by Mike Wild
Morg made good on his threat. Without any further warning, he shoved Dolorosa out in front of him and, as she stood there looking confused, two sharp blades – her own sharp blades – were thrust suddenly through her. Dolorosa stiffened, her eyes widened and, as the projecting lengths of the blades glistened with blood in the light of the sun, she made a sound that was not unfamiliar to Aldrededor but was nevertheless horribly strange.
“Heeeeeeeeeee...”
“DOLOROSA!”
“A crone as scrawny as this,” Morg said, “she’s lucky I missed the vital organs. She will, though, bleed to death unless I grant her medical attention. Now, old man, why don’t you show me exactly what’s in that stable?”
Aldrededor was about to do exactly that, caring about nothing other than getting help for his wife, when Dolorosa vigorously shook her head. The act clearly caused her great pain.
“Aldy,” she said, in a guttural voice, “do what I said. ’E will not let me die.”
Aldrededor swallowed rapidly. “I cannot take that chance.”
“You must. They cannot get their ’ands on the sheep.”
It would have been funny, had it not been so true, and Aldrededor knew it.
“If my wife dies,” he growled at Morg, “there will be no place you will be safe, no sanctuary you can hide in or shield you can cower behind. I will hunt you down, I will find you, and then and I will kill you.”
“Lika thees,” Dolorosa muttered weakly.
Aldrededor stared at her wavering smile, swallowed again, and immediately turned. He was inside the stables and slamming the door shut behind him before Morg could make another move. The rune-inscribed lock re-configured itself.
“You and you, get this woman in the wagon,” Morg snarled to his men, who had just relieved Hetty of her pipe and were working their way through what remained of the smoke. “The rest of you,” he added, releasing Dolorosa’s body and slamming his fist on the doors of the stables, “raze this thing to the ground.”
Morg’s men responded, and within a minute they had gathered torches and surrounded the stable. The soft thrumming of the flames of their torches was, however, drowned out from a growing sound from within the stable’s walls – a thrumming again, but this time one which made their heads ache and was quite clearly caused by something other than fire.
“What in the name of the Lord of All?” one of the Swords muttered.
The roof of the stables suddenly began to rise upwards, not from any mechanism designed to make it do so but from the sheer force and pressure of something rising inside. As the roof broke apart in broad splinters, the walls, too, began to press outward as if the something inside were turning slowly as it rose. The walls began to fall away like discarded cards.
Bowing to these pressures, the entire stable exploded outward and something rose from its ruin, a sleek flying shape the length of three carts, that then hovered in the sky. An uncountable number of black vents flapped on its side, shiny and looking like the shifting of reptilian skin, and on the underside of its hull, orange orbs pulsed.
The Swords, even Morg, staggered back. But Dolorosa, being dragged to captivity, caught a glimpse of her husband at the flying thing’s helm and smiled. Seeing the repaired Tharnak airborne once more, she watched as it hung there for a second, acknowledging her, before banking gracefully and disappearing above the rooftop of the Flagons.
Morg stared after it, his lip curling in anger. He stared at the Flagons and then at his men.
“Burn it. Burn it all.”
CHAPTER FOUR
THE RED CHAPTER’S cull of Kali’s friends was swift and simultaneous. Their targets tracked by Eyes of the Lord, squads of Freel’s mercenaries struck across the peninsula at the same time Gregory Morg raided the Here There Be Flagons.
Exiting the Three Towers in Andon, on his way to a certain club in the Skeleton Quays for an engagement he hoped he couldn’t get out of, Poul Sonpear spotted a number of spherical shadows scudding about his own as he progressed down the alley he used as a short cut. He immediately dropped into phase, thinking himself safe in the half realm accessible only to members of the League of Prestidigitation and Prestige, and was somewhat surprised to be joined there by four black-clad figures – shadowmages, by the look of them. Sonpear began to muster defensive spells – skull shield, ball of immunity, flash – but his assailants were ready for him. One countercasted with slow, another with silence, while the final two physically wrestled him against a wall, restraining him while a scrambling collar was clamped around his neck.
Sonpear recognised the collar as proscribed technology, Old Race, and as he felt its effects numbing his faculties, his mind raced. Why was he being targeted? Who were these men? What did they want? There was only one possible answer, and he tried, but failed, to send a telepathic warning to the one person with whom he maintained a permanent link. The message that would never be sent was, Kali, they’re coming for us...
ELSEWHERE IN ANDON, Jengo Pim lay on his bed in the Underlook Hotel, clutching his greasy knife as he imagined the Hells Bellies writhing before him. The hideaway of the Grey Brigade was unusually quiet, most of his boys out on jobs for the night, leaving only twelve or so snoring in nearby rooms. As Pim gnawed on the leg of meat his knife skewered, swilling it down with a chunky Allantian red, there was an unexpected creak from the floor below. The thief frowned, then shrugged – the Underlook was an old building, prone to shifting. He rejoined his fantasy, wiping juice from his mouth with a satisfied sigh, when a second creak – this time the drawn out, pressured creak of foot on floorboard – impelled him to extract his knife and slip off the bed, eyes narrowing suspiciously.
He moved onto the landing and stared down the main staircase. As he did, a candle was snuffed below, then another and another, until all was black. A shape – possibly more than one – flitted through the darkness. Visitors, Pim thought, but no problem – the old hotel didn’t take kindly to unexpected guests.
Pim tapped gently on bedroom doors, rousing sleepers, and then flipped a lever on the wall. A dull clank and ratchet sound signified that all of the traps on the ground floor were now active, and as his men slipped silently down the stairs with garrots tensing and daggers gleaming, he was confident that caught between a rock and a hard place, whoever had checked into the Underlook this night had no chance.
A series of screams met him from below, and protesting cries as traps were tripped, but a chill went through Pim as he realised the voices in both cases were those of his own men.
He called out – no reply. How could a dozen of the best thieves in the business be taken out so easily? His mind raced, trying to identify who might possess a strong enough grudge against the Grey Brigade to launch such an offensive. It was only at the last moment, after he had slowly taken the stairs himself and swift, shadowed figures came at him, driving him to the floor with a yell, did he realise what this was all about. Her name, as blackness descended, was the last thing that passed his lips.
“Hooper!”
AS PIM’S ROAR echoed through the Underlook, Martha DeZantez knelt by her daughter’s graveside in Solnos. There was no body in the grave, but that didn’t matter, because it was here that Gabriella was remembered in spirit, next to the grave of the man she had loved, and it had become a place of peace and remembrance. She would find no peace today, however, as for a second her heart seized as she heard Gabriella’s voice, as clear as day, warning her against something, and then shadows loomed suddenly over her. A second later all that remained of her presence was a flower with a broken petal lying on the ground.
IN FAYENCE, ABRA Sarkesian had just wheeled his Abra-Kebab-Bar into its lock-up for the night, woeing the takings of the day, when a shadow at the rear of the storage area caught his eye. The lock-up had provided an emergency bolt-hole for Kali Hooper on more than one occasion, he dropping awnings to hide its existence the moment she rode into it, and his heart lifted to see she had sought his shelter once more. But the face that e
merged from the shadows was not Kali’s – not even close.
SO IT WENT. Peninsula wide from Oweilau to Malmkrug to Turnitia, Vosburg to Freiport to Volonne, anyone with recent contact with Kali Hooper, however minor, simply disappeared. But not everything went according to plan. At that moment in Gargas...
A GLOVED HAND prevented the bell on the door of Wonders of The World from tinkling as it opened. Yan DeFrys motioned his heavily armed men into the shop in silence. He’d been told his target was a strange one, rumoured to possess a faculty for bodily transformation, and had decided his best tactic for capture would be to simply overwhelm him. He’d hoped to have all of his men inside before he was alerted but it seemed that was not to be. Though the shop had appeared empty through its windows, the old man was suddenly there, appearing as if by magic.
Yan DeFrys sneered. With a shock of white hair and beard, and what looked like a pink horse blanket over his shoulders, the old man shuffled about the shop waving a feather duster over piles of stock. This was his target?
“I’m closed,” Merrit Moon said.
“Then you should lock your door, Mister Moon.”
“Why? Others respect the sign hanging there. You see what it says, hmm? ‘Go Away’ is what it says, and I’d be obliged if you did so.”
“We’re not here to shop, old man.”
“No? Some pongbegon for you, I think. Wooh-hoo, yes. And you, sir – in you I sense a man with a frustrated wife. Knickerknocker Glory’s what you need. Direct from the Sardenne and very good for the old early oooh, if you know what I mean.”
The mercenary to whom Moon had spoken moved forward, but DeFrys held him back.
“We have no interest in your trinkets, trivia or fetishes, old man. We’re here for you.”
Moon continued to shuffle about, apparently not listening. It was odd but for a second DeFrys got the impression he seemed to blur between locations rather than physically move. DeFrys nodded to two of his men, who moved to apprehend him. Moon looked up as they began to weave their way through piles of stock, and manoeuvred himself behind others when they drew close. This happened twice more and the mercenaries cursed in exasperation finding direct pursuit impossible. The stock had been arranged in such a way that it formed a miniature maze seemingly designed to frustrate their every attempt to reach their quarry.
“That’s right, that’s right,” Moon said. “Have a good look around.”
“I already told you, old man,” DeFrys barked. “We have no interest in your goods.”
“Today’s special is a boozelhorn made by the Yassan of the Drakengrats. It’s said if you blow a boozelhorn your enemies comprehensively fill their trousers. Would you like a demonstration?”
DeFrys growled; game over. He bashed away a pile of stock, hurling pots and jars to the floor. Some clattered through an open trapdoor which Moon moved towards.
“I expect there’ll be quite a mess,” he said. “Now where did I put that shovel?”
“Stay where you are, old man!” DeFrys ordered as Moon began to descend. His men crashed after him, reaching the opening just as the old man’s head vanished below. It was odd but just for a second he thought he saw the old man disappear before he disappeared – that was, before passing out of view beneath the floorboards. It had to have been a trick of the light. It was difficult to tell with his men crowding around.
“What are you waiting for?” he shouted. “Follow him!”
DeFrys expected to hear the sounds of a scuffle before the old man was dragged back to the ground floor. But there was only a puzzled cry from one of his men.
“Sir, he’s gone, sir!”
“What?”
“The old man, he just seemed to disapp... no, no, wait, he’s here. I think.”
“Make up your mind, man!”
“I could have sworn...”
DeFrys bit his lip. This whole thing was damned peculiar.
“Don’t let him out of your sight,” he said. “I’m coming down.”
DeFrys descended the ladder. Half way down he paused, running his hand over a light tube that illuminated the lower level – the kind of light tube, Old Race technology, that he had only ever seen in archaeological sites or the sublevels of Scholten Cathedral. What were they doing in a primitive market town in Pontaine?
What, for that matter, were all the other objects down here?
The old man stood on the other side of the cellar, smiling. In the artificial light he looked somehow strange, almost flat and two dimensional.
“An impressive collection, isn’t it?” he said. “Reserve stock which I normally only make available to special customers. Those I trust to use it properly.” His expression darkened. “Some of it I don’t make available at all.”
DeFrys looked to where the old man was pointing. Beside him was another small chamber beyond the cellar, one that appeared to normally be hidden behind a display cabinet that was, for the time being, swung open on concealed hinges. His eyebrows rose at what he saw in there – even if he didn’t necessarily know what it was he was seeing.
“Do you realise how many years it has taken me to collect these items?” Merrit Moon said. “How many sites I have risked my life to explore to bring them here, to safety?”
“Proscribed technology,” DeFrys said.
“What has come to be known as proscribed technology,” Moon said. A needless repetition that brought a momentary frown to DeFrys’ face. “Proscribed by a Church which has neither the wit or wisdom to use it properly.” He turned towards the chamber, staring wistfully at each object in turn. “Here there are devices that can change the nature of a man or his surroundings. Devices which can control the weather, bringing rain or sunshine depending on which is your desire. Devices which can turn the tide of a war...”
DeFrys stepped off the bottom rung of the ladder and took a step towards the old man.
“Why are you telling us these things, old man?”
“I once told a protégé of mine – perhaps you’ve heard of her – Kali Hooper?” Moon went on. Again it struck DeFrys as a non-sequitur, “that she had to take great care in what she released into the world. I have to tell you the same now.”
“These objects will be confiscated, old man,” DeFrys said. “Examined by experts within our ranks...”
“I doubt, however,” Merrit Moon continued, “that you will pay much notice to what I say.”
“What?”
“I couldn’t take them with me, you see. Had to leave them behind. But I cannot let them fall into your hands. Simply cannot. It would not be right.”
“What?” DeFrys said again.
He stared hard at the old man, his face questioning, but Moon simply stared impassively back. A sudden tug of fear gripped the mercenary, for now that the old man was so close the sense of unreality about him that had been so nagging seemed more pronounced. He took a step forward so he was standing nose to nose with the man he was to arrest. His target had no body heat, no body odour, no substance at all.
“For that, I am genuinely sorry,” Merrit Moon said.
DeFrys swallowed and put out his hand. It passed right through Merrit Moon.
“Genuinely sorry...” Merrit Moon repeated.
Suddenly everything made sense to DeFrys. Moon’s seeming to blur as he moved. His momentary disappearance at the trapdoor. But most of all his inability to answer a direct question. The old man wasn’t being obstructive or evasive – he simply wasn’t answering questions because he hadn’t heard them!
These last few minutes this... projection had been delivering a pre-recorded lecture.
And class had just been dismissed.
“It’s a trap, get out, get out!” he shouted to his men, but too late.
As the walls around DeFrys began to throb and glow with strange green veins, he found himself scrabbling for the rungs of the ladder alongside his men. Forcing them off it, in fact.
His breach in officerial responsibility was academic, for his men would never report h
im. The cellar of Wonders of the World exploded with a force no human bomb could have achieved, and a second later the rest of the shop – ground and upper floors – followed suit. DeFrys was running for his life from the building when it was wiped from the map, and the concussion hit him like a giant sledgehammer in the back. He was thrown forward to land crookedly and heavily on his front, the impact forcing out an explosive grunt.
As Gargassians began to run towards the site, pointing and gasping, it took a few seconds for the mercenary to cease moving forward, his twisted body ploughing a furrow in the ground where he’d landed, his jaw carving a rut.
HUNDREDS OF LEAGUES away, Merrit Moon was eating a sandwich when he felt his old life vanish forever, the event transmitted to him by the elven sensory sphere he had left behind with the holographers in the shop. The One Faith, the Only Faith, the Fewer Faith, he thought philosophically. And continued to chew.
The knowledge that he no longer had a home did not come as the wrench he thought it might, surprisingly. The old place had never been the same since being all but demolished by the k’nid, and even as he had been packing the cracks they had left with the elven compound he had named detonite, in readiness for the Faith forces he knew would inevitably come for him, he hadn’t felt particularly sad. There were some things the k’nid attack had destroyed that could never be replaced – his elven telescope, ironically the first thing that had seen them coming, among them – and he was far too old to seek out and gather such treasures again. To surround himself with such seemed folly in these changing times, in fact.
There was, of course, also his health. He wasn’t ailing – in fact, for a man of his age he was in quite superior shape – but that was wholly due to the ogur corruption that continued to taint his body. The solutions and elixirs he had perfected to keep his transformative affliction in check continued to do their job, and while he still possessed the thread-engineered antidote that Kali had brought from the Crucible, he resolutely refused to use it. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust it – because of its provenance its efficacy was beyond question – but that, as he’d told Kali that night in the Flagons, to use it just didn’t feel right. If he were honest, he had never been able to shake a conviction that what had happened to him had happened for a reason, and in the light of recent developments he was becoming more convinced still.