Thief of the Ancients

by Mike Wild

  “Themselves the children of the Chadassa and the Calma, some of whose dying kin, following a great disaster that struck them, crawled onto the land where they were adopted – adapted – by the Old Races, who pitied them. This magnanimous act was the best thing they could have done, for in creating the humans, they gave Twilight a second chance.”

  “But is it a second chance? I mean the very fact we’re having this chat only confirms what you’ve already said. That every attempt by the kattra to stop the Pantheon has ended in failure. Why should this time be any different?”

  “Because of what is happening. For the first time in our endless struggle the Four that were and the Four that are can work together. With the knowledge I have given you – with what you have already discovered and found – the Four can become eight. With that, we have a fighting chance.”

  Kali frowned. Despite everything Zharn had said, she’d gone through too much and been surprised so many times to accept her words hands down. She needed more.

  “Who were you?” she asked. “You and your Four?”

  Zharn paused, but when she answered her response was accompanied by a faint smile. “I was no one of consequence, like the others. And yet bound by my legacy, as you are by yours. As for the other three, Rollin Dumarest was a dwarf, but unlike so many of his race a gentle, kind and loving man. Tremayin Fireflak, an elf like myself, prone, as befitted her name, to combustible temperament and absolute disregard for authority of any kind. And last, but far from least, Traynor Boom, a dwarf again, whose contribution to our cause were the blades of his two-handed battleaxe, Bloody Banshee. Its eloquent use bought the Drakengrat facility additional time, though regrettably not enough to save it.”

  “He died there?”

  “Alongside Tremayin, fighting to protect the ship even as the darkness enveloped them.”

  Kali warmed to Zharn, despite the sadness she related. The fact that they were both talking of similar experiences made her feel a kinship with the elf, even though she and Zharn had never met. A kinship with her and the other three that was beginning to make her believe everything she’d been told.

  “And Rollin Dumarest? What happened to him?”

  “Rollin? Lost with Rodolfo Domdruggle, somewhere in the Expanse.”

  There it was again – that common experience – and Kali’s mind whirled. Were it not for the fact that she, Lucius Kane and Silus Morlader were still alive, Zharn could have been speaking of them. And of Gabriella before she’d sacrificed herself. The similarities between the present and the past continued to be staggering.

  “I’m sorry,” Kali said.

  “Don’t be. Though their sacrifices are fresh in my mind, in a sense it all happened a long time ago,” Zharn responded. “As I imagine is the case with yourself, I did not know my companions well, for that is the nature of our legacy. But they are sadly missed.”

  What did it for Kali was the question she asked next.

  “If we each have one of your souls, which of you am I?”

  “Can’t you guess?”

  “Combustible temperament?” Kali said. “Absolute disregard for authority of any kind?”

  “Hello, Tremayin.”

  Kali put a hand to her mouth, holding back a sob. It took a moment for her to recover, and when she did she believed Zharn. But a couple of problems remained.

  “When I came here you called me Kali,” she said. “How did you know my name?”

  “Because you told me.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “If you say so,” Zharn said slowly. “There are some questions that I can’t answer.”

  “Okay, then, here’s another one. You said that our abilities were sent by a bloodline, but as far as I know I don’t have one. I wasn’t born to any family. I was found, as a baby, in a dome.”

  “And,” Zharn sighed, “there are some things that you can’t yet know.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they haven’t yet happened.”

  “I haven’t come this far to hear more riddles! Tell me, dammit!”

  Zharn considered for a moment.

  “Then first tell me – would it benefit you to know that you are dead?”

  For the first time since her ordeal had began, Kali felt freezing cold. “What?”

  The way Zharn couched her response could have sounded threatening, pitying, even sad. But it didn’t. It actually sounded rather amused.

  “Poor Kali Hooper. The girl who never was.”

  Kali’s anger was diffused in a swirl of confusion. “Zharn, I don’t understand.”

  “I know. But you have to trust me. Trust yourself. Now is not the time to speak of this.”

  Kali remained silent for more than a minute, torn by what she’d heard. She couldn’t deny that in coming this far to learn about the Old Races, she’d wanted to learn about herself also – expected to – and Zharn’s words hadn’t just sent her back to square one, they’d knocked her completely off the game board. The fact was, though, she now accepted what she’d been told, and as a result felt the time would come when she would discover her origin. With whomever it was that would finally give her the answer.

  In the meantime there was the small matter of saving the world. Again. She might as well get on with it.

  “What,” Kali said at last, “do I need to do?”

  “Many things, and none will be easy. Your first task will be to unite the Four, and when you are together, unite what lies within you all.”

  “What lies within us – ?” Kali began, and then suddenly her mind flashed back to the final encounter with Redigor in the cavern below. What had exploded from within. Somehow now she knew why it had had such an effect on Redigor and on what had remained of the Hel’ss Spawn.

  “That was dra’gohn magic? What’s missing from the Circle?”

  “Yes. A sliver of it was implanted within each of your bloodlines.”

  “But how? I thought it was all gone?”

  “There are some things –”

  “That I can’t yet know?”

  “I’m sorry. But you will come to understand.”

  “Yeah, right. So, okay, unite what lies within us all. How do we do that?”

  “There is an artefact – an enchanted rod of my own manufacture known as the Guardian Starlight – that was hidden in the Anclas Territories and is currently sought by Lucius Kane. Find this rod and it will provide you with the means.”

  “Me? All this magical gubbins sounds more like a job for Lucius himself.”

  Zharn smiled. “It will not be necessary for you to use ‘magical gubbins’. The Guardian Starlight itself knows what it must do. But it is Lucius Kane who will wield the rod when the Guardian Starlight is complete, for only he has that power.”

  “Fair enough. Unite Lucius, Silus and Gabriella. But isn’t there one small flaw in your plan?”

  “There is?”

  “Gabriella DeZantez is dead.”

  “Need I repeat that so, child, are you.”

  “Riiigghhtt,” Kali said hesitantly. “So we’ve united and powered up this rod – what next?”

  “You must travel beyond the World’s Ridge Mountains and there use the rod to restore the Circle of Power.”

  “Whoa, stop. Beyond the World’s Ridge Mountains? But I thought there was nothing there?”

  “It is true that your journey will end beyond the mountains. But also begin. Be patient, Kali, and you will see.”

  Kali’s mind flashed back to her rescue of Merrit Moon. And to the journal she’d read.

  “At least I think I know a way through. Or a start. A place called the Hall of Tales?”

  “Indeed.”

  Kali frowned. “The old man finding it is a bit convenient, don’t you think?”

  “Convenient, or destined?”

  “O-ho, no, don’t you start that. Don’t you dare start that.”

  The dome rumbled and parts of the energies that surrounded Kali and Zharn started to diffuse. The dome wa
ll reappeared and Kali saw cracks appearing throughout its structure. As Brundle had warned, the cap was beginning to fall apart.

  “I think,” said Zharn, “that our moment in time is almost over.”

  “Problem our end,” Kali replied. “We’re taking a bit of flak at the moment.”

  “Kali,” Zharn said, her image starting to flicker, “Listen to me. You have the means to finish this once and for all, but I cannot tell you how because I do not know. But you have time to ask me one more question that might help you, and I will answer it as best I can.”

  Kali could think of a hundred, but her brain was so busy that she couldn’t pin down one. Finally, she asked something that, despite sticking in her mind, she immediately thought may not have been relevant at all.

  “Have you ever heard of someone called Marryme Moo?”

  “The name” said Zharn, “is Marryme Moon.”

  And then the dome exploded.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  IT WAS OVER.

  Kali found herself standing suddenly in what remained of the Thunderflux cap, wind whistling through the shattered structure, less dome now than a ring of jagged projections. The Thunderflux was gone, diffused, and with it the link to the past that had existed for uncountable centuries. She was alone, and any more questions she might have, she’d have to answer herself. Including the most personal ones of all.

  Poor Kali Hooper, the girl who never was. And the name is Marryme Moon.

  Kali shivered, exposed in more ways than one. She was therefore grateful when behind her a crunch of boots on debris signalled the arrival of Slowhand. She didn’t even need to turn to know it was him, merely sensed his comforting presence, and murmured her thanks when the archer slipped his shirt over her naked body, helping when her aching arms struggled with the sleeves.

  Now she did turn, looking up at him. Slowhand’s shirt draped her like a tent, hanging below her knees, but it still couldn’t fully disguise the bruises and burns, the patches of crusted muck and weed, and here and there the spots of blood that were already seeping through the thick cloth.

  “Fark, Hooper,” Slowhand said. “What happened to you?”

  “Long story,” Kali replied, numbly. “Old story.”

  “Want to share it?”

  “Not yet.”

  Kali cocked her head. It had only just occurred to her that, other than the whistling of the wind, the island was silent. No more tremors, no more screams.

  “The Hel’ss Spawn is gone,” Slowhand said. “Come see.”

  He took Kali by the hand and led her out of the ruin. They walked slowly up the slope to the clifftop that was Horizon Point. The bodies – what had been left of the bodies – of the Faith and their own people were gone, the landscape normal once more, and the only signs of the struggles that had taken place were the half-melted remains of the Brogmas, standing there slumped and still on the bleak promontory. Maybe one day, Kali thought, someone like herself would come to the island and see these things, wonder at their meaning and the role they had played in its history.

  If there was a one day.

  She took a breath. At least, as Slowhand had said, one small part of the battle was done. Gazing out to sea, she saw that the waters around the island were smooth, that the dra’gohn magic that had burst from her in the cavern far below had indeed delivered the killing blow to the alien entity and the bastard who’d possessed it. In a way, it had been the Hel’ss and Kerberos who’d fought the battle – their essences clashing in a preliminary skirmish – and for now, at least, Kerberos had won.

  Kali took no comfort in the fact. Though the sea looked quite beautiful, coloured by the remains of the amberglow engines, as if lit by the rays of a glowing sunset, she knew now what she was really looking at. And all she could see was a series of majestic, spectral forms swooping above a slowly diffusing bloodstain that, when it was gone, would once again make Twilight an emptier place.

  “Do you know what they did, ’Liam?” she said quietly. “Do you know what they did to the dra’gohn?”

  The archer stepped up beside her, surprised to see tears on Kali’s cheeks. She seemed only half aware of his presence, staring out to sea, haunted somehow, and he noted her fingering her breastbone, as if contemplating something a long way, or a long time, away.

  “Do you want to tell me?”

  Kali did, and Slowhand pulled her to him as she related the tale, and when it was over he found all he could do was hold her, because there was nothing to say.

  “We’re all that’s left now,” Kali said eventually. “The Four.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “We get the dra’gohn magic out of us and where it’s meant to be. One way or another, we end the wars of the Pantheon once and for all.”

  Slowhand moved her to arms’ length, lips forming a small smile. “You never do anything small, do you?”

  Kali laughed. “Well, the first thing we have to do is get off this farking island.”

  “Being sorted as we speak. The others are below.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?”

  The two of them wound their way down the steps through the ruins, back to the beach where Redigor and his forces had landed. The place was a hive of activity, Sonpear and Pim and his men tinkering under Brundle’s supervision on the flutterbys, while Hetty, Pete Two-Ties and Martha DeZantez were helping the rest of their people, who had taken refuge underground, out from the access hatches, assembling them back on the surface. Kali bit her lip, looking in vain for the stretcher carrying Dolorosa, and fearing the worst when it didn’t appear. But as it happened, she shouldn’t have been looking for a stretcher at all.

  “You arra the mess,” a voice criticised at the same time a bony finger prodded her in the shoulder. “We cannot take-a you anywhere.”

  Kali span. “Dolorosa?”

  The old woman loomed in her face, eyes narrowed, though there was a hint of humour in them. “Who elsa you theenk speaka thees way?”

  “But how?” Kali said. Her gaze was drawn to Dolorosa’s wound, now nothing more than a patch of dried blood on her torn clothing with a hint of strange, gold stitching on her skin.

  “If there’s one thing yer can say for me wife, it’s that she knows her ’erbs,” Brundle said from where he lay under a flutterby, bashing it with a spanner. He rose, wiping his hands with a rag. “That an’ a bit o’ the old knitting, eh?”

  “Clack-clack,” Dolorosa said.

  Kali smiled, patted the old woman on the shoulder, and moved towards Brundle.

  “I wanted to thank you.”

  “Me? It’s Brogma yer shou –”

  “That isn’t what I meant,” Kali interrupted. And punched the dwarf hard in the face.

  Brundle crashed onto his backside, hand over nose. Three streams of blood ran between his fingers.

  “Owww! Wod de fark wad dad for?”

  “The Trials,” Kali said. “You did design them, didn’t you?”

  “Aye, well,” Brundle said, but was spared further defence when Kali offered him a hand up.

  “Forget it,” she said. “They kept me on my toes, and I’ve a feeling I’m going to need to be kept on my toes.”

  The dwarf, like Slowhand and Dolorosa before him, looked her battered and bloody body up and down. “Looks like yer made a bit of a worgle’s arse of it, to me.”

  “Hey! There were complications, all right?”

  The dwarf’s expression turned to one of surprising concern, knowing full well what the complications must have been. “If ah had a badge yer could have one. Bu ah don’t. Good to see yer made it, smoothskin.”

  “Me, too. So what’s happening?”

  Brundle pointed at the flutterbys.

  “It’s taken a bit o’ tinkerin’, but these beasties should get most o’ yer people home.”

  “That’s a long way. I thought they were short range flyers?”

  “They are. Which is why I’ve had to cannibalise some ta handle the jou
rney. It’ll take a week or so an’ ah can’t guarantee they’ll make it intact through the Stormwall, but they should come down within’ range o’ the peninsula’s shipping.”

  Kali nodded. “Good enough. But if you’ve stripped them down, there won’t be enough room for everybody, surely?”

  “No,” Brundle said, and hesitated. “But with those lost on both sides, fewer’ll have ta remain behind than yer think. Ah reckon five or six volunteers.”

  “My hand’s up.”

  “Ah don’t think so, lass. Yer know by now where yer should be.”

  “And I know where these people should be,” Kali said, looking at the freed prisoners. “I’ll get there, Brundle, don’t you worry. Meantime, like I said – my hand’s up.”

  “Fair enough,” the dwarf conceded. “An’ ah don’t think yer’ll havta look far for the rest.”

  Kali jumped, suddenly aware of the forms of Slowhand, Dolorosa, Sonpear, Pim and Freel beside her. She studied the Allantian, glad to have him back with her, but aware also that his efforts to help since he’d been freed of Redigor had left him exhausted. His experience wasn’t something recovered from easily. “Jakub,” she said, calling him by his given name for the first time, “please, go with the others. We might need your strength when we get home.”

  The Allantian faltered, then nodded, tromping wearily towards those who had been assembled to leave. Slowhand slapped his back as he departed.

  “So the rest of us swim?” he asked Brundle. “Or do you have another plan?”

  “Me scuttlebarge, o’ course,” Brundle said. He made an obvious point of staring at Kali’s behind and then added, “She’ll be a little low in the water, but we’ll make it.”

  “Hey!” Kali protested.

  “Hey yerself,” the dwarf replied. “Now let’s get these people on the move.”

  Brundle moved among the flutterbys, starting up their engines, and the beach was filled with the sound of their insect-like drones. The choice of pilots was left to Kali, and she chose those whose determination she knew would get them home – Martha, Hetty, Abra and Freel himself among them. Civilians were led to the flutterbys in small groups, settled in, and then with a series of complex hand gestures that Kali was sure were more to do with showing off than actually necessary, Brundle walked from machine to machine, signalling each pilot that they were ready for take off.