Thief of the Ancients

by Mike Wild

  “Is there a problem, Miss Hooper?” he asked.

  “No. No, I –”

  “Then I suggest we do what we came here to do.”

  Munch turned to Makennon. The Anointed Lord took her gaze off Kali and looked at him and, after a second, nodded.

  “Destiny awaits,” Munch said, smiling.

  He signalled to some of the soldiers and they unloaded four crates from the first wagon, then carried them forwards to the plinth, breaking the seals and revealing the keys packed safely in straw inside. Munch ran a hand over each with a reverence that made Kali frown. “With your permission, Madam?” he said to Makennon.

  The Anointed Lord inhaled, drawing herself up to her full, imposing height. “Go ahead,” she said.

  Munch lifted the first key from its crate and placed it in its matching template, pressing it home with a sound like a shifting stone slab, then rotated the plinth until it locked into place with a grating thud. It struck Kali that he looked far too much like he knew what he was doing, and she frowned as he expertly did the same with the second, and then the third key, until only the last remained. As he lifted it from its crate she moved to stop him, but with a click of her fingers Makennon had her restrained by the soldiers, along with Slowhand.

  “Please – you don’t know what you’re doing!” Kali hissed.

  “On the contrary, Miss Hooper,” Munch said, in a tone which made her feel suddenly very cold, “I do.”

  He inserted the fourth key, repeating the same procedure as before, and then stood back as the plinth took on a life of its own. Each of the keys now turned of its own accord, first clockwise or anti-clockwise, and then back again, and then in a seemingly random pattern that Kali realised had, in fact, to be some kind of combination. Her theory was proven correct when, after a further four or five turns – it varied with the keys – each again locked, but into a different position from which it had started, and then sank further into the plinth with more resounding thuds. A panel opened in its centre and from it rose a patch of what looked to be spikes arranged in the shape of a hand.

  “Yes,” Munch said. “At last, yes.”

  He placed his hand gently on the spikes.

  Everyone in the chamber looked down as the floor trembled beneath their feet, then up and around as the seawater in the glowing tubes began to bubble and stir, the strange arterial system coming to life. The fans that punctuated their length began to slowly rotate and the detritus that had so long ago been sucked in with the seawater began to flop and toss in the glass tubes, and then began to circulate around the system with greater and greater speed. Bubbles began to bounce in the water now, a sign that more was being sucked in from the sea above, and the mounting speed of the fans increased its circulation and pressure, churning the murky water until it turned opaque and then a milky white. There was no sign of the seaweed or detritus any more, only a seething rush of pressurised liquid that raced through the tubes all around the throne room, heading towards what appeared to be each of the statues against the walls and, ultimately, the Clockwork King.

  The roar of it was deafening. The whole of Martak shook.

  But it was nothing compared to the shaking to come.

  Kali swallowed as the water thundered into the pipes that fed the enormous statue, and as it did, the Clockwork King proved itself to be far more than a statue after all. As Kali and the others watched in amazement, great plates of stone detached themselves from various parts of its body, separating along hairline cracks for the first time in a thousand years. Dust poured from the edges of the rising plates and from the edges of the holes in the statue that remained, and as the dust fell away, the interior of the Clockwork King was revealed. There, powered by the inrushing seawater, great metal cogs and wheels turned and rotated, and pistons thumped, their movements extending the thick metal rams on which all could now see the plates were rising away from the component parts of the statue they had once been. As they did, the cogs and the wheels inside the king began to twist and turn, and then so did the rams, and as each plate followed suit, they slowly moved in different directions towards the walls and ceiling of the throne room. Kali looked up and around and saw that indentations in the stone matched each of the giant plates exactly.

  It was at that moment that Kali realised there had been no confusion about the number of keys described in the scrolls in the Three Towers. The mention of a fifth key hadn’t made any sense to her back then, but it sure as hells did now. And there was a fifth key, no doubt about it.

  The fifth key was the Clockwork King.

  And she suspected she knew what it opened.

  She looked up again as a series of deep booms signalled that each of the stone plates had locked into their corresponding positions, and then she looked left and right towards the galleries, swallowing. Despite wanting to know all about the wonders of this place earlier, all she could think now was: Let me be wrong. Please, let me be wrong.

  But she wasn’t. That became clear as soon as the pipes that seemed to feed the statues in the galleries began to churn even more than before, and then a series of deep and prolonged rumblings drew everyone’s glances towards the sides of the throne room. One after another, all along the walls, the dwarven statues were sliding upwards, the dust of ages pouring from them, their cobwebs tearing away. Moving slowly, each rose its own height and eventually came to rest with a thud, and revealed behind where each had stood was a space as dark as a tomb. And out of each space came a whiff of something foul.

  Makennon’s people had begun to scatter as soon as the statues had started to move, but now the Anointed Lord shouted for them to stand their ground. Kali glanced urgently at her and saw, despite the order, that she was looking increasingly uneasy, as if the soldier’s part of her mind was weighing up the tactical advantages and disadvantages of what this place might offer, finding them at odds with that part of her that had been driven here by religious zeal. She might have brought a little too much of the warrior to her role of Anointed Lord, but it was highly unlikely she wished to further the Final Faith’s cause by endangering all life on the peninsula, including her own.

  “Makennon, stop this,” Kali said. “I can see in your eyes you suspect what I said is true – or at least worth considering. Look at this place and think. How can anything in this graveyard fulfil the destiny of your church? I don’t know what you expected to find but I’d guess this isn’t it. This can’t be anything good.”

  She grabbed Makennon by the shoulders, shook her and forced her to look at the tomb-like entrances. More cobwebs shifted slightly where they dangled in front of the darkness, disturbed, perhaps, by a breath of something from within.

  “That monstrosity on the throne isn’t the Clockwork King of Orl, Katherine,” Kali persisted, shaking her once more, “it’s the Clockwork King of All. Ask yourself, woman – all what?”

  Makennon hesitated for what seemed to be an age, regarding Kali with unwavering eyes. Then finally she nodded, flicking her finger at Munch to stand him down. But he didn’t move. Makennon instead flicked her finger at the soldiers to stand him down. They didn’t move, either.

  Munch laughed. “The problem with giving me autonomy to choose people for these missions, Anointed Lord, is that I chose carefully. And the people I chose on your behalf for this mission I did so because I knew you might have second thoughts.” He sighed. “Second thoughts I cannot allow.”

  Makennon looked furious but knew better than to move. The soldiers already had their crossbows trained on her.

  “What is this, Konstantin?”

  “Destiny. But not, as I led you to believe, the destiny of the Final Faith. No, I simply needed its resources to find my way home.”

  “Home?”

  “Home.” Munch looked almost sad as he added, “It was my destiny to come here, Katherine – not yours. I am sorry.”

  “Pff, I’ll bet,” Kali said. “You know what, Stan – I had you pegged right from the start. Well, almost.”

&nbs
p; “Munch, what are you saying?” Makennon asked again.

  “He’s saying that he’s a dwarf,” Kali explained. “Or at least as much of a dwarf that the one million millionth drop of dwarvishness he’ll have left in his blood after all this time qualifies him to be. And unless I miss my guess, that blood’s from the clan responsible for what happened here.”

  “Quite correct, Miss Hooper. I am the last of Clan Trang – what became Clan M’Ar’Tak.”

  “Listen, pal,” Slowhand interjected. “If I know my history, the dwarves were a noble, advanced race of miners, engineers and warriors, not homicidal bearded shortarses with faces like a mool’s arse.”

  Munch glared at him, but his voice remained calm. “You wish proof of my claim, Mister Slowhand? Then I shall give you proof.” He glanced up at the gallery tombs, which as yet remained as they had been. “The last part of the process to activate the Clockwork King of All.”

  Slowhand winced as, without flinching, Munch suddenly rammed his palm onto the patch of spikes in the centre of the plinth, smiling as his blood formed a pool beneath them.

  “That had to hurt.”

  “Know this,” Munch said. “The Clockwork King responds only to those whose veins still flow with the blood of Belatron the Butcher.”

  Slowhand shot a glance at Kali. “Who in the hells is Belatron the Butcher?”

  “Bad guy,” Kali answered. “I think.”

  “With a name like that I’d guess it’s a pretty safe bet. Gods, you couldn’t make this up,” Slowhand added to himself in a whisper.

  Neither could he have made up what happened next. Munch’s blood seeped away into the plinth, and as it did the Clockwork King began to move again. Only this time, instead of sending out rams, its lower half reconstructed itself into the form of another throne on a circular platform. Except this throne was man-sized – more accurately, dwarf-sized. There was something else, too – it was surrounded by strange cylinder-shaped crystals.

  “Oh, look,” Slowhand said light-heartedly, though with tension in his voice. “He’s built himself a chair.”

  Munch settled himself into it and the Clockwork King remade itself once more, smaller components from within assembling themselves into some kind of metal ring that moved forwards to encircle Munch’s head. More spikes shot out of it and embedded themselves straight into his skull, and as they did the cylindrical crystals began to glow. Munch jolted and spasmed in the throne for a few seconds and then smiled. “Yes, Mister Slowhand, that hurt, too. But not, I am pleased to say, as much as my warriors are going to hurt you.”

  “Warriors?” Slowhand queried, dubiously.

  “Not nice,” Kali said. “I’ve seen them before...”

  Munch closed his eyes and concentrated. A deep and rhythmic pounding suddenly reverberated throughout the throne room, and then from each of the spaces behind the statues figures marched before halting, more than one from each, and each of them thrice the size of a man. Standing there with their arms and heads slumped like those of ogur, they filled the galleries now and, like the interior of the Clockwork King itself, they were things of metal, of cogs and pulleys and gears, though they had been assembled in such a way that, like the king, they also superficially resembled dwarves, although grotesquely so. Each wielded a dwarven war hammer in one hand and a double-bladed axe in the other, but while the axe was of relatively normal size the hammer was as grotesquely enlarged as each warrior itself – a vicious-looking slab of iron-ribbed stone that was actually part of the ogur-like arm and would likely shatter walls, let alone bones, with a single blow. The only thing the warriors did not carry was a shield, but the giant hammer made such armour unnecessary, its bulk, used defensively, protection enough.

  These were the things of which the manuscripts and all the tales had warned. Let slip once on Twilight, it had taken the combined technologies and sorceries of the elves and the dwarves to stop them. Let slip again, onto a Twilight where such abilities were as yet in their infancy, they would be formidable and unstoppable.

  “By all the gods...” Katherine Makennon breathed.

  “Don’t you mean – ?”

  “Slip of the tongue. What are these things?”

  “They are M’Ar’Tak,” Kali said. “Clan Trang’s vengeance for the bloody carnage the elves reaped upon them. Isn’t that right, Stan?”

  Munch smiled on his throne. And then his face darkened. “History paints the dwarven races as the merciless ones, the warmongers, the roaring, blood-lusted, cold-blooded killers, but in our war with Family Ur’Raney it was they who proved to be merciless. Our war had raged for months, our forces driven back across the western territories we contested, the Ur’Raney seemingly able to summon endless reinforcements and our people falling before them – many to their blasted scythe-stones before they learned better. Before we knew it, our army was devastated, pushed back here, to the edge of the world. We thought they would stop, allow us to lick our wounds and leave, but they did not, instead driving us over the Dragonwing Cliffs, slaughtering us even as we fell, and forcing those who survived that slaughter into the sea. For the first time in the history of our race, dwarves were forced to hide, because there was nothing else they could do. They hid in the caves that permeate these cliffs like floprats because otherwise they – and Clan Trang – would have been exterminated.”

  “One of those who hid was Belatron, wasn’t it?” Kali said. “He’s what started all this?”

  Munch nodded. “Belatron, our greatest wielder of magics. And within him a simmering hatred of the elves, a thirst for revenge that grew over the months – and then the years – into what you now see before you.”

  Slowhand spoke up. “You’re saying that a small bunch of bloodied survivors burrowed into the sea and built an army of clockwork men to do their fighting for them. Apart from being a little unrealistic, that’s not a very dwarven battle ethic, is it?”

  “No, not to do their fighting for them,” Munch said.

  The archer gestured up at the warriors. “Then what do you call –”

  “To do their own fighting,” Kali said, cutting Slowhand off. “Because they’re not clockwork men – at least, not wholly.” She peered at the massed ranks and made out what the others had apparently yet not, that within the skeletal structure of each warrior were brains riveted into metal skulls, hearts suspended within metal ribs and, most grotesquely of all, eyeballs set deep within metal sockets. These things were not simply mechanical, they were vessels for the remains of warriors who had been slaughtered by the Ur’Raney.

  And the most disturbing aspect about them was that, whatever mix of technology and dark magics had been used to create them, the organs remained fresh. Kali could tell that because each had a smaller version of the ring that encircled Munch’s skull embedded in a still-pulsing brain.

  “They called them the Thousand,” Munch explained. “Dwarven warriors partly resurrected from where they had fallen to the elves and restored to fight again.”

  “Belatron harvested their bodies,” Kali realised with disgust. “Returned to the battlefields and ripped their remains apart when they should have reached their final rest. That’s why they called him Belatron the Butcher.”

  “They were warriors!” Munch exclaimed. “Each and every one of them would have given their right arm for the chance to fight for their clan once more!”

  “Seems they did,” Slowhand said. “Amongst other things.”

  Munch slammed his fist onto the side of his throne. “Clan Trang had to rise again! M’Ar’Tak had to march!”

  “Wo-hoah. Steady, shorty.”

  “It all went wrong, though, didn’t it, Stan?” Kali said. “This throne you’re sitting in – this skullring you’re wearing – is what Belatron used to control them. Only he couldn’t, could he? Because by the time he’d done with them, by the time their brains had realised what they now were, and by the time he had forced them up those steps and indoctrinated them with his messages of death and killing and war,
they had, all of them, become completely insane.”

  “They turned on their own,” Makennon said. “And then they turned on everything else. A marching horde, but nothing to do with the Lord of All. How could I have been so blind, so stupid, so wrong?”

  “You weren’t wrong, Makennon,” Slowhand said, looking at Kali. “Like Hooper, here, you just didn’t have access to all the information. Something, in your case, I’m sure a certain short bastard had a lot to do with.”

  Makennon swung on Munch. “Why do you do this, Konstantin? Do you want to use your army to bring down the Final Faith?”

  Munch laughed. “The Faith? The Faith is fleeting. My army is to be used to bring about a resurgence of the dwarven race, by giving them the freedom to emerge from their underground enclosures by annihilating anything that stands in their way.”

  “I’ve got some news for you,” Slowhand said. “Your lot died out a long time ago. There are no more dwarven enclosures.”

  “Actually, there might be,” Kali said, hesitantly.

  “What?”

  “Tale for another time.”

  “Oh.”

  Kali turned back to Munch. “Munch, listen to me. Belatron couldn’t control these things, and neither will you. They won’t wipe out anything that stands in your way, they’ll wipe out everything, including yoursel –”

  “Enough!” Munch barked. He inhaled deeply and his blood-stained brow furrowed with concentration. “It is time.”

  All along the galleries, the heads of the clockwork warriors rose from their slumped positions and stared ahead, ruptured vessels in their unnatural eyes making them appear to flare red. Then, in military step, they began to march forwards and pound down the steps from the three levels – an army on the move. Munch blinked and four separated from the horde, coming to stand around him as bodyguards, but the rest, assembling in ordered ranks of five abreast, stood ready to march towards the exit.