Thief of the Ancients

by Mike Wild

  But cross the bridge she must. Because at its far end, in the exact centre of the cavern and towards which the other three bridges also led, was what she presumed was her ultimate destination. A huge column of intertwined, multicoloured lightning that shot powerful whips of energy throughout the cavern and towards its roof, dancing and dissipating where they struck its walls with a force Kali could hear and feel even this far below. This had to be the phenomenon that Brundle had mentioned to her.

  The Thunderflux.

  Whatever the Thunderflux was.

  Kali swallowed. It wasn’t so much because the phenomenon looked as though it might be capable of incinerating her at the merest touch, but because, if what Brundle said was true, that inside it the truth lay. The truth. The truth she had been searching for for years. The fate of the Old Races. The secret of who she was. The destiny of mankind.

  All she had to do was reach it, and the answers would be hers.

  Kali’s heart thudded as she stepped onto the bridge, immediately backtracking as a wave crashed down directly in front of her, swamping the narrow thoroughfare and leaving behind a detritus of seaweed that dangled from the stone like vines. Kali took another step forward, feeling some of the aquatic matter crunch beneath her bare feet and some, its surface suckered, adhere to her soles like glue. She kicked it away and continued on, watching the ebb and flow of the waters beneath her every step of the way. A wave crashed directly under the bridge and a heavy spray buffeted her on both sides, and then she ducked, clinging onto the rock, as the bridge was swamped in a backwash. Kali was knocked onto her side, almost slithering off the bridge on the slime that coated it, but managed to hook a foot in some of the seaweed on its opposite edge, preventing her fall. She heaved herself onto her hands and knees again, most of her body coated now in a green marine goo, and uttered a small curse as she stared ahead and saw there was perhaps still two thirds of the bridge to go. She would not be stopped now, though, and decided to use the bridge to her advantage rather than treat it as an obstacle.

  Kali waited where she was, hanging on for dear life, as three more waves crashed about her, and then, having worked out a rough pattern to the water’s movements, raised herself into a sprint position and flung herself forward. The slime caused her to lose her footing almost immediately, of course, and she managed only three pounding steps, but that was exactly what she wanted, and she allowed herself to fall forward, crashing back onto the slime and allowing it to do what slime did best. Grimacing as her body became coated in an ever accumulating layer of green sludge, pulling a wrapping of seaweed with her, Kali slid along the bridge until she came within yards of the Thunderflux.

  And didn’t stop.

  Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

  Kali felt the surface of the Thunderflux prickling her bare flesh, warming it, as she neared, and having no desire to enter it until she had a far better idea of what she was dealing with she fought madly to bring herself to a halt. Her desperate scrabbling and slapping at anything and everything that might halt her progress turned her in a slow circle as she slithered closer and closer, as if she were coming to the end of some carnival ride, but she came to a stop at last, mere inches away from the crackling column.

  The waves were not striking this close to the Thunderflux, but Kali still rose hesitantly, unsure whether one of the whips of energy might catch her and fry her where she stood. Other than the prickling, warming effect of the column itself, however, they seemed harmless enough, one even passing directly through her, leaving her with little more than a slight sense of disorientation.

  Slowly, Kali stretched out her arm, her palm touching the column’s surface, and she felt a thrill she’d struggle to describe. The closest she came brought a smile, as she remembered a phrase from a year before, the speaker of which was no longer with us.

  All tremblous in the underknicks.

  The phrase – and the feeling – reassured her. There was nothing to be afraid of here, surely? After all, what would be the point of having her – of having any of the kattra – go through the Trial only to have them zapped into oblivion when they completed it?

  This thing had waited a long, long, long, long time. It wasn’t going to hurt her.

  Kali took a breath and was about to step into the Thunderflux when she stopped dead. There was something she’d forgotten. The bridge on which she was standing was not her bridge. And if the truth was protected from those who were not meant to hear it by the Trials, who was to say she wouldn’t be committing some grave error by entering the way Silus was meant to enter? Should she somehow try to make her way to her own bridge?

  Kali didn’t know whether her hesitation was valid or not, and as she weighed up its pros and cons – not least the seeming impossibility of reaching her own bridge from where she now stood – she failed to notice what was happening below the bridge, in the still tumultuous waters behind her.

  Through one of the sea caves that fed the cavern, a slick of orange goo had mingled with the waters within, and as Kali continued to stare at the surface of the Thunderflux, the slick moved closer to her. Thicker and more soup-like than the liquid through which it flowed with a clear intent, the first thing that Kali knew of its presence was when it exploded from the waters to loom above her.

  Kali span, but it was too late. In much the same way as it had earlier on Horizon Point, the Hel’ss Spawn darted at her and slapped her off her feet and the bridge. With a yelp, Kali found herself falling into the waters below, her heart almost seizing when the cold struck her. Momentarily numbed, she struggled to come to terms with what had just happened, and when she did, despite being underwater, roared in fury. Thanks to the Hel’ss Spawn she was going to have to do this whole damned thing again!

  Fury, however, was not nearly a powerful enough word to describe the emotion that overtook her a few seconds later. For as Kali kicked her way to the surface the orange slick enveloped her like the caress of a rough lover, and as it did she felt a fundamental difference between what had attacked her earlier and what was attacking her now.

  The Hel’ss Spawn had meant to do her harm, of course it had, but in a sense it had been impersonal, the attack of an entity which cared not at all for the individuality of its victim. This, though, was different, and she sensed something – a presence – almost immediately. There was, as far as she was aware, only one dirty old bastard who’d try to cop a feel in this way.

  “Redigor,” she growled. “You just don’t know when to farking give up, do you?”

  There was no answer, of course. How could there be? Redigor’s body had gone and all that was left of him now was the same non-corporeal parasite that had been hitching a lift inside Jakub Freel. It seemed he’d gone up in the world – literally – having presumably infested the Hel’ss Spawn as it had plunged with his soul off Horizon Point, and she reflected that only the Pale Lord could be arrogant enough to try and possess a god. Or at least the agent of a god.

  Kali had to admit, though, that he was making a pretty good job of it. The Hel’ss Spawn, under Redigor’s control, seemed determined that she was not going to win, dragging her back under the water and flinging her about until her breath, hastily snatched as she went under, was forcefully expelled by the battering she was taking. Thankfully, Redigor provided her with an opportunity to replenish her lungs as she was hauled from beneath the waves and flung violently towards the distant walls of the cavern. Here Kali’s lungs exploded again, this time as the impact winded and dazed her, and she tumbled from the wall onto a rock below, where she rolled weakly back into the raging sea. Undulating, constantly shifting shape, the Hel’ss Spawn came at her again, enveloping her and then plunging to the bottom of the submerged cavern, dragging her along the rough sand there until her flesh was rubbed raw and bleeding. Then, lifted through a cloud of her own diffusing blood, Redigor returned her to the surface and high up into the air.

  Kali dangled in the entity’s strange grip like a marionette whose strings had been severed, glowe
ring, despite her pummelled state, at the viscous form before her. For one fleeting second she was transported back to the observatory at Scholten because the Hel’ss Spawn rearranged itself into a semblance of Redigor’s features and returned her gaze, smiling coldly.

  She knew then that she was only suffering the first act of Redigor’s perverse game. The battering he was giving her was not meant to kill her, only soften her up. Redigor wanted her utterly helpless, broken not just physically but mentally, so that she could do nothing when he eventually rammed the Hel’ss Spawn’s hungry tendrils inside her, ripping away her very soul.

  Well, she’d felt Redigor’s touch before, when he’d tried to drain her of her essence in the Chapel of Screams, and she’d be damned if she was going to let it happen again. If Redigor wanted to knock the fight out of her, she’d show him just how much fight she had left.

  Kali began to kick and pummel in the Hel’ss Spawn’s grip, only for it to fling her through the air towards the cavern’s unforgiving rock walls again. The undulating form followed immediately, ready to snatch her up again, but this time she was ready.

  As she flew through the air, Kali grabbed onto one of the lengthy strands of seaweed that dangled from each of the bridges, and swiftly swung herself around so that she smashed back into – and through – the viscous entity that Redigor controlled. As she’d guessed, the manoeuvre was so unexpected that even the Hel’ss Spawn had difficulty adjusting, and part of the shape-shifting entity collapsed, unable to reform itself in time to stop her. Redigor’s avatar did so a second later, of course, but by then it was too late, Kali having used the seaweed in the manner of a vine and swung herself to a point where she let go, flailing through the air towards the hanging detritus of the cavern’s adjacent bridge.

  Swinging from marine vine to marine vine, Kali built up a momentum that enabled her to use them all as ropes to evade Redigor, and changing her course frequently and unexpectedly the entity found itself being stretched to the limits of its shape-shifting abilities, breaking apart, as it pursued her about the cavern. Exactly where this was leading, Kali wasn’t sure, but she suspected that the orange taint from the amberglow that had caused so much disturbance to the Hel’ss on the surface – the same glow that infused it here – was damaging it somehow, and hopefully it was a chink in its armour that she could exploit.

  All she had to do was keep moving. Survive long enough to find out.

  What Kali hadn’t taken into account was that in some way Redigor himself seemed aware that his alien host was damaged, and rather than be cowed by the fact that the Hel’ss Spawn was breaking apart in its crazed pursuit of her, he pushed the entity to double its efforts to succeed. Kali was guessing but it seemed to her that Redigor didn’t care that the Hel’ss Spawn might be destroyed, that this was no longer about his survival, or his insane plan being resurrected, but just between he and her. It was revenge Redigor craved. Petty revenge.

  This was personal.

  There would be no stopping a madman, Kali realised. This coupled with the fact that even she couldn’t keep this up for ever, that she was rapidly tiring from the exertion involved, led, inevitably to a moment where Redigor’s avatar gained the upper hand.

  It was an appropriate phrase, for as Kali made a minor error that caused her to miss a leap between seaweed strands, forcing her to swing for it a second time, what remained of the mass of the Hel’ss Spawn exploded from the water and clenched her in what resembled a giant fist. Kali struggled and slithered within it but the fist held her fast, and she roared in frustration as Redigor’s features appeared fleetingly in the viscous matter once more.

  The bastard was smiling. He had everything that he wanted.

  All that remained was for him to deliver the finishing blow.

  Kali swallowed repeatedly, tensed in anticipation, remembering how Redigor had invaded her in the Chapel of Screams, tried to strip away her soul, and would have succeeded had it not been for the intervention of Gabriella DeZantez. It had been the worst pain she had ever felt, agonising beyond words. But this, this was going to be different.

  It was going to be one hells of a lot worse.

  Kali flung back her head and roared in pain as the Hel’ss Spawn coated her body and began to insinuate itself into her flesh through every orifice, every pore. She watched horrified as it travelled beneath her skin, seeking out muscle, tendon, sinew and bone, every vital organ, and she began to buck and groan as each part of her began slowly to be reworked from the inside. It couldn’t be happening but it was, it was, and as her vision pulsed with blood pumped wrongly through her body, in great, warm washes where it should not have been, she saw that her flesh had already begun to dissolve, her arms and legs shrinking, deforming into shapeless, liquid things, her stomach collapsing and her flesh running from her in streams, like candlewax.

  She would be nothing soon, and her universe consisted of one endless, deafening scream.

  Then, suddenly, as one small part of her recognised the Hel’ss Spawn had worked its way up, was spreading now over her thumping heart, ready to take that, too, she felt another kind of pain. No, not pain, but the kind of red-hot, nagging insistence in her chest she had felt when almost drowned. This feeling was different, though, not the result of a desperate need to draw air from without, but the need of something to be released from within.

  Images flashed unbidden into her mind. The moment at the Crucible when Tharnak had told her she shared a legacy with him. Brundle, placing his hand on her in the tavern in Gransk, the gasp he had uttered thereon. Herself, standing in front of a mirror in the Flagons that one dark night she had told no one about.

  The night that she had become aware of the thing she believed made her what she was.

  The night that she had seen the thread within her glow.

  Oh gods, Kali thought, as it began to glow again, brighter than ever before. What was this? What the hells was this? And then the pain of what the Hel’ss Spawn was doing to her was forgotten as her spine arched so acutely it seemed to snap in two, and she screamed with an agony she thought could get no worse as something broke from within her and the cavern exploded with light.

  Kali felt herself falling, released from the grip of the Hel’ss Spawn, remade miraculously whole. Instinctively, unthinking, she grabbed onto a strand of seaweed and swung there breathlessly as before her the Hel’ss Spawn roared. She had no idea what she had done but suddenly the entity – Redigor’s screaming face within it – was retreating from her and flinging itself about the cavern as though infected with some deadly toxin. Against rock after rock and wall after wall it crashed, each time breaking itself apart into smaller and smaller segments, and then, when there was little of it left, what remained of it collapsed into the waters and, bobbing on the waves, began to drift lifelessly away.

  Kali hung where she was, gasping, unable to believe what had happened, waiting for the Hel’ss Spawn, for Redigor, to rear up once more. But after five full minutes had passed, it, and he, did not.

  The Hel’ss Spawn was gone.

  Bastian Redigor was gone.

  Slowly, Kali lifted herself hand over hand up the seaweed strand and then collapsed onto the bridge above. She lay there on her back for a few seconds, her palm caressing her chest, feeling the place the light had come from. It was back within her now, that she could feel, but, despite what it appeared to have done, it was of no comfort.

  Gods, what was it? What was she?

  Was this a part of the Truth?

  Kali stood and stared ahead of her. The lightning column that was the Thunderflux waited no more than ten yards along the bridge on which she stood, and somehow she knew that this was the right bridge, her bridge, and that whether by accident or design of fate she’d been delivered to the right place. Whatever lay within was the end of the Path of Endurance, the end of the path of Kali Hooper.

  Her destiny.

  Kali took a breath and strode inside the Thunderflux. She found herself rising and then stopping in
side a domed chamber, and she guessed she was inside the Thunderflux cap. The same energies that had danced in the column danced here, too, all around her, beating at the walls, but they did her no harm.

  The only shock she felt was when a face appeared before her.

  A woman.

  An elf.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “HELLO, KALI,” THE elf said. She spoke slowly and her words trembled in the air, as if they were the most delicate things in the world. “As I speak, I am separated from you by many thousands of years, and the civilisations I represent are about to end. They shall be gone from this world soon – taken by the entity you will already have encountered. The elves and the dwarfs and all of their grand achievements will be no more. But we leave behind us the seeds of a new race – the human race – whose origins lie in the depths of the oceans of this world, and not, like us, in the skies above… or on other worlds, far beyond your skies.” The elf paused. “I expect you have many questions. Please feel free to ask anything you wish.”

  “I, er, don’t suppose you have a towel?”

  The elf smiled. “No, I don’t have a towel.”

  “Right. Sorry about that. I guess I’m a little nervous. How about who are you? And how can we be speaking like this?”

  “My name is Zharn. And I am able to speak to you because I am trapped in a moment of time. A moment created when the Thunderflux was capped, that links the Trass Kattra that is now with the Trass Kattra that was then.”