by Mike Wild
Jerragrim Brundle’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Yer wouldn’t by any chance be tryin’ to delay goin’ in there, would ye?”
Kali swallowed, caught out. “Why would I do that?”
“Oh, ah don’t know, but here’s a stab in the dark. Because yer might die?”
Kali turned to face the arch. The fact was, she was trying to delay the start of the Trial, but not because of the danger. No, if she were honest with herself, after all her years of trying to solve the mystery of what happened to the Old Races, it was that she was afraid of. Finally learning the truth. Would it place more responsibility on her shoulders? Or take that responsibility away? What was she to do in either case, being at the centre of things or being out of it completely, her job done? It wasn’t death but survival that she feared, the knowledge that whatever happened from here on in was going to change things – change her – for ever.
Right then, as she stared at the billowing curtain of cobweb draped from the symbol of the clenched fist, she would have given anything for Lucius Kane to be standing before his arch in her place. Let the shadowmage burden the responsibility, when she’d encountered him in Andon he’d seemed capable enough, after all. Or Silus Morlader. She didn’t know the man but was aware of his supposed legacy and somehow this place – far out to sea and battered by the swirlies – seemed more appropriate to his skills. Even poor Gabriella, had she lived. Despite the doubts the Sword of Dawn had started to feel about the Church she had served all her life, surely her own admirably unshakable faith would have carried her through?
But none of them were standing here, were they? It was just her. Alone. And she could either stand here all day talking pits with the dwarf or get on with it.
“I’m ready,” she said.
Brundle nodded and moved to the arch, slowly pulling away the thick cobweb. Taking a deep breath, Kali moved towards the shadows beyond.
“Smoothskin,” Brundle said, placing a hand on her side as she passed, “if it’s worth anythin’ ah know yer can do this.”
“Thanks, shorty.”
“See you on the other side, eh?”
“’k.”
Kali moved through the arch, and the world behind her was gone. Not gone physically but in her mind, subsumed by the feel of the chamber she found herself in.
It felt indescribably old and, despite the rumbles from above, indescribably lonely. The knowledge that this place had been created for her and her alone – that no one else had ever, ever set foot here and likely never would – weighed heavily on her mind. Kali examined its meagre contents; a stone trough of water and a stone bench, illuminated by what appeared to be glowing crystals in the walls, and then another cobwebbed arch which led out from the chamber opposite to the one by which she’d entered. Through there lay the Trial and whatever it had in store for her, and where in any other circumstances she would have ignored Brundle’s instructions, tackled it under her own terms, here that somehow felt wrong. Here she suspected she should follow the rules to the letter.
Even if it was so farking cold.
She sighed and stripped off her bodysuit, folding it neatly and laying it on the bench. She stood over it for a second, shivering in the breeze that came from further within, allowing her naked body to acclimatise to the environment. She looked at the trough and wished that instead of blessed water it held a few gallons of thwack. That was the only spiritual aid she needed, right now, thank you very much.
Despite the temperature, she scooped up a handful of water and splashed her face and neck. She hissed but the cold liquid invigorated her and reinforced the reality of her situation. She took three deep breaths, then turned to the second arch.
She was ready.
She stepped through into the darkness.
Found the floor ceased to exist under her feet.
And fell.
Kali’s yelp of surprise segued into a longer wail of alarm as she tumbled down a steep slope. Whatever she’d expected beyond the arch it wasn’t to be wrong-footed from the word go, and in the seconds it took her to come to terms with her situation she repeatedly impacted hard with the walls of the passage as its curving descent bounced her down and down, left and right, deep into the bedrock of the island. Then her survival instincts kicked in and she flung out her arms in an attempt to halt her progress. For a few seconds her flesh grated against rushing rock but then the walls of the drop were no longer within her reach. Feeling only air on her palms, and then suddenly also beneath her, it didn’t take much to work out the passage had ended and she was now in freefall in some kind of vertical shaft. Knowing the nature of this place, it wasn’t likely there was going to be a cushion beneath her.
She flailed in the darkness, seeking a means to prevent her ending the Trial almost before it had started as a mass of shattered bones. Her hands closed on some kind of rope – ancient hemp but tarred, it felt, to preserve it – and with an organ jarring oof she halted her fall, bringing a shower of clattering stones and dust from far above. The respite was only momentary, however, as, while she swung there, she heard the metallic klik-klak of some kind of ratchet releasing itself as a result of her weight, and suddenly the rope was snaking heavily down about her and she was dropping once more. She flailed again, made contact with another rope, and the sound of another klik-klak made her heart thud.
Shit!
But part of her had already worked out what was going on. She leapt into dark space again, found another rope – klik-klak – and then another – klik-klak – each time falling further towards the base of the shaft, and with increasing speed. To her left and her right, throwing herself upwards and downwards amidst what she now knew to be a veritable forest of dangling deathtraps of different lengths, she moved from rope to rope all the time sensing the ever accelerating approach of whatever lay beneath her. Still shrouded in total darkness, she at last clutched a rope that seemed not to produce a response from a ratchet, and she hung there gasping, the ancient hemp creaking as she moved slowly on its end.
Klik-Klak.
Bastard!
Kali lunged, desperately, instinctively, and so violently that the next rope she grabbed onto swung wildly back and forth, crashing her against the walls of the shaft and sending her spinning in the opposite direction. This didn’t exactly improve her mood but, after a few seconds one thing did.
It held. As it stilled, the rope held.
Her weight on it also seemed to activate some kind of mechanism, and to her right part of the blackness rumbled. A square of light – a doorway to another passage – appeared in the shaft’s walls. As it did, it illuminated the area where she dangled. Directly beneath her Kali could now see the entire base of the shaft was rooted with spikes taller than she was, and though they were clearly as ancient as the ropes she was willing to bet they had lost none of their keenness. Kali flexed a foot, dipping the flesh off her big toe onto the tip of one of them, then snatched it away with a hiss as a bead of blood appeared.
Clichéd, she thought, but couldn’t help but admire the design of the trap that could so easily have left her impaled upon the spikes. Right from the second she’d stepped through the arch, the whole thing had been a test of reaction – the kind of reaction only she, as one of the Four, would possess. That this was, she suspected, only the start of what her Trial had in store for her, brought a summation of its designer’s ingenuity that consisted of just one word.
“Twat.”
Despite that, Kali did now feel advantaged. She had some measure of the Trial. And if the rest of it consisted of the same perverse, impossibly difficult challenges she had just faced, it might even be fun. With a grunt of determination she began to inch her way up the rope to draw level with the doorway, then swung, let go, and landed.
The passage she was in was lit by the same growths as in the preparation chamber, but the fact that she could now see where she was going did not make Kali any less cautious. Just as well, too, as a sudden grinding of ancient gears gave her a moment’s
notice of the crescent shaped blades that began to scythe rapidly across the passage before her, all along its length. The vwoop, vwoop, vwoop of the blades was constant, and though Kali had encountered similar deathtraps in other locations, this one differed in one vital respect. The gaps between the blades were unforgiving, no wider than she was, making the old run and stop, run and stop strategy impossible, and unless she wanted to lose the bits that Brundle had fondled in the bar in Gransk, or the arse he’d commented on at Horizon Point, she’d have to use a different technique.
The sudden rumbling of a wall behind her, closing the exit from the passage and moving forward to shunt her towards the blades, forced Kali to act without thought, and she crossed her arms tightly against her chest, sucked her stomach in, and began to pirouette through the blades.
She span and span and span again, with ever increasing acceleration, feeling stupidly dizzied but forcing herself to remain upright and straight as a dye while the blades scythed within a hair’s breadth of her flesh, carrying away with them long streaks of her sweat. Every spin, every quarter second, brought with it the conviction she was about to be cleaved in two but amazingly, miraculously, she sensed suddenly that she was through. There was no relief, though, for the same acute senses that had served her so well over the years warned her this wasn’t quite done yet, and Kali flung herself onto her back as a final blade swept along the passage, between those that had stopped after her passing, and sliced a thin red line from her groin to her sternum.
Like she’d said. Twat.
So it went. Kali fought her way on, besting such classics of the athletic archaeologist’s trade as the punching walls, the stomping hammers and the bubbling lava pits of doom, each challenge perversely tweaked to deliver that extra pound of her flesh. She even half expected to come up against the revolving razor rabbit, though didn’t, but that was probably because she’d only encountered that once, in the dark, and in truth had been very drunk at the time.
She at last emerged onto a narrow rock bridge spanning a vertiginous void and, before she proceeded, collapsed to her knees to take a breather. But the breather didn’t last for long. Her first thought as the bridge beneath her began to rumble was that they were rolling out that old chestnut, the giant boulder, but then the ceiling began to rain debris and she realised she must be somewhere near the surface, where the death throes of the Hel’ss Spawn were continuing. Cracks started to appear in the bridge before her, and Kali picked herself up and ran, heading for the safety of another cave mouth with the symbol of her Path at its end. But before she could reach it a fall of rocks blocked her way through. Her Path of Endurance, it seemed, was at an end.
Or was it? As dust settled after the tremor, leaving the bridge intact if skewed, Kali looked into the void the bridge crossed and found it not to be a void at all.
The design of the Trials was cleverer than she’d thought, not in terms of the challenges they offered but the fact they also seemed to intersect each other, for below and, indeed, above her, she could make out cave entrances with the symbols of the Paths of Magic, Faith and Water – the latter a pool in the floor rather than an entrance – inscribed in their frames. Staging points, like this one of her own.
The solution was obvious. She could no longer continue on her own Path so would have to choose another. But which?
No choice, really. It seemed fitting that she took the one she felt closest to.
Gabriella’s Path.
Not that it was easy jumping tracks. With a series of grunts, Kali threw herself from the bridge and managed, precariously, to gain a hand and foothold on the cavern wall. From there she began to inch her way upward, almost losing her grip more than once, but at last found herself in a position just below the lip of the entrance inscribed with the symbol of the praying hands. She flipped herself upwards, ready to journey in, when it occurred to her that the direction she was facing was back the way she had come.
She turned and found that the way ahead lay through a similarly inscribed portal – but one that was at least two hundred yards away on the other side of the cavern. There was no bridge that connected them like her own.
How in the hells was she meant to get across? How in the hells had Gabriella been meant to get across? Was there in fact a bridge there like one of those she’d heard about, built in such a way it disguised itself against its background? Or was it one made of perfectly carved crystal, refraction free, that would only reveal itself when sprinkled with dust?
Kali almost kicked herself. It could be neither of those, of course, because if it were, how could she have flipped herself upwards? All she would have ended up doing was flattening her arse on rock.
What, then? A bridge that revealed itself stage by stage with every footstep you took? A bridge controlled by some mechanism handily concealed in a nearby room full of monsters? Dammit, there were just too many kinds of bridge.
Including one she’d forgotten.
This was the Path of Faith, right?
What if this was a bridge of Faith? Had Gabriella been here, would all that would have been required of her be a belief that the bridge was there? A bridge that was provided by her God?
There is a bridge, there is a bridge, there is a bridge, Kali thought as she closed her eyes tight and took a tentative step forward. She must have been doing something right because she didn’t tip into the cavern below. Another step. There is a bridge, there is a bridge, there is a bridge. Another, then another, then another. Oh, this was a piece of pits, she thought, and began to run. Bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge. All right! It was really quite astounding how you got religion when you needed it.
Oops. Impious thought.
Kali suddenly felt air beneath her feet. Well, not beneath so much as rushing by. Her eyes snapped open and saw that, luckily, she had almost made it to the other side. She roared and flailed forward, grabbing onto a vine that dangled from the opposite entrance, and pulled herself up. She rested for a second. Close call, smartarse.
Kali strode through the entrance into the next stage of Gabriella’s Trial – and straight into an inferno. The passage ahead was blocked by fire burning with a heat so searing she wondered if it was meant to represent the Hells. The religious hells, that was, not the bastard in the skies – the place where Gabriella and her fellow devotees preached you went when you’d been a naughty boy or girl. Another test of her faith, then? A demonstration that as a Sister of the Order of the Swords of Dawn she could walk through the hells unscathed? Maybe. But the Trials were tests of the person and their abilities, so what if this was meant to challenge Gabriella’s magical resistance? What if this was a magical fire that Gabriella might be able to saunter through but would roast anyone else alive?
Kali reached out a hand and pulled it back with a hiss, her palm reddened and blistered. Okay, it felt like real fire but that didn’t prove anything. Maybe all she needed to do was concentrate like she had on the bridge – or, considering her surroundings, maybe a little bit more. Kali closed her eyes and put out her hand once more. The heat of the fire began to lessen. And when it had lessened enough, she began to walk forward. Flames enveloped her but she continued on unharmed.
She’d been right the first time. She had to admit that Gabriella’s Trial was a bit of a breeze compared to her own.
Kali was halfway along the passage when she began to smoke. Began to hurt. And however much she concentrated the pain wouldn’t go away.
Oh gods, she realised. This wasn’t a test of Gabriella’s faith or her magic resistance. It was a test of both.
Kali ran. Ran faster than she ever had in her life, the flames licking at her, blistering her, turning patches of her skin an agonisingly raw red. She burst forth onto another bridge but it too was lined with fire. There was nowhere to go but down.
Kali threw herself off the bridge without a clue what was below, and landed hard, on rock. She patted herself down, wincing, and saw that once again she was in some kind of juncture between Paths. Lookin
g around, guided once more by the symbols carved into the rock, she saw that the only other Path accessible from this point, and again only with difficulty, was Lucius Kane’s.
Kali picked herself up and made her way across the rocky hinterland. The entrance to whatever stage of Kane’s trial she would face lay some eight metres away, on the other side of a precipitous and apparently bottomless ravine. She backed up, taking deep, preparatory breaths, then raced forward with arms and legs pumping and leapt over the unwelcoming depths.
Her roar of determination echoing throughout the subterrain, she made the leap with a foot to spare, but landed hard, and the pain of the sharp rock on her bare soles made her somersault forward not once but three times. The last of these gymnastics took her onto Kane’s symbol-inscribed path, and even before she could right herself she spotted three coruscating, variously coloured orbs in a triangular formation heading directly for her, and fast, along the narrow passage beyond. Kali squealed, rose and span, intending to retreat while the orbs shot by, but an invisible wall now blocked her in, and she span back, mind racing. The orbs had resolved themselves into balls of blue crackling energy, hissing ice and – oh great – more fire. Kane’s trial was wasting no time and she guessed this was a test of his reactions, his ability to swap between threads at speed, finding the right ones to counter the different elemental threats, diffusing, destroying or repelling them before they hit.
Yep, that made sense. For him. But what the flying fark was she supposed to do?
Fly. It was all she could do. Fly through the lethal looking orbs as they came, launching herself through the small gap in the heart of their formation. This she did, feeling like some kind of circus act, turning almost three hundred and sixty degrees as she kept her body streamlined. But she was a human thread passing through a needle’s eye, and some contact was unavoidable. Kali took the pain from grazing the fire orb almost as a matter of course – how could it be any worse than Gabriella’s inferno? – but she gasped in pain as the ice orb grazed a hip and ribs, the temperature contrast on her reddened skin agonising enough, but not quite as agonising as then having that same skin instantly frozen and stripped away. A streak of raw flesh now running half the length of her right hand side, the last thing she needed was contact with the last of the orbs, but this was unavoidable, too. The blue, crackling energy sent her entire body into spasm in what remained of her flight, and Kali hit the ground clumsily, twitching and coated in sweat, small darts of lightning dancing over her before discharging into the air.