Thief of the Ancients

by Mike Wild

  “Aye, well, I only did the pullin’. The man yer’ve got ta thank for firin’ ya yer lifeline is over there.”

  Kali looked to where Brundle’s head inclined, and noticed another figure on the clifftop for the first time, reeling the wire that had saved them into a coil. The black-garbed figure with the scar on his face was familiar to her – and yet at the same time wasn’t.

  “Him again?” she whispered. “I saw him in Gransk, and on the ship…”

  “If yer expectin’ me to know who he is, ah haven’t a clue,” Brundle said. “All I know is he turned a blind-eye down by the flutterbys at the moment we needed it.”

  Kali nodded and, bidding Freel to stay where he was, walked over. Something about the stranger suggested that she should approach him alone. The dark-maned figure continued to patiently wind his wire but he eyed her warily from under lowered eyelids as she approached.

  “I wanted to thank you,” Kali said. “For what you –”

  She stopped mid-phrase. The line fully wound now, the stranger was twisting himself around to place it in a quiver on his back, and as he did she caught the outline of a bow slung beside it. Partly hidden by his body before now, it was of design uniquely familiar to her. This wasn’t just any longbow. There was only one longbow like it on the whole of the peninsula.

  “Where did you get that?” Kali asked suspiciously.

  “This?” the stranger queried. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because it’s called Suresight and it belongs to a friend of mine. A good friend.”

  “Really? Even one who deserted you?”

  Kali felt surprise and a slight pull of anger, her mind flitting back to Scholten a year before. But Kali quashed the feeling, more concerned with how the stranger knew what he knew.

  “I don’t know what they were but I’m sure he had his reasons,” she replied, tight-lipped. “What I do know is he wouldn’t voluntarily relinquish ownership of that bow.”

  “He wouldn’t. And he didn’t.”

  Kali’s hand lowered to her gutting knife, interpreting the words as a threat. “So I repeat – where did you get it?”

  The stranger looked at her fully for the first time. A slight smile pulled at his lips and, though it was colder than she remembered, Kali recognised it instantly. But more than that it was the eyes. She knew those eyes.

  “Slowhand?” she breathed, in disbelief.

  The archer regarded her steadily, as if reluctant to admit what she evidently knew, and his smile remained as cold as when it had formed.

  “Hi, Hooper,” he said. “How you doin’?”

  “Ohhhhh, you know,” Kali said tremulously.

  Her mind was spinning, not just with the impossible reappearance of her ex but his look, attitude, the fact that after vanishing from her life without so much as a by-your-leave he could be here, standing in front of her at all.

  “It was you – you who killed the archers and the shadowmages. I should have guessed. Killiam, what the hells are you doing here?”

  “Long story,” the archer said, and, the line stashed, began to move away across the cliff. As he did, he nodded to Freel who, having overhead the exchange, nodded numbly back.

  Kali wasn’t going to have Slowhand abandon her in the same way he had in Scholten, and she trod heavily after him, grabbing him by the shoulder.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  The archer span. “Why don’t you tell me where I’m going?” he barked. “After all, I can’t seem to make a move without you. A successful move, that is.”

  “What the hells are you talking about?”

  “Like I said, long story.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Nothing to hear.”

  Kali’s grip tightened. Her eyes narrowed as she spoke.

  “You’ve changed,” she said. “And I don’t just mean physically. Something’s happened.”

  “It’s personal.”

  “What, and the fact that I’ve spent a third of my life with you, sleeping with you, saving your life and you saving mine, going through all kinds of shit together, means you don’t know me well enough to tell me something personal?”

  “There was a girl, okay!” Slowhand barked. “More than a girl.”

  “So what else is new? And?”

  “She died.”

  Kali felt herself reel, but said nothing.

  “She died, Kal,” Slowhand repeated, after a moment. The way he spoke suggested a return to their old familiarity and the break in his voice suggested he did want to talk about it, after all. “Her name was Shay and she died because of me.”

  Kali stared at her ex-lover, gaze flickering, and then slowly, hesitantly, put her arms about him and pulled him to her. “Tell me,” she whispered in his ear.

  Slowhand did. About the carnival, about Shay, about the attack and about Fitch.

  “FITCH,” HE GASPED, lying there.

  “Fitch,” the psychic manipulator had repeated in that strange, high-pitched voice. It was as if he’d had his voicebox transplanted by that of a child’s, or perhaps a bird’s. “Querilous Fitch. Abandoned Fitch. Dead Fitch.” He’d cocked his head to the side. “Or would have been had that master of destiny, Killiam Slowhand, had his way.”

  He – Slowhand – had thought back to their last meeting, a year before, in the Sardenne, when their roles had been reversed. The psychic manipulator, smashed and broken by the juggenath, had lain helpless beneath him, more so when he had rammed one of his arrows cleanly through the bastard, impaling him to the ground.

  “Looking good,” he’d said, trying to disguise the fact his throat was so dry.

  “Flatterer.” Fitch took a breath and the bladders deflated like tiny lungs. Briny liquid bubbled and popped from the tops of tubes. “Not a pretty sight, am I? Unfit for the eyes of women or children. It’s really quite remarkable how much damage the body can take and yet not die. In my case, as in your’s, the damage was extensive – bones shattered, internal organs crushed – and were it not for the sheer power of my will I would be one more pile of crumbling bones whose flesh had succumbed to the many dangers of the Sardenne.” The psychic manipulator almost giggled. “I thank you, by the way, for the arrow you… left with me. It gave me the means to defend myself while my mind effected sufficient repairs to drag myself to safety.”

  “Willpower can achieve remarkable things, I’m told,” Slowhand answered through gritted teeth. “You know, I once stopped – well, dating for a week.”

  “I’m not talking about willpower, you fool. If it were simple willpower, stand up!”

  “You know I can’t.”

  “I can help you do so.”

  “How and why in the hells would you do that?”

  “The abilities I began to hone in the Sardenne were, sadly, not enough to repair myself. But have since become as precise as a surgeon’s tools. I can restore you to what you were.”

  He swallowed. “That’s the how. What about the why?”

  “Because I need your help. Against the Final Faith.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I realise how that must surprise you, but much has changed within its ranks. When at last I returned from the Sardenne, I found – how do you say – a cuckoo in the nest?”

  “The biggest thing that’s cuckoo in that nest is you, you sadistic bastard.”

  “I enjoyed my work, I do not deny it. But ceased to enjoy it when I found the whole reason for it was being subverted at the highest level.”

  “Subverted? By Makennon?”

  “Not Makennon. The Anointed Lord no longer holds primacy over our Church. Instead, it is in the hands of one who would make a dark covenant with the Hel’ss.”

  Fitch told him, then, what Kali and he had, by now, learned of Redigor’s duplicity, and his mind whirled as he worked out the identity of the only member of the Faith in a position to do what had been done.

  “Freel?” he’d said disbelievingly.

  “Your friend is no
more. The wheel of destiny has turned.”

  “Oh, there’s a wheel, now,” he said with some exasperation. “Newsflash, Fitch. I turned my back on that life for this one because that whole ‘destiny’ thing left me with no choice.”

  “Look around you, archer,” Fitch said matter-of-factly. “This life is ended.”

  His gaze moved across the Big Top, settled on the pathetically slumped body of Shay. Her eyes were staring right at him, but instead of the support and comfort they once offered, they were not seeing him at all.

  “And do you know why this life has ended?” Fitch continued. “Because of the choice you made. Because of that choice, your little sweetheart over there died. The simple truth is all our destinies are linked. Because of you she was destined to die…”

  Whether Fitch’s was deliberately provoking him or not, he’d roared. But it was the roar of a declawed beast, and all he was able to do was writhe impotently on the ground.

  “…and because of you I was destined to live.”

  For a moment, he didn’t realise what Fitch had meant. And then –

  “The arrow,” he breathed, and laughed with the sick realisation.

  “The arrow.”

  He lay there in silence, his breathing becoming shallower, until Fitch spoke again.

  “Kali Hooper is once more in pursuit of the Pale Lord,” he said. “Will you help her?”

  “Hooper doesn’t need my help. She’ll survive. She always does.”

  “Perhaps not this time. And if she falls, someone will need to take her place.”

  He laughed again. “What are you trying to put over on me, Fitch? That I could step into her shoes? That in all this talk of ‘the Four’ someone got their sums wrong and I am, in fact, ‘the fifth’? Moolshit.”

  Fitch smiled. “I admire your pretensions, but sadly you will always be a supporting player – one of many, whether they know it or not. No, what I attempt to suggest is that if Miss Hooper falls, I will need you as my eyes and ears if I am to defeat the Pale Lord.”

  “Why this sudden interest in everyone’s welfare? I thought the whole point of the Filth was to coerce them into surrendering their existence to Kerberos in some kind of… rupture.”

  “The word is rapture, archer. And so it is. Not to be taken by the Hel’ss.”

  “The way I see it one big blob in the sky is much the same as another.”

  “Then you couldn’t be more wrong. Kerberos is our God, our Lord of All, not the Hel’ss. It is with his power that the future of this world lies.”

  “Like I said, moolshit. Fundamentalist moolshit.”

  “Do you want to stay here and die? Or do you want to find out? Make a choice, archer. Choose your destiny.”

  He stared up at Fitch with vision that was already beginning to fade. He was dying, there was no doubt about that, so there was nothing to lose. For Shay, he might even be able to find out what wasn’t letting him go. Sometimes, he guessed, being in league with the devils was better than being in league with nothing at all.

  “This is all some kind of game to you, isn’t it? But I’ll play. What do you want me to do?”

  “Stay close to Kali Hooper, for wherever she is, Bastian Redigor will be close by.”

  He swallowed. “Do what you have to do.”

  And so Fitch began. To restore him. But also to change him. It made sense when, later, he saw in a mirror a different body, a different face looking back. After all, if he was to be Fitch’s eyes and ears, it wouldn’t have done to be recognised by the Pale Lord.

  Yes, it had made sense. But it hadn’t stopped the screaming.

  “IT HAD TO hurt,” Kali agreed. “But not as much as… oh, gods, ’Liam, I’m sorry. So very, very sorry.”

  “I know. But, hey, at least the bad guy is dead.”

  Kali nodded. “That’s what bothers me. What are you supposed to do now? Report to Fitch? How? Where? What exactly is it that he wants out of all this?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine, better, probably,” Slowhand said. “But in the meantime, I guess there are other things to think about.” He pointed down the slope of Horizon Point, to where Redigor had corralled his hostages. There, among the stilled forms of the Brogmas, Jengo Pim and his men were liberating them all from their chains and, as Kali walked down, three figures emerged from the crowd. Hetty Scrubb and Pete Two-Ties were overjoyed to see her but it was Red Deadnettle who physically demonstrated how much, scooping Kali into his arms and giving her a bearhug that almost made her projectile vomit her thrap. As it was, as she felt herself being squeezed tighter and tighter, she couldn’t help letting out a prolonged fishy burp.

  “Oops,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “No me,” Red said. “Me sorry.”

  “How you doing, Red?” Kali said as she was plonked back on the ground. “You all right? Hetty? Pete? You?”

  “We have been prisoners of kunto, but have survived, Kalee,” Hetty declared, somewhat fierily. “We are all fine.”

  “Apart from,” Pete Two-Ties said, “‘door also a woman’, eight letters.”

  Kali nodded. Much as she loved the others, Dolorosa had been the one foremost in her mind, and she moved through the crowd to her. The old woman was on her stretcher at the heart of the group, being tended by Martha DeZantez. Gabriella’s mother mopped her brow with a torn piece of skirt while Dolorosa herself stared at the sky, wincing as she did.

  “How is she?” Kali asked quietly, squatting down.

  “Her infection has spread,” the archivist said. “In a wound this serious, she should be dead. Tough old girl.”

  “Eet issa nothing,” Dolorosa mumbled unexpectedly. “Randy Cromwell Quaid once hadda me impaled witha his throbbing sabre.”

  Martha reddened and coughed embarrassedly.

  “No-a, wait,” Dolorosa said, only half there, “it wassa the Robbing Sabre.”

  “I’m sorry,” Martha said. “She’s delirious.”

  “No, she’s not,” Kali smiled, stroking Dolorosa’s hair. “She used to be a pirate.”

  “Did she?” Martha said, impressed. In an effort to keep Dolorosa with them, she asked, “What was the name of your ship?”

  Dolorosa sighed happily. “Eet wassa the Fluffy Bunny.”

  “That doesn’t sound very… piratey.”

  “It was the Run For Your Money,” Kali corrected.

  “Better,” Martha agreed.

  Kali paused. “Has she mentioned her husband at all – Aldrededor?”

  “Something about running away with a space sheep?”

  “Right. That’s not what it sounds like, either.”

  It was good to hear Aldrededor had evaded the Faith’s clutches, but, wherever he and the Tharnak now were, she couldn’t begin to guess how he must be feeling having left Dolorosa behind. Kali bit her lip. “Martha, is there anything you can do for her?”

  The woman shook her head. “Keep her comfortable is all. I’m sorry, Kali.”

  Kali nodded, and stood. Mercifully, she had no time to reflect on her friend’s mortal state, as Brundle barrelled up to her and dragged her towards the cliff.

  “You should see this,” he said. “Somethin’s happenin’.”

  Kali joined the dwarf at the cliff edge, as did a number of others who’d spotted the same thing he had. Directly below was the spot where a portion of the Hel’ss Spawn with which Redigor had communicated had plummeted into the sea. It was still there, and still agitated, though not as agitated as the rest of its mass, farther out to sea. As they watched, it moved to reabsorb itself, but when it did its agitation seemed to be exacerbated, not calmed. A ripple effect headed inland and water began to crash against the cliffs in great spumes, some of it almost as high as the spot on which they all stood, catching them in its spray.

  “Aw, shit,” Brundle said. “Ah think there’s a storm comin’.”

  “I’m guessing you don’t mean a normal storm, right?” Slowhand queried.

  The dwarf ground his teeth. “Nay,
mah friend. Ah don’t mean a normal storm.”

  “He’s right,” Kali said, pointing. “Take a look out there.”

  Everyone’s gaze shifted offshore, towards the main body of the swirlpools, where the maws had begun to spin even more violently than before. Spumes had become plumes, and exploded into the air where the swirlpools clashed, and where they crashed back down again they rolled from the lips of the maelstroms in the form of huge, destructive waves. These, in turn, disrupted the swirlpools further, carrying them with them on their crest, raising them and tipping them so their normal rotation was stretched and skewed, and as a result they began to move through the waves erratically, unpredictably, more liquid tornados than the swirlpools they had been.

  The deadly band that surrounded the island seemed to be going absolutely insane.

  What was worse, it was heading directly for shore. Directly for them.

  “You think we’ve pitsed it off?” Slowhand asked.

  “No,” Kali said, frowning. “I think something’s wrong.”

  “Maybe Redigor stuck in its throat.”

  “Something more. There, where the Black Ship went down…”

  There was no exact spot where the ship had sunk, of course, merely great swathes of water filled with its shattered wreckage. But wherever wreckage could be seen, so could something else. A glowing orange tint that was spreading through the swirlpools like a powerful dye.

  “What is that?” Slowhand mused.

  “The ship’s amberglow reactors,” Kali said. “They’re disintegrating.”

  “Why would that affect the Hel’ss Spawn?”

  “Gods know.”

  “Aye, well, we can play twenty questions later,” Brundle growled. “Right now, we need to get these people underground.”

  Brundle was right. The deadly ring of the Hel’ss Spawn was already closing on the island and great splashes of it were pummelling its shores and cliffs, rising higher and encroaching more inland every second. A heavy and viscous orange rain started to splatter the steps and the ruins, and then the edges of Horizon Point itself, and wherever the rain fell chaos was the result. Ground fleetingly became fog-like or gaseous, or as solid as stone, flickering through all the colours of the spectrum and more before liquefying before their eyes. The shapes of boulders changed, spherical one second, square and spear-like the next, taking on the textures of glass or wood or sponge and ultimately nothing at all. Some of the upper buildings of the ruins folded and bent on their foundations, as if viewed through a funhouse mirror, as flexible as rubber one moment, fragile as paper another, before the stresses they suffered made them, too, lose their solid state and drain slowly away.