the great standing waves of water leaping high into the air. “Perhaps a boat is not the best way out of here. Perhaps we could climb the cliffs, walk past that way.”
    Ponderos looked up at the edges of the high cliff tops against the dark sky, as sharp as newly broken glass. “I fancy that we would find it difficult to breathe up there, my friend and it is a very long way to climb. Under or around, that is the only way.”
    “Let’s consult with the villagers first.”

Chapter 6
    They turned back and retraced their steps, leaving behind the humming nest and its dangerous occupants. They approached the village once more and began to descend the terraces. As they came nearer, a pall of smoke became visible—first as a thin layer, then as an overhead stain in the air which shrouded them and the village in an artificial twilight. A few minutes later, Ponderos threw out his arms to stop them.
    “A strange thing,” he said. “Strange,” Ponderos frowned for a moment. “Go back a few paces then watch the village as you come back.”
    Calistrope and Roli backed up as Ponderos had suggested. From a few hundred paces away, the village was a ramshackle collection of structures built from logs and unpainted planks with often unglazed windows gaping at them. As they walked forward, between one step and the next, the dilapidated houses were metamorphosed.
    The buildings stretched and twisted, changed color; overhead, the stars became softer, the sun