The Clockwork King of Orl

by Mike Wild

  Kali swam, and then waded from the water onto the base of the Clockwork King.

  Munch, more feverish and manic-looking than ever now, seemed almost to shrink back before her.

  "I knew that you were resourceful," he declared wearily. "I never realised quite how much."

  As he spoke, an entire run of the water tubing collapsed from the throne room walls, weakened by the loss of the rest of its network, and beyond it, even more began to buckle. A crack appeared in the throne room wall.

  "Yeah, well," Kali said, darkly. She was thinking back to the Flagons. "That slashing the ankle thing? Someone gave me the idea."

  "Miss Hooper..."

  "Stand up and face me, you bastard."

  Blood ran slowly down Munch's forehead. "You know as well as I that I cannot - I will not - leave this seat. I am helpless before you. So, go ahead - what are you waiting for?"

  "Aaargh!" Kali roared, plunging the gutting knife downwards. But at the last moment she froze, the tip of the knife shuddering in her grip an inch from Munch's heart.

  The dwarf chuckled deeply, and Kali regarded him with a hatred that could not manifest itself.

  "You may have become some kind of fighting machine," Munch said, "but you will never be a true warrior. Not so long as you cannot finish your opponent. That is what differentiates the victor from the defeated on the battlefield."

  "I can't let you continue this..."

  "Then do what you came to do, girl. Stop me. Kill me. Go on - do it!"

  Munch sounded almost as if he wanted her to. Kali pulled back her arm, ready to plunge the knife downwards once more, but again desire and conscience clashed, leaving the blade suspended and trembling, her whole body doing the same in furious frustration.

  "Do it or all that you know will be gone, girl. Pontaine, Anclas, Vos, Gargas. Everything you know."

  "You've already taken enough away from me."

  "Soon there will be others who do what you do now - only they will be of the dwarven race. And it will be your bones they will pick over. Your bones, Kali Hooper. The bones of a fleeting and inconsequential speck in history."

  "Not if I have anything to do with it."

  Munch chuckled again. "Then do what must be done. Only you can't, can you? You have let down all those who trusted you, brought about the end of everyth -"

  "No."

  "The end of everything. You've lost, girl. You have los -"

  There was a dull crunch and Munch's eyes widened suddenly in shock and disbelief, and for a moment Kali simply stared at him, wondering what had happened. Munch was staring back, directly into her eyes, but it took her a few seconds, during which a small tendril of blood ran from his left nostril, to realise that his eyes had already fogged and he was seeing nothing.

  The arrow quivered slightly where it was embedded in the centre of his forehead.

  Kali turned. How he had managed to get past the clockwork warriors she had no idea, but from the far end of the throne room a battered and bedraggled-looking Killiam Slowhand waded towards her through the rising and increasingly tumultuous water. He lowered Suresight to his side, its job done.

  "In future, why don't you leave it to the sidekick to do the killing?" he said. He suddenly stretched his arms out and looked surprised. "What? You thought I'd let you do this alone?"

  Kali inhaled a deep, trembling breath. There was no time for thanks or celebration, however, because there was still the problem of destroying the Clockwork King. But as Kali began to contemplate the problem, it was solved for her. The cracks that had begun to appear in the throne room walls widened suddenly, and as they did the ceiling itself began to crack and subside. Suddenly a wide gash appeared in what was effectively the sea bed and, along with chunks of rock, water began to pour down on the very spot where she and Slowhand stood.

  Kali and the archer staggered back, watching the deluge pour onto the Clockwork King, and as the rocks crashed onto and shattered its cogs and pistons and gears, water poured thunderously onto the crystals that had brought its army to life. There was a series of sparks and then small explosions, and, at the opposite end of the throne room, the warriors that continued to march towards the exit suddenly stopped. Just like that.

  Kali and Slowhand stared at them, watching to see if they moved again. But they didn't.

  "Okaaaay..." Kali said.

  Slowhand suddenly pulled her to the side as a chunk of rock hurtled down and smashed into the deluge next to where they stood.

  "The whole place is coming down," he said. "Time to go."

  "No argument there."

  "After you."

  "No, no, after you."

  "Hooper, just -"

  "Move. I know."

  They swam towards the exit, manoeuvring themselves around the frozen forms of those clockwork warriors that had ground to a halt before it, and preparing to do the same with those in the corridor itself. Their red eyes stared as dully as those of Munch now, and they seemed strangely at peace.

  The sea can have them, Kali thought.

  Slowhand swam through the doors before her, and she was only an arm's length behind him when a sudden surge in the water caught her from behind and sucked her away in its backwash, returning her to the heart of the collapsing and flooding chamber. And, unbelievably, she saw that the doors to the throne room were closing.

  "Slowhand!" she yelled.

  The archer had already noticed her absence and had turned around, attempting to swim back to her aid. But it was almost as if the water was consciously trying to keep him back, one small surge after another catching him and holding him where he was so that he did little more than tread water. He stared up at the closing doors and roared with anger and frustration.

  "Hooper!"

  Dammit, Kali thought. Dammit, dammit, dammit! But as much as she tried to reach the closing gap, similar surges to those that frustrated Slowhand held her back. The rumbling of the doors could be heard even over the roaring of the inrushing sea, and the last thing she saw of Slowhand was his anguished face as they closed finally with a resounding boom.

  Kali splashed around. The seawater continued to rush in with a roar and she rose slowly towards the throne room ceiling. Then, suddenly, the roaring stopped and she realised she was fully underwater, the throne room completely flooded.

  As rocks fell about her in slow motion, an eerie silence descended. Kali fumbled in her equipment belt and withdrew her breathing conch, jamming it in her mouth, then floated there and stared into the murk. She might have been cut off from Slowhand but she was not alone, and below her the lifeless body of Munch drifted from its seat and rose up, ascending above the still forms of his warriors. Kali let the corpse float past her face without reaction, but then another shadowy shape in the water caught her eye and she almost spat out her conch in shock.

  Because the seawater that had poured in from above had brought something with it.

  Kali back-pedalled in a sea of bubbles. There, hovering before her in the water, was a humanoid figure - but humanoid was as close as it came to anything human-looking she had ever seen on Twilight.

  Some kind of... fishman. She'd heard reports that similar creatures had been sighted in Turnitia but she'd dismissed them as the ramblings, perhaps even the ravings, of thieves too gone on flummox to be grounded in reality. But here one was, right in front of her - and it was staring at her.

  Communicating with her.

  Not talking, though. The thieves she had spoken with had described the fishmen as black-eyed, green-scaled, razor-toothed and bespined, but this one was different, its scales silver, face smooth and mouth toothless, with glowing nodules that hung from either side of its jaw. But neither mouth nor jaw moved as it spoke. Instead, Kali heard its words inside her head.

  And, what was even more disturbing, it knew her name.

  Kali Hooper. I am pleased that your path has brought you where you should be. That you have achieved what you must.

  Kali found herself responding witho
ut even knowing how. And finding herself doing so without the need to speak, she found herself asking everything in her head at once.

  Where I should be? What are you? Just what the hells is going on?

  The creature floated where it was, regarding her, a paper-thin tail moving lazily behind it, and Kali felt a kind of smile - a very cold one.

  Questions. Questions all the time, since when you were a child. Even then we could hear you - here, beneath the sea.

  What? Are you saying you've been spying on me?

  Spying? No. Watching. You, and the others. The Four.

  The Four?

  Four known to us. Four unknown to each other. Four who will be known to all.

  Oh, gods help me, you're one of those who talks in riddles. I've come across your kind before. Statues, mainly, but -

  Riddles? No. Only answers not yet formed.

  Listen! You're doing it again! Hey, it's been a long day - how about some simple answers to some simple questions?

  The creature floated before her, saying nothing. Kali took it as an invitation to continue.

  Who are you?

  Our name would mean nothing. We are the Before. The After. Those who have always been and will be again.

  Will you stop it!

  I... we... they... apologise.

  Kali scowled, then frowned. The Before? she thought. The After?

  My visions? she asked. Were you responsible for them?

  Yes.

  How? Why?

  The first, to offer a solution. The second, to drive you. The third - the third to remind you of your own mortality... and, more importantly, that everything is not as it seems. The creature paused. We know you but... we were uncertain of your resolve.

  What? You thought I'd give up? Back off because what I faced was too much? Then, Mister - you are a Mister? - however much you think you know me, you don't know me at all.

  From this moment, no. Your path is what it has become. It was important to us only that you were here - at Martak.

  Kali trod water. Martak. The way the creature spoke of it - spoke of her - it was almost as if they both had a place in some unknown scheme of things. It suddenly occurred to her once more how un-dwarven the water network had felt.

  You were here when all this began, weren't you? You helped the dwarves to build this place - to build the Clockwork King?

  They were dying. They had no resources. The balance had to be maintained.

  The balance?

  Too many of the elven ones, too few of the dwarves. The ferocity of the Ur'Raney was unanticipated, and their numbers after their victory had to be... curtailed.

  Curtailed? You're saying you did what you did to give the dwarves an advantage? By all the gods, you wanted the Ur'Raney culled, didn't you? Only it all went wrong - the warriors you helped the dwarves create turned on their own as well - and then on everyone and everything else...

  The creature remained silent for a second. We chose our agent badly... everyone makes mistakes.

  But why would you do that?

  The balance had to be -

  Maintained? Kali shouted in her head. What balance - why the hells are you talking abou -

  She suddenly choked and realised that, once more, her breathing conch was near to exhausted, something that her conversational partner had also spotted.

  I would suggest that you have time for one more question.

  One more question, Kali thought, and despite the fact she had a thousand in her head - about the balance, about this undersea creature, about the Old Races - she knew exactly what it had to be. Because, somehow, she knew it was relevant.

  Do you know where I come from?

  The creature laughed - not laughed in her mind but actually, physically laughed - and was suddenly obscured in a cloud of bubbles that came either from whatever orifice it used to breathe or simply from the stirring of the water created by its thrashing reaction. Wherever the bubbles had come from, when they went away the creature was gone.

  Damn you, Kali thought. Whoever or whatever you are, damn you.

  More rock fell about her from above, and with her last lungful of air she began to swim upwards, kicking and kicking until at last she passed through a fissure in the ceiling of the throne room and up, out into the sea. She broke its broiling surface and began to swim towards the shore. Slowly, wearily, she ascended the steps, glancing down at the jetty and the stilled warriors that would remain there now, until the weather of the area simply wore them away.

  Slowhand, Horse and the ogur were assembled above. There was, however, one member of the party missing.

  "Where's Makennon?"

  "She skedaddled when the army stopped. Probably halfway back to Scholten Cathedral already, licking her wounds. Glad to see you made it, Hooper. But then, I should have known you would."

  Kali waved him away, too knackered to speak. Her banter with Slowhand would, she knew, resume some time soon. There were, after all, things to do, among them find his sister and a cure for Merrit Moon.

  Before that, however...

  Kali patted Horse and took a bottle of flummox from his saddlebag. She drank deeply, and burped.

  And then she stared down at Martak. At the sea. And she thought of what she had just encountered in it.

  There were more questions to be answered than ever before. It was good, then, that she liked a challenge. In fact, she felt a renewed determination to discover the secrets of Twilight and the ultimate fate of the Old Races. And in doing so, she knew, she would leave nothing unexplored, nothing undiscovered, nothing untouched.

  Nothing, now.

  No stone unturned.

  THE END

  Mike Wild is much older than he has a right to be, considering the kebabs, the booze and the fags. Maybe it's because he still thinks he's 15. Apart from dabbling occasionally in publishing and editing, he's been a freelance writer for ever, clawing his way up to his current dizzy heights by way of work as diverse as Doctor Who, Masters of the Universe, Starblazer, 'Allo 'Allo! and - erm - My Little Pony. Counting one Teen Romance, one ABC Warriors and two Caballistics Inc., The Clockwork King of Orl is his fifth novel. However, only his beloved wife and tuna-scoffing cat give him the recognition he deserves.