Thief of the Ancients

by Mike Wild

  Redigor smiled. “No. Vultures are creatures of instinct, their pickings what they find. We, on the other hand, are creatures of refinement, and the pain we shall inflict upon you will be exquisite. Think of it, child – as the darkness comes and the screams of your race echo across the land, we shall thrive.”

  “Not if I can help it...”

  Kali roared and leaped for Redigor, unsheathing her gutting knife as she did, but her hand was caught in a vice-like grip and Redigor’s eyes stared down at her, wide and wild.

  “What is it you are trying to do?” He said, almost compassionately.

  “You said it yourself, Redigor,” Kali gasped as she twisted in his grip. “There’s an order to these things and you’ve had your turn. The Ur’Raney don’t belong here any more.”

  “And you intend to stop me how? By scratching me with your knife?”

  “I’ll stop you, you bastard.”

  Redigor released his grip, but Kali found herself frozen before him. The Pale Lord gazed at the pillar of souls and took a deep, satisfied breath. “This isn’t a time for weapons, child, this is a time for celebration. Dance for me.”

  “What?”

  “Dance for me!”

  Kali didn’t do dance, she didn’t like dance, she didn’t understand dance, but she danced. Danced for the Pale Lord. Spasming and twitching at first, trying to resist, her feet began to tap the floor, and then she began to spin, moving away from the Pale Lord, down the aisle, her body whipping around again, and as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t stop – couldn’t stop, didn’t stop, until she reached the far end of the Chapel of Screams. She slammed into the wall beneath Slowhand with numbing force and, her dance done, slumped to the floor.

  “Did you really think you would be able to make a difference?” Redigor asked.

  Kali shook her head and wiped a slick of blood from her face. She realised it was dripping on her from the archer suspended helplessly above her. Oh gods, Slowhand, she thought as her head spun. What was it she had gotten her lover into? What had she gotten them all into?

  Kali struggled to rise, staggered, retched, intending to go for the Pale Lord again. It was only as she began to weave between the tombs that a whisper from the helpless Slowhand halted her in her tracks.

  “No, Hooper... no, it’s too late...”

  Kali turned to look up at him, but focused again on the pillar of souls spearing the Chapel roof. It was impossible from where she stood to see the top, but she didn’t need to see Kerberos to know that it had at last been reached. The pillar of souls suddenly pulsed brightly, its helpless captives rushing up, and a second later pulsed again, this time downwards. The pillar of souls darkened as if flooded by a rush of arterial blood. Not so dark that Kali couldn’t see what was within, though, and she drew back as the base of the pillar struggled to contain a miasmic wave of grasping, clutching, spectral forms, tearing at their own and screaming so loudly it seemed to pierce the very fabric of her ears.

  One triumphant cry could be heard above the screaming; Redigor, his hands held high.

  “They come!” He declared, laughing. “They come!”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  KALI HAD WONDERED how exactly the final exchange might take place – how Redigor’s delivery of the Ur’Raney back to Twilight would occur – and as she staggered back she got her answer.

  The expansive, seething, screaming base of the pillar of souls filled and bloated, and exploded, dazzling those present. As Kali watched it through her fingers it blasted harmlessly through her and the wall of the Chapel behind her, towards the tombs. It wasn’t harmless, though, was it? It was deadly, conjured across the millennia to be as insidious as anything could be. At least to those who had been chosen to be the recipients of what it contained. Kali could not help be awed by the sight, but knew full well that, within the next few seconds, it was going to end the existence of countless innocents who, through no fault of their own, had become caught up in the schemes of a madman who had plotted against them almost since before the human race had been born.

  How would they end, though?

  Despite herself, Kali couldn’t help but ask the question. She pictured the soul wave expanding rapidly through the tombs, individual tendrils of it darting into each of the thousands of ancient resting places like snakes before snapping back out, carrying within each of them the physical essence that had been preserved in the remains of the Ur’Raney. Then, perhaps with a violent spasm from each of the soul-stripped assembled before the tombs, these snakes would strike, darting into necks, eyes, mouths, preparing to infuse themselves into the horrible emptiness from which the true inhabitants of these bodies had been so cruelly torn.

  It sickened Kali – the awareness that somehow these things had to know which tomb to seek out, which body to violate, and they would move to them as unerringly as salmon returning to their spawning ground.

  This, though, was all her imagining, and by the time she could see the Chapel once more, she realised she might never know.

  Those souls belonging to Redigor’s Ur’Raney Court had already found their homes, slipping into the bodies of Katherine Makennon and the other dignitaries as easily as worms into soft soil, and the effects on their hosts was immediate. Soft groans escaped each of them. Their eyes widened in response to the intrusion, then took on a peculiar blankness. This faded away, to be replaced by new eyes that took in their surroundings first with an almost childlike innocence, then a growing curiosity, and then a hunger unlike any Kali had ever seen.

  They began to metamorphosise – ever so slightly but enough – taking on the slightest sharpening of their physiognomy, a subtle elongation of the ears, and the lightest of green tints to their skin. Kali could also have sworn – but this may only have been because of the manner in which they carried themselves – that they grew taller.

  With almost reptilian twitches of their necks, each of the Ur’Raney rannaat sighed and, as one, turned to face Bastian Redigor. Their Lord stood smiling at them, a welcoming smile, his mu’sah’rin already draping herself languorously about his neck.

  “Hooper...” Slowhand’s voice said weakly from above Kali. “This might be the time for that ‘long shot’ you mentioned to Freel.”

  Kali said nothing.

  “Hooper, the long shot?”

  This time, Kali bit her lip.

  “Hooper, you do have a long shot, right?”

  Don’t ask me that, ’Liam, don’t ask, Kali thought.

  What was it she had said to Freel, back in the Sardenne – I tend to work on the hoof? Well, she wasn’t on the hoof now, was she, she was on her backside, collapsed helpless against a wall, and it didn’t look like her long shot was going to be materialising at all.

  “Sure, ’Liam. I’ll ask Baz to stop, shall I? Get him to send his people home to Kerberos?”

  A drop of blood fell from the archer, and he spoke slowly, quietly. “They have no home other than the hells, you know that. They don’t belong on Kerberos and they don’t belong here. Hooper, come on, you always have something up your sleeve...”

  “Not this time. I’m sorry.”

  “Kali...”

  “Not this time!”

  Shocked, Slowhand stared down at her. But Kali was not looking up and all he saw was the top of her head.

  “Kal,” he said. “We’ve all lost people close to us, and we know how much that hurt. Now that’s about to happen again, only on a massive scale. As I see it, as soon as that pillar disappears, they’ve lost their loved ones for ever, but so long as it’s there we have a chance to bring them back... somehow.”

  Kali’s eyes slowly rose to the base of the pillar of souls, still emptying itself of the last dregs of Ur’Raney souls. What the archer said was true – while that pillar still existed, there might still be time to save them somehow, to bring them back, for something to happen – no matter how much of a long shot it might be.

  “Hooper,” Slowhand said. “You’re the only one who can do th
is...”

  “I know,” Kali whispered to herself.

  “What?”

  “I said, I know!” Kali shouted, picking herself from the floor. Between her and Redigor, the rannaat, who were just about to move away from their tombs, turned at her defiant cry. She uttered a primal roar as she ran along the aisle to launch herself at the Pale Lord. The rannaat looked almost amused, and looked to their Lord for guidance. Redigor, looking less amused, shook his head.

  Kali pounded towards him, beads of sweat falling from her.

  “Enough,” Redigor said. “You are a meddlesome pain, child. I could easily strip your soul and take your body for my collection, but I do not believe I wish to keep either.”

  Redigor’s arm shot out and he curled his fingers. Kali found herself halting in her tracks and collapsing to her knees with a cry of agony as something seemed to close around her heart and pull. She looked down, her mouth falling open in shock and pain. Whisps of light were being drawn from within her. As he had with so many before her, Bastian Redigor was extracting her soul – and doing so, it seemed, in as slow and as agonising fashion as he could.

  “Hey,” Kali uttered between clenched teeth, “that just isn’t fair...”

  “And since I do not wish to keep your soul, child,” Redigor continued, ignoring her. “Why don’t I simply tear it out?”

  The elven sorcerer jerked his outstretched hand again and Kali wailed with pain. Though she remained on her knees, she was bent backwards, her spine and neck arched like a bow, throat taut, mouth stretched open as far as it would go. The light poured from her and across the Chapel to Redigor’s fingertips. There the Pale Lord breathed in deeply and with satisfaction, as if he were drinking her.

  Kali groaned. The more her soul was drawn from her, the more agonising it became. She was struggling desperately now to hang onto the last of her being, but she was fighting a losing battle. Her vision darkening, her thoughts dimming, feeling as though she were adrift in some dark expanse, she was only peripherally aware of a shape that staggered into her distorted vision, and then of two blurry flashes that sliced through the air before her. Through the air and through her departing soul. Kali screamed in agony as the whole of her self suddenly snapped back in like an elastic band, and she bucked on the floor taking deep, gulping breaths.

  In that instant she realised that Redigor’s grip was gone, and that she was whole again.

  Whole, and not alone.

  “Stay behind me,” Gabriella DeZantez said, wielding the Deathclaws. “I guess what they say about these things slicing souls is true.”

  What? Kali thought. What they say about the claws is true? But Gabriella has the claws and Gabriella is dead... she died.

  Gabriella was dead... she had seen her die in the Sardenne, at the hands of the juggennath. But at the same time here she was.

  Kali shook her head and saw Gabriella, pulling her to her feet. The Enlightened One was scarred and battered, her armour crushed and misshapen beneath her torn surplice, and a dark rivulet of blood leaked from the side of her mouth, but she was there. And behind her, staring with a strange mixture of curiosity and rage, was the Pale Lord.

  “No, no,” Kali said to Gabriella, trying to push her away, “he’s too powerful. Get out of here, get out of here now.”

  Gabriella grabbed her by the shoulders. “It’s all right, remember.”

  “All right?”

  “Yes, all right! Now, stay behind me.”

  Kali nodded, not really understanding. And then she began to remember. Remember because Redigor was attempting the same trick on Gabriella that he had tried on her, but with absolutely no effect at all. Gabriella, in fact, still had her back turned to him, and she hadn’t even noticed what he was attempting to do. Then – Redigor still trying without success to rip out her soul – she turned and began to limp slowly up the aisle towards him, drawing Kali in behind her.

  From over Gabriella’s shoulder Kali saw the Pale Lord hesitate.

  “What is this?” He said. “Some kind of resistance? Who are you, girl?”

  “My name Gabriella DeZantez. I am a Sister of the Order of the Swords of Dawn.”

  The Pale Lord’s eyes narrowed. “And pray, Sister, what brings you here?”

  “I come to smite thee.”

  The Pale Lord looked, for a second, amazed, and – as Gabriella and Kali continued their approach. But then his face reverted to its usual arrogant mask and he raised his arms towards Gabriella. Kali knew what was coming and it was clear that so, too, did Gabriella.

  The Enlightened One’s fingers curled into the top of her breastplate, ripping it away, and she drew in a deep, preparatory breath.

  “Bring it on, you unholy bastard!”

  Bastian Redigor’s lip curled.

  “Very well. We shall see how strong you are.”

  Lightning burst forth from his fingertips, smacking Gabriella directly in the chest. It had no physical effect other than to slow her slightly, discharging in bright arcs and cracks about her shoulders as she pushed against it. Redigor loosed another bolt, equally ineffective, and his eyes widened. He thrust his arms forward once more and this time a plume of fire lanced towards Kali’s protector, bursting about her body. Kali ducked, but still Gabriella moved forward.

  Now Redigor tried ice, and the crackling, steaming bolts of magical energy slammed into Gabriella with a serpentine hiss but, again, only slowed her in her tracks. It was like struggling forward against a strong wind, and this was exactly what Redigor tried next, summoning a gale to pummel Gabriella that, while it set every loose object in the Chapel flying, she strode through as if it were an inconvenient breeze.

  The pair of them were halfway up the Chapel’s aisle now, nothing stopping them reaching Redigor.

  The Chapel was filled with shrieking hags as phantom horrors materialised out of every corner and swept at Gabriella, threatening to tear her apart. As they came, so too did great, writhing snakes whose wide, fanged maws bit down on her. Nor were they the last of what Redigor had to offer. Spectral daggers hurled themselves at her in wave after wave, fist-sized explosions detonated about her body, and stone barriers assembled themselves out of the floor, only to crumble before Gabriella’s determined march. The Pale Lord actually looked visibly shaken now – was perhaps even becoming drained – but rather than feel a sense of impending victory Kali felt increasing concern for Gabriella. It was true that the Enlightened One seemed unstoppable in her progress, but Gabriella seemed at last to be weakening before it.

  She moved more slowly now and, above the noise of the assault, Kali thought that she even heard Gabriella wheeze with strain. She wanted to say stop now, that’s enough, you’ve done what you can, but she knew she couldn’t. If Gabriella gave up now the two of them would be dead, and any chance of stopping Redigor gone for good. Suddenly all of Kali’s attention was focused not on Redigor’s continuing barrage but on Gabriella herself.

  A great, unremitting river of destruction poured from Redigor’s fingertips, slamming relentlessly into Gabriella. No one, however gifted, could withstand such destruction for much longer, and Kali’s heart sank as Gabriella at last began to falter. She felt the sheer impotence of her own position, the fact that she couldn’t help the woman at all. Knowing that she would be inviting instant obliteration if she stepped from behind Gabriella’s protective guard, all she could do was will the Enlightened One onwards despite her mounting pain.

  And more than pain.

  At first Kali wasn’t quite sure what she was seeing, but Gabriella’s muscles were now less pronounced than before, and somehow deteriorated. Her skin had lost its golden sheen, becoming less vibrant. With horror Kali realised that this wasn’t simply a reaction to the suffering Gabriella was enduring; she wasn’t just weakening before Redigor’s onslaught, she was aging before it. Kali placed a hand on her shoulder, felt bone rather than muscle beneath her fingers.

  Oh gods, what’s happening to her?

  The answer seemed clea
r. As immune to magic as Gabriella had announced herself to be, she might have had the ability to spend her entire life shrugging off any one of the Pale Lord’s individual attacks – of anyone’s attacks – and somehow recovered. But what she had suffered from Redigor collectively in the space of minutes was already a lifetime’s worth. She had been drained of everything she had in attempting to save her, in attempting to save everyone, and Gabriella DeZantez’s life was ending right before her eyes.

  Redigor’s barrage continued and Gabriella, having almost reached him, faltered, staggered, and crumpled to the floor, more bone than flesh.

  Redigor lowered his arms and looked down. His eyes widened and he bent and plucked the Deathclaws from Gabriella’s twitching hands.

  “Ah,” he said, “I’ve been looking for these for a long, long time.”

  Kali’s rage was incandescent as she stood before him, but she could do nothing. If she made a single move, the elf would reduce her to dust.

  “Now,” Redigor said, “wouldn’t you agree that was just a waste of time?”

  Kali’s eyes rose to him, but the Pale Lord was calmly looking at her, awaiting an answer to his question. He wanted an answer, Kali realised, so that he could bask in his supremacy, and, in all honesty, she wasn’t sure that she wouldn’t have to give the one he desired. But not yet. Not yet. She looked slowly around the Chapel of Screams, at Slowhand, at Freel, down at Gabriella DeZantez, and then up at Makennon, from whose eyes a stranger stared haughtily down. She hoped that they understood she’d tried her best, and that this time her long shot hadn’t paid off.

  Her eyes returned to the Pale Lord. As they did, she heard something that the Pale Lord hadn’t yet picked up on. It was a sound that she had been hoping to hear almost since she’d arrived at the Sardenne, a sound that when she had first heard it had filled her with dread, but which, now, buoyed her heart.

  That was the thing about long shots, she guessed. Sometimes they took a while to arrive.

  “Actually, no,” she said to Redigor, “I wouldn’t agree at all. What Gabriella did wasn’t a waste of time, it bought us time.”