Thief of the Ancients

by Mike Wild

  Kali stripped off her backpack and waited as eagerly as he had above as Moon unwrapped the key from the oiled cloth in which she’d wrapped it. She had lost count of the number of times she had brought artefacts here for him to examine, and had witnessed a gamut of reaction, ranging from vague disappointment to child-like excitement to awed reverence. But the way he reacted now she had not seen before, and it made her feel momentarily cold inside. The old man’s face had darkened.

  “Gods of the Great Pits,” Merrit Moon said, slowly. His voice was filled with dread and he actually backed away from the key slightly, staring at it from the greater distance as if he could not believe what lay before him. When he spoke again, which was not for a few moments, his voice came out almost as a whisper. “Kali, where did you find this?”

  Kali hesitated. Merrit? she wondered. What the hells is the matter? Is there a problem here?

  “Tell me!” he barked, suddenly and totally uncharacteristically.

  “All right, old man!” Kali shouted. She was surprised to feel her heart thudding. She had never seen him, never heard him like this. “In the Sardenne. A subterranean site called the Spiral of Kos.”

  “How old?”

  “What?”

  “This Spiral of Kos, girl – how old was it?”

  Kali frowned, wondering where this was leading. “I don’t know exactly, but from the architecture possibly Mid Age. The vegetation inside was of unknown genus, but I doubt that it was indigenous. I think it may even have been cultured. Oh, and by the way, it ate people.”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Moon hissed, impatiently. He was nodding vigorously, as if the information he had asked for was causing him pain and he was trying to shake it out of his head. “Oh, gods of the Great Pits,” he said again.

  “Merrit, what is it? What’s wrong?”

  The old man stared her in the eyes and said: “Kali, this... artefact has to be returned where it came from – right away – right now!”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Returned immediately, Kali.”

  Kali could not hold his gaze. “Yes, well,” she said, slowly. “That could prove to be a little difficult.”

  Merrit Moon paused. “Oh, gods, tell me you didn’t –”

  “I did.”

  “Gods!”

  “Merrit, it wasn’t my fault.”

  The old man flung his hands up in the air. “For Kerberos’s sake, child, when will you learn to curb this... this destructive streak of yours? ‘Thanks for the advice but I can look after myself’,” he muttered.

  Kali actually felt herself becoming annoyed with the old man. “I don’t know, Merrit! Maybe when people or things stop trying to kill me.” Her mind flashed back to the last time something like this had happened, and she felt a twinge of guilt remembering how in escaping the Temple of Rahoon she’d brought down its plinths like ninepins as she’d raced down the steps with the Rock of Ages rolling hot on her heels.

  But at least Moon had liked that artefact.

  The old man sighed. “Sorry. I’m sorry. Are you all right? What were you up against this time?”

  “I’m fine. And it was Final Faith. But not normal God Squad. More like some special –”

  “Final Faith?” Moon repeated, incredulous. He seemed more staggered by this revelation than by the appearance of the key itself. “It can’t be,” he said. “Tell me, Kali, did these people seem specifically interested in the key, or were they, do you think, there only by chance?”

  Kali shrugged. “I can’t really imagine any scenario where anyone would find themselves in the heart of the Sardenne Forest by chance. No, from what Munch said I’d say they were specifically interested in the key.”

  “Munch...” Moon said. He rewrapped the key in its shroud of oiled cloth and laid it carefully on the shelf behind him.

  “This... thing needs to disappear, Kali. I need you to understand that. To be hidden again, this time once and for all. And its resting place needs to be far from prying eyes, scheming brains and grasping hands.” Moon sighed again. “Which is why, the first thing in the morning, it and I will be heading for the World’s Ridge Mountains.”

  Kali stared at him, speechless. It wasn’t that he was taking the key from her, because in that decision she trusted him without question – it was just where he was talking about going.

  “I’ll be taking the southern road,” Moon continued, aware of her reaction and expecting fireworks any time soon. “But even so I expect to be gone for some weeks.”

  “Then I’m coming with you.”

  Moon shook his head. “No, Kali. The fewer people who know the key’s location, the safer the peninsula will be in the future. And you cannot get fewer than one.”

  “Are you saying you don’t trust me? Tell me what the key is, Merrit!”

  “No. And you know that I trust you. It is other forces out there that I do not. If the Final Faith are indeed aware of what this key is and knew that you were privy to its whereabouts, then their pursuit of your knowledge of its location would be... zealous indeed.”

  “But the World’s Ridge Mountains – it’s suicide, old man!”

  Moon grabbed her suddenly by the shoulders. “I will be fine,” he insisted, giving her a reassuring squeeze, “Fine.”

  Kali told Moon about her vision, then, but the old man had no idea where it had come from, or what it meant, and she pursued it no further. Their business done, Moon prepared a hot supper of pot-roasted rufoon, redbread and dripping, which Kali devoured eagerly, sending the food on its way with a bottle of black wine that the old man swore was part of a batch he had found in an Old Race cellar years before, and which he reckoned was a still-palatable and particularly fine vintage. It was his theory that its owners had been saving the bottles for some celebration that ultimately had never come. Kali made the right appreciative noises, but the fact was the old man had never been very good on the booze front, and the reason it had remained in the Old Race cellar was more likely that it wasn’t fit to be served to the rufoon they were eating – or perhaps was even what had killed it. She forced it down, though, trying her best to turn her grimaces into smiles, as Moon questioned her about what she was going to do next.

  “Ar dunnof, really,” Kali shrugged, her mouth filled with redbread. She spat sizzling crumbs and waved the half-torn loaf in the air, forming little spirals that burned into her retina. “Back to the Flagons for a few dayf reft and then one of the loft canals, mayfee. Had a tip there’f an entranfe to be found somfwhere near Turnifia.”

  “An entrance to one of the lost canals near Turnitia?” Moon repeated, intrigued. He stroked his chin. “Yes... yes, that would make a lot of sense.”

  Kali dunked her redbread in the dripping and took another bite, nodding. “Mmmmf, I’fe fought so, toof.”

  As they finished, the noises from the street outside diminished to the last clatters of carts leaving the market, a few scattered farewells and goodnights, and then to the kind of solid silence that could only descend on a remote and rural town such as this. Moon, of course, had an early start, and so wanting to retire, offered her a bed for the night, but Kali declined, ready for some fresh air after the heat from his fire and preferring, anyway, to travel by night. It was a preference that worried Moon – the isolated and winding country lanes that were the only way out of there had, because of their isolation, a reputation of being dangerous enough by day, let alone night – but Kali held to the logic that anyone who willingly travelled in the darkness would be perceived by whichever grabcoins lay in wait as probably too dangerous to be approached in the first place. So it was that she gathered together her things and stepped out onto the cobbles, slinging and securing her saddlebags onto a snoring and slightly startled Horse as she readied him for the journey. She stared at Moon as he stood watching in the doorway, lit by the warm glow from inside, and then over his shoulder to the door to the shop, and the hatch to the hidden reliquary that lay beyond. An image of the key, wrapped in its protecti
ve shroud in readiness for its journey, flashed into her mind.

  “Merrit,” she said, “be careful, up there, please.”

  The old man smiled, reassuringly. “I am never anything else, young lady. Believe me, you do not get to my age in a world as surprising as ours without constantly being so.” As Kali mounted Horse, Moon tossed his one-time steed a bacon lardon, and Horse bounced it off his nose into his mouth and munched down gratefully, eyeballs spinning. “Besides,” the old man added, “it will not be the first time that the World’s Ridge Mountains have welcomed these old bones into their cold embrace.”

  Kali raised her eyebrows and then nodded. She should have known.

  “Another tale, Merrit?”

  “For another time.”

  Kali smiled and squeezed her heels into Horse’s flanks, then reined him in the direction of the road out of Gargas. “I’ll be in touch, old man,” she said, and urged Horse forwards. The old mount swung its head in the direction of Moon, whinnied a goodbye, and then began to clop slowly forwards.

  “Safe journeys, Kali Hooper... and you, too, my faithful old friend,” Merrit Moon said, smiling to himself. “Safe journeys.”

  The relic-monger watched Kali and Horse until they had fully crossed the market square and begun to descend the slope to the town gate, then turned inside to his parlour. The fire crackled, as welcoming as ever, but as he closed the solid wooden door behind him, the old man’s smile faded. It was indeed not the first time that he had had cause to journey to the World’s Ridge Mountains, but he did not regard the coming prospect quite as casually as he had led Kali to believe. The mountains were a wild and rugged place, as untamed as the Sardenne and as anywhere on the peninsula, and their dangers were not to be underestimated. To travel there alone, as Kali had reminded him, would be considered suicide by most.

  Luckily, he was not most.

  But he would need to prepare.

  Merrit Moon bolted the outside door behind him, took a last swig of his remaining wine and then headed through to the shop and back down the ladder into the reliquary, this time bolting its hatch above him. As far as the reliquary went, he had never been wholly truthful with Kali about it – it was indeed where he stored his rarer items, but what Kali did not know was these items were neither the rarest, nor the sum total of them. Waving another light cylinder into life, Moon took a small key from his pocket and inserted it into the lock of a display cabinet against the far wall, turning the key not clockwise as might be normal but anti-clockwise, twice, until there was a dull click that did not come from the lock but from the wall behind it.

  With the slightest touch of his hand the wooden cabinet swung away from the wall on iron hinges, revealing yet another room – a round chamber – beyond.

  A small collection of objects glistened on stone shelves in the light of the cylinder outside.

  Sighing, his heart heavy, Merrit Moon stepped towards them.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  KILLIAM SLOWHAND HAD become used to every kind of reaction to his performances, from laughter and tears to boos and hisses, showers of flowers and hails of rotten fruit. He’d had standing ovations and he’d had people who’d stood up and walked out. He’d been welcomed in towns, run out of towns, almost lynched in towns and had, in some, been called names which even he had not heard before. Most hurtful of all, he’d had women who’d cackled at his tights.

  But before tonight he’d never felt the tip of a dagger pressed coldly and threateningly against his spine.

  A tad overcritical, he thought.

  The performance had gone well, and the sound of the audience’s laughter and applause still ringing in his ears, Slowhand had exited backstage, it being divided from the front stage by a curtain slung over a rope – a method of construction which, in fact, made up his makeshift theatre, wherever he went. Once there, he had quickly begun to wipe off his greasepaint with a damp cloth, attempting at the same time to strip his torso and legs of his spotted tunic and stripy tights, the colourful costume he wore on stage. The ritual would normally have been a far more leisurely affair, done with a good stiff drink or three, but the night’s show had been a good one, loud and raucous, and not only in terms of the numbers in the crowd but the number of them he had seen react to his little vignettes. Quite a few more seeds had been planted, this night, and if Slowhand didn’t miss his guess there was a good chance he was going to be paid a visit because of it.

  Sure enough, though a little too soon for his modesty, visitors had arrived, and he had heard the other curtain – the one behind him, the one leading to the outside world – suddenly ripping open, and in a flurry of activity had found himself cornered and grabbed by both arms while the cold, pointed metal was rammed into his flesh, almost but not quite piercing the skin.

  Critics, he thought again.

  He coughed and turned slowly, the dagger tracing a thin red line around his waist until it settled in his navel, and he found himself – wearing his tights around his ankles – facing three robed figures.

  The three were strangers to him, but he knew exactly who they were. One was female – and cute. Or at least would have been had she not been the one sticking the dagger into him – or represented what she did.

  Slowhand played it casual, ignoring the crossed circles on their sleeves. “Sorry but I never do autographs after a show. It’s making the fluffy animals out of the balloons, you know... makes the wrists ache.”

  “We have no interest in your autograph, Mister Slowhand, or your fluffy animals. We are here regarding a different matter. That of your growing reputation.”

  “My, er, growing reputation?” Slowhand said. He couldn’t help himself – he looked down then back up with a smile, winking at the girl. Rather disappointingly, her gaze remained impassively and steadfastly fixed on his face and didn’t drop an inch. Not that an inch would have done the job, he reflected. Nope, not even close.

  “It has come to our attention that certain... subject matter may not be serving the best interests of our church.”

  “Certain subject matter?” Killiam repeated. He adopted the same dramatic pause as the man who had spoken. “Are you talking about my... little play?”

  “Your little play. The Final Faith does not take kindly to being portrayed as the Final Filth.”

  “Oh,” Slowhand said, “dear.”

  “As a result, the Anointed Lord wishes to converse with you. Now.”

  “The Anointed Lord?” Slowhand said, feigning shock. Bingo, he thought. “Right... well. How can I resist? May I dress first?”

  “We wish you would.”

  “Thank you.”

  Killiam turned to his wardrobe – a pile of clothes strewn on the floor – then turned back, indicating with a toss of his head that he’d like his visitors to turn their backs. In actual fact, despite what he was slipping on, he wasn’t remotely concerned whether they turned or not – he just wanted to see if the girl had problems doing so. And yep, she was lingering, lingering...

  Ha! Got ’em every time!

  Satisfied and dressed, Slowhand found himself escorted from his makeshift theatre, noting as he was led outside that others in the robes of the Faith were already tearing it down, folding and packing the cloth into sacks for removal, probably to be taken away for burning. Some members of his audience who still remained milling about in Ramblas Square made discomforted noises but, of course, none of them said anything to the demolition team. None of them dared.

  Slowhand didn’t mind. The Faith was doing itself no favours with this kind of behaviour, and it was something else that would hopefully lodge in his audience’s minds.

  It was a measure of the Faith’s sensitivity that his little play had attracted such attention, but then by bringing it here to Scholten he had rather hoped that it would.

  The Final Faith, he reflected. As churches went, Twilight had never known anything like it, or those that ran it. Appearing out of nowhere not so many years before, and rapidly growing to become the large
st organised religion on the peninsula, the Faith preached belief in a single god named the Lord of All, said to be the creator of all things. Slowhand wasn’t a religious man but he did know that before the Faith’s arrival there had at least been a choice of gods, and to his mind this single deity must have made for much rubbing of hands in the church because its followers knew exactly who to give their money to. Oh, yes, the Faith had got quite a little business going on that front.

  It wasn’t, of course, the first church that had supported itself by means of its followers’ donations, but what disturbed Slowhand was that with the Faith there was a price to be paid for everything. Its followers prayed to the Lord of All for little other than for what followers had always prayed – a good harvest, prosperity, or the simple wellbeing of their loved ones – but in each case there was a price – a price for prayer – that was all too eagerly levied by the Faith, more often than not on those who had little or nothing to spare in the first place. He had actually seen people reduced to ruin in their desperation to please the Lord of All, but the Final Faith’s answer to these tragic turns of events? Prayer.

  As he was led through the city, Slowhand scowled. Would that that was the all of it. He had travelled far and travelled wide, and in those travels had seen or heard examples of the Final Faith’s influence in spheres where churches should really have no business – influence in spheres that made him feel at best uneasy and at worst actually fearful of their ultimate aim. The priesthood of the Faith – from the Enlightened Ones at the bottom of the hierarchy to the Eminences at the top – were taught that the Lord of All did not simply desire but demand unity for humankind, a distinction that made the heavenly helper seem less benevolent father figure and more malevolent dictator. Only through such unity, it was said, could humanity achieve ultimate and complete ascendance as a divine creation, but one only had to look at events in Turnitia and other cities in recent years to realise that unity sometimes came about by means of the rod, and was merely a euphemism for their true objective – nothing less than the complete and utter control of the peninsula, under the law of the Faith and the Faith alone.