Thief of the Ancients

by Mike Wild

  The psychic manipulator bowed slightly, his hands steepled. They were bandaged, Kali noticed. “Kali Hooper. What a pleasant surprise.”

  “What the hells are you doing here?” Kali demanded.

  “Helping, Kali, just like you. All hands on deck, and all that.”

  “What – you run out of heads today?”

  Fitch smiled and suddenly noticed the burns on Kali’s neck. He tutted sympathetically.

  Kali snarled.

  “I suggest,” Freel said hastily, “that we get down to business.”

  “No argument here,” Kali agreed. “You said Makennon needed my help? That you feared she’d gone to the hells?”

  Freel nodded. “The Anointed Lord has been taken.”

  “Taken? By which I presume you don’t mean she’s currently prancing through the clouds annoying the rest of the poor souls with Kerberos?”

  “He means abducted,” General McIntee said. “Here from the very heart of the Faith.”

  Kali pursed her lips, nodded. “Neat trick. So who’s got her?”

  Freel nodded to Fitch who promptly shut down all of the images being projected from the Eyes of the Lord. He then picked up an inactive Eye of the Lord from a nearby table and readied it for viewing.

  With DeZantez, Kali found herself watching the horde’s assault on the tunnels. She saw an overview of the grey figures pouring from the tunnel, zooming images of agonised or dying Final Faith soldiers and the flashes of the intruders’ makeshift but lethal weapons. She had to disguise her shock as she saw Slowhand struggling in the grip of Faith guards. She had already met with indisputable proof that his mission to kill Fitch had failed, and now she knew why. Just like herself, events had overtaken him. Not for the first time, she reflected that she and the archer had a knack for being in the right place at the wrong time. It was almost as if, as Poul Sonpear had pointed out some months before, their presence in these places was somehow predestined. Now was not the time to worry about that, however, or Slowhand’s current fate. If she were to make sense of what was happening before her, she had to give it her full attention.

  Katherine Makennon was visible in the fray now, the armoured form of the Anointed Lord striding into the sublevel at the head of her men. Again, Kali caught a glimpse of Slowhand, trying to stop Makennon wading in. Wade in, of course, was what she did, and Kali had to give the woman her due – she could certainly bollock the bad guys. What happened next, however, was so unexpected and shocking that she wasn’t at all surprised to see Slowhand and his captors reel from it.

  Something hurtled out of the dark, darker than the tunnel from which it came. A thing of indeterminate shape, a storm cloud streak that moved at breakneck speed, whose outlines writhed before the eye. A shifting, octopus-like morass and an insane blur at the same time, as seemingly insubstantial as shadow as it shot straight at Makennon and whipped back towards the tunnel, wrapping about her as it did, absorbing her in its mass and carrying her away. In that instant – and only that instant – it was almost identifiable, as a black carriage drawn by wild-eyed, snorting horses from the pits. A moment later the shape and Katherine Makennon with it were gone.

  “Farking hell,” Kali said, as the image from the sphere flickered and died.

  Gabriella DeZantez was a little more controlled. “What in the name of the Lord was that?”

  “Interesting, isn’t it?” Freel said. “All I can say is that it – and the preceding events – were repeated at twelve other locations across the peninsula. And in each case the leader of that community was taken by that... thing.”

  “By previous events, I presume you mean the attack from the soul-stripped?” Kali said.

  Fitch looked surprised. “You know of the First Enemy?”

  The First Enemy, Kali thought. Only the more senior of the Final Faith called him that, those who remembered. DeZantez seemed not to be one of them, and so for her sake –

  “Why don’t you remind me, Fitch?”

  Fitch shrugged. “The result of a conceit of the first Anointed Lord, Jeremiah Nectus Dunn. He mistakenly believed the teachings of the Faith could be taken to the farthest reaches of our empi... of the land.”

  “The Sardenne Forest you mean.”

  Fitch nodded. “But Dunn was wrong. The people who live in that forsaken hinterland have greater things to fear than the Lord of All, as our people discovered to their cost.”

  “My, my, Querilous Fitch, that’s almost blasphemous,” Kali chided.

  Fitch could have been talking about any of the multifarious creatures that called the Sardenne home, and it would have served Dunn’s missionaries right if they had encountered them and not come home as a result. But he wasn’t talking about them, she knew. It wasn’t the bogarts and beasties of the great forest coming out of there that they had to worry about – the assault on Scholten Cathedral was far too coordinated for them. This was without doubt the work of the one ruling intelligence that called the Sardenne home. In an area called Bellagon’s Rip.

  Most people called him the Pale Lord.

  “He was the first serious resistance our Church encountered,” Fitch continued. “A sorcerer of power unprecedented, then and now. He found the presence of our people in the forest – in his forest – distasteful, and made that distaste abundantly clear. Those who ‘survived’ the encounter remain with him, I imagine, to this day. In the end the Faith and he made a truce. The Sardenne would be left alone and, unless we attempted to return, so would we.”

  Kali nodded. It was pleasing to see that some things made Fitch sweat as profusely as his victims. But with good reason. In Pontaine, at least, the Pale Lord had become something of a bogeyman. A necromancer by the name of Bastian Redigor, he had been banished from civilisation long ago and had retreated into exile in the depths of the Sardenne Forest, whereafter occasional sightings of his almost albino features and tall, thin, cloaked figure – who never seemed to age – had earned him the nickname of ‘the Pale Lord.’ It was what the Pale Lord did during these sightings, however, that had earned him his fearful reputation over the years. People near to the forest began to disappear, first in ones and twos and then in ever increasing numbers. If these people were ever seen again it was as a fleeting form glimpsed among the trees, empty and grey and engaged in mysterious business. These people had become slaves of the Pale Lord – he had taken their souls for purposes unknown – and they became known as the ‘soul-stripped.’ As the years had passed, more and more had been taken – the soul-stripped themselves taking people on their Lord’s behalf – so much so that unruly children were sent to bed with a promise that, if they did not behave, the Lord or his growing army of minions would come to ‘kiss them’ and take them away into the night.

  Oh yes, Kali knew that, because she’d been one of those children who’d lain awake night after night, peeking out fearfully from under the sheets. Thankfully, rather than turn her into a gibbering wreck, it had eventually instilled in her a curiosity for the unexplained that had defined the rest of her life.

  But why, after all these years, and as the Faith hadn’t returned to the Sardenne, was the Pale Lord attacking them?

  And how the hells had he been able to do what he did?

  “I thought your tunnels were shielded,” she said. “Weaved so powerfully nothing, not even the Pale Lord, could get through.”

  “They are. Or rather, were. The shields collapsed before the assault began. Just vanished. As, incidentally, did the abilities of every mage or shadowmage in the complex.”

  Kali’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Vanished how?”

  “We don’t know. They just –”

  “Fizzled out,” Kali finished, and sighed. “Just like Quinking’s Depths.”

  “Quinking’s Depths?”

  “Below Solnos,” Kali said absently. “The same thing happened there.”

  “Then I imagine you’re thinking that the reason the shields collapsed is related to the appearance of the machines near Solnos. And yo
u would be right. But only partly so.”

  “Oh?”

  “Those machines are not the only ones of their kind. There are three groups of them.”

  “What?”

  Fitch moved to a map of the peninsula, pointing out three locations. “Three groups of three machines rising from beneath the ground at precisely the same time. Their appearance was reported to us by our senders, just before their abilities... left them.”

  Kali hesitated. “Wait one minute. Are you trying to tell me this phenomena is peninsula-wide? That magic has been cancelled out everywhere?”

  “Yes. Our theory is that these machines have been activated from some central location by forces of the Pale Lord for just that purpose. It is with this that we need your help.”

  Kali folded her arms. “I thought that’s where I might come in. You want me to find out where this location is and shut these things down right?”

  Fitch nodded. “Only then would we have an effective defence against the First Enemy. Only then would we be able to effect a rescue of the Anointed Lord.”

  “And the others who were taken, of course...”

  “Of course.”

  “Okaaay,” Kali said. “And just what do you lot do in the meantime?”

  “Try and find out more about what the Pale Lord is planning,” Freel said. “To that end I ordered an Eye of the Lord despatched to the Sardenne.”

  Kali was impressed. She doubted very much that such a course of action would even have occurred to Fitch, who could think of nothing to do with his new toys other than spy on his flock.

  Sometimes you just needed to think, as it were, outside the collection box.

  “Show me,” Kali said.

  “I will,” Freel reassured her. “But the journey to and from the Sardenne takes time. We expect the Eye’s return in the next couple of hours.” The enforcer shrugged, half-smiled and spread his arms. “In the meantime, I suggest you make yourself at home.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  MAKE YOURSELF AT home, Freel had said. How exactly did you do that in the bosom of the most intolerant religion the peninsula had ever seen? Kali had contemplated popping upstairs to do a few numbers with the Eternal Choir – maybe something with a bit of a beat – or perhaps sneaking into Makennon’s quarters to grab herself a nice, hot bath, but she didn’t want to give Fitch a chance to play with his balls. She had even thought of getting the hells out of the cathedral for a while to down a flummox or three in the Ramblas, but the information she was waiting on was too important to miss.

  She tried to get to see Slowhand, But the archer was under heavy guard – access to no one but Fitch – and instead she found herself wandering the sublevels. She came at last to the naphtha chamber where the soul-stripped, who had been left behind after the Pale Lord’s assault were meeting, without objection, their ultimate end. The creatures’ fate was indicative of how Redigor had used them as nothing more than cannon fodder to draw Makennon out, and now their purpose was done, they were discarded.

  Kali was surprised to see DeZantez in the chamber, watching the mindless victims with sorrow rather than disgust in her eyes. As one soul-stripped after the other was placed within a naphtha cage, mindlessly compliant, she seemed even to sag before the weight of them, as if each victim took with it a little part of her. Maybe it did, Kali reflected. After all, as a Sister of the Order of the Swords of Dawn, these were the people whom DeZantez had sworn to protect, and they had been taken from her by the Pale Lord in obscene numbers.

  Watching them burn, Kali cringed, recalling her own close encounter with the gibbet and trying not to think how agonising her death could so easily have been. She was aided in this by what was perhaps an even greater horror. As the naphtha consumed them, the Pale Lord’s soldiers remained perfectly still, making no attempt to escape their gibbets and absolutely no sound other than the crackling and spitting of their own burning flesh. By all that was natural, they should have filled the underground with the sound of their screams but, whitened eyes staring unfeelingly ahead, their mortal forms departed the world uncomplaining, supplicant until the last to their dark master’s will.

  When it was done, Gabriella DeZantez touched all four points of the crossed-circle on her tunic and then placed her right palm on its centre, her head bowed in prayer. When her gaze rose once more Kali was surprised to see teardrops beading the corners of her eyes.

  “Maybe now,” DeZantez said, “their souls can somehow reach Kerberos.”

  Kali regarded her, and nodded non-commitedly. Considering the treatment she had received at this woman’s hands, she hadn’t expected such a human response from her but, then, she had already sensed that there was more to her than the average Filth drone. She shared their devoutness, yes, but she was clearly not part of the pack. There was an air of independence and a sense of humanity and, more importantly, justice about her. For a moment she wished she could share her hopes for the victims.

  “You don’t believe in ascension to Kerberos.” Gabriella observed, seeing her expression.

  Kali shrugged, bit her lip. “Let’s just say I’ve seen and heard a few things that make me question the received wisdom, particularly the teachings of the Filth.”

  DeZantez actually smiled at the slur. “That it is our destiny to ascend – to become something greater than our whole?”

  “Yes.”

  DeZantez pondered for a moment. “We have time. What if I could prove to you that when a deserving soul departs its body it does indeed travel to the place to which we all aspire – to the clouds of Kerberos?”

  “And just how would you do that? With some Faith parlour trick? No, I don’t think so.”

  “No trick. And nothing to do with the Faith. Except, of course as a reinforcement of our faith. No, this is something that was here before our Church. Something much, much older.”

  Gabriella snapped instructions to a nearby brother, an initiate by his cowl, to fetch something from her saddlebag, and he departed, returning a little while later with a small cloth-wrapped object. Gabriella unfolded the material almost reverently, revealing what appeared to be a shard of glass or crystal.

  “This is a piece of Freedom Mountain,” she explained. “It was loosened during a recent... let’s say visitation and removed from the site by a man named Crowe, as a souvenir of what happened there. Travis... he neglected to take it with him when we parted company.”

  “I don’t see what geology has to do with anything here.”

  “Take it,” DeZantez urged. Kali did, and found the shard unexpectedly light. “Now come with me.”

  Kali frowned, but did as asked, finding herself led along a number of corridors to a small chamber which had been converted into a makeshift field hospital to treat the few survivors of the recent attack. One of the cots held the badly injured body of a Faith brother for whom nothing more could be done. The dying man stared up at DeZantez with dimming eyes as she stood over him, a rattle of recognition at her Swords of Dawn surplice escaping his dry throat. Gabriella smiled with genuine warmth and sat gently down on the side of the cot, taking the man’s hand.

  “This is Brother Marcus,” she explained, squeezing his hand. “Brother Marcus is a good man, with simple beliefs. Chief among those beliefs has always been that when his time comes he will ascend to Kerberos and there find the greater glory that awaits us all, just as the Final Faith teaches.” She leaned forward to Brother Marcus’s face and spoke softly. “You understand, don’t you, Marcus, that your time is coming soon?”

  Brother Marcus nodded almost imperceptibly and swallowed, as did Kali. DeZantez had clearly spent time here while she’d been wandering around.

  “I am with you,” Gabriella said.

  Kali shifted uneasily on her feet, but said nothing as DeZantez continued to comfort Marcus and wait for the man to die. There was, she presumed, some point to this. After a few more minutes, Marcus’s hand suddenly tightened in Gabriella’s, he bucked once and gave a long sigh. This particular member
of the Final Faith had breathed his last.

  DeZantez sighed. “What do you see?” She asked Kali.

  “A man gone to meet his maker,” Kali responded. “But who, or what, that maker is I wouldn’t want to say.”

  “Look again,” Gabriella instructed. “Through the shard.”

  “What?”

  “The shard. Freedom Mountain had a direct physical connection to Kerberos, and that has given it some unique properties. Look again,” she added. “Hurry, girl, or it will be too late.”

  Girl? Kali thought. There wasn’t that much difference in their ages and, in fact, she was pretty sure she was the elder here. Nevertheless, she shrugged, warily raised the shard before her eyes, and caught her breath. Because what the shard revealed was that Brother Marcus hadn’t yet gone anywhere. His soul, his essence – Kali wasn’t sure what to call it – separated itself from the physical form like pollen shaken from a flower by a spring breeze. It was made up of sparkling, scintillating beads of light as vibrant as anything Kali had ever seen. As they emerged from his lifeless body, they formed themselves into a recognisable semblance of Brother Marcus – albeit distorted, as if viewed through a carnival mirror – forming and stretching upwards, towards the ceiling of the chamber. And then, with an actual, noticeable glance down at his corporeal remains, through the ceiling.

  Kali continued to stare upwards, working out where beneath Scholten this particular chamber was located, trying to rationalise what she had just seem. But she couldn’t. Because unless Brother Marcus was heading for a final tankard in the Bloody Merry – which, considering the Faith’s abstinence laws, seemed unlikely – there was only one thing up there. Quite some way up there.

  “The clouds of Kerberos.” Kali said softly.

  “The clouds of Kerberos.” Gabriella confirmed.

  “I... I don’t know what to say.”

  “Then say nothing. But understand that this is why I have given myself to the Faith. That, despite what you think, some of us truly believe.”