Thief of the Ancients

by Mike Wild

  A wary Slack dibbed a toe onto the bridge, clearly not trusting its solidity, while Kali strode casually by him into the void, slapping the stalactites she passed and humming a happy tune. She reached the pillar and waited for Slack to catch up before inserting the key into a second indentation carved in its centre. This time she turned it left three times, right and then left again. There was another grating sound, and another rumbling from below.

  “Six pillars,” Kali explained as another rose ahead of them, “six combinations. If all are entered correctly, they form a bridge all the way to where we want to go...”

  Slack sniffed. “This is really quite easy, then.”

  “Easy?” Kali chided as she waited for the bridge to form before skipping onto it. “You think I got this key from some adventurer’s junk sale? Oh, no. This key is a complex construct of separate components, each of which was hidden in a site rigged to the rafters with every kind of trap you could imagine. These past few weeks I’ve been shot at, scalded, suffocated, stifled, stung, squeezed, squished and squashed, so maybe, Mister Slack, you should rethink your ‘easy.’”

  “And you say you’re not doing this for the money?”

  “Nope,” Kali said. “Holiday.”

  “Holiday?”

  “Holiday.”

  The fact was, she was still reeling from recent revelations about ‘the darkness’ coming to Twilight – so much so she’d had to get away, from friends, the Flagons, all of it. Not that there were actually that many friends around right now. Slowhand was off avenging the death of his sister, and she’d barely seen hide or hair of Moon or Aldrededor since she’d rescued the Tharnak from the Crucible – the old man, whose shop was being rebuilt after the k’nid attacks, and the pirate were spending all their time tinkering with the ship in Domdruggle’s Expanse. Dolorosa had dismissed it as boys and their toys but there was a serious side to their tinkering, readying the ship for when – and for what – it might be needed. Not that she missed any of them – her holiday had been chosen specifically to keep her busy. She had, in fact, lost count of the times she’d barely avoided it becoming a funeral. In short, she’d had one hells of a time, and the acquisition of what lay ahead was the last challenge she had to face. Because what she had so far not told Slack was that forming the bridges was only half of it.

  “One wrong move,” she said, “and the entire mechanism resets itself. Bridges gone, pillars back where they came, carrying us with them into the depths.”

  Slack peered down and glimpsed something huge, white and serpentine slither through the darkness. “But there is something down there! Something horrible!”

  Kali looked over her shoulder, smiled. “Of course. There’s always something horrible.”

  With the more restrained Slack in tow, Kali negotiated more bridges, coming eventually to the last one – the one to the resting place of the artefact.

  This time she wielded the key but hesitated as she held it before the lock, drawing a worried glance from her companion.

  “There is a problem?” Slack asked.

  “No, no, no problem,” Kali responded.

  Well, not much of one. It was only that at this point she might most likely get them both killed. The fact was that while her studies of the dwarven key had revealed a pattern to her, she’d been sure of all the combinations except this last. The combinations represented a really quite simple series of nods to the inclinations of the dwarves’ multifarious minor gods – lightning equalling from above, or up; sunrise, east, so right; sea, which at this point on the peninsula was to the west and therefore left. The problem with the last combination was that it contained a glyph for the god of wind and, frankly, that one had left her stymied. Wind, after all, could come from any direction, so how in the hells was she meant to know which was correct? In the end, she’d whittled the possibilities down to two answers – up, because the wind in this valley was predominantly northern, and down, or south, because... well, because.

  Hesitantly, she inserted the key in the final niche, turned most of the combination and stopped before the final twist.

  North now, or south? If she guessed wrong, the last thing she’d see would be Slack wetting himself again, and she could think of better images with which to depart the world. She stared at the odorous little man and, in doing so, made up her mind. It had to be, didn’t it?

  Kali turned the key south, locked it in place and, after a few seconds, the bridge appeared.

  She sighed heavily; she’d gambled correctly. On a dwarven joke. A crude but effective joke, much like the dwarves themselves, and she could imagine them roaring with laughter when they had thought of it.

  Hey, Hammerhead, how about this? There’s more than one kind of wind!

  Kali was not about to tell Slack that she’d just gambled both of their lives on the strength of a fart gag, so instead she sauntered nonchalantly across the bridge, finally setting foot on the reassuring solidity of the central pillar. And right in front of her was what she had come for.

  The Deathclaws.

  Legend had it they had been forged by the renegade blacksmith Dumar, who had pledged his allegiance to an elven rather than dwarven court. Commissioned by that court’s Lord, the mysterious metal from which they were made was said to have washed up as jetsam near Oweilau millennia before. That the metal could wash up – that it could float – was just one of its unusual qualities and had led many to speculate its origin lay with those said to live deep under the sea. True or not, the metal was unlike any worked before. It was pliable yet all but indestructible. When fashioned into the claws, they were sharp enough to slice through anything, natural or man-made, most importantly the unbreachable brodin armour in which the dwarves of that time garbed their warriors. It was even said that, wielded with skill, they could bypass the armour completely and slice away a dwarf’s soul.

  Unsurprisingly, the Lord who wielded the Deathclaws became unstoppable on the battlefield, and thousands of dwarven warriors had fallen before him, until, one night, the claws had simply vanished from the Lord’s chambers.

  The fact that, thereafter, Dumar returned to live among his own people in such circumstances that ten lifetimes’ smithing could never have paid for may or may not have had something to do with the disappearance. But, by whatever means the dwarves acquired the claws, they had thereafter sealed them here, on the lowest level of Quinking’s Depths, so that they might never be wielded again. They were, in short, a priceless treasure, a one of a kind artefact that Kali had had on her ‘to find’ list for as long as she could remember.

  She sighed and lifted them from the podium on which they rested, then slipped them onto her hands. As light as silk, each of the metal handpieces was attached to five curved rune-etched blades by intricately crafted hinges and studs that allowed for perfect freedom of movement. It was hard to believe that something so delicately and lovingly constructed could have been intended for such deadly use. It wasn’t simply the workmanship that belied their purpose, however. The legend also said that the elven Lord had imbued the runes with additional sorcery that ensured the blood of the fallen never tainted their beauty, and it was this that gave them their golden glow. Kali couldn’t resist wielding them for a short time – slashing at the air like a cat, grinning as they cut the air with a hiss – and then she moved to return them to the podium.

  “What are you doing?” Slack asked, aghast.

  “Putting them back,” Kali said.

  “Are you insane?”

  “Nope. I made a promise to a friend a long time ago that certain things should stay where they are, for the good of Twilight.”

  Behind her back, Slack hopped up and down, gesturing at the key, the bridges. “Then why all this?”

  “Because I could.”

  “Because you could?”

  Kali nodded. “It’s about the thrill of the chase.”

  For a moment, Slack stared at her open-mouthed, then moved with hitherto unsuspected speed, putting a knife to Kali
’s throat. It was as dull as a twig compared with the treasure she had found but could still cause a nasty gouge. More uncomfortable by far was the fact that Slack was pressing himself tightly up against her rear, rubbing her exposed midriff slowly and panting in her ear. Kali sighed, but only with bored resignation.

  “I will be taking the claws, Miss Hooper,” Slack said.

  “You sure about that?” Kali responded.

  “What? Of course I am sure!”

  “Only it’s just that if I drop them to the ground you’ll have to pick them up, and while you’re doing that I’ll kick your nuts so hard people’ll be calling you ‘four eyes.’”

  There was a pause.

  “I told you, Slack, plan ahead...”

  “Then pass the claws to me slowly, between your legs.”

  Kali drew in a sharp breath in mock sympathy. “Or ‘no nuts.’”

  “Over your shoulder, then!”

  “‘Twilight’s silliest hatpins’?”

  Slack tightened his grip. “You are toying with me, woman.”

  “Actually, I’d prefer to get this over with. Have you any idea how much you stink?”

  “Give me the claws.”

  “Won’t.”

  “Will.”

  “Won’t.”

  Slack sighed in exasperation and Kali smiled. All you ever had to do was wait for the sigh that said your opponent was off guard.

  She elbowed Slack in the ribs and flung him around in front of her, kicking his legs out from under him as he came. It should have pinned him to the ground with the Claws at his throat, and that was exactly where they would have been had the entire cavern not begun to quake violently, almost spilling the pair of them into the depths. As it was, Kali stumbled to her knees, the Deathclaws skittering from her grip, and Slack took advantage of the moment to grab them and run. Kali growled and made after him, then suddenly stopped dead in her tracks.

  What the hells?

  That some kind of quake was occurring was beyond doubt, the cavern shaking and thick falls of rock dust pouring from the roof. The rumbling was almost deafening. The quake, though, was not what had caused Kali to stop in surprise. Something seemed to be interfering with the thread bridges throughout the cavern. As Kali watched, they faded and flickered. The magic seemed to be destabilising for some reason and, if it disappeared completely, she and Slack were going to be trapped down here.

  Slack himself had a more immediate problem, however. Oblivious in his flight, the rat was already running across the fifth bridge and, from her vantage point, Kali could see it was the most unstable of them all.

  “Slack, come back!” Kali shouted, but the only response she got was a backward flip of a finger. “Fine, you moron, run, then! Just get off the farking bridge!”

  She’d meant the warning to galvanise him but it actually had the opposite effect. Slack paused in his tracks, turning to face her. That he was listening was good, but it was also the worst thing he could have done.

  Kali stabbed a finger downwards, trying to make the man aware of his situation, and comprehension slowly dawned as Slack looked down. His mood turned from triumphant glee to undisguised panic as he saw the bridge flickering in and out of existence. The sudden realisation that, at any moment, there might be nothing between himself and an abyss filled with something horrible spurred the thief into running for his life but, unfortunately, time had run out for Slack.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeee!”

  “Bollocks,” was Kali’s honest response. But she couldn’t help raising her eyebrows when she saw the Deathclaws remained where Slack had been, still held in his bloody, severed hands, amputated by the flickering bridge the moment he’d fallen through. For the bridge, like the others, had not yet gone for good. She had time – though not, necessarily, any to waste.

  Kali ran. As the six bridges continued to blink on and off, she knew that crossing each successfully was going to be a matter of a timing, using the pillars that connected them as staging posts.

  The first bridge was, at that moment, in an either/or state of flux, and she ran on the spot until she felt it safe enough to traverse, then put on a sudden burst to reach its other end. She did the same with the second, and then the third. The fourth presented a problem, almost as unpredictably erratic as the one on which Slack had met his doom. The effects of the quake on the cavern were worsening. What the dwarves had intended to be a protective sanctum for as long as the hill above existed was now starting to come down about her ears. While she ran on the spot waiting for safe passage a rain of dust and stones left her coated in a grey shroud, and she had to dive out of the path of several large chunks of debris.

  Then, when the bridge finally seemed stable enough for passage and Kali began to race across, all of the pillars began to move up and down.

  Kali felt her stomach lurch as the pillar ahead rose and the one behind sank, taking the bridge with them so that she suddenly faced an uphill flight.

  Oh, you have got to be kidding.

  Kali pumped her legs until she neared the rising pillar ahead, and, with a bellow, threw herself onto it, rolling into a ready position for the next, crouched to leap.

  There were only two bridges left now, but she was painfully aware that the next was the one that had so abruptly ended Slack’s time on Twilight. It was once more flickering every half second or so but, interestingly, the claws had still not fallen through, which suggested it was stable enough to take her. The problem lay in timing it right, because if she moved at the wrong moment the pillar ahead would have risen too far and she’d once again face a steep incline to reach the end.

  Kali ducked as the cavern shook violently and further falls of rock poured from the roof all about her, and then scowled at the bridge ahead. It looked as right as it was ever going to be.

  Kali moved, faster than even she thought possible, but once again the quake scuppered her plans. As she began to race for the final pillar a massive boulder detached itself from the cavern roof and plummeted straight down. The boulder seemed to hit the pillar in slow motion, splitting asunder before bouncing off into the abyss, and in its wake the pillar started to crack and break apart. What was worse, it severed the link with the last two bridges. Kali staggered and yelped in protest as the threads there began to sputter and die, and now it was her mind rather than her body that raced. She took in all of the possibilities presented by the changing circumstances and moved again, heading not for the pillar but for the Deathclaws. It had never been her intention to remove them from the cavern but now they were coming with her whether she liked it or not. In fact, they might even save her life.

  Kali didn’t even slow to pick the ancient weapons up, executing a rolling somersault as she ran, one hand slipping into each of the claws and shaking to lose Slack’s disembodied grip. His appendages spun down into the abyss, arcing trails of blood, until something white snatched them out of the air to join the rest of him, but Kali was already gone.

  Her sole interest now was in reaching the collapsing pillar before the bridge died or it broke apart completely. The pillar was more or less level as she reached it, though far from intact, and as Kali landed on its buckling and crumbling surface it finally relinquished its hold on the bridge ahead, which blinked out of existence before her eyes.

  She didn’t need to turn around to know that the bridge behind her was also gone, but neither did she let the fact that she was seemingly now trapped on a disintegrating finger of rock hinder her pace. Kali ran full pelt across its surface and then, even as she felt the pillar tipping and tumbling away beneath her feet, she let out a loud “gaaaaaah!” and launched herself into the air.

  Arms and legs flailing to stretch as much distance out of the leap as possible, she seemed to hurtle though the air for ever. But then she thudded into the stalactite ahead of her, the claws embedding themselves effortlessly into the spine of rock.

  Kali simply hung there for a second.

  “Oh, yes,” she breathed to her
self.

  From the stalactite to the ledge and the exit was now only a minor jump, and Kali made it with ease. She would have taken a moment to pay her respects to Slack but the cave was rapidly filling with rubble. But as Kali moved into it she did cast a backward glance into the cavern that had almost claimed her life. The last of the bridges were flickering out now, leaving the ages old resting place in darkness but even as the roof caved in, she sensed that it hadn’t been the quake that had caused the bridges to go away. No, something else had killed the magic.

  Maybe when she reached the surface she’d find out what the hells was going on.

  CHAPTER TWO

  HELLS WAS THE right word. As in all of them breaking loose. Kali dragged herself spluttering and squinting up into the dawn light, disorientated and wrong-footed. Not only because the landscape she remembered from before her descent was now obscured by a dust cloud so thick she could bite it; she also immediately found herself dodging rivers of scree flowing rapidly down the hillside. As the treacherous stones threatened to sweep her off her feet, Kali hopped left and right.

  There was no escaping it. The whole range rumbled as if the world itself were coming to an end. The boulders she dodged smashed into others below, cleaving apart with cracks like thunder, the guttural, groaning, thrashing sounds of uprooted trees and vegetation and the strange, hollow clattering of falling rock everywhere. There was another sound, too, not particularly loud in comparison, but one to which demanded Kali’s attention. It was the agitated snorting and roaring of Horse, whom she had left tethered nearby – safely, she’d thought at the time.

  Kali scanned the hillside, trying to locate the bamfcat in the chaos. As she did she caught sight of a dark, spherical object, the size of a fussball, darting here and there through the dust-filled air. As she saw it, it stopped dead, hovering right in front of her eyes. Kali recoiled instinctively, thinking what the hells? But by the time she’d recovered enough to try to work out what the sphere was it had already gone, darting away into the fog as quickly as it had come.