Thief of the Ancients

by Mike Wild

  “I see you are enjoying yourself,” Aldrededor observed.

  “Not… quite… the… words… I’d… have… chosen,” Kali gasped as she strained to keep the punchbolts in place. “Do you think, maybe, you could give me a hand here?”

  Aldrededor applauded softly.

  “Aldrededor!”

  The ex-pirate smiled again, sighed, and began to look around for suitable pieces of rock or detritus with which he could jam the spaces Kali’s appendages currently occupied.

  “Is it any wonder,” he commented as he worked, “that we at the Flagons worry about you all the time? Why is it that you get yourself into these ridiculous situations?”

  “I have a knack for it.”

  “Clearly. Tell me – just what would you have done had we not come along?”

  “I don’t know,” Kali said through clenched teeth. It took a second for what Aldrededor had said to penetrate. “Hang on. What do you mean, ‘we’?”

  “There,” Aldrededor said, fitting the last block into place. “I believe you can climb down now.”

  “Thanks. Ahhh. Ooohh. Aldrededor, what do you mean, ‘we’?” she repeated before becoming distracted as what appeared to be a thick cloud of brown fog roiled from the Mole’s cabin.

  A second later, it happened again, and Kali moved to the door, coughing as she was engulfed in a cloud of cloying reekingness.

  Oh no, she thought, and stepped back as something tall and thin articulated itself, in the manner of a brackan, from the inside of the cabin and stood, cheroot in mouth, arms folded.

  “Dolorosa?”

  “Of coursa Dolorosa! Who you expecta, thatta red-headed tart, the Annoying Lord?”

  “Anointed,” Kali corrected, absently. “Dolorosa, what in the hells are you doing here?”

  “Our land is plagued by man-eating theengs and you think I woulda let my ’usband make thisa journey alone?”

  Kali stared at the aforementioned and Aldrededor shrugged, picking at a tooth.

  “Who’s looking after my pitsing pub?”

  “Do notta worry. Horse issa behind the bar.”

  “Horse!?”

  “Hah! I havva her! Eet ees a leetle joke. No, thatta reprobate Deadnettle, he looka after the place. Notta that there are any customers. Nothing, and I mean nothing, comes near while the fat women dance.”

  “The Bellies are still dancing?”

  “They havva leetle choice.”

  “True,” Kali reflected. She paused for a second, looked at the two of them, and shook her head fondly. “Look, I appreciate you bringing the Mole, but I have to go now.”

  “Offa to save the world.”

  “Again,” Kali sighed.

  She patted them both on the shoulder and moved to the dwarven machine. She settled into the pilot’s position but found her legs bent up against the control panel, as they had been when she had first found the Mole. Again, she tried to push the seat back but this time it would not go, blocked by some object. Kali leant around and found that Dolorosa was not the only unexpected extra to arrive with the dwarven machine. Something was jammed behind the seat. A small, wicker basket. Kali flipped the lid and stared inside. There were a number of bottles of flummox and two small mountains of slices of bread, layered in pairs, with filling between them. Kali prodded the uppermost layer of bread tentatively then pulled back with a grimace as a thick, brown substance slowly oozed from beneath it.

  “What,” Kali asked cautiously, “is this?”

  Dolorosa looked surprised. “It issa beer anda butties for our trippa into the mountains.”

  The beer Kali didn’t have a problem with, but it was these ‘butty’ things, and what was still oozing insidiously from inside them, that had disturbed her. She picked one of the creations up and it flopped under its own weight, plopping a lump of brown stuff onto her lap.

  “Surprise stew butties?”

  “Ovva course!” Dolorosa looked affronted. “Wassa the matter, eh? You havva gone offa my signatura dish while you havva been away?”

  “No, no,” Kali said quickly, having no wish to incur the old woman’s wrath, especially by mentioning you couldn’t have a signature dish if it was the only dish you ever made. The fact was, while she had nothing against surprise stew as such, she’d rather have eaten her own knees than the mess that was being presented to her now. That wasn’t really the point though, was it? “Dolorosa. This isn’t a picnic.”

  The woman stared at her, squinting her eyes, then turned to her husband and threw her hands in the air. “Pah! Now she thinks I amma some kind offa buffoon! A madda olda lady whose marbles havva rolled away, eh?”

  Aldrededor curled his moustache and smiled, saying nothing, and Dolorosa span back to face Kali.

  “Ovva course I know this issa no piccaneek! Eet ees going to be very dangerous. Alla the more reason to keepa uppa our strength, yes?”

  Dolorosa seemed to entering full flow, so it was going to be useless to argue. “Well, yes, I suppose so, but –” Kali began and then faltered. Dolorosa had just said what she’d thought she’d said, hadn’t she? Our strength. Yep, she’d definitely said our, as in ‘we.’

  “Ohhoohhhooooo no. If you think you’re coming with me, you’ve got another think coming. This isn’t a day trip into the country, old woman, it’s the Drakengrat Mountains we’re talking about.”

  “I thought itta wassa the Lost Canalsa of Turnitia first?”

  “Those, too! And you can guarantee that they became lost for a reason. There’s always a reason with these places. Deathtraps, monsters, insatiable, grasping hairy things that lurk in the dark…”

  “I havva shared my bedaroom with Aldrededor for forty-five years, this issa nurthing.”

  Aldrededor blew her a kiss.

  “What?” Kali said, looking at him. “Oh no, uugh, I don’t want to know. The point is, it’s what I do – and I do it alone. You could die down there.”

  “Anda we coulda die uppa here. Or havva you forgotten the k’nid?” She leaned in towards Kali and added: “Havva you forgotten that when you take thissa machine, we woulda havva to walk home to the Flagons? Howwa long do you thinka we’d survive outta there, hah?”

  “What?”

  Dammit!

  In all the chaos of the past few days she had forgotten that. Her own trip here from Andon had been perilous to say the least, and she couldn’t reasonably expect Dolorosa and Aldrededor to make a journey ten times that length. And neither could she leave them here, where Vossian patrols might find and detain them, or worse. Maybe they could camp just inside the entrance to the Lost Canals, she pondered briefly. But then remembered the deep roar she thought she had heard when she had first breached its gates. It might have been nothing – an acoustic trick of the waiting labyrinth – but then again...

  Dammit!

  “All right, all right! But the two of you do everything I say, understand? You keep quiet when I tell you and you keep your heads down when I tell you and –”

  Aldrededor interrupted her. “Young lady. My wife and I have survived the Mirror Maelstrom of Meenos and the Seven Sirens of the Sarcrean Sea, we have stood fast in the path of ripper gales and laughed in the face of the Chadassa themselves –”

  “Like a this – hahahahaaaar!” Dolorosa interjected.

  “– we have sailed the acid surf, we have swum the shadowed waters, and we have rode the boiling waves of the north.”

  “Enough!” Kali said. She had to admit she sometimes forgot that these two had… history and, being reminded of it by them, she felt vaguely chastised. She couldn’t help but worry nonetheless. Neither of them were any longer in their prime and, when it came down to it, they were family. She made no apologies for trying to keep them safe.

  But what choice did she have?

  “Aldrededor… Dolorosa?”

  “Yes, Kali Hooper?”

  “What say we get this show on the road?”

  The pair released a satisfied sigh. “Yes, Kali Hooper.”

/>   Kali gunned the engines of the Mole as Dolorosa and Aldrededor clambered into the seats behind her, checking they were settled before she flicked the lever that closed the hatch. The loud and sibilant hiss as it sealed made what they were about to do seem all the more immediate. But Kali wasn’t sure what was worse – the unknown region they were about to negotiate or the sudden overwhelming odour of garlic and piratical aftershave that pervaded the Mole’s cabin. This was going to be a long journey.

  Having become quite used to the dwarven machine’s controls by now, Kali pushed forward the lever that set it into gear, and then another that turned it on its tracks until its nose pointed towards the open hatch. Then, without further hesitation, she urged the machine forward, swallowing slightly as its front dipped onto the slope that lay beneath the opening. Outside the small observation portholes, the ambient light turned from the azureness of above to a strange and somewhat eerie rippling green.

  “So theesa canals, they are what?” Dolorosa queried. “Some kind ovva sewer?”

  “Not a sewer,” Kali said. “But, to be honest, I haven’t a clue what they actually are. All I know is where they go. At least, part of where they go.”

  “Whicha beggas the question. If you avva thees ‘Mole’, why is it you didda not drill into them somewhere else, inna stead of using thees hatch? Somawhere less dangerous?”

  That, Kali could answer, and did. The fact was, she had made one exploratory dig at the location of one of the canal’s branches over a year before, but had hit a layer of something that had been as impenetrable as the dropshaft plates she had later discovered. Whatever the material was, it defied damage from all the tools in her possession and then some. She seriously doubted that even the dwarven drill bits would make much inroads without taking damage. No, the dropshafts were the only realistic way in – and now that she was actually using one of them she hoped that she might find some answers as to what the material was. Because if she knew that, it might give her more of a clue as to who it was had built the bloody canals in the first place. Speaking of which, the Mole was coming to the end of the access tunnel.

  “Lady and gentleman,” Kali said as she flicked on the Mole’s headlights. “The Lost Canals of Turnitia.”

  Both Aldrededor and Dolorosa leaned forward to peer through the portholes, and gasped. Kali almost did the same. Only the fact that her brain was working overtime to process what she was seeing preventing her from doing so.

  Because with the affair of the dwarven testing ground and then the entrance passage to this network, she was beginning to think that she’d had enough of tunnels to last her half a lifetime, but the fact was tunnels were not what she had got. Instead, ahead of the Mole, she found herself staring at an arched thoroughfare that was as large and as grandiose as the inside of a cathedral. What was even more awe inspiring was that this passage was only one of the canals. Beyond further dark arches, to their left and right, as far as they could see, were many more of them, routing away to gods knew where beneath the surface of the peninsula.

  “By all of the gods,” Aldrededor breathed. “I never thought I would see this place.”

  “You know it?”

  “From tales told on the high seas.”

  “Itta reminds me ovva the crystal caverns beyond Sarcre,” Dolorosa whispered. “You remember, Dreddy? Where a we founda Davyjonz Locket?”

  “I remember, darling,” Aldrededor said, his eyes twinkling. “Ah – it is good to smell the sea again.”

  The sea? Kali thought, and then realised that what Aldrededor said was true.

  That briny odour she had smelled above was stronger here, detectable even through the filters that were bringing air into the cabin. The fact that they were a good number of leagues from the sea, then, could mean only one thing. The canals down here were seawater canals, pumped throughout the network by who-knew-what kind of mechanisms.

  “It’s nice to be somewhere where there’s a little peace and quiet,” Kali commented.

  Aldrededor’s eyebrows rose.

  “Wait – you do not know?”

  “Know what?”

  “These canals. The tales on the high seas tell of something that lives down here.” He stroked his moustache. “As my beloved wife might say, something beeeg.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  IF THERE WAS something beeg living in the Lost Canals of Turnitia there was, after half a day’s travel through them, no sign of it. But then there was more than enough canal left for it to hide in. Or, if you were a glass-half-empty type, more than enough for it to leap out of. If it leapt, Kali mused. After all, it might crawl. Or slither. Or hop. Whatever it might do, Kali tended towards the glass half-empty principal, and so had been guiding the Mole through the canals cautiously and in low gear, its headlights dipped and sweeping slowly across broad banks and shadowed arches.

  Despite Merrit Moon’s warnings of tunnel collapse, they had come across few obstacles so far, and those they had, had been little more than piles of rubble which the Mole’s sonic cannons made short work of. Having already made the decision not to stop until they were through the canals, Kali could only experience what they had to offer by peering through the Mole’s forward viewing slat, and this she did, squinting, to occasionally purse her lips, occasionally raise her eyebrows and also, occasionally, frown. It was the way the canals made her feel. It was strange but, regardless of how many ancient sites she had visited, this place felt different. Though she couldn’t quite put her finger on why. It was as if she had taken a step too far into the past and, for some reason, she felt like an intruder here. The feeling was not, though, one that would prevent her from intruding again – it actually quite intrigued her – and this she was determined to do, when she had the time.

  Speaking of time, she had estimated that at their current rate of progress it would take the Mole about two days to navigate the canals beneath the Anclas Territories. Not as quick as other methods that might have gotten her to the Drakengrats but the only one she had.

  When her unwanted passengers had joined her she’d imagined the journey was going to be interminable but Aldrededor had, in fact, turned out to be amusing company, sharing more of his tales from the high seas. As pleasant company as he was, however, the same had not turned out to be the case with Dolorosa.

  Crammed behind them in the cabin, not only was her habit of smoking cragweed cheroots sending the air scrubbers into overdrive, but it had not taken long for her to start complaining that she was suffering badly from the bone-ache. This was only one of what turned out to be a series of complaints. Interruptions that included frequent prods in the back accompanied by suggestions of which way to turn, whether to slow down or speed up and, on occasion, louder cries of “stupid-woman-watcha-out-forra-that-bump ahead.” There had also been repeated questions along the lines of “Are we there yet?” Last but not least, she had emitted an ear-piercing shriek when she had discovered there was a dried dwarf’s head beneath her seat. This then promptly, and unexpectedly, ended up on Kali’s lap, causing screeches from both she and Aldrededor and reducing everyone to a nervous wreck. Admittedly, Kali had forgotten about the head, and she might have given Dolorosa that one were it not for what happened next.

  Dolorosa leaned forward and whispered something in Aldrededor’s ear, but it was just loud enough for her to hear.

  “You want what?”

  “She wishes to answer the call of nature,” Aldrededor whispered diplomatically. “To powder her wart. To enhance the realm of the gods of the sea…”

  “I know what she means, Aldrededor! But hells, woman – can’t it wait?”

  “Eet issa the shock of this theeng, eet has sent my plumbing into spasm,” Dolorosa objected, pointing at the dwarf’s head and shaking her own. “No, I can notta hold it any longer. I warna you, Kali Hooper.”

  “Fark, haven’t you got a bottle or something?” Kali said with exasperation.

  “I cannotta – and willa notta – tinkle while you listen!”

&
nbsp; It wasn’t a thought that appealed much to Kali, either, and the fact was she doubted she could last two days. “All right, all right!” she said, sighing heavily. She squinted through the observation slat, looking for a suitable parking space and then, with a grinding of levers, brought the Mole to a stop. The hatch hissed open. “Go. But don’t go far and make it quick.”

  “Actually, I too might...” Aldrededor said hesitantly, then smiled and shrugged.

  “Pirates!” Kali cursed as the two squeezed by her. She sat there for a second, looking out of the hatch, and then thought what the hells, let’s have a look. It was a good excuse for her to stretch her legs, anyway.

  Trying to ignore the conspicuous head of Dolorosa behind a pile of debris and a whistling and flexing Aldrededor against the wall in the opposite direction, Kali stepped out onto the bank of the canal and took her first good look around since they had entered the network. She tried not to breathe in too deeply because, frankly, whether they were in an ancient wonder or not, the Lost Canals of Turnitia stank to the high clouds, worse even than a sludgestrider’s socks. The reason for that was possibly as a result of its collapsed sections or simply because it had been long unmaintained. But whatever the cause, the whole system of canals had stagnated. Not only did thick moss – glistening and pungent – cover the walls of the tunnels like a thick skin, but the canals themselves seemed not to be filled with seawater but dark green vegetation. The entire surface looked thick enough to walk on. Despite all that, though – and something beeg or not – the arches that led off into tunnels in the distance pulled at Kali but, again, she knew that now was not the time. She looked towards Aldrededor and Dolorosa, willing them to hurry up, but while the former was already nearing her with a sigh and declaration of how much better for that he felt, the latter had not moved from behind her pile of debris. In fact, she seemed to be waving at her to join her with quite some desperation.

  Gods, Kali thought. What now?

  “I amma stuck,” Dolorosa confessed as she neared. “My feet, they havva become caught in the weeds.”