Thief of the Ancients

by Mike Wild

  “Good luck to all of you,” Martha DeZantez said.

  “You, too,” Kali replied.

  “See you at home, Kalee!”

  “The gods be with you, girly, lady, madam, missus-woman.”

  One by one, their noses dipping slightly, the flutterbys rose from the beach and headed out to sea. They skimmed the waves at first but then began to rise until they were silhouetted against the coming sunset, which was already starting to paint the waters. A few minutes later they were dots, and then they were gone.

  “They’ll be fine,” Slowhand said, sensing Kali’s concern.

  “I hope so.”

  Kali studied the archer. He hadn’t turned as he’d spoken, but continued to stare out to sea. No, Kali thought, not out to sea but across it, doubtless seeing the distant shoreline of the peninsula in his mind’s eye. A peninsula that had one less thing to offer him when he returned.

  “What about you? Will you be fine?”

  Slowhand straightened, drawing in a deep breath through his nose.

  “I guess I’ve finally realised what my destiny is.”

  “Which is?”

  “Today, to have been right there on that clifftop, where I could save your life,” Slowhand said. “And tomorrow… tomorrow, well, somewhere else where the shit hits the fan.”

  Kali smiled. “I’ll try not to keep you too busy.”

  The archer turned at last. “So then – it’s business as usual.”

  “Not quite usual,” Kali said, regarding Slowhand’s altered appearance disapprovingly. If he intended to remain by her side, there’d have to be changes. “Poul, can you do something about this?”

  The mage approached, circling Slowhand and inspecting his features with darting, close cocks of the head that made the archer scowl and pull warily away.

  “I think so,” Sonpear said. “Presuming Mister Slowhand doesn’t want me to rebreak all of his bones, returning his physiognomy to what it was should require only a minor incantation.”

  “Then would you please do it?” Kali asked.

  “Hey, hey!” Slowhand objected. “I’m here too, remember. Do I get a say in this?”

  “Not really,” Brundle interjected. “Unless, that is, you actually want to spend the rest of your life looking like an orc’s knob found its way into yer mammy’s panties.”

  “Listen, shortarse…”

  “Slowhand, shut up!” Kali said. “I mean, what’s the problem here?”

  “The problem? The fact that it farking hurts is the problem.”

  “Don’t be such a baby.”

  “You weren’t there, Hooper. I’m telling you, those few minutes I spent on the Big Top floor felt like an eternity and… ow,” Slowhand concluded. “OW. OWW!”

  Sonpear smiled, his hands already weaving the threads, and as he did the coarser elements of Slowhand’s features began to dwindle, reforming themselves into the more familiar lines he had once possessed. Kali nodded approvingly as she witnessed the return of the lantern jaw, the cute, concave nose, the mouth whose edges splayed laughter lines, though they had clearly been challenged of late. Even his hair returned to its natural colour and length, which the archer wasted no time tossing manfully in the wind.

  “What about the scar?” Kali said, frowning at the ‘x’. “The scar’s still there.”

  “It is?” Slowhand responded, running his hand over his cheek.

  “It shouldn’t be,” Sonpear said slowly. “But it won’t seem to go away.”

  “Dammit!” Slowhand cursed.

  Kali stroked and then playfully slapped Slowhand’s cheek. “Never mind, pretty boy. I’ve had worse scars and it kind of suits you in a an ugly kind of way.”

  “Oh, it’s all right for you,” Slowhand protested. “Your scars recover because of that… regeneration thing you have going on…”

  “Why,” Sonpear mused, “won’t it go away?”

  “What?” Slowhand said.

  Something flared in their midst, and the archer let out a cry far surpassing those when Sonpear had begun his work. Maybe even surpassing those when Fitch had begun his work. It was only after a few seconds that Kali realised the flare had come from him.

  Slowhand dropped to his knees, groaning in pain, hand clutching his scar. Kali bent to help but faltered. She hesitated because between the cracks of Slowhand’s fingers, light was leaking. A light that was starting to grow so bright it was shining through his flesh.

  Rays of it began to punch between his fingers.

  “What the hells?” Kali said. “Sonpear?”

  “Mister Slowhand,” he said cautiously. “I want you to remove your hand. And I want you to do it very, very slowly.”

  Slowhand nodded, but clearly had difficulty. His teeth clenched, the rumble of what would become a roar filtering through them, his hand seemed adhered to his flesh, pulling glue like strands of light with it. Then at last it broke away, revealing what lay beneath.

  The ‘x’ shaped scar was pulsing a brilliant white.

  “What… the… fark… is… happening?” Slowhand rumbled.

  “Haven’t a clue,” Kali said honestly.

  Dolorosa worked her way through the group about the kneeling archer, saw the scar and drew in a sharp intake of breath. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously.

  “This looka familiar,” she said. “A horribly familiar…”

  “Familiar?”

  “Yessa,” Dolorosa insisted. “Do you notta see?”

  Kali realised she had been paying far too much attention to the glow than to the detail of the scar, and as she studied it saw that around the weal of raised flesh, another tracery of light was slowly appearing. Having started beneath the scar it was working its way up left and right, like a burning fuse on Slowhand’s flesh, enclosing the ‘x’ in a perfect circle. Then, as its two paths joined, it flared as brightly as the rest of the scar.

  “Did I notta tell you, Kali Hooper? That’s –”

  “Oh gods,” Kali finished. “The symbol of the Final Faith.”

  “The what?” Slowhand said. “The what?”

  Kali stared at the crossed circle, burning now as brightly as a white-hot furnace. Then she felt Sonpear’s hand on her shoulder, easing her away.

  “There’s nothing that can be done,” he said. “Stand back. Everybody stand back.”

  “Stand back?” Slowhand repeated, panicked. “What – am I going to explode?”

  “Not quite.”

  “Not quite?” The archer responded, having become quite high-pitched. “What the fark do you mean, not quite?”

  He doubled over once more, wanting but resisting the need to slap his hand back over the pulsating scar. For the crossed circle of the Faith lifted away from his skin, becoming something quite independent of him, floating in the air. Gasping in both shock and relief, Slowhand scrambled back as the glowing emblem began to grow, its diameter widening.

  It stopped then burst into flame. The four arms of the ‘x’ burned away into the surrounding circle. And in the space that was left, the face of Querilous Fitch appeared. He smiled like some visiting deity, but a smile did not sit easily on the psychic manipulator’s emaciated features and the last thing anything felt was that their visitor was here to do good.

  “Fitch,” Slowhand said, “what the hells is going on?”

  “Ah, the archer,” Fitch said. “I should like to thank you for acting on my behalf. Through you, I have been able to witness the emergence of that I have waited so long to see.”

  “What the hells are you talking about?”

  “Your scar was a spell called a Roving Eye,” Sonpear determined. “Not to be confused with an Eye of the Lord, it is a magical thing. An observer – a conduit, if you like – between here and the mainland. Or wherever it is Fitch currently lurks.”

  “Poul Sonpear,” Fitch said. “It has been a long time since last we met.”

  “You two know each other?” Kali asked.

  “Once upon a time, Querilous was a studen
t of mine. I’m sorry to say I taught him many things he should never have known. Including the Roving Eye.”

  “Teachings long since surpassed, Poul. But I thank you for the human perspective on the power of the threads.”

  “What do you mean, human perspective?” Kali asked, suspiciously.

  Fitch smiled. “Of all the things you should have learned from Slowhand, Redigor and your own recent discoveries about yourself, it is that few things are what they seem,” the psychic manipulator said. Then his features began to change, seemingly to melt, his flesh becoming waxier, greyer and moister as it did. This unexpected physiognomy took on a number of new features, including a lipless mouth, enlarged eyes, and a pair of glowing, bulbous nodules that hung from the side of his head, swaying slightly, as if caught in a gentle stream.

  Kali’s mind whirled. A flashback of a face from long ago, in the floodwaters of Martak. Of a shadowy shape in Gransk harbour. And of a fleetingly sighted rescuer on the other side of a sealed hatch on the Black Ship.

  “You,” she said. “All the time.”

  “Me,” Querilous Fitch responded. “All the time.”

  “Er, you want to tell me what’s going on?” Slowhand prompted Kali. Like most people on the peninsula, he had never seen such a creature before.

  “Fitch is one of them. A fish.”

  Slowhand paused.

  “The slippery bastard.”

  “Was it you at Scholten, too?” Kali asked Fitch. “My liberator from the Deep Cells?”

  “Of course. I could hardly leave you at the mercy of the elf, now, could I?”

  “Somehow I never pictured you as my knight in shining armour.”

  Fitch smiled, though in his new form it was less of a smile and more the slow, crescent shaped gaping of a freshly slashed throat.

  “I had no interest in protecting you, girl. Only that which you carry.”

  “The dra’gohn magic?” Kali gasped.

  “Do you realise how long I have waited for you to manifest its power? To even realise you possessed such power?”

  “Sorry to keep you waiting. I suppose you want it?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, guess what – you’re not having it.”

  “We’ll see about that, won’t we?”

  Fitch’s face began to move towards Kali, and in doing so the whole of his form physically followed it through the Roving Eye. Slowhand noticed that it was no longer in the strange wheelchair he had seen but walking independently – if walking was the word. The psychic manipulator still retained the semblance of human legs but seemed to glide rather than walk towards them, slime trailing behind him, making his approach all the more threatening. The archer and everyone else backed away. Only Sonpear made any kind of move, his hands weaving what may have been the beginnings of a spell, but none of them would find out which because a second later the mage from the Three Towers was dead. Very, very dead. Fitch simply raised his hand and Sonpear was struck all over his body by what seemed like a hundred invisible sledgehammers, each of them pummelling him so hard his robes billowed beneath the impact, disregarded the flesh beneath, and shrouded the mage in explosive puffs of dust from his own, obliterated bones. Sonpear jerked and spasmed and then the floppy remains of what he had been fell onto the beach on what remained of his face.

  Kali refused to be weakened by what had happened. She wouldn’t let Fitch see that.

  “Why, you bastard? What do you want from the magic?”

  “What do you think I want? Its power! With it, all can be made as it should be. A world of water. One vast ocean in which my kind can flourish undisturbed, can thrive.”

  Kali laughed out loud. “You want to play god? Use the power of the Pantheon to remake Twilight?”

  “Why not? Without the interference of the Four, the last of the Pantheon will destroy each other, consume themselves, and in the process you landwalkers will be gone.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you but the Four might have something to say about that. Or at least one of them.”

  “Which,” Fitch said, “is that?”

  His hand moved again and, behind him, the still fiery circle of the Final Faith started to unravel until it became an open-ended strand of fire, like a glowing whip. It flexed and snapped in the air and then straightened, less whip than spear, one end pointed directly at Kali. She swallowed, knowing, somewhow, that she had only a second left.

  “What I don’t understand,” she said, “is why the Faith? Why involve yourself with them?”

  Fitch smiled. “Where better to hide yourself than amongst the blind?”

  The spear of fire shot forward, straight into Kali’s chest and out through her back, and then twisted in the air to return to Fitch. It penetrated him in the same way it had her but, this time, did not re-emerge. The psychic manipulator – the fish – took a deep, satisfied breath.

  “At last,” he said.

  Kali slumped to the beach as heavily as Sonpear had, landing in an almost foetal position. Unlike Sonpear, she still lived, though it hardly seemed so. What Fitch had done – stripped her of the dra’gohn magic – had hurt more than when Redigor had tried to take her soul in the Chapel of Screams, but there was a worse pain. An emptiness. Everything she had fought for – the true nature of which she had only just discovered – had been taken from her the moment it mattered most. And the worst of it was, it had left her too weak to do anything about it.

  Kali’s foetal position tightened, her knees rising, her fists clenching, her head dipping into her chest.

  “What,” Dolorosa shouted, “have you done to my girl?”

  The piratess moved towards Fitch but Slowhand grabbed her and held her back.

  “Don’t,” he warned. “He’s too dangerous.”

  “Dangerous, but leaving.” Fitch said. “It’s been a long, long time since I have been able to delegate my more unsavoury tasks. I miss that.”

  Slowhand glared at him. “And what exactly are you delegating?”

  “Your deaths, of course.”

  A sneer formed on Slowhand’s lips, but faded as Querilous Fitch began to retreat from him. Because the psychic manipulator – the fishman – glided once more, this time backwards down the beach, towards and then into the sea.

  Staring at them all the time, Querilous Fitch receded beneath the waves, the water lapping about his waist, his chest, his head, until he was gone. And as he disappeared, in his place, other figures waded by him from the depths, at least twenty of them, sloughing dark water and seaweed from their muscular forms as they came. Forms green of skin and scaled, and even without their talons, armed to their very sharp teeth.

  “I think,” Jengo Pim said, “that we should get the hells out of here.”

  “I’m open to suggestions,” Slowhand responded.

  “Back up the steps. We can make a stand on the cliff.”

  Slowhand nodded and pulled Kali’s slumped form to its feet, supporting her as they began the climb. Pim, Brundle and Dolorosa brought up the rear. The old woman hissed at the fishmen as they crossed the beach in pursuit.

  The climb seemed to take forever, and night closed in, but there seemed to be more than shadows in the rocks and ancient ruins around them. Hisses and sibilant rattles punctuated the darkness, and shapes flitted here and there, preternaturally fast, leaving a peculiar dampness in the air. Every member of the party cast uneasy glances as they rose higher and higher, but it was down to Brundle, as they at last reached Horizon Point, to voice what they all feared.

  “They’re everywhere, yer know,” the dwarf said. “There must be hundreds of ’em.”

  It was true. As Slowhand, Pim and the others formed themselves into a defensive huddle on the highest point of the island, those that Querilous Fitch had sent from the sea to be their executioners emerged from all points of the compass, up the steps, from behind rocks, out of the shattered remains of the Thunderflux’s cap, and over the lip of the cliff behind them.

  All of them swarmin
g onto Trass Kattra in search of their prey.

  “It’s over,” Kali said, lying weak in his arms.

  Slowhand started at her words.

  “That doesn’t sound like the Kali Hooper I know.”

  “That’s because I’m not the Kali Hooper you know. Not any more.”

  “The dra’gohn magic,” the archer said. “We’ll get it back. Finish the job.”

  Kali stared over his shoulder to where the blood red orb that was the Hel’ss hung in the sky. It was almost touching Kerberos, now. She shook her head. “Too late. Just like last time, too late.”

  “Not if I have anything to do with it,” Slowhand said.

  “Make that we,” Brundle rumbled.

  “I’d go with that,” agreed Jengo Pim.

  Dolorosa nodded. “We will make sure these feesh havva their cheeps.”

  Slowhand lowered Kali’s head to the ground. “I have to leave you now. Just for a while.”

  “What the hells are you doing? This is suicide.”

  Slowhand grinned. “Hey, I’m your sidekick, aren’t I?”

  He rose, pulling Suresight from his back and notching an arrow, the tension of it creaking in the night. Beside him, Brundle unslung his battleaxe from its scabbard with a sching and hefted it before him. Pim drew a short sword and Dolorosa twin daggers, slashing the air with their blades.

  Slowhand stared at the surrounding circle of fishmen, jaw clenching as it began to close in.

  “Bring it on,” he said.

  THE END

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Mike Wild is much older than he has a right to be, considering the kebabs, the booze and the fags. Maybe it’s because he still thinks he’s 15. Apart from dabbling occasionally in publishing and editing, he’s been a freelance writer for ever, clawing his way up to his current dizzy heights by way of work as diverse as Doctor Who, Masters of the Universe, Starblazer, ’Allo ’Allo! and – erm – My Little Pony. Counting one Teen Romance, one ABC Warriors and two Caballistics Inc, Mike has written nine novels. However, only his beloved wife and tuna-scoffing cat give him the recognition he deserves.