by Ian Whates
"I thought the survivors from that little hellhole sported tattoos to show what they've been through."
"That's right. All except me and my sister."
She had managed to surprise him again. The two sisters who ruled the Tattooed Men were legendary, so much so that he never even believed they existed until now. The pair were said to be the greatest warriors ever to emerge from the Pits. "You're one of those two."
"Yeah, now can we forget the questions and get on with this?"
"Sure, kid, whatever you say."
"Don't call me that. I'm not a kid."
No, on reflection she certainly wasn't. In fact, Dewar wondered whether she ever had been.
This temple of Thaiss was identical to all the others scattered around the under-City, complete with waterfall and the familiar small pond. The water was crystal clear, Tom noted in passing. The Thaissians were the most popular and numerous of the cults and religions in the under-City, and not even the cockiest of street-nicks were likely to wash or urinate in the sacred waters, just in case.
The Blade led him into the building, where the Thaistess waited. Her hood was drawn back but her hands were hidden in the sleeves of her robe, meeting across her stomach. She was considerably older than the priestess met earlier in the day, deep wrinkles marking her face, though she still stood straight and proud. There was nothing soft or welcoming in her eyes, which held a harder edge than Mildra's had ever shown. She nodded to the Blade, noting Tom's presence with a cursory glance, and then turned to lead them into an inner chamber, considerably larger than the one in which he had fought off the Maker's device and its influence earlier that day.
Two people waited there, both seated, one human and the other, against all expectation, a Jeradine. The latter stood up as the party entered and stepped towards them.
"Tom, what a pleasure and a relief to see you again," said a familiar flat and monotone voice.
"Ty-gen?"
Tom would never have believed he could be so pleased to see a flathead. Even though he had only met him briefly, the Jeradine had been kind to him and it was a relief to see any familiar face at that particular moment. Not that Tom would have recognised him if he hadn't spoken.
Tom felt as if he might cry, from a combination of relief, despair, confusion and exhaustion, but he held the tears at bay, refusing to be the kid that Kat so often accused him of being.
"Where is Kat?" the Jeradine asked.
"She had something to do," Tom replied, the words coming with difficulty. "I think she's gone after the Maker."
"On her own? Let us hope she is careful." Ty-gen looked back towards the person he'd been sitting with, an elderly man with a kindly, smiling face, which was a marked contrast to the Thaistess' countenance. "Tom, I would like you to meet an old friend of mine. This is the prime master."
"We meet at last, Tom." The voice was as open and friendly as the face.
Tom stared. "The prime master?"
"Yes, for my sins." The twinkle in the man's eye broke through Tom's gloom and he smiled despite himself. He could hardly believe this, could hardly comprehend all that had happened in the past two days. Surely life had no further surprises to throw at him after this. The prime master!
"The boy is not well," the Thaistess said, her voice as frost-laden and severe as her appearance.
"Oh?" The prime master looked genuinely concerned. "Would you object to the Thaistess examining you, Tom? She's very skilled."
He nodded acceptance, too daunted to refuse. The woman deftly ran fingertips over his body, from the crown of his head to his knees. He stood stock still, as petrified as he had been at any time that day. While she conducted the examination, the prime master questioned him about his injuries.
"My side started hurting when I was running," he explained, "and my head..." How could he explain what he had done, when he didn't even understand it himself?
"When you destroyed the Maker's creatures?" the prime master supplied for him.
Tom nodded, surprised that the man knew about that. Then he remembered the insubstantial eye he had imagined seeing during the fight; perhaps it was real after all. Had they been watching him and Kat all along?
"He has a hairline fracture to a rib," the Thaistess said, ignoring Tom and addressing the prime master as if reporting on some damaged piece of furniture - exactly the sort of attitude that had caused Tom to mistrust religions and their priests for so long. "It might have been damaged earlier but only really made itself known when the boy was forced to run. As for the head, I can ease his pain but would not trust myself to tamper with its cause."
The prime master smiled. "I'm sure Tom will be grateful for whatever help you can give, won't you, Tom?"
He looked into the man's face, finding sincerity and encouragement there, and he nodded, if a little reluctantly.
"You'll have to lie on the divan and remove your shirt," the Thaistess said, addressing him directly for the first time.
Tom hesitated. He remembered the warmth and pleasure of Mildra's healing touch well enough, but this was not Mildra, and he didn't trust this sour-faced woman.
"Come on, boy, I won't bite."
Tom wasn't so sure,
"You can trust her, Tom," Ty-gen said.
Tom crossed to the long seat on which the prime master and the Jeradine had been sitting when he entered and, gritting his teeth, pulled off his shirt and lay down, wincing at the renewed pain that shot through his side as he did so. He looked up at the Thaistess as she approached, steeling himself against her touch.
"Kat was all right when she left you?" Ty-gen asked.
If they had been watching, surely they knew the answer already; unless they stopped watching once the Blade arrived. Perhaps he had imagined that eye after all, or perhaps Ty-gen was only asking in order to distract him, to try and put him more at ease.
"Fine," he replied. No she wasn't; she had been anything but fine, but the glib response came readily to his lips and, besides, it was easier than explaining.
This Thaistess' hands felt older than Mildra's - rougher-skinned and less gentle in their touch - but he still experienced the same sense of pleasant heat emanating from them as she pressed them to his body. The warmth enveloped the sharp, caustic pain, dulling its edges and slowly whittling the hurt away, until only the warmth remained. She lifted her hands and the comforting glow began to fade, but not all at once, the sense of well-being lingered, even as he felt the now familiar touch of fingertips at his temples. A new source of gentle heat spread through his skull, purging it of pain and leaving him wonderfully clearheaded for the first time since lashing out at the Maker's creatures.
"Thank you," he said to the Thaistess as she withdrew her hands.
She smiled - the first remotely kind expression he had seen cross those austere features.
The boy stood up and pulled on his shirt.
The prime master spoke to him again. "Now, Tom, I assume you're wondering what's been happening to you over the past few days." Tom nodded, since that was exactly what he had been wondering for much of the time. "I can explain it all to you, where your abilities come from and why they make you so special. But first, there's something I'd like you to do for me."
He might have guessed as much - no one ever did something for nothing, not even, it seemed, the prime master of all Thaiburley.
"Don't get me wrong," the man continued, as if reading his thoughts, "one doesn't depend on the other, I'm not attempting to make a deal here, but your help is needed urgently.
"You see, the attack on you and your friend by those street-nicks was not an isolated incident. All over the City Below the nicks, who seem to have fallen under the Maker's sway by the thousands, are on the rampage. The Blade can defeat them physically, but not mentally. Only you can do that. We need your help to save all those nicks, Tom, to purge them of the Maker's influence.
"Are you willing to do that, for the sake of your fellow street-nicks and for all the City Below?"
&
nbsp; Tom stared in disbelief. For a moment there he thought this man understood, but clearly he didn't. Tom would never be able to do something like this. He might have stopped a handful of the Maker's creatures at close quarters, but he had no idea what he'd done to achieve even that much, and the effort had left him with a crippling headache. How could he possibly do the same across the whole under-City? He simply couldn't, and it was unfair of anyone to expect him to.
"I don't think I can," he said. "I don't even know how."
"We can help you there, Ty-gen and myself, but only you can actually do it. Will you?"
Help? How could anyone possibly help him do something he didn't even understand himself?
Ty-gen reappeared - Tom had not even noticed him slip out. The Jeradine carried a complex piece of crystalline equipment which Tom recognised immediately as being made from khybul.
"This is a transmitter, Tom," the prime master explained.
"There are Jeradine with similar mechanisms in every temple of Thaiss throughout the City Below," Tygen added.
"The plan is, that if we can cause you to unleash the same sort of force you used to disable the Maker's devices," that settled it, they had definitely been watching, "Tygen's device will amplify and transmit that force; it will be picked up across the entire Row and sent forth, destroying the Maker's devices and their evil work in every street and corner of the under-City, thus freeing the street-nicks."
"And will that really work?" Tom wanted to know.
"So we believe, yes, although the only way to be certain is to try it. All you have to do is generate the same objection and repulsion of the Maker's creatures as you did before and we can take it from there. Will you try to do that, for all our sakes?"
Tom wasn't particularly looking forward to another headache, but hopefully the Thaistess could help with that. In any case, how could he possibly refuse? "Yes," he heard himself say. "I'll try. But I don't know how."
The prime master smiled. "Don't worry, we suspected this was an instinctive act and not a conscious one, that you hit out only when under extreme threat and wouldn't be able to reproduce the act at will, so we've made arrangements."
He looked across to the Thaistess. She raised finger cymbals and chimed them, an act which reminded Tom of Mildra, which again brought Kat to the forefront of his thoughts and emphasised her absence anew.
An acolyte walked in, bearing a glass tank in which sat one of the Maker's abominations, this one with limbs that resembled the jointed legs of a crab. The glass must have been reinforced in some way, because the thing kept striking against it with sharp claws, blows which brought no discernable effect.
Tom recoiled instinctively, even though he knew the thing was trapped.
"That's it, Tom," the prime master said. "I felt the stirrings of something then, but it has to be stronger."
His encouragement spurred Tom on and he strained for all he was worth, trying to recall exactly what he had done, how it felt when he lashed out as the things attacked Kat, but nothing happened.
The acolyte placed the glass tank down on the divan beside him, and the device's claws punched at the glass, seeming to come straight towards him until the sharp rap as they struck the sides of the container signalled their failure. He redoubled his efforts and again felt a stirring, but nothing more.
"Tom," the prime master said, "I can help with this. I can enable you to bring your power out, but it will mean an invasion of your privacy, of your mind, something I would never contemplate under normal circumstances. Would you allow me to reach into your head, to draw out the potential we need to save the City Below?"
Tom was taken aback. Someone reaching into his head? "Will it hurt?"
"My touch? No. But channelling the power may well do, as it did before, though I should be able to help shield you from some of that as well. The Thaistess will be here to ease your pain afterwards."
Again the woman smiled and Tom decided that he may have misjudged her.
He drew in a ragged breath, not at all certain about this, but even so, he nodded. "All right then."
The prime master didn't touch him, just seemed to stare towards him, and Tom felt nothing to indicate any intrusion or invasion as he'd feared. This time though, when the caged creature hammered against the glass, his reaction didn't stop at a simple stirring. It started that way but grew into a stream, a rush, an out-pouring. If the prime master was able to help deflect some of the pain, it didn't show. Again, Tom's skull felt as if it were ripping apart, and without any way of knowing whether or not his effort had been worthwhile, he crashed into blissful oblivion.
...
Despite being fascinated by this enigmatic and feisty girl, Dewar was, in truth, a little relieved when they went their separate ways. She made a prickly travelling companion at best. Their return to the dog master's lair was far swifter and more direct than Dewar's route from it. They loped through streets that had gone ominously silent, as if the tide of street-nick violence had swept through here already and left only emptiness in its wake.
Dewar found himself distracted by trying to guess Kat's age. The Pits had been closed for more than three years now, but that was little help, since he had no idea how old she was when she had fought there. In her teens, certainly, but whereabouts in her teens? He could always have asked, he supposed, before she disappeared towards the end of their journey, but he was reluctant to do so, both because he doubted the girl would have deigned to answer and because he didn't want her to think he was that interested.
He slowed as the streets became more familiar and he knew his goal was just a few turns away. The dog master must be aware that he was coming, so where were his creatures, the false hounds which were the man's trademark? As yet there had been no sign of them.
Dewar had always possessed excellent peripheral vision. The trick was to be aware at all times, to not get sucked into concentrating so intently on whatever demanded your attention - whatever was directly in front of you - that you ignored the small flutterings of movement which barely registered at the perimeter of vision. This was a skill he had taught himself through necessity, and it was one that proved of worth once more, when he rounded the corner to find himself confronted by two of the biggest false-hounds he had yet seen.
The two beasts started forward as soon as he came in sight, ears back, heads down and teeth bared. One looked to be almost entirely built of metal, with just the lower jaw bearing any visible fur. Each fall of its steel-forged claws resounded against the ground. The other, larger still than the first, was more wolf than any dog Dewar could think of, though this one too had its fair share of metal, notably around the chest and neck, while a steel frame supported the lower jaw. In addition, it sported a ridge of curved steel spikes running down the length of its spine. After a few leisurely steps the pair broke into a run, charging straight towards the assassin.
He readied himself, sword in one hand, kairuken in the other, focused and confident. It was just a hint of movement, easy to miss with two lethal constructs bearing down on you, which alerted him. It came from the opposite direction to the two attacking hounds and it was silent and low. A long, sinuous creature, more snake than hound, had attempted to creep up on him, its segmented body barely held off the ground by four stubby legs. Instinctively, Dewar leapt high, pulling his knees up to his chest in the process.
Teeth snapped shut where his ankles had been. As Dewar came down from his leap, he stamped hard, landing a foot on the device's neck, just behind the head. The body started to writhe, as if the hound was attempting to loop it around the restraining foot, but Dewar's other leg, the left, was already swinging forward. At the last instant, he rocked back on his right heel, freeing the dog just as his left foot connected, kicking the snake-dog into the air and sending it sailing towards the nearest of the oncoming brutes, the wolf.
The charging hound flicked its head up as if irritated by such a distraction. In doing so, it knocked the smaller hound further backward, to be impaled on
its ridge of razor-like spikes. In doing this the wolf exposed its throat and Dewar unleashed the kairuken, far closer than he'd intended. Sparks flew all around as the snake-dog thrashed and died and the kairuken's disc ripped the larger beast's throat open, chewing circuits and cutting into internal mechanisms. The wolf collapsed, its front legs giving way first so that it nose-dived into the ground. But the other dog was upon Dewar before he could bring his short sword to bear. It leapt, jaws open and aiming for his throat. Dropping the kairuken, he thrust his left wrist into the gaping maw. The thick metal guard he wore there was intended to deflect blades but would serve equally well to stop the bite of an ordinary dog. Unfortunately, this was no ordinary dog. The pressure on the guard and on his arm beneath was enormous and he could feel the metal start to distort, to buckle. At the same time, Dewar tried to arch his body to keep it away from those flailing claws as they inevitably came back to the ground, but he met with only limited success. One paw's worth of razors sliced through his trousers and into his leg.
The pain was abrupt and intense, but he knew how to cope with pain. Blocking it from his mind, he concentrated on bringing up his sword and applying it to the one apparent weak spot in this brute. He thrust the blade along the line of its jaw and into the construct's throat, pushing with all his strength. Still the unrelenting pressure continued and he was afraid the guard would buckle entirely, leaving his wrist to be crushed like some dry twig. He twisted the blade, working the tip deeper into the wound, and enlarging the area it could damage inside the thing's throat. Smoke started to rise from the dog's nostrils, so clearly his efforts were having some effect, but was it enough?