Thief of the Ancients

by Mike Wild

  “No good,” Kali said. “Can you turn it up?”

  “Up? No. But ah can get closer.”

  “Closer?”

  Kali heard the dwarf fiddling with more controls behind her back, and a second later something moved into view before the vertispy. It looked very much like an ear trumpet, and, trailing what appeared to be a hosepipe behind it, skittered towards Redigor on tiny, mechanical legs. Kali shook her head in the manner of someone who was seeing things, because as much as she applauded Brundle’s inventiveness, there were some things that were just too weird.

  The peculiar device did, though, do the trick.

  “…and I bring these people before you as a foretaste of what is to come!” she heard Redigor announce. “The first of many I can bring to you in advance of your arrival. Think of it. Of the strength you’ll gain. Of how much easier it will be to challenge the other!”

  The other? Kali thought. Hadn’t Redigor once called the Hel’ss ‘the other’? If that was the case, did he now mean Kerberos? But what was he talking about – challenge?

  “A whole Church – no, a whole religion!” Redigor went on. “The largest religion on this planet – the Final Faith! Hundreds of thousands of followers, all of whom once followed their Anointed Lord, but, through her, now follow me. Hundreds of thousands who have but a single mind – mine!”

  Redigor’s ego clearly hadn’t diminished since he’d been chopped in half, Kali mused. But it wasn’t the ego that was important here, was it? It was the position he was in. Now that he was, apparently, the power behind the throne of the Final Faith, it was just possible that he could influence the majority of the population of the peninsula, whether directly or indirectly, and through belief or through fear. The question was, why would he want to?

  “They can follow you, too!” Redigor’s rant continued. “Follow you, who, because of me, they believe to be the herald of your enemy! Give themselves to you, willingly, in the ritual they mistakenly call Ascension!”

  Oh gods, Kali thought. Was that was this was about? Redigor up to his old tricks – some kind of exchange that would once again resurrect his psychopathic elven ‘family’, the Ur’Raney? But, no, that couldn’t be, could it, because the souls of his people were with Kerberos. She’d seen them dragged back into its azure clouds kicking and screaming herself.

  “And all I ask,” Redigor requested, “is that I be remade as what I once was. That I walk this world in my own form once more. That I live!”

  What? Kali thought. That’s it? All this was about was Baz getting himself a makeover? One lousy, should-have-been-long-dead Ur’Raney pleading for the chance of a few more years of torture, incest and bloodletting? Why would an entity like the Hel’ss be interested in a bargain like that? And how – come to that – could it achieve it for him, even if it were?

  Redigor’s address to the Hel’ss Spawn seemed to be over for the moment, and Kali watched as the viscous behemoth swayed slightly before him, offering no sign of reaction at all. That’s right, blobbo, she encouraged it, send him home with a flea in his would-be pointy ear. Of all the stupid, ridiculous…

  The Hel’ss Spawn folded itself over Redigor and his shadowmages and – Kali could think of no other word for it – licked the group of prisoners assembled directly behind them. The lick stripped the flesh cleanly from their bones and twenty five or more skeletons stood there for a second before collapsing to the ground with a clattering sound that Kali thought she might remember forever. The last thing she saw was Redigor’s shadowmage retinue gesticulating at the sky beyond the Hel’ss Spawn – where loomed the red sphere of the Hel’ss itself – and firing what she recognised as souls in its direction. Then she staggered back from the vertispy, collapsed against the cave wall and vomited.

  “Oh, shite,” Brundle said. “I thought it might come to this.”

  “It isn’t what you think,” Kali said, taking deep breaths. “This wasn’t just the Hel’ss Spawn, it was the Hel’ss itself. It murdered them – murdered two of my friends. It’s actually made a bargain with Redigor. Something about being strengthened, about a challenge, and about being able to remake him. Does than make sense to you?”

  Brundle moved to the vertispy to see for himself. “Aye, it makes sense. All apart from why Redigor should want to be remade. Inta what?”

  Kali laughed, a little bitterly. “Oh, I’m sorry, didn’t I tell you? Redigor isn’t what he seems. You might think you’re looking at Prince Jakub Tremayne Freel of the Allantian Royal Family but one year ago he was possessed by Bastian Redigor, otherwise known as the Faith’s First Enemy, the Pale Lord.”

  Brundle started. So violently that his head thudded into the hood above the eyepiece. He pretended it hadn’t happened, though, and kept his grip firmly fixed to the vertispy’s handles, his eyes steadfastly on the lens.

  “Ah thought that name sounded familiar,” he growled. “That elf’s meddlin’ in things he has no business being near.”

  “Brundle, we have to get the rest of my people out of there, before more of them die. What can we do?”

  The dwarf disengaged himself from the vertispy, flipped up its handles and thrust the pipe back up into the ceiling.

  “What we can do is get that bastard off me bloody island.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something? Redigor has a small army up there.”

  “Don’t you worry, lass,” Brundle replied. “The Missus’ll take care of everything.”

  “The Missus?” Kali said in disbelief as Brundle led her at some speed back through the underground warren. “The Missus? What the hells is Brogma going to do? Stab them with knitting needles? Beat them with wet thrap? Or is it more than coincidence that thrap rhymes with crap?”

  “Just wait and see, lass.”

  “No, Jerry, no. No, no, no,” Kali persisted. “I finally find myself in the place that’s meant to provide me with all the answers and what have I had since I’ve arrived? Riddles, half-truths, hints of mysterious chats with someone who as far as I know might be a figment of your imagination. So tell me now – how exactly is Brogma going to take care of everything?”

  At that moment they re-entered the main cave. Brogma gave them a cheery wave with her needles. Brundle waved back but continued on through the cave, leading Kali into yet another series of tunnels on its other side.

  “Brundle, answer me!”

  The dwarf span to face her, beard jangling, all three nostrils flaring, face redder than any face she’d seen before. She took an involuntary step back.

  “Have ye no respect for yer elders? By the farting denizens of Tapoon, what’s happened to patience these days?”

  “Patience? I’ve been waiting a year to find out what the pits is going on.”

  Brundle snorted. “A year? A whole year? Bah! Try waiting a few millennia.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Let’s just say that caretakin’s a full time job, eh?”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute. When you told me the caretaker had been waiting for me since the day the Old Races died, I thought you were talking generally. I mean about the role.”

  “Well, in a way ah suppose ah was…”

  “But now you’re telling me you’re the only one who’s occupied that role?”

  “Aye, that’s what ah’m tellin’ yer. An’ yer know what’s the worst about it? No farkin’ bastard’s ever presented me wi’ so much as a carriage clock.”

  “I –”

  “Now,” Brundle barked, making her jump. “Will yer let me do me farking job?”

  Brundle continued his march through the tunnels, Kali dogging him every inch of the way.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said.

  “What’s not to believe? Yer met Tharnak at the Crucible didn’t ye? He survived. And that pointy-eared bastard upstairs. Him as well.”

  “That’s different.”

  “How is it different?” Brundle growled.

  Kali shrugged as she moved. “Well, Tharn
ak was the result of experimentation by some of the greatest minds of the Old Races, and the Pale Lord is an ancient and powerful sorcerer with all of the dark threads at his command. You – well, you’re just an obnoxious, little arsehole who moans and farts a lot.”

  “Hmph. Why don’t yer tell me what yer really think of me?”

  “Okay,” Kali said, warming to the subject, “why don’t –”

  She stopped as Brundle entered a large chamber carved, as far as she could tell, at the far end of the subterranean labyrinth. The reason for her sudden cessation of hostilities was that in the few seconds in which Brundle had preceded her, he’d wasted no time in tugging another embarrassingly flowery dust-shrouded curtain from before a long recess carved into the chamber wall. The way he slapped the curtain to the ground and glared at her left Kali in no doubt that he was hoping – really hoping – that this would shut her up.

  It did the trick. Kali stared open-mouthed at the number of dark shapes, ten of them, that were standing immobile in the shadows of the recess. Squat, humanoid shapes, though forged of metal, some of them missing parts of an arm or a leg, they were all similar in one startling respect. They all wore the face of Brogma.

  “Hello, my beauties,” Brundle said.

  The figures were so old, so neglected, that Kali was sure Brundle didn’t expect a response. But then she staggered back as a slight glow lit their eyes and, as one, the figures stamped a foot onto the ground in recognition of the dwarf’s greeting. A heavy and metallic crunch brought a fall of dust from the ceiling.

  “What the hells is this?” Kali said, stepping back some more.

  “Don’t you worry,” Brundle said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  “Nothing to be afraid of?” Kali repeated.

  It was all right Brundle saying that, but what she had just witnessed had brought a pang of recognition and fear she thought she would never feel again. The shape of these things, the way they were constructed, their very aura. The last time she had seen monsters like these they were being left to rot in the floodwaters of Martak after she had put paid to their would-be resurrectionist, Konstantin Munch.

  Smaller and squatter they might be, but in every other respect it was like looking at the army of the Clockwork King.

  “The Brogmas won’t hurt you, lass,” Brundle insisted. “Come on, come closer.”

  Kali hesitated, then did as bade. She studied the Brogmas’ faces – their identical faces – noting they seemed made of some flexible rubbery material. They were in varying states of decay, and if she had to hazard a guess she’d have said each of them had been stored here after being active at different times in the past.

  They weren’t the only Brogmas stored here either. Brundle whipped away coverings from further recesses all around. There were more Brogmas in each; in some Brogmas who had all but rotted away. Kali wasn’t sure whether to be shocked, disturbed or, when she saw how tenderly Brundle looked at them, deeply saddened.

  “Smoothskin, ah’d like ta present wife thirty-three,” he said, gesturing at one. And then, at others in no particular order or without any favouritism, “Wife nineteen, fifty one, three…”

  “Jerry,” Kali interrupted. “What have you done here?”

  The dwarf wiped his beard, snagging his bells so that they were pulled up silently and then flopped back with a dull tinkle.

  “Made meself some company, lass, what else.”

  “Company?” Kali said. She hated to refer in such a manner to the constructs which the dwarf regarded with obvious affection but she could see no other way. “But these things. They remind me of a place. A place I wished I never had to go.”

  “M’Ar’Tak,” Brundle said. “It’s where ah learned mah trade.”

  Kali stared at him, everything falling into place even as she struggled to accept it. The sheer number of Brogmas before her, like the deceased members of a family entombed for generation after generation, back to the start of their lineage. The tree trunk whose annotations, now she came to think about it, had all been written in the same hand. But most of all, Brundle’s tale about the attack of the Hel’ss Spawn on the Thunderflux. It wasn’t as if he’d been lost in memory, he had been lost in memory.

  “My gods, you really have been here all the time. Jerry, how can you be so old?”

  Brundle pulled back his shirt and rapped a fist on his chest. There was a metallic clang. “Mechanical ticker. Doesn’t last for ever but every few hundred years Brogma gives it a service.”

  “You worked with Belatron,” Kali said, still struggling with the implications. “Belatron the Butcher, the architect of the Clockwork King.”

  “Aye. But don’t you worry. It didn’t take me long to work out what a psycho he was. Upped and left wi’ me tools, wandered the world and eventually ended up here.”

  “But you were there when – ?”

  “The Ur’Raney drove the dwarves into the sea? Aye, ah was. Which is why you’ll forgive me for me temper. This has become a wee bit personal.”

  “Jerry,” Kali asked cautiously, “was there ever a wife number one? Was Brogma ever… real?”

  The dwarf’s eyes lowered, and when he spoke it was softly, fondly. “Aye, she was real. So many thousands o’ years ago that I’ve lost count, she was real.” The dwarf sniffed; a strange sound through three nostrils. “The old girl lasted almost seven hundred years, not a bad age fer one o’ our kind, not a bad age at all. Didn’t want to leave me on me own, ya see?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Smoothskin, it were so long ago they could ’ave named a geological age after it. Besides, she went in her sleep. Never knew a thing. No chance ta worry about me wakin’ up alone.”

  “That’s good. Is she… buried on the island?”

  “What? And let the Hel’ss Spawn have her bones? No chance. No, lass, ah took Brogma to the mainland and our clan’s burial grounds ’neath what yer now call Freiport. She lies there still.”

  “I’ve never found that site,” Kali said. “I’ll make sure I never do.”

  “I thank ye.”

  Kali let Brundle’s response hang in the air, unsure of what more, if anything, there was to say, but as it happened she was spared the problem. The mention of the Hel’ss Spawn seemed to have galvanised the dwarf back into his old self, and his mind seemed focused on his task once more.

  At least she thought so.

  “Wife!” he shouted. “Have yer finished that knitting yet?”

  “Yes, dearest!” came the echoing reply.

  “Then what are ye waitin’ for? Bring it through.”

  “Coming, dear.”

  Kali said nothing, merely waited while Brogma waddled into the cave with the armful of wiring she had been working on all the while. Kali wasn’t sure what to expect – an overly baggy jumper, a scarf, some baby bootees? – but it certainly wasn’t the tangle of wiring that looked to her exactly the same as it had when she’d first begun. She frowned as Brundle took it and then shooed his wife away. Brogma returned to the main cave without protest. Of course she did.

  “Brundle?” Kali said.

  “Ah had the wife start knittin’ before ah left for the mainland,” he said. “Just in case ah was compromised and that bloody Black Ship got here after all. Should o’ been ready but me old darlin’ isn’t as fast as she was.”

  “She isn’t?” Kali asked, remembering the blur.

  “Nah. Which is why ah told her to hurry up, on the slim chance that you were right. About yer know, up top.”

  “Jerry, what the hells are you talking about?”

  “Oh, this is beautiful work,” the dwarf said, ignoring her. He picked at and examined the wiring as he might fine filigree. Then he started to pull chunks of it away, opening the chest plates of each of the Brogmas as he did, and stuffing the handfuls inside. That done, he started to finger each bit of wiring individually, delicately, and, in turn, each Brogma started to exhibit further signs of life, the rotation of an arm here, the bend of
a leg there, the sudden turn of a head followed by a wink in the dwarf’s direction.

  Kali watched as he worked.

  “Jerry, I don’t understand. Belatron’s clockwork warriors were part organic but these aren’t. They look like his army but they’re not. I’ve never come across this kind of technology before, even at the Crucible, where they were building spaceships, for fark’s sake.”

  “Interestin’, isn’t it?” Brundle said as he continued to tinker. “Scraps that washed up a long, long time ago. The remains of… well, to be honest wi’ ye, ah don’t know what, but ah know they had silver eyes and must ’ave walked this world long before I did. Took me centuries ta work out their ins an’ outs an’ what went where’s but, when ah did, ah was able to build the Brogmas without the need for any poor sod’s brains bein’ scraped off some battlefield. Brogma – the latest Brogma, that is – is a mistress of knittin’ some o’ the more advanced functions together.”

  “More advanced functions?”

  “See, when ah first built the Brogmas, they weren’t just for company but designed for defence, too. Defence o’ the island. Trouble was, they sat here for thousands o years wi’ nothin’ to defend against, an’ started gettin’ trigger happy. The day one o’ them almost blew me brains out when all ah’d asked for was a light for me pipe was the day ah decided to strip them o’ their sentry circuits.” The dwarf sighed and stepped back from the Brogmas, closing their chest plates. “Well, now, here they are, restored to what they should be.”

  Kali stared at the Brogmas. They looked exactly the same.

  “Nothing’s happening.”

  “Battle stations, girls,” Brundle said. “We’ve got an elven arse ta kick.”

  “Yes, dear,” said ten Brogmas in unison.

  The Brogmas stood to attention and Kali watched in amazement as their forms expanded, arms thickened and legs extended, so that each Brogma was now as tall as she was. They didn’t just grow either, they sprouted – small hatches and panels sliding or flipping open on their forearms and their thighs, on their chests and in their torsos, each cavity whirring and clicking as it unleashed a weapon of some description or another, designed to operate independently or in the construct’s hands. Blades, hammers, axes, small, star-like discs designed to be fired, morning stars and flails, each of Brundle’s wives became in an instant a one woman arsenal. Simultaneously, they all span full circle at the waist, and as the weapons sliced the air or were beaten on their open palms with the rhythm of a war drum, their eyes flared with power.