Thief of the Ancients

by Mike Wild

  “Are you done yet?” she asked, biting her lip.

  “Almost there,” Slowhand said, strained. There was a sudden sound of metal falling into place, and then she heard him step away from the door with a sigh of satisfaction.

  “Done.”

  Kali didn’t turn. “Put them back on.”

  “They’re a little worn,” Slowhand protested.

  “Put them back on!”

  Kali waited while there was another sigh, a slight shuffling and then a polite cough. These sounds were followed by a creak. She turned to see the door had been opened wide, and the corridor beckoned outside.

  “Madam,” Slowhand said, with an exaggerated flourish.

  The two of them peeped out into the corridor, and saw for the moment that it was empty, the guards, as Slowhand had said, between shifts. But though they weren’t there to sound an alarm, there was an immediate clamour from the other prisoners, who stared at them through their bars.

  “Oh pits, it’s ’im,” one said. “No, no, what ah mean is nice bit o’ singin’, there, Mister. Voice of an angel, you ’ave. Come orrn, let us out.”

  “Don’t say that – he might do an encore.”

  “It’s a calculated risk. Look, do you wanna get yer arse out o’ here or not?”

  “Can I ’ave five minutes to fink about it?”

  “Sorry, boys,” Slowhand said. The truth was, he regretted having to leave them here but there was no other choice in the matter. Two might make it out of Scholten Cathedral alive but any more would leave them wide open to detection. He placed his hand on Kali’s shoulder and ushered her along the corridor, following close behind. But as they reached its end, they heard footsteps on stone – the new shift descending the stairs.

  Kali motioned for Slowhand to freeze and then flattened herself against the wall. As they passed her unnoticed form and saw Slowhand, they drew their swords, and she stepped out and tapped them both on the shoulder. She flattened the first with an open-palmed punch to the face, and Slowhand handled the second with a blow to the neck from behind.

  Kali bent down to one of the crumpled guards and snatched his ring of keys. She tossed it to one of the prisoners they had left behind, who caught them in a hand projecting through the bars. “A half-hour before you make your move,” she said, and pointed at Slowhand. “Or he starts to sing.”

  “Oh, funny,” Slowhand said. He punched both guards in the face again to make sure they stayed out cold, then said, indicating the cells: “That’s running a risk.”

  “Hopefully, they’ll make it out. But if they don’t, they’ll provide us with a good diversion.”

  Slowhand looked at her, surprised. “A little cold and calculating, for you, Hooper.”

  “Last few days. I’m learning.”

  Slowhand nodded. As he did, Kali began to strip the tabards and unbuckle the armour from the guards. He placed a hand on hers. “What are you doing?”

  “Getting us some clothing. You, in particular.”

  Slowhand shook his head. “Armour will do us no good where we’re going, believe me. And you’d look a bit obvious in just a tabard. Cute, but obvious.”

  “If this is just a ploy to keep me nearly naked –”

  “Trust me.”

  Kali sighed. “So what’s the plan?”

  “We head up.”

  “Up, eh? Here we are in what, some deep cells, and we head up? I’d never have thought of that one.”

  “Will you shut up and move?”

  The two of them began to wind their way up the spiral stairway, staying cautious and keeping low, emerging eventually into the guard room that lay above. There, a guard was slumped in a chair, his feet on his desk, with his back to them, a faint snoring sound coming from the other side of his head. Slowhand seemed to know where he was going, and pointed. Without a sound, the two of them crouch-walked around the edge of the room, coming eventually to a door to a connecting corridor, which Slowhand peered through.

  “The hard part,” Slowhand whispered. “From here on in it gets a little crowded.”

  Crowded? Kali thought. And then she remembered being carried down from her interrogation – the sounds she’d heard, the sights she’d seen, or perhaps just imagined. What was Slowhand saying, she wondered, that they had been real? Here, beneath the cathedral?

  “You’ve told me what you were doing here, Slowhand,” she said as they moved into and along the corridor, “but you haven’t told me why.”

  Slowhand hesitated. “The Faith and I have a bit of history. Or I should say they have a bit of history with someone close to me.”

  “Who are you talking about? Who did they have history with?”

  Slowhand was uncharacteristically silent for a second. “That’s a story for some other time. Point is, there’s a lot more going on with the Final Faith than meets the eye. A lot more. And I needed to know what.”

  “And you found something?”

  Slowhand nodded, pointing ahead of where they skulked. “Specifically, this.”

  Kali turned and, though used to some sights, actually gasped. The corridor ended a few feet ahead of them and, where it did, it opened out into a cavernous chamber carved into the rock and lit by the kind of light cylinders she had only ever seen in the possession of Merrit Moon. But it was what they lit that staggered her.

  People milled about in what appeared to be some kind of warehouse and distribution centre, though from what Kali could make out very little of what they were storing and distributing consisted of either Final Faith tracts or any other religious baubles, bangles and beads. Instead, crates and packing cases piled high throughout the chamber were marked as containing supplies, both rations and medical, as well as various tools, implements, building materials and virtually anything else that would be needed in establishing Final Faith outposts throughout the land. There was a hint of how they would start to get there, too – iron rails in the floor of the cavern, with carriages upon them – some kind of rail way?

  From what she had heard of their methodology there was something missing, though, and to satisfy her curiosity Kali crouch-walked into the cavern and forced open a crate that looked to her to be particularly suspect. Sure enough, she found what she had guessed they would contain.

  Weapons. A lot of weapons.

  She hadn’t imagined anything when she’d been dragged from the interrogation chambers to the cells, it was all real. And the cavern she saw was not the only one – corridors led off everywhere. The sub-levels of Scholten Cathedral were not so much a religious base as a military complex.

  Something else drew her attention.

  “Slowhand, wait. What’s that?”

  Slowhand looked to where Kali pointed. On the other side of the cavern there were two openings in the rock wall, and in each a wooden construction that looked like some kind of lift, one of them rising and terminating at this level and the other, counterbalanced, going down.

  Even further down.

  Kali might not have noticed them at all were it not for the fact that they were heavily guarded, and that alone piqued her interest. What sent it into overdrive was that as she and Slowhand watched, Katherine Makennon emerged from the ascending shaft.

  “Now, what do you suppose is down there?” Kali mused, slowly.

  “Don’t know. Ladies’ toilets?”

  “Witty. Why are the guards there, and nowhere else?”

  “I don’t know, but the question’s academic. Wherever it is those shafts go, there’s no way past those guards, not without alerting the whole of the Enlightened. We have to continue up.”

  “Slowhand, I thought you wanted the inside story on this place? Don’t you want to know what’s down there?”

  “Of course I do. And I know you do. But not now, Hooper. There’ll be another time.”

  Kali sighed. “Well, at least let’s try to see if Makennon gives anything away. She seems to be going our way.”

  “Fine,” Slowhand said, “we follow her. But don’t get
too close, and whatever you do, stay under cover.”

  “Stunning tactic. Never would have thought of that one.”

  “Just move.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Keeping behind crates, pillars and whatever else could provide cover, Kali and Slowhand pursued the Anointed Lord, gleaning little but nevertheless coming closer to what must have been an exit. Then, suddenly, Querilous Fitch appeared. Kali and Slowhand flattened themselves against a wall and listened in.

  “I am here to report, Madam, as ordered,” Fitch said.

  “Sorry not to have been available earlier,” Makennon responded, “but we had to seal below.”

  “More problems?” Fitch asked. “It has been... three days.”

  Makennon nodded. “We lost another two – including Salome. The defences in this dig are formidable.”

  Kali looked at Slowhand eagerly, about to speak, but he put his hand to her mouth and shushed her.

  “That is unfortunate,” Fitch said. “I’ll arrange for disposal of the body.”

  “There is no body, Fitch.”

  “Ah, indeed.” He hesitated for a second. “Madam, have you considered using –”

  “The girl? No, Fitch, she is far too undisciplined, a loose cannon. Besides, following your recent treatment of her I very much doubt she would be sympathetic to our cause.”

  “She does not know what happened. And perhaps could be... persuaded?”

  “No. I know her kind. You might beat her but you wouldn’t break her. There’d come a time when she’d run into a trap rather than trip it for us. No, Fitch, I’ll arrange for another. In the meantime, what did you learn from her?”

  Again, Kali looked at Slowhand. What did Fitch learn? She’d been sure she’d said nothing.

  Fitch paused. “The girl was extremely resilient, unexpectedly so for one so young. I suspect hidden depths with this one.”

  “Depths?”

  “Great depths. I... needed to rest after the questioning. Some of the things she recalled were a strain and I needed to collate what I had gathered.”

  Makennon stared at him.

  “Well?”

  “The girl no longer possesses the key, nor is she aware of its exact location,” Fitch said, his voice slow and tired. “However, there is a friend. An old friend. A relic-monger named Merrit Moon.”

  “And you believe that the key lies with him?”

  “Yes,” Fitch sighed. “But Moon travels.”

  “Where? Where does he travel?”

  “Beyond Pontaine. To the ridge of the world.”

  Kali saw Makennon swallow. Even for one in such a powerful position as she, the World’s Ridge Mountains instilled a sense of awe and unease. It was a place even the Final Faith did not tread lightly.

  “Munch has arranged things?” Makennon asked.

  “He and his men rode two days ago.”

  “Good,” Makennon said. “Very good.” And with that, she dismissed Fitch. Speaking to herself, unaware she was being overheard, she added: “This time, just bring me the key. I do not want an old man cluttering up my dungeons as well.”

  Kali watched Makennon follow Fitch up the corridor, stunned. She spun to face Slowhand, her expression pained. “How could he know that? I didn’t say anything!”

  Slowhand looked at her sympathetically. “Pits, you don’t know, do you? That man’s a psychomancer, Kali. Not so much a mind-reader as someone able to realise memories. I’m afraid he’s been inside your head.”

  Kali seethed, knowing there’d been something wrong all along. “Munch told me he was there to stop me blacking out.”

  “It’s a common trick. A dirty trick. While that little bastard was keeping your conscious mind distracted, his psychomancing friend was poking around in your subconscious and, in there, there’s nowhere to hide. You couldn’t help what they discovered, Kali, or stop them doing it. You literally weren’t to know.”

  Kali snarled. Munch’s abuse of her had gone far beyond the physical and, whatever it might have revealed to her by way of a side-effect, she didn’t like that one little bit.

  At the moment, though, that wasn’t the issue.

  “They know where Merrit went, and they know he has the key,” she said to Slowhand. Her expression hardened. “As of this moment, the exploring’s over. I have to get to the old man. You have to get me out of here now.”

  “Could prove a little difficult,” Slowhand said, slowly.

  “What?” Kali protested. “But I thought you – ”

  She stopped – because one of the two guards behind her had just discreetly coughed.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CLEARLY, THE TIME for stealth was over. Kali informed the guard of the fact by smiling sweetly and punching him hard on the nose. He staggered back against the wall, hands over nostrils pouring with blood, and with a satisfying metallic-cum-fleshy crunch Kali booted him up under his armour, bringing the knee of her other leg up under his chin at the moment he crumpled towards her, howling. The guard flipped onto his back, out cold.

  Slowhand, for his part, performed a kind of spin that was half pirouette and half boxer’s dodge that took him behind the guard so fast that the man barely had time to register the manoeuvre. As Slowhand came out of the spin, he wrapped his arm around the guard’s neck, bent him double and rammed his head straight into the wall. Twice, to be sure he was out. And then, because he was Final Faith, just once more. The guard slumped and Slowhand dropped his unconscious body to the floor like a sack of wet wort.

  The pair of them stared at each other, he smiling, she inwardly cursing – dammit, they’d always been good as a team.

  Cries of alarm echoed down the corridor and urgent footsteps clattered towards them from all directions. Somewhere far above, they heard the peal of the cathedral’s bells changing volume and pitch. The change would mean nothing to pilgrims going about their worshipful business, but to Kali and Slowhand it signalled one disturbing fact – the Final Faith knew they were on the loose.

  They ran, not sure in which direction to head in the underground warren but moving with the surety that if they covered enough ground they must eventually come upon the exit. A number of avenues became blocked to them, however, barred gates sliding down from their niches in the rock to block off doorways to rooms and corridors, and to some degree the pair of them felt they were being herded. But herded or not, they were going to be no easy catch. Helpfully, the corridors here were stacked with equipment and supply boxes, and while they presented some impediment to their flight, forcing them to dodge and weave as they ran, they also provided cover and the means to discourage some of the guards from their pursuit. Three who tried to block off a corridor ahead were flattened as Kali forced over one stack, causing a mini avalanche, another two crushed against a wall as Slowhand hefted, without much difficulty, a crate of armour and tossed it towards them for them to catch. There was little room to manoeuvre in the tight confines of the corridors, however, and more confrontations were inevitable. The two of them refused to allow such inconsiderate encounters to slow them down, kicking, punching, leaping and dodging their way past them all, and as the numbers dwindled they started to believe that their escape might be successful. It simply never occurred to them that there would be nowhere to go.

  The corridor ahead came to an impassable and totally unexpected end. The rock out of which this entire complex had been carved had, it seemed, provided a starting point in the way of natural caverns, and ahead of them now lay one such chamber. Dropping away from the corridor floor to a depth of about fifty feet, stretching away ahead of them perhaps three times that, the stalagmite-layered area was impossible to traverse around its edge, and even if they had been able to climb down to its floor, it would have been impossible to climb out the other side. The Final Faith had provided a solution to this natural hindrance – a slatted bridge that spanned the gap – but at that very moment, powered by the pumping arms of two of their people on the other side, it was moving away from Kali and S
lowhand at a rate that made it impossible to reach.

  They skidded to a halt, staring at the bridge as it retracted along guide cables in response to the turning of the large spoked wheel on the other side. An identical wheel on their side was of no help as it was impossible to operate while the other was in use. What was worse, the opposing wheel clearly had visible on it a clamp that could be swung down once the retraction operation was complete, effectively making the device on their side useless.

  If they couldn’t get across the bridge, they had no way out at all.

  Slowhand summed up the predicament succinctly. “Hooper, we’re stuffed.”

  Kali, however, wasn’t listening. She stared at the retracting bridge, weighing up the widening gap, and then without a word to Slowhand ran back along the corridor down which they’d come. The troubadour looked at her dumbfounded, but then his expression turned to alarm as Kali turned and, taking deep breaths, began to pound back towards him. He looked at her, looked at the gap, and then back at her again.

  She was going to try to make the jump.

  “Hooper, don’t be stu –” he began, but Kali had already drawn even with him, then was panting past him, and then she was in the air. Yelling with exertion as she took flight, legs pinwheeling beneath her, she flew forwards, describing a long arc that took her towards the ever-distancing bridge.

  Her hands stretched out for a handhold before her – and missed.

  But only just. Kali twisted, forcing an extra inch, and slammed into the lip of the retracting edge with an explosive grunt. She dangled there by her elbows as she took a second to recover before heaving herself up onto its walkway. One of the guards was already coming towards her but, as he approached, Kali slid aside, around him, then slapped him in the back with her arm, sending him careering over the lip to the unwelcoming rock floor below. The other guard, seeing what was happening, flung the lock onto the wheel and grabbed a pike from against the corridor wall, charging at Kali and intending to impale her. As he came, she grabbed both rails of the bridge and flipped herself upwards, the guard and his pike passing harmlessly beneath her. Spinning in mid-air, Kali landed behind his back, roared into him and, using his own momentum, rammed the wailing guard into the air to join his friend below.