Thief of the Ancients

by Mike Wild

  Kali yelped as she crashed into the podium and flipped over it, then smashed jarringly and numbingly into the far wall. She picked herself up, wiping blood from her lip.

  Again, she ran at the mage, and this time he simply raised an arm and she found herself rising with it, treading air before she could get anywhere near him. The mage smiled, slowly rolled her over in the air and then manoeuvred her helplessly floating body to the side of the chamber. Kali felt herself pressed against the wall and, as she struggled futilely against the invisible grip that held her there, the mage moved his arm again and she found herself being slowly dragged all the way around the circumference of the tower, as if she were dirt to be smeared from his hand.

  It was, frankly, embarrassing. But embarrassing was all it seemed to be. Presumably the mage could have flung her around like a doll if he so wished, but he simply continued as he did, smiling, as if this were his way of proving a point.

  He even let her down gently, positioning her back on her feet before him.

  “Okay, that wasn’t fair. You’ve got me, so what happens now?”

  The mage smiled. “Absolutely nothing. I mean you no harm and will defend myself only as and when necessary. I have been employed to provide a client with the same information you now seek, and that employment is now done. It would be churlish of me to censure you for obtaining the same knowledge by your own means, would it not? And I could have turned you in the moment you fell through that hatch.”

  “It was you watching me.”

  “I... sensed you, yes.”

  “You’re the sender,” Kali realised. “The Final Faith’s source.”

  The mage bowed. “Poul Sonpear at your service. Trusted archivist for the League of Prestidigitation and Prestige. But the Final Faith are quite generous when it comes to persuading people to bend the rules a little. Tell me,” he added with genuine intrigue, “just why is it you and they find this material of such great interest?”

  “You’ve seen it. What the hells do you think?”

  “I have no opinion. I have seen many thousands of such manuscripts and these, as are they all, are open to subjective interpretation.”

  You can say that again, Kali thought. People saw what people wanted to see. Never more so than when they pursued their interest with religious zeal. And that remained exactly the problem here.

  “What if I were to tell you these things warn against the end of civilisation as we know it? That unless I recover a key that the Final Faith took from a friend of mine, they’re a quarter of the way to unleashing something –”

  Kali paused, unsure how to go on.

  “Something?” Sonpear urged.

  “I don’t know yet, okay?” Kali shouted at him, piqued. “But something very, very bad. A clockwork king.”

  Kali frowned, aware, after the intensity of her search, of how unthreatening that sounded.

  Sonpear laughed. “Then I would suggest that you will not be able to stop them.”

  Kali balled her fists. “What are you saying? That this is, after all, where you call your friends to finish me off?”

  “Not at all. I wish only to point out to you that the Final Faith’s journey along their path of discovery has progressed somewhat further than you think.”

  “Say again?”

  Sonpear sighed heavily. “My... exchanges with the Final Faith’s receiver work two ways and, though I do not intend to, it is sometimes hard to avoid absorbing... peripheral information. This key that you refer to – the one taken from your friend and that I believe you originally acquired from the Spiral of Kos? – it is not the first to fall into their hands.”

  Kali swallowed. Suddenly what Munch had said in the Spiral about hazards he’d recently encountered made sense. “They have more?”

  “There have been two previous expeditions – to forgotten sites called, I believe, the Shifting City and the Eye of the Storm.”

  Names that sounded suitably trap-like, Kali thought. And they must have been two of the sites the map referred to, but she – and, presumably, Merrit – had never heard of them. But then they didn’t have the resources the Final Faith had – the bastards.

  “And they were successful?”

  “I gather so.” Sonpear stared at her. “Young lady, the Final Faith are already in possession of three of your keys and are about to acquire possession of the fourth.”

  “What? Where?” Kali said, urgently.

  “A site that has so far caused them considerable problems and loss, and by inference therefore the most dangerous of them all. And it is located beneath the most convenient and unexpected place you can imagine – the Final Faith’s headquarters at Scholten Cathedral itself.”

  Kali’s mind flashed back to her and Killiam’s escape – the curious lift shaft, the place she had wanted to go.

  “Slowhand, you fark,” she said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I have to go,” Kali said, knowing she needed to reach the key first. “Listen, you’re the spy – is there a back way out of here?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  MUCH AS KALI had negotiated her conduit above Andon, so the man without clothes negotiated his below Scholten – only here the conduit was constructed not of metal but of stone. Dank stone. The dank stone of a sewer, in fact, sheened and slimed by substances worse than those Kali had encountered at the Three Towers – vile, brown, smelly substances that a man as clean and fastidious as he should not even have to think about, let alone drag himself through.

  Somewhere beneath the Scholten Cathedral kitchens Killiam Slowhand tried not to think about the sludge that coated him, especially as there was nothing at all between the sludge and him. Every inch of him.

  The archer shuddered.

  It could have been worse, he supposed. For one thing, he could be beneath the Final Faith’s privies rather than their kitchens. For another, more importantly, he could be dead. The knife that had been lunged at him on the walkway had been intended to deliver a fatal wound but had instead only grazed his side, something to do with the fact that he had grabbed its wielder and thrown him off the towering building as soon as his arm had come towards him. As the guard’s scream faded in Scholten’s night sky, his friends would probably have avenged him, finished him off, were it not for the fact that the head guard, just caught up, had ordered him to be taken alive. The order came on the specific instruction of Katherine Makennon, but why she wanted him kept alive, he didn’t know – perhaps so she could have her Mister Fitch turn him to her cause, or perhaps merely so that she could revel in his reincarceration. She had certainly seemed to revel as she had had him stripped of what little clothing he had, and he wondered whether something had been going on there, whether perhaps a little of his charm had rubbed off on her after all? Because surely she couldn’t have rumbled the old abrasive underpants trick?

  Whatever the reason, it had led him to his present unsavoury predicament. Makennon had returned him to a cell but this time somewhere she could keep an eye on him, a small oubliette she just happened to maintain in her private courtyard, which was obviously used only for very special guests. He had felt quite flattered by this and had returned the favour by singing romantic ballads night and day – his very own Eternal Choir. But all good things had to come to an end and, after two weeks, she had ordered his execution at the earliest opportunity.

  This was fine by him, as he had never intended hanging around. He’d have been gone the first night had he not needed to lose a little weight first. Not that he was overweight, of course, just – well, a little big. A little big for the hole in the oubliette floor, that was.

  It was a flaw in security but a necessary one, because with the amount of rain over Scholten, without it he or anyone else kept in the oubliette would have drowned. The hole had probably once been too small for anyone to pass through but it was also long unmaintained – its grate rusted – and, over time, the draining water had worn away its edges, providing a smooth-edged if extremely tight squeezewa
y through the floor. The fact was, if he had been fully clothed, he’d have had to strip anyway to get through.

  Definitely. Yes, without a doubt.

  Slowhand shook his head. Hooper would never have believed that he’d done it again. Once – just once – he’d like to catch her losing her clothes in the line of duty. Then she’d know that these things just had a way of happening. But no – there was no chance of that, was there? Not with little Miss Prissy Knickers.

  Slowhand continued crawling forwards, estimating he’d pass beyond the cathedral walls in about ten more minutes. Ahead of him, he could actually see a dim circle of azure night sky that was the sewer’s outlet.

  Unfortunately, that same light was also partly obscured, silhouetting something coming straight towards him. And down here it could have been anything.

  Slowhand cursed. Feeling somewhat vulnerable in his present state, he looked for somewhere to hide. His eyes darted ahead of him, behind him, down and up, but he was in a sewer and there was nowhere to go. He was actually so involved in doing what he did that he failed to notice how quickly the something was coming at him. And the something was so involved in getting where it wanted to be that it didn’t notice him.

  Heads collided.

  “Ow, dammit!”

  “Jeeeeshhh!”

  A face popped up right in front of his.

  “Slowhand?” Kali Hooper said.

  He strained to see in the dark. “Hooper? Oh hells, don’t tell me – you can see better in the dark, too?”

  “Looks like it. So... how are you doing?”

  “Oh, you know...”

  “Mmm.”

  “Mmm.”

  The usual exchange went on for a while until Kali suggested they backtrack slightly in her direction, where an access shaft meant the roof of the sewer opened up. They moved to it, and Kali and Slowhand stood.

  As he rose, the sewer’s detritus slipped off his body, and Kali saw what was beneath. Or rather wasn’t.

  She turned quickly away. “Oh gods, you’re naked again, Slowhand. How in the hells do you manage it?”

  “Hey – don’t blame me, blame Makennon,” he defended himself. “Or maybe even yourself – in case you’ve forgotten you’re the reason I got locked up again.” He waved at himself. “Like this.”

  “You told me to go!”

  “Of course I did – but I didn’t expect you to come back! What the hells are you doing here, Hooper? Did you forget something?”

  Kali’s expression became serious. “I was too late to save the old man.”

  Slowhand faltered. “Gods, I’m sorry.”

  “I know you are. But before he died, he told me what’s going on. Sent me to Andon. This whole mess is worse than we thought.”

  Slowhand bowed his head, sighed. “When is it ever anything else? Tell me.”

  Kali explained the gist of what she’d learned, omitting only those parts she was still working out in her own head, and, as she did, the expression in the archer’s eyes changed from anticipation to resignation, and he rested his palms on the sewer wall, slowly banging his head against them. “I suppose this means I’m not escaping any more?”

  “I... might be grateful for a little help.”

  Slowhand punched the sewer wall. “I knew it!” He pointed ahead, would have jumped up and down like a petulant brat if he could. “Do you realise I’m only a hundred yards from the exit! A hundred yards, Hooper. I see the light at the end of the tunnel!”

  “I know. I came in that way. Slowhand, what can I say? The outside world’s not all it’s cracked up to be?”

  “Aaarrgh!” Slowhand roared in frustration.

  “Oh, will you stop it,” Kali chided him. “Look, I hardly expected to find you crawling about down here, all right? In fact, I thought you were dead.” She paused, quietened, and added softly, “I’m glad you’re not, by the way.”

  Killiam stared at her in her new dark silk bodysuit, and his tone softened. “Yeah, me too. Like the new look, by the way. Very nice outfit. Clingy. It, er, shows off your good points.”

  Kali folded her arms. “It’s damp and I’m cold, you pervert. Now, are you with me or not, because I want out of this sewer...”

  “Oh, funnily enough, so did I!” Killiam offered, flinging up his arms, though by now it was obvious that he didn’t mean it. Nevertheless, the action resulted in something flying off his hands and slapping Kali in the face. Slowhand looked down, apologised.

  Kali wiped the article away, shaking her head. “There’s an access shaft in the ceiling about two hundred yards back,” she said. “Comes out near the Eternal Choir. We can work our way back down to the complex from there.”

  “Okay, I’ll go first,” Killiam said, bending back to enter the tunnel.

  Kali grabbed him. “O-ho, no. If you think I’m going to crawl along looking at your rear end in all its glory, you’ve got another think coming.” She got down on her hands and knees. “I go first.”

  “Fine, fine,” Killiam said, tiredly. But as Kali moved forwards into the tunnel he smiled at the sight of her bottom, stuck his finger in his mouth to wet it, and drew a tick in the air. It was only a moment later he realised his mistake.

  “Guh... uh... ahhhh... pits...”

  “Hah!” Kali said. “What was that, by the way? On your – ?”

  “Sewerkraut, I think.”

  “Don’t you mean –”

  “No, Hooper. I know what I mean.”

  The pair found the access shaft and up it a ladder that rose to cathedral level, which they climbed, shoving aside a grate. They emerged into a corridor filled with the singing of the Eternal Choir, and the first thing Killiam did was flatten a guard who stood in a doorway mouthing the words as he listened to it. He quickly stripped him of his armour, then donned it himself, bundling the body into a dark niche.

  Kali looked him up and down. “Better,” she said.

  Slowhand shrugged, buckling up his collarpiece. “Yeah, well – this time we’re not planning to go flying anywhere, are we?”

  “The door’s just down there – come on.”

  “Wait,” Slowhand said. “There’s something I need to get first. From Makennon’s chambers.”

  “What? Are you nuts?”

  “Trust me, Hooper. I’ve a feeling we’re going to need this thing.”

  Slowhand led Kali to the Anointed Lord’s audience chamber – deserted, Kali guessed because Makennon was down at the dig – and opened a compartment in the wall. Kali found herself staring at the most magnificent-looking longbow she had ever seen. She knew where it must have come from – the Battle of Andon, eight years earlier. This was the weapon that had killed John Garrison.

  Slowhand weighed it in his hands, ran his palm along its sleek lines. “Suresight,” he said. “Never thought I’d see her again.”

  “Careless of you to lose her.”

  Slowhand pulled a quiver from the compartment too, lined an arrow against the shaft, pursing his lips and nodding in approval. Then his expression darkened. “Yes, well... After Andon I’d had enough of killing. Everyone had.” His tone lightened once more. “But times move on. Let’s go.”

  “Hold on,” Kali said, looking around. “If Makennon’s in the habit of keeping souvenirs, maybe...”

  She rifled through a nearby chest and with a cry of triumph pulled forth her toolbelt, removed from her prior to her interrogation. She also found her torn and tatty old outfit, and as she held it up to examine it, wasn’t sure what disturbed her more – the fact that Makennon had seen fit to keep it, or the fact that Dolorosa had been right in her observation that it did indeed steeenk.

  She left the remains of the garment where it was and they continued on to their original destination, moving down out of the cathedral and into its sub-levels once more. This time, they avoided all the guards they could, having no wish to announce their return to the lower depths.

  There was only one problem. The bridge across the cavern had been retracted to the o
ther side, the wheel there locked. What was more, two guards paced back and forth in front of it.

  “Dammit,” Kali said. “They’ve battened down the hatches.”

  “Not a problem,” Slowhand said.

  He unslung his bow.

  Kali stared at the distant wheel and guards. So far they hadn’t been spotted but...

  “What the hells are you doing?” she whispered. “Take one of them down and the other will sound the alarm before you can hit the second. Oh, and even if you could get the second, then there’ll be no one to activate the wheel. We need to think this through.”

  “No, we don’t,” Slowhand said. He primed an arrow and hefted the bow. A nerve in his jaw twitched as he waited, but then, at the exact moment the pacing guards crossed paths, he let fly. The single arrow pierced both of their necks, dropping them instantly, then carried on to impact with the wheel clamp with a solid thud, releasing the lock.

  “Hells, you’re good,” Kali said.

  Slowhand smiled, patting his bow. “It’s good to have the old girl back.”

  Kali brought the bridge to their side and the two crossed, sneaking their way through the remainder of the complex until they neared the shafts that had so aroused Kali’s curiosity what seemed now an age before. This time, they weren’t guarded, but with the bridge supposedly retracted they didn’t really need to be.

  “Hooper, why here?” Slowhand asked. “I mean, an Old Race structure on this site, and then, centuries later, the cathedral built here too, presumably with the Final Faith not then knowing what was beneath it. Can that just be coincidence?”

  “Maybe,” Kali replied. “Or maybe this has always been a site of some significance, sociologically, historically or religiously. Maybe people, whoever they are – or were – are simply drawn here. Actually I’ve come across a few old manuscripts that suggest there may even be a number of nodes located across the peninsula, nodes that could be part of a network of –”

  “Enough, Hooper,” Slowhand said. “What do you expect we’ll find down there?”