Thief of the Ancients

by Mike Wild

  Kali studied the dip, saw that the tunnel levelled out again beyond it and then turned her eyes on the fossil. These remains had to be hardy, considering it was clear to her that the dwarves had had no choice but to tunnel under them rather than through.

  “Help me,” she said, picking up a rock.

  “Throwing stones at the lava won’t make it go away.”

  “The fossil!” Kali shouted. “There, where it’s been cracked by the tunnel subsidence! We can bring that part down!”

  Slowhand looked exasperated. “Why?”

  Kali leapt onto a slight rise of rocks at the tunnel’s edge, avoiding the lava that had now caught up with them. Slowhand did the same on the opposite side, looking down warily as the red river overtook them and began to flow into the dip.

  Kali smashed at the section of the fossilised remains with the rock. “’Liam, just help me!” she pleaded.

  The urgency of her tone persuaded him and – though he still didn’t have a clue what she hoped to achieve – Slowhand joined in. It took a fair number of strikes but finally the dark mass came loose from its resting place of ages and crashed down into the lava-filling dip, flipped over to become a bowl shape floating on the surface.

  Some kind of carapace, it could just as easily have been a boat.

  Kali began to hop from rock to rock at the side of the tunnel, towards it. “Move,” she shouted.

  Slowhand did as he was bidden, mirroring Kali, and it did not take him long to realise what she had in mind. And it was just a little bit frightening.

  Kali reached the rim of the dip and hurled herself forwards, crashing into the bowl with an explosion of air and a grunt. Slowhand was half a second behind and almost didn’t make it, but, as he threatened to shortfall into the roaring red river, Kali stood, balancing unsteadily, and grabbed his flying form by the scruff of the neck. She yanked him to safety and Slowhand crashed down next to her, winded.

  The makeshift boat rose on the lava until it rode above the opposite side of the dip. And there, sailing the lava with its speed building slightly, it continued along the tunnel.

  Slowhand stared at the passing rock walls, and down at the lava river, thinking it was a little like being on some carnival ride, only hotter. Like that new thing they’d had at Scholten Fair, the Tunnel of Luurrvv. The blupping of the lava even sounded quite romantic.

  “Hooper...” he said, sweeping back his hair.

  “Get your head down,” Kali said.

  Slowhand raised his eyebrows, looking surprised. “Don’t you want to take things a little more slowly?”

  “Down, you idiot!” Kali repeated and, as she spoke and Slowhand obeyed, the carapace slammed into a thick stalactite dropping from the tunnel roof. The impact sent the makeshift boat into a spin and it began to careen along the tunnel, crashing into its walls and generally out of control. As the pair of them clung to the carapace’s sides, lava splashing all about them, it seemed to Slowhand that his Tunnel of Luurrvv had suddenly become a tunnel of soon to suffer very painful death.

  Kali, though, didn’t seem too perturbed.

  “You get up to this kind of thing every day?” Slowhand asked, swallowing.

  “Course not. Maybe once a week. Not enjoying the ride?”

  Enjoying was not perhaps quite the word but Slowhand had to admit it was exhilarating, but only after the carapace had taken enough knocks without splitting open to reassure him that it might, after all, be safe enough to survive the trip. The flow of lava had sped up again beneath them, and now the carapace moved through the tunnel at dizzying speed, impacting and spinning with each new twist and turn as it made its inexorable way towards the tunnel’s end. Then, suddenly, the tunnel began to slope downwards, its exit visible ahead. But the exit, too, was blocked.

  “Hooper?” Slowhand said.

  Kali smiled. “We’ll be fine... fine.”

  Slowhand did not look convinced as they hurtled towards the pile of rocks blocking their only way out of the lava. He imagined the carapace shattering on impact, spilling them both into the lethal surge that would inevitably envelop them.

  “You’re saying you think this thing’s strong enough?”

  “Definitely,” Kali said.

  “How can you know?”

  “Because,” Kali began as the carapace slammed into the rock fall and broke through it. “This thing we’re on,” she continued as they sailed out into daylight, “has been down here a long, long time.”

  The carapace plummeted down some unknown hillside, the wind roaring past them, skimming the erupting lava flow as it went.

  “Meaning?” Slowhand shouted.

  “It belonged to something you don’t see around any more!” Kali shouted back.

  “What, for hells’ sake –”

  The carapace impacted with the hillside, bounced and flew. It bounced again, this time more violently, throwing them both into the air.

  Kali flailed towards a landing and yelled, “A drraaagggonn!”

  Slowhand stared at her and, while staring, thudded into the ground. He tumbled down the hillside, rolling, bouncing and cursing until, like Kali, he at last came to a bruised and aching stop. “A dragon?” he repeated.

  “Oh, yeah,” Kali said with exhilaration. She stood and stared at the carapace as it screed past them and then stopped further down the hill. Kali hadn’t felt like it for quite some time but she whooped.

  Slowhand stood and stared at the aftermath of their flight from the dome. The lava on which they had ridden was still gushing from the tunnel mouth above them, but the majority of it that had spilled forth was thickening in the outside air, turning grey and mottled on the slopes, smoke and steam rising from its curdling surface.

  Kali stared into the distance. There, she could see that smoke also rose above the city of Scholten, and on the air she could just make out the distant ringing of the cathedral’s alarm bells. She smiled. Makennon actually had something to be grateful to her for. If she hadn’t opened the tunnel, giving the lava an escape route rather than letting it build as if in some huge pressure cooker, then there would be little left of the underground complex, and perhaps even her cathedral itself might now be reduced to rubble.

  It was quite ironic. Kali Hooper – saviour of the Final Faith. Ah well, they could thank her later.

  In the meantime, there was the small matter of a key to pursue. Four keys, actually.

  “There’s just one problem,” Slowhand said. “We’re stuck in the middle of nowhere and, in case you haven’t noticed, we don’t have any transport.”

  “Actually, we do,” Kali said, and to Slowhand’s surprise stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled. “Little thing I’ve been teaching him,” she said.

  Slowhand looked baffled. “Teaching him. Teaching who?”

  “Horse.”

  “Horse?”

  “A-ha. Horse Too, to be precise.”

  “And where is this Horse Too?”

  “Stabled in Scholten, where I left him.”

  “And you expect him to hear you whistle from here?”

  “Horse is not your normal kind of horse.”

  “I see. Okay. Then just how is he going to get out of the stable, exactly?”

  “Oh, he’ll find a way.”

  Slowhand shook his head. Maybe the heat in the tunnel had got to Hooper after all. He was about to say something else when there was a sudden blur accompanied by the sound of heavy hoofbeats, and where there had been empty space between him and Kali a moment before he now found himself staring at something that resembled a Vossian siege machine. A large chunk of stable fencepost attached to a rope dangled from its neck.

  “Slowhand, meet Horse. Horse, this is Slowhand.”

  The mysterious creature stared at him balefully, and snorted.

  “What in the pits is that?” he heard himself asking.

  “Bamfcat,” Kali said simply.

  Horse’s tongue suddenly lashed out and wrapped itself around Slowhand’s face.
<
br />   Kali smiled. “I think he likes you.”

  “Mmmmrrrrumfff.”

  “Definitely.”

  “Grruuurrkk.”

  “Okay, Horse, that’s enough. Let him go.”

  Seconds later, Slowhand found himself sitting behind Kali on the beast’s back, Hooper leading him back to Scholten, a move he wasn’t entirely sure was wise given the circumstances of their last visit. But Kali, as it turned out, only wanted to speak to the gate guard – and did so from a distance so she wouldn’t be recognised.

  “The Anointed Lord?” she shouted. “Has she left the city?”

  “Three hours ago, Ma’am.”

  “Dammit,” Kali said, looking to the west. Makennon now had the four keys – and therefore the location of the site – but she still only had a rough idea of where it was. “She could be taking any one of the three roads. If we lose her...”

  Slowhand dismounted from Horse and examined the ground. It was thick with tracks heading into and out of the city, but he seemed confident as he pointed ahead and said, “Actually, she took that one.”

  “Slowhand, there’s no way you could know.”

  “Take a look,” the archer said.

  Kali did, and laughed. “That woman’s too full of herself for her own good,” she said. She stared again at what could only be Makennon’s tracks, because the horseshoes of her mount had been carved with the symbol of the Final Faith.

  On her trail, they headed west, crossing Vos, and came within sight of Makennon’s party as they travelled on towards the coast. Kali longed to pass the Anointed Lord, to reach Orl first, but she knew that without the exact location of the site, she and Slowhand could be seeking it out for weeks. The journey was long, Makennon and her party proceeding with the surety of something within their grasp that negated the need for haste, but their progress worked to Kali and Slowhand’s advantage, allowing them to stop off in the coastal town of Malmkrug to acquire rations and essential supplies, including squallcoats for the worsening weather. Beyond Malmkrug, they passed along the southern rim of the Drakengrat Mountains, and there Horse sniffed the air, recognising the place where it had been found. The beast hung its head wistfully, though, because perhaps it did not recognise it as home.

  The Drakengrats faded into the background as the party and their pursuers neared Oweilau, and here the coastline took a turn to the north-east, where eventually it would swing fully east once more, towards Dellendorf and, eventually, Freiport.

  Kali did not think they would turn that far, however, as the location of the site had been towards the end of the peninsula, so they would likely stick to the western paths as far as they could go. This they did, and eventually came to point where they could be no more than an hour or two’s travel from the Sarcrean Sea. Kali itched to continue ahead now that they were so close – was certain now that she would be able to find the site herself – but as Makennon’s party made camp for the night it soon became clear that they could go no further for the time being. Camped bang in the middle of a gorge, there was no way they could get past them without being detected, and no way around without attracting the attentions of the shnarls who at night roamed the coastal rocks in vicious packs. No – all they could do was make camp for the night themselves, then get ahead of Makennon’s party in the morning when they’d moved once more onto open ground.

  The pair of them watched from a ridge as the Final Faith bedded down, their assorted wagons circled in protection. There was little to see, and Kali and Killiam were about to call it a night when, from the east behind them, more wagons made their way towards the camp. They had to have been behind them all the time and Kali and Slowhand hid as they passed, she snarling at the unexpected yet somehow inevitable arrival of the leader of the group.

  “Munch,” Kali said. “Pits, I should have known.”

  Slowhand frowned. “Munch, maybe. But what the hells is that?”

  Kali looked at the caged wagon towards which Slowhand pointed, and immediately recognised the creature held therein.

  “That,” she said, “is one of the ogur from the World’s Ridge Mountains.”

  “They exist?” Slowhand said.

  “Oh yes.”

  “Care to tell me why Munch has brought it here?”

  “Holiday by the sea?” Kali said. “No, seriously, I haven’t a clue.”

  She yawned.

  “Time for bed, eh?” Slowhand said. “Just you and me and a seductively crackling fire?”

  “You and me, maybe, but no fire, crackling or otherwise. This stage of the game, we can’t risk them spotting us.”

  Slowhand sighed. There she went again, treating him like an idiot. “Actually, I already knew that. No matter,” he added, winking, “instead we can get up close and personal, share some body heat.”

  Kali stared at him. “There’s another possibility,” she said. “In the Drakengrats, when bad weather hits and they can’t get off the mountains, the high shepherds slice open the stomach of one of their flock and crawl inside for the night, using the intestines for warmth...”

  Slowhand looked shocked. “You wouldn’t – not Horse?”

  “Who said anything about Horse?”

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “I’ll get some blankets from the saddlebags,” Killiam said.

  “Yes, you do that.”

  Minutes later, they had bedded down for the night, blankets a few feet apart. Lying in the azure darkness, each sipping on a bottle of flummox, Kali stared up at the night sky and its coming eclipse while Slowhand kept an uneasy eye on Horse, watching as the beast’s tongue lashed out into the shadows surrounding the camp, snapping back every now and then with something dark, furry and squealing in its grip. The thing didn’t seem to be interested in him any more, and so he turned his attention to Kali. The expression in her eyes as she stared at the stars troubled him.

  “Hooper, how long have I known you?” he asked.

  “Too pitsing long.”

  “I’m serious. I’ve known you long enough to know when something’s bothering you. What is it?”

  “What do you think, Slowhand? I lost two of my oldest friends.”

  “I know that. But I know there’s something else.” He paused. “The old man told you something in the World’s Ridge Mountains, didn’t he? Something about you, about the things you can do?”

  Kali hesitated, and then told him about the old man’s parting words, about how and in what circumstances he had found her, inside the sealed site.

  Slowhand stared.

  “How in the hells could it have been sealed?” he said. And after a delay, added, “Who are you, Hooper?”

  “Slowhand, I wish I knew.”

  The archer saw Kali’s expression grow reflective, and changed tack slightly in the hope he could cheer her up. “There’s one thing I don’t get. You came out of nowhere, an orphan with no family at all – so, why Kali Hooper? Where did you get the name?”

  The question seemed to have the desired effect, and Kali smiled.

  “Until I was about five, everybody just called me half-pint, but when I started to grow it didn’t seem appropriate any more, so someone suggested I take Red’s name instead. He wanted to call me after his mum, Dora. Dora Deadnettle, can you believe it? Needless to say, I vetoed that.”

  “Wise move.”

  “A-ha. So they suggested a number of other names but none of them worked, and I went back to being half-pint. Then, one night, Pete Two-Ties started staring at the beers and writing their names down, playing with the letters he got...”

  “The letters?”

  “The letters. And out of all of them, Pete found that one beer, in particular, worked.”

  “Which was?”

  Kali took a swig of flummox. “Orki Hop Ale.”

  Slowhand couldn’t help himself. He spat his flummox out.

  “Wait a minute. Are you telling me that’s all your name is – an anagram?”

  “That’s right. I’m named af
ter a beer. Got a problem with that?”

  Slowhand shook his head, swallowing hard. “No, no, no... no. Absolutely appropriate, really.”

  “I thought so.”

  Slowhand concentrated, mouthed letters. “Could have been worse, given what Two-Ties had to work with. Kira Pohole...”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Erika Phool.”

  “No...”

  “Karlie Pooh.”

  “All right, Slowhand, that’s enough!”

  They drank some more.

  “Now it’s my turn. You never told me – what is it between you and the Final Faith? Why the vendetta?”

  Slowhand’s expression darkened, and he stared off into the night. “That question’s in a whole different league, Hooper.”

  Kali shifted onto her side, cradling her head in her palm. “I know. And if you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine. But I think you need to share with someone, Slowhand, and after what we’ve been through in the past few days...”

  Slowhand sighed, and his eyes flickered as if viewing some distant memory. “I have a sister,” he admitted, eventually. “A twin sister.”

  Kali had to admit she was gobsmacked. Somehow she had never thought of Slowhand as being, well, human. Not in the way of his having family, at least. She’d never really imagined him being a child, growing up – always seen him as he was now, having arrived in the world fully formed, grinning, winking and stroking back his hair. That there had been a sister that he had grown with was a double revelation to her.

  “I never knew.”

  “There’s no reason why you should have. Jenna was... taken before we met.”

  “Jenna,” Kali said. “Hold on. What do you mean – taken?”

  “The Final Faith,” Slowhand said. “In their early days, and maybe still now – to build up their numbers – they had an indoctrination programme... actually, more like forced assimilation. Jenna was working in Freiport when the Faith’s recruiters paid her a visit.”

  “She went willingly?”

  Slowhand shook his head, took a long swig from his flummox. “Jenna didn’t have a religious bone in her body. Before that day.”

  “What are you saying? That they brainwashed her?”