Kal Moonheart Trilogy: Dragon Killer, Roll the Bones & Sirensbane

by Rob May

  They made their way down in silence. Kal could guess where they were going. She had been under Arcus Hill many times before, but had usually entered by a different route, via the catacombs under the Basilica. Three hundred steep, uneven steps later, they entered the Forgotten Tomb. But unlike the other times they had met here, they were not alone. Three other people sat on worn leather chairs around the stone sarcophagus in the centre of the cave.

  Ganzief Greatbear was thumping the top with his great fists.

  ‘Just imagine,’ he was saying. ‘I could just shove the top off this tomb and be the first person in a thousand years to look a god in the eye!’

  ‘The second person,’ Ben corrected, as he and Kal made their way between the stalagmites.

  Felix Firehand was sitting at a respectful distance from the stone block. The boy, Gwyn, was sat on the cave floor by his chair. Firehand looked up at Ben with a disapproving expression ‘You opened the tomb of Arcus? What did you see?’

  ‘Exactly what I expected,’ Ben said with a shrug. He took a seat and put his feet up on the tomb. Firehand flinched at this sacrilege.

  The final person seated around the stone block was Viola Witchwood, a senator who had made her fortune in trading luxury goods. She had attended Ben’s party, not in a tawdry costume, but in a beautifully-cut emerald-green tunic dress. Kal felt awkward and plain as she took a seat next to her.

  ‘Hello, Kal,’ Witchwood said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Apparently, Kal has some information that might be of interest to us,’ Ben said. ‘Alright, shall we get started?’

  Senator Firehand stood and took control. ‘This emergency session of the Senate is now open,’ he announced formally. ‘There is only one item on the agenda: the murder of Senator Jarole Grey. Surely our great Senate can shed some light on what Grey may have done to deserve such an end.’

  Kal smiled to herself. That may have been true, just not in the way that Firehand meant it.

  ‘Grey was a rich man who bought his seat in the Senate chamber with his family’s money,’ Greatbear summarised, ‘and he hardly ever sat in it. He was running for consul only because every Grey for the last twenty generations has done so, but his heart was always down in the Snake Pit. I cannot believe he ever troubled anyone long enough for them to even notice him, let alone want to kill him in such a … creative way.’

  ‘It’s an attack on the Senate itself, then,’ Ben deduced. ‘Or an attack on the Consulate, in which case you three had better start employing more guards if you want to survive long enough to see the votes counted.’

  Ben’s provocative words made Firehand, Witchwood and Greatbear all turn suspicious eyes on one another.

  Kal stood up. She wasn’t intimidated by these senators, especially when she knew more about the situation than they did. ‘Did any of you actually see the symbol branded on Grey’s body?’ she asked them. ‘Captain Dogwood was pretty quick to arrive, and surprisingly effective at containing the crime scene.’

  Firehand bristled. ‘If the details had gotten out, there would be hysteria on the streets. Dogwood is just very good at his job—’

  Kal threw down a leather-bound notebook onto the stone tomb. It landed open at a pencil sketch of a bold design: a clenched fist surrounded by flames. The senators all leaned in to look. Witchwood gasped, Greatbear laughed, and Ben beamed at Kal with undisguised pride.

  ‘Where did you get this, Moonheart?’ Firehand asked sharply.

  ‘Captain Dogwood’s back pocket,’ Kal admitted freely.

  ‘Care to explain, Felix?’ Viola Witchwood said, a mischievous sparkle in her green eyes. ‘You probably know more about this symbol than the rest of us.’

  Firehand sat rigid in his seat. ‘I hardly need to explain myself,’ he said. ‘Yes, the flaming fist may have once flown from the banners of my great ancestors in the early days of the Republic, but it has long since been appropriated by others. We all know what it symbolises now.’

  Revolution!

  ‘This information can’t leave this …’ Firehand gestured to the darkness that filled the edges of the cave, ‘… place.’

  Kal saw the fear behind his eyes. She knew that she had some power over him now. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I don’t spread lies and rumours … at least not until I prove them true.’

  Gwyn looked up from where he was sitting playing with pebbles on the cave floor. ‘Kal will help!’ he said.

  Greatbear slapped the stone tomb with his palm. ‘There you go then,’ he roared. ‘That settles it! The voice of the gods has spoken. Kal will solve this mystery!’

  ‘Tell them what you suspect, Kal,’ Ben said.

  Kal sat back down. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘There’s another group who might be interested in revolution—in hitting the Senate hard during the elections. Last year I did a job for Ben; I had to warn Raelo Redrake to stay away from the Dragonites. But they rarely let those involved with them break off ties and live. And Raelo is still alive. He left the party just before the murder, and he hasn’t been seen since. I could go and check up on him …’

  Firehand mulled this over. ‘And what would you want in return for your help?’ he asked, in a tone of voice that suggested that he already knew the answer.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Kal mused. ‘You could reopen the Snake Pit and drop Zeb Zing’s trial, for a start.’

  Firehand was silent for a while. There was a chill in the air; the Forgotten Tomb was probably the coolest place in the city right now.

  ‘Find me a killer,’ he said eventually, ‘and then we will talk about your friend.’

  Kal turned to leave, but not before she had some final words to the Senate, including Ben: ‘I’ll see what I can find out. But right now, you’re all suspects too.’

  * * *

  Kal walked alone down one of Arcus Hill’s wide tree-lined avenues. It was three in the morning, and the city was starting to quiet down. She wanted to visit Zeb as soon as she could, to tell her the latest developments. She wasn’t hurrying though; in her mind she was lost in the past, thinking back to the time when she and Ben had first explored the mysterious underground world beneath the city …

  … and seen—inscribed on a stone door, thousands of feet beneath street level—the same symbol that she had seen tonight—the blazing fist of Lord Protector Feron Firehand, who had founded the Republic five hundred years ago; the untouchable hero whose many statues around the city were only outnumbered by those of the gods.

  A man who thought his secrets had been buried forever.

  II.v

  I Love the City

  It was seven years ago that I first saw the flaming fist of Feron Firehand. It was the day that Ben and I entered the city; Ben had not been back since visiting as a child, and I had never seen it at all. We came in from the east, along the Zorronov Road. Apparently, the entrance to Ben’s secret tunnel was somewhere between the two concentric walls that ringed the city, so as dusk fell we found ourselves approaching the bridge that spanned the moat.

  ‘The guards shouldn’t stop us at this gate, at least,’ Ben said. ‘Although, they might wonder what we were doing out in the Wild, so we need a vaguely convincing story. Follow my lead!’

  The moat was wide, the water black and still, and the bridge was narrow and flimsy; I guess that the idea was that it wouldn’t support the weight of some of the larger monsters that might come crashing out of the Endless Forest. The walls on the far side of the moat were constructed of whitewashed concrete, and two forty-foot-high towers stood either side of a gated arched tunnel.

  We crossed the bridge and approached the guard who was leaning against the postern gate, smoking a roll-up. ‘We’re back!’ Ben announced confidently.

  The guard looked at Ben, and then at me trailing behind. We could have passed for a pair of grubby farm workers, returning from a day in the fields, if it wasn’t for the fact that in this city the fields were inside the outer wall. ‘Where have you been?’ the guard asked in
a bored and dutiful voice.

  Ben grabbed me in a surprise hug. ‘I took my girl here to a secluded grove a few miles away to propose to her!’ he declared. The guard looked up and gave us a second glance. My screwed-up face and stiff body language probably didn’t do much to help support Ben’s story.

  ‘Well … congratulations, I suppose,’ the guard grunted.

  ‘Oh, spare me your good wishes,’ Ben said cheerfully, ‘She said no!’

  The guard laughed, the tension was broken, and a minute later we were through the tunnel and into the ring of farmland that surrounded Amaranthium.

  I was giggling like a teenager. I was a teenager back then! ‘You’ve got the gift of the golden tongue, Ben,’ I said. ‘The city schools are going to be fighting over you when we eventually get inside.’

  It was an innocent comment, but it precipitated the moment that, looking back, set us both on the course that led us to where we are today.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll ever go back to being a schoolteacher,’ Ben said. ‘I’ve been thinking, Kal; if we do find my ancestor King Aldenute’s stash hidden under Arcus Hill, then we should invest it in some kind of business …’

  What did Ben know about business? ‘The storytelling business?’ I joked. But almost immediately I had a flash of inspiration: we could buy a run-down building, and turn it into a theatre; writing, making costumes and rehearsing long into the night; recruiting a company of actors—a band of friends with who we would have the happiest of times sharing Ben’s stories with the world.

  If Ben and I had been on the same page back then, then our lives would have been so different now; but of course we were not …

  ‘There’s one position in the city that has but two very simple entry requirements,’ he told me. ‘You have to be at least thirty years of age, and a millionaire …’

  Ben was convinced that there was a seat in the senate chamber with his name on it.

  * * *

  I tried to look the soldier in the eye, but he stared ahead blankly. His surcoat and shield were unadorned, but the black pennant that flew from his spear bore a simple, chilling white image: a skull.

  The soldier was also twenty feet tall, and made of stone. We were standing on the Field of Bones, before one of the enormous granite sentinels. A hundred of them—a whole century—stood as a monument to the legion that had been completely wiped out defending the city five hundred years ago.

  ‘They gave their lives for the crown, for my family,’ Ben reflected as he stared up at the fearsome warrior. ‘But by the time the monsters were driven back from the city, the king had killed himself and the palace had fallen. The last thing my illustrious ancestor ever did was knight his guard captain, Feron Firehand, after he slew the West Wind Dragon. Suddenly we had a new hero and the Republic was born. Of course, it’s a republic in name only; even today, at least one of the two consuls elected every year is a Firehand, and the other is usually some crawling sycophant. Someone needs to put a stop to it.’

  Was Ben nursing an ancient family grudge? ‘You told me you weren’t interested in reclaiming the crown.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Ben said, ‘I want to play the Firehands at their own game. In the senate house, in the courtrooms … in the elections! The elections are actually held, and the votes counted, right here on the Field of Bones.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got my vote at least,’ I said. ‘But you’ve got to earn it by getting us into the city. Where is this secret tunnel?’

  ‘Somewhere … right here,’ Ben said, moving away to a spot between two of the giant soldiers: the Field of Bones was bordered by a stepped terrace, for the crowds to gather on during public events, and all along the top level was a five-foot-high carved frieze. ‘The king’s family feared for their lives during all the political upheavals,’ Ben said, ‘so this tunnel was their emergency escape route. The door is hidden in the frieze … just here I think … and the words to open it have been passed down through our family …’

  Ben kneeled in front of a stretch of carvings depicting legionaries and monsters battling in the forests, and whispered his secret phrase: ‘I love the city.’

  I just sat on the stone step and pretended that I wasn’t with him.

  He repeated the phrase slightly louder. Nothing happened.

  It was dark now, but the Field of Bones was busy with beer tents, food stalls and crowds of labourers socialising under the looming shapes of the statues. A group of guards tramped past on patrol. A peddler, his pony loaded with knick knacks, went by in the opposite direction. And all this activity was just a taster of what life would be like within the city walls proper. It was a strange thrill seeing so many new people, after growing up in a village where I knew everyone else’s face better than I did my own. So I watched the nightlife while Ben crawled about looking for his door.

  ‘I love the city!’ he proclaimed out loud, standing up and spreading his arms before the frieze. A group of young farm hands walking past turned to look. One strapping lad mimicked the gesture and shouted, ‘And I love you!’ The patrol of guards looked back to see what the commotion was.

  I honestly don’t know what Ben would have done without me there that night. Punched the stone until his fist bled, probably, and shouted and screamed until the guards dragged him off and threw him out into the Wild for the night. I never did register the point at which helping Ben avoid and escape trouble became a full-time job for me, but looking back, this may have been the night.

  ‘Senator,’ I addressed him in a mocking tone. ‘Did you think that there was a little creature that’s been sitting behind the door for five hundred years, listening out for someone to come along and say the magic words? Here, let me have a look. You go and get us some dinner at one of those stalls.’

  Ben shuffled off, mumbling to himself, and I took the chance to examine the frieze without distraction. On one of the carved panels that Ben had been focusing on, a one-eyed giant—a cyclops—was towering over the legions; further along the frieze, the cyclops was on its back, and a triumphant soldier was holding up a bloody sword in one hand and the cyclops’ heart in the other; on the right hand side, the surviving legionnaires were depicted surrounded by monsters, making their last stand on a ridge, with the distant, unreachable city on the horizon.

  Eye … Heart … Amaranthium.

  I love the city.

  I put my left hand on the cyclops’ eye, and stretched to put my right over its torn-out heart. I couldn’t reach the other side, so when Ben came back, holding two sausages in buns, I ordered him to go and put a hand on the small carving of the city. The very second he did so, there was a click and square panel of stone moved inwards a fraction of an inch. We both moved quickly in front of it, to cover it up from curious eyes, and for a while we stayed there, nonchalantly leaning against the stone, eating our greasy sausage supper.

  ‘You’re amazing, Kal,’ Ben said, wiping his mouth and licking his fingers. ‘Maybe I really should have asked you to marry me back there in the forest.’

  ‘You should have asked me when you were just a schoolteacher,’ I told him. ‘Powerful politicians are just not my type.’

  That was the first and only time that subject ever came up.

  * * *

  It was almost dawn by the time we were able to enter the tunnel. Workers were heading out into the patchwork of farmland that surrounded the city, but the Field of Bones was deserted. Nobody was watching, so we carefully moved the square stone cover aside and entered the cramped space beyond.

  Inside was a metal-runged ladder that dropped away into darkness. Ben had gone and bought a couple of lanterns earlier, so we were ready to go. I slotted the cover in place behind us—it clicked back into position—and we began our descent. The ladder led down perhaps twenty hundred yards, then a rough-hewn tunnel led off in the direction of the city. It was low and narrow, so we had to duck down and walk in single file. Our invasion of Amaranthium had begun.

  ‘This tunnel used to come out under the
palace,’ Ben was saying as we walked, ‘but the Senate buildings occupy that part of the Hill these days, so I have no idea where exactly we’re going to end up. You know, if we’re really lucky, then the tunnel might pass through the Forgotten Tomb itself. Can you imagine, Kal—we could be moments away from stumbling across a royal fortune!’

  Ben stopped dead in his tracks, and I crashed right into his back.

  ‘Hmmmm,’ he said, swinging his lantern about. ‘I wasn’t expecting this.’

  We were standing at a crossroads.

  The first tiny seeds of doubt and panic started to sprout roots in my mind. ‘Do you think we’re close to the way out?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ Ben said. ‘I don’t think we’ve passed under the river yet, and Arcus Hill is on the other side of that. I’m not even sure exactly which way we’re facing right now.’ He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out half a crusty bun.

  Ben explained: ‘Banos escaped the Labyrinth of Ice by dropping crumbs from a magic cake, baked for him by some girl who was madly in love with him.’

  Was he serious?

  ‘Going by the taste of the one that I ate,’ I said, ‘I don’t think that these are magic buns.’

  Ben gave me a withering look, then proceeded to walk down the left tunnel, dropping breadcrumbs as he went. I followed after him. What choice did I have? ‘This is just a waste of food, if you ask me,’ I said. ‘If we get lost and starve down here, then you’ve only got yourself to blame!’

  We followed the new tunnel for a good couple of miles as it snaked about beneath the city. For all we knew, we were now back outside the city walls. Had we gone deeper underground, or were we nearing the surface? Who could tell? What would be worse? Coming to another crossroads, or coming to a—

  ‘Dead end!’ Ben said. He swore loudly several times.

  He turned around, but then I noticed the keyhole …

  It was a perfect square, about an inch wide, in the dead centre of the rockface. As I brought my lantern closer to look, I started to notice other details: there was a design carved into the stone. Brushing away the ancient dirt and dust, I uncovered an image that surrounded the square hole; a large symbol, about three feet across, that covered what appeared to be a solid stone door.