by Mike Wild
He cried out in shock, twisting in mid air, and saw Freel standing on the lip of the last car. Slowhand fully expected to hit the tracks once more, but Freel's whip lashed towards him, coiling about him and slamming him against the rear of the train. Slowhand hung, dazed, and saw Freel glaring down at him, his teeth bared.
What the hells is this? Slowhand thought. First the bastard shoves me off the back of the train, and then he catches me, and now he leaves me dangling here?
This was about Jenna, it had to be. Freel was playing mind games, for sure.
The Faith enforcer stared down at him for what seemed an age, his face red, his eyes wide and wild, and then suddenly jerked the chain upward, bringing Slowhand with it. The archer clutched the lip of the car's roof and pulled himself up, and Freel snapped the chain off him, turned and walked away.
Slowhand stood, breathing hard and rubbing his wrists, staring after the man. His every instinct was to follow, to grab him and to sort the problems between them out right now, but somehow he didn't have it in him.
Instead, as the train sped inexorably towards the Sardenne he returned wearily to the cross-legged position he had adopted at the start of their journey, and once more his mind began to wander.
This time, however, his imaginings were not of naked women, of the rolling plains of Pontaine, or even of the Sardenne. Instead, they were of his sister's face, staring at him from the burning gondola of the Makennon. One word kept repeating itself, over and over in his mind. An order, delivered in his own, sure voice.
"Fire!"
It was said that a fistful of full golds could buy you anything in Fayence, but the bigger the fist the better the anything it bought. Not that any of the personal services of this town were in any way unsatisfactory. The local Lord, who maintained a fiscal and hands-on interest in them all, made sure of that. It was merely a matter of how long it would take to recover from the relaxations on offer, whether they were mental, physical, or both. Stimulation-wise, Fayence boasted it catered for all six senses, sometimes all at once, and it wasn't for nothing that the many hotels in the town were known as convalesalons.
Kali moved through a noisy crowd of the coming night's - or possibly week's - guests-to-be, many of whom, by the look of them, should have checked in some hours before. She was making her way along Fayence's main thoroughfare - known to one and all as Sin Street - and the air was a fug of exotic perfumes, stimulating massage balms and dreamweed clouds, the odours brushing off on Kali in the jostling melee. Though she knew exactly where she was heading, she found it impossible to get there in a straight line, the sea of revellers carrying her first towards Maloof's Erotivarium, thence the Palace of Pleasure and Pain and its patented 'Sinulator' by way of the Slither Baths and the Womb Chambers, the barkers in front of which deafeningly promised a sensory experience such that "you'll wish you'd never been born!" Kali knew that the so called 'Womb Chambers' were, in fact, the extracted bladders of globe toads from the Turnitian marshes but if the owners weren't going to tell the punters that little trade secret who was she to spoil their fun? You sure as hells had to admire the inventiveness of this place.
Not that Kali was that familiar with Fayence's attractions, she would be at pains to point out to anyone who asked - no, no, no, not at all. Slowhand, of course, had been badgering her to come here since they'd first become an item, but as that prospect was the equivalent of letting a very greedy little boy loose in a very large sweet factory, she had consistently denied him her company - and knowing she knew, he hadn't dared come alone. She smiled, thinking how galled he'd be if he knew she were here now. Even if she currently had only a passing curiosity in the establishments of Sin Street and was actually heading towards one of the town's more unusual attractions, a little more off the beaten track.
That was the thing about Fayence. It hadn't always been like this. For hundreds of years, in fact, the town had been the favoured home of those who studied the old Wheel of Power, and had once even been considered as a potential site for the Three Towers, the headquarters of the League of Prestidigitation and Prestige. That it had lost out to Andon in this respect had been an early blow for Fayence but one which had ultimately served it well. When their more conformist brethren had decamped to the north-west, the mages who subsequently came here - followed, in turn, by such complementary professionals as apothecaries, herbalists and suppliers of various arcane needs -shared a certain streak of independence, an individual approach to their studies that would have made it difficult for them to gain acceptance amongst their peers elsewhere.
They had their limits, however, and while many of their experiments might have stretched these to breaking point there were areas of their craft that, by general agreement, were considered too dangerous for exploration and, therefore, forbidden. Creation magic was one. Necromancy another. Thus it was that when Bastian Redigor was discovered to be waving his wand around in such murky waters - the specifics of which had not survived the passage of time - the man was banished forthwith from Fayence, never to return. It was at this point that the town's fortunes had begun to wane, not least because it was rumoured that with a wave of his hand upon his departure Redigor had left behind a legacy in the form of an incurable and agonising taint that quite literally consumed mages' brains, reducing the skull to an empty shell within a day.
Whether the rumour were true or not, one by one the mages died, and with them gone the livelihood of the apothecaries, herbalists and suppliers went too, and while a few remained to this day - albeit providing services for a clientele with more intimate requirements - Fayence was reduced to a little more than a ghost town.
So it remained for a number of years until the present Lord of Fayence, Aristide, inherited his position, whereupon he reinvented the town to reflect his own predilections, a change of emphasis he knew would be lucrative bearing in mind the amount of coin he himself had spent elsewhere over the years.
There was one area of the town Aristide did not change, however. Whether for fear of a return of the taint, or whether because the aura of the outcast who had become known as the Pale Lord still, after all this time, lingered there, it was left to rot, untouched, abandoned.
It was where the mages had died. They called it the Ghost Quarter.
Kali approached this forgotten part of town between the ignominious landmarks of a derelict comfort parlour called Whoopee Kushen's, outside of which an out-of-date courtesan swatted flies, and a grimy street stand trading in spit-roasted mool and bottles of thwack that gloried in the name Abra-Kebab-Bar. It was doubtful if either enterprise was licenced by Lord Fayence, but they had attached themselves to the outer periphery of his salacious empire to engage in its spirit nonetheless. As Kali neared the latter, its proprietor - a huge, fat, greasy-bearded man three times the size of his stand who presumably was Abra - almost fell off his stool at the prospect of an actual customer. But his ear-to-ear grin faded as Kali nodded, smiled and passed on by.
"Girly, lady, madam, missus-woman," he protested as she passed, "I assure you, there is nothing for you beyond my small but perfectly formed establishment." He stroked his beard. "A little like yourself, if I may say..."
Kali smiled. "You can forget the flattery, Abra. I'm not looking for food or drink."
Abra coughed, and actually looked embarrassed. "Ah, I see."
The man's redness made Kali flush too. "No, no, not that either - not anything." She resorted to her failsafe tactic when she found herself in an impasse situation. "Actually, I'm trying to save the world."
"The world?"
"Umm. Think so, anyway. Not quite so sure about what's going on this time."
"The world," Abra said again and then, aghast, "My advice to you is forget the world, save yourself."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because if you are heading within, you must be heading for the Pale Lord's house yes? There can be no other reason to go there. I say do not do so, because those who do, they do not come back."
"Other
people have gone there?"
Abra made a dismissive sound. "Oh, not often. The occasional mage or relic hunter, eager for a memento of our infamous son. Young, drunken couples with their underknicks already about their ankles, clearly acting upon a dare." He sighed and shook his head. "I do not see any of them again, other than as a stain upon a wall, a smear across a window, a splatter beneath my feet." Abra emphasised his point by suddenly squeezing a large dollop of kebab sauce onto the ground with a loud and flatulent plop, making Kali jump.
"I see," Kali said. Redigor had obviously trapped his old home the same way he'd trapped his books, which made her destination all the more interesting. "Thanks for the warning, Abra. I'll watch my step."
Abra sucked in an amazed breath. "You still go?"
Kali placed her hands on her hips in what she hoped was a heroic stance. "It's what I do."
"Then you are the loopo," Abra exclaimed, rotating a finger at his temple.
"That's what people keep telling me."
Kali moved on into the Ghost Quarter, shaking her head as Abra produced another sigh and flatulent plop. But she had soon left the Abra-Kebab-Bar behind her, Sin Street far behind her. The difference between the two locations could not have been more marked. Kali was now the only living thing in a warren of utterly silent streets, shattered glass cracking underfoot, the odd piece of rubble skittering away from her. There were no birds in the azure night sky, not even any vermin peering from the empty houses on either side - rich nesting grounds though they'd be. Lifeless and dark, the houses themselves were remarkably well-preserved, some even retaining the black 'T' daubed there long ago to warn others that their owners had succumbed to the taint. Kali was pretty certain that the 'T's would have served no useful purpose. The Pale Lord was powerful and, if his taint had your name on it, sooner or later it would have got you, no matter what.
The Pale Lord's home was the eeriest in the eerie warren of properties - a foreboding, rambling structure at the end of the street which, despite being long-abandoned, seemed to glow faintly of candlelight from within. Kali approached slowly, looking around to make sure she was alone, and climbed the step to the entrance. The door was half-obscured by thick cobwebs and half-hanging off its hinges and, when pushed, fell to the floor in a cloud of dust. Shadows danced slowly within. Kali eased into the hallway, and could have sworn she heard the sound of footsteps from the upper floor. She swallowed.
Disappointingly, though, as Kali cautiously began to explore, there were no ghosts - and very little of anything else - to be found. Apart from a couple of fairly obvious traps which she carefully defused, the house seemed exactly what it appeared to be: empty and derelict. For an hour, she worked her way minutely through all its rooms, finding nothing and ending up in the building's main parlour where, from the looks of what remained, Redigor had once kept his library and laboratory. But as elsewhere, there was little to see. What the passage of time had not rotted had been removed, most noticeably in the bookshelves lining the room. Even the laboratory was a disappointment. A dust-covered and vaguely horseshoe-shaped workbench occupied the heart of the room. Kali could imagine Redigor standing there conducting his 'unique' experiments, but the only evidence which now remained of them was the odd upturned belljar or shattered pipette. Kali pursed her lips. Not quite what she'd expected of an infamous necromancer's laboratory, it had to be said.
Still, though the dwelling seemed to offer her nothing, Kali couldn't shake the feeling that she was missing something. She had the feeling there was something wrong with the room that she couldn't quite put her finger on, something to do with space. For some reason, it felt bigger than it was, more open. Kali backed up to the door and studied it anew - nothing. Maybe she'd been wrong to come here after all, she thought, frustration flooding her.
It was in that moment, her mind returning to the bigger picture, filling with images of the Sardenne and what lay within it, that she stopped looking - and that was when she saw.
It wasn't much, like something in the corner of her eye right in front of her, but it was there. Something odd about the way the workbench curved, as if its relations with the rest of the room were oddly misaligned. She noticed then how it wasn't just the bench that appeared odd but the other trappings, too - bookcases, furniture, even the tiling on the floor. Where their lines should have been straight, they curved ever so slightly, and where surfaces should have been flat, they were very gently concave. The only comparison Kali could draw was that it was like looking through a very weak fish-eye lens, but what she saw was there - something bending the reality of the heart of the room.
Kali moved into the 'u' of the bench and waved her hand slowly back and forth where light seemed to bend the most. She felt a slight thickening of the air and, for a moment, her fingers brushed against something almost, but not quite, insubstantial. Dammit, she knew what this was now. It was a glamour field like the one she'd encountered at the Crucible, only in this case highly localised, highly concentrated. So concentrated it was able to confound every sense. To manipulate reality with such finesse would have taken great skill indeed, and such a degree of skill would surely only have been used if, as she suspected, Redigor had something very significant to hide.
Kali's elation was fleeting. The problem that remained was finding out what. Even though she knew there was something there, her perception remained too wrong-footed to tease it out into the open. Frustrated, she flopped down against a wall, clucking her tongue as she stared at the field.
Come on, Hooper! There has to be a way to work this, a way to skew my senses so that I'm not looking at what the field wants me to look at.
For a while no solution presented itself and then, slowly, she smiled. What was that old adage about mixing business with pleasure?
A moment later, Kali was out in the street, racing back through the Ghost Quarter to Abra's stand.
"Your thwack," she said. "I want it."
Shock at her sudden appearance mingled with surprise at actually making a sale. "H-how many bottles?"
"All of them."
"All of them?"
"And flummox. You got any flummox?"
"I - I think I may have a few bottles, yes..."
"Those, too. What about twattle?"
"Twattle?" Abra gasped. He glanced about himself guiltily. "I have one bottle. But it is deadly. And illegal. It is also very, very expensive."
Kali pulled a coinpurse from her pocket and emptied its golden contents into Abra's hands. "I'll take it. I'll take everything. The lot. But I'll need you to wheel it to Redigor's house."
The suggestion brought even more sweat to Abra's face than was already running down it but, as he watched Kali bite the cork from the bottle of twattle and down it in one, he realised she was not to be messed with. He had, after all, once seen a bottle of twattle make someone's ears drop off. Quickly, he began to unlock his stand's complex arrangement of brakes and supports. Kali, meanwhile, grabbed two armfuls of bottles and was gone.
Back at the house, she ploughed into the various ales with industrial zeal, popping out to Abra when necessary for more, and the wall where she slumped was soon stacked with a small mountain of empties. The booze hadn't yet achieved its desired result, however, her preternatural capacity for the stuff preventing her from getting drunk enough to loosen her hold on reality. Not that it wasn't having some effect.
As she once more sought out Abra for supplies she felt an overwhelming desire to tell him what a very nice fat man he was - no, no, really, Abra - and, on returning to the laboratory, she accidentally booted half the bottle mountain across the room. Kali hopped up and down flapping her arms, trying to shush them as they rolled and rattled everywhere, but the little farkers wouldn't listen, so she called them names instead.
She dropped to her knees, snorting, eyes moving in circles over her fresh supply. Which to pick? Which to pick? Which to pick?
Having decided that the fourth of the identical bottles was by far the prettiest, she stood p
recariously and raised it in a toast to the glamour field. There was still no change in its appearance but the small manoeuvre threw her off kilter and her feet momentarily forgot which of them was which. Kali staggered into one of the bookcases, bowed and apologised profusely, then soothed its hurt feelings by drawing shapes in the dust of one of its shelves. It was as she was doing this that she realised she could murder a kebab.
Kali staggered to a window and shouted to Abra at the top of her voice. As she turned back, it suddenly occurred to her that she had stumbled upon actually quite a cool concept, having food delivered to your door. Maybe she ought to jack in all the world saving stuff, go into partnership with Abra and open a home delivery shop. Hells, with Horse she could have the food anywhere in a five league radius in no time, still warm and at no extra charge. Now, what would she call it? Kebakali? Kalibabi? Kebabkalbulbu -
Pitsh!
There was something wrong with her lips.
The realisation suddenly struck Kali that for the last few seconds she'd been staring at a spiral staircase in the centre of the room. Mouth gaping, bottle dropping to the ground, she half walked, half stretched towards it, as if any sudden move might make it vanish once more. It didn't. It was there, all right, as real as everything else in the room, solid beneath her touch. Kali burped and pulled herself in, turning sinuously around its metal core like a dancer, head angled to peer up the spiralling steps into shadow.
"Boo!" She said suddenly, and giggled, blowing a hole in a thin blanket of cobweb, which dropped down onto her face like a flap of skin.
Kali puffed it away, peered through the hole and frowned. Even sobered up slightly. From what she could see through further cobwebs, the staircase went up high. Higher than the house itself. Maybe it was something to do with her pickled brain, or maybe it was because she had become used to such things, but Kali didn't find anything odd about that at all. Nor did she find its shadowed heights unnerving or daunting. Far from it, because she knew she was staring at a threshold that hadn't been crossed since Redigor had abandoned the house. This staircase was what he had been hiding, his little secret, and at its top she might very well find out just what the Pale Lord was really all about.
