by Mike Wild
She watched the orbs hit the invisible wall and disappear. Her eyes narrowed.
She hated this farking place. It had actually made her pee.
Kali forced herself up on trembling arms and wearily began to limp further down the passage. She remained on guard for more lightning, thunder, acid rain or whatever was going to be thrown at her next, but in actual fact she reached a chamber that was in stark contrast to any she had encountered before. That wasn’t to say it wasn’t equally dangerous, of course, even though all it seemed to contain was a door.
That was it. A door. A door standing all by itself in the centre of the chamber. A door that you could walk all the way around. And in the centre of the door, a lock. But what was the point of a lock if all you had to do to get through the door was move to its other side?
Kali frowned. The sheer fact that she was looking at a locked door seemed to indicate this was a test of Kane’s thieving skills rather than his magical legacy, but that wasn’t necessarily so. If this path had the same duality of purpose as Gabriella’s it could be either.
No, she realised suddenly, it couldn’t. Or at least she didn’t think so. Because if it were a test of thieving skills and it was Kane who was attempting this trial, if he’d reached the island before her, then he, too, would be doing it naked, and what was he supposed to pick the lock with, his – well, she didn’t need to picture it, did she? She wasn’t denying the shadowmage might have hidden talents but she doubted that was one of them, so this had to be a kind of a hybrid test – a thief’s challenge that needed to be solved by magic. If that was the case, then she could...
No, again. Who was she kidding? Either way she was bollocksed.
Frustrated, Kali kicked the door.
And then found out what would have happened if Kane had failed this test.
The rapid shnik! shnik! shnik! was a dead giveaway, and she would have been dead had she not encountered similar traps on more than one occasion. She berated herself for not having noticed the myriad circular holes that punctured the walls of the chamber, even though they had become filled and disguised by the dust of ages, and once more leapt into the air.
What was it to be, she wondered? The tree, the stag or the teapot? In the end, she found herself in an unidentifiable and vaguely sillier position than any of them, suspended where she’d leapt between the hundred or so pointed bars that had erupted from the walls, roof and floor horizontally, vertically and diagonally, ramming themselves into the opposing areas of the chamber in a series of thuds and explosions of dust. Kali hung there immobile, her neck trapped between an intersection of bars so tightly she felt it had been removed and mounted, her left arm bent back and behind her at the elbow, her right thrust straight down under her, toes almost but not quite touching the ground. Her torso and right leg, meanwhile, were twisted at such an angle she could easily see all the way down the livid scar on her right hand side. She reflected she hadn’t done badly considering what the chamber had thrown at her, but the bar that had skewered her left thigh, punching all the way through by the bone and impaling her on the latticework, elicited a long and weary groan. Kali waited, watching the drips of blood from her leg puddle on the chamber floor, then, as she’d hoped, the trap reset itself. With the dull rumble of some hidden mechanism, the bars slowly retreated to their housings, and, bit by bit, Kali was released from her confinement, slithering downwards from bar to bar.
The one that had punctured her thigh, the dust it had gathered grating on her inner flesh, hurt like the hells as it came out, and she gritted her teeth, finally thudding to the floor with a gasp.
That was it. Sod the world. She wanted to go home. Now.
There was no going back, though, was there? Only forward. And in that respect, the trial was offering Kali the first break she’d had. This trap, like all the others, was multilayered, and though she had failed the door test – as Kane conceivably could have – the trap itself was as much of a test of skills as the door had been. Whatever magical wheeze the shadowmage might have used to avoid a change of career to a pin cushion – some spell like skin of steel, spongeflesh or size of a worgle, whatever he called the bloody things – survival satisfied the test’s conditions as much as success.
The locked door was gone. Transformed into a shimmering portal.
Kali sighed, picked herself up and, leg slick with blood, limped through.
Another bridge.
That’ll do, Kali thought. She’d had more than enough of the Trial of Lucius Kane.
She dropped down into what she thought was going to be another hinterland, hoping to find a cave inscribed with the symbol of Endurance. But all there was was a dark and uninviting pool of water in the rock floor.
Guess who? she thought.
The memory of what had happened on the sinking Black Ship still fresh in her mind, it was the very last thing she wanted to do, but Kali inhaled one slow, very deep breath and then dived beneath the surface into the Trial of Silus Morlader.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
IT WAS LIKE swimming through soup. Cold, leftover and half-rotten soup filled with every unwanted ingredient that could ever be imagined. As Kali propelled herself down with determined strokes, still moving painfully slowly against the swell – the murk around her offered up great patches of silt from the cave floor, wooden flotsam that bobbed and bumped against her, detritus that had accumulated over the ages, and finally, but by no means the least, lengthy, cloying strands of seaweed and other marine vegetation that slithered over and clung to her body and, on occasion, her face, making her want to release her air and gag.
These were not the only obstacles she faced. The crystalline formations that lit the rest of the Trials were far less abundant here, worn away for the most part by the roiling water and eroding effects of its contents, and the further Kali swam from the entrance the darker the waters became. The darkness itself was not the danger, of course – with no idea of what form these submarine caves took, or even of which direction she was meant to be heading, she was blind in more ways than one, and her hands scraped repeatedly and painfully against boulders, sharp growths of coral, and rock walls. Kali began to trail blood, and at one point another length of the seaweed wrapped itself around one of her legs, sliding down to entangle her ankle. Repulsed, Kali kicked herself away so violently that she span in the water, her head cracking an unseen boulder so hard she saw stars.
Disorientated, having involuntarily released a quantity of her air, Kali scrabbled back to what she thought was an upright position. But the disturbed water had become thick with silt, and there wasn’t even the faintest patch of light, and for all she knew she could have been attempting to swim downwards or sideways.
The first stirrings of panic set in as all Kali could feel, whichever way she stroked her hands, was rock, and she turned again and again, this way and that, but finding no hope for her predicament. She twisted herself around once more. This time her hands dug into the base of the cave, scooping up fistfuls of sand and shells and, as she cast them away as if they were contaminated, another flare of panic came. She found the rock wall – a rock wall – once more, and groped her way along it, hoping that this time she had chosen the right direction in which to kick off.
She had, finding a bend with her fingertips which she pulled herself around, but as she began to thrust herself forward once more the stark reality of her situation was already starting to hit home. It had been all right telling herself that she could negotiate the path designed for Silus, that her abilities would get her through, but the fact was if this path was meant to be as much of a challenge for him as her own had proven to her, then, despite the fact she was already faltering, she would only have, as it were, dipped her toes in the water.
The realisation brought with it a desperate burst of energy, and Kali propelled herself through the water as fast as she felt it safe to do so, ignoring the bumps and scrapes to her arms and hips that had earlier given her cause to tackle the liquid path more cautiously. O
ne pain that she couldn’t ignore, however, was the one growing in her breast, a searing heat of constrained, exhausted breath that was beginning to feel more and more as if someone were scraping the blade of a knife up and down her trachea. The pain made her want to cough and, more dangerously, swallow reflexively, and, as she did, her mouth opened slightly, expelling some of what was left of her air in a cloud of bubbles and allowing the taste of the mire through which she swam inside her. Kali swallowed it, for there was nothing else she could do, and knew it was only a matter of time before her lungs would involuntarily start to fill with more of the tainted liquid. There was nothing else for it. She swam on, determined but ultimately not built for that which she had been forced to endure, and then felt her stomach, her chest, her entire torso begin to spasm, fighting against her to draw in the great, gulping breath that she didn’t want to take.
More bubbles exploded from her mouth and struggling, slowing to a stop, Kali hung there and then gradually began to incline vertically upwards, her limbs floating. She flailed in the water, bucking, resisting, knowing her fate was inevitable. She could hear her own resistant moans inside her head, magnified because she was unable to release them, whimpering and animalistic. Her eyes widened in desperation, even now seeking a way out of this deathtrap, but seeing nothing but the mire that was sure to become her watery grave.
Then suddenly, waveringly, there. Kali wasn’t sure whether she was actually seeing it or whether it was the result of the increasing, spotted flaring of her vision, but above her seemed to be light. She began swimming upwards, brushing gleefully welcome, upwardly sloping rock as she did, and then unexpectedly burst the surface with a single, long gulping inhalation of breath. The breath caught on the muck that had settled within her and immediately she vomited up the dire water she had swallowed.
Taking another gulping breath, hacking and spitting, Kali looked around. There wasn’t much to see. Illuminated by a small collection of crystals, a small, hollow niche surrounded her, not quite big enough for her to fully stretch out her arms. At first she thought it might have been some kind of rest area for Silus – a staging post on his trial, maybe – but she then realised he would have no need of such respite. Studying the rock, she realised it was a natural formation, the result of erosion into which the swirling waters below must periodically rise, trying to find an alternate exit from the labyrinth through which they flowed.
Kali forgot what such a feature was called but, in actual fact, didn’t give a toss. She was just grateful it was there. Had she been able to reach it, she would have kissed the rock above. Shagged it, if the rock had been in the mood. This tiny pocket of air could prove to be her salvation. It could even prove the means by which she might survive Silus’s trial after all. Using it as a base, a central point, she could reconnoitre the labyrinth that lay ahead, gauge distances, directions, each time returning here for vital oxygen. And each time, hopefully, having managed to map the trial a little further. This was nowhere near a guarantee, of course – who but its builders knew how far the trial extended – but it was a start.
Kali wasted no time, filling her lungs, dipping her head back beneath the water and power-stroking down. Less panicked now, with a brain filled with thoughts rather than adrenalin, she twisted, eel-like, around a bend in the cave she could now discern. The bend led to a narrow flue that dropped vertically and she twisted again, doggy-paddling herself into position to descend it. The flue dropped about a hundred yards and, at its base, she found a number of passages radiating off a small chamber. Kali decided to explore them clockwise, and swam into the first, finding, after about ten yards, a dead end. She retraced her path and was about to tackle the second passage when she started to feel the familiar burning sensation in her midriff. Time to return and refuel, as it were.
Done, Kali tried the second passage, and then the third – dead ends again – though the second proceeded so far in that she thought it was leading somewhere, and only just made it back to the airhole. On her return trip, the fourth passage proved to be the one she wanted and, after a winding route, she shot with surprising speed into another chamber, one much larger than the last. Again, though, she had reached the limit of her explorations, and twisted herself around in the water to return from whence she came. But there was a problem. Her accelerated arrival into the chamber had been the result of the strong current generated in the passage she’d used, and returning to the passage, swimming against the current, wasn’t possible. Kali struggled, her arms pumping and legs kicking, but she made no headway at all, and, ever weakening, found herself spat back into the heart of the chamber, where she was tossed and rolled helplessly.
Panic flared within her once more as she felt more currents tugging at her and, using what little strength she had left simply to remain stable, realised she was in the middle of a maelstrom. The chamber, like the one above, offered a variety of exits, but in this case many, many more, riddling it like Gargassian cheese, and from each and into each water poured under such pressure that attempting to fight or resist its flow was a lost cause. Not that she had time to fight or to resist as her breath was almost gone now, the searing pain in her chest urging her to take one breath, just one breath...
An involuntary burst of bubbles escaping her mouth, Kali’s mind raced as fast as the currents clashed with each other around her. Like the rest of the aquatic labyrinth this chamber had clearly been designed as a challenge for Silus, but surely not simply to confuse and to trap him here, because for a man with no need of breath, what would be the point? He could take all the time in the world to negotiate his way through. If not a trap, then, what? Some kind of gauntlet? A test of his endurance and skills? If that was the case, what skills, other than the ability to breathe under water, did Silus Morlader possess?
Think, woman, think! He was a mariner, right? He had lived all his life with the sea. The fact that his legacy had endowed him with the preternatural ability to survive in a submarine environment could, in a way, almost be considered a bonus. But there was little doubt that his abilities, even when latent, must have drawn him to the sea, because that, after all, was his destiny, as much as it had been her destiny to spend her life burrowing beneath the ground. Silus Morlader and the seas of Twilight were complementary forces. They were one with him, and he was one with them.
One.
That was the answer. You didn’t fight that which made you whole. You didn’t struggle. And the purpose of running a gauntlet was to prove it presented no danger to you, that you accepted its dangers and were comfortable with them. Yes, that had to be it.
Unless she wanted to die here, decomposing until her flesh became one with these waters, her bones battered on the chamber’s rock walls until they, too, were silt, it was her only chance.
Kali relaxed her body, closed her eyes, and allowed herself to drift into the strongest of the currents. She forced herself to remain relaxed as it snatched her away, ignoring the presence of the rocks that projected all around her, trusting, as Silus would have done, the tumultuous ebb and flow of the chamber’s currents, allowing them, with only the slightest instinctive changes in her posture, to deliver her where she was meant to be.
Her body was carried through the waters of the chamber, bending and twisting, supple and slithery as a snake, and, while occasionally she felt looming masses of rock flashing at her or within inches of her side, or her whole body buffeted as one current crossed another, she did not resist and simply went with the flow. Even the now agonising tightness of her chest seemed to dull as she proceeded, accepting the inevitability of her underwater journey, which could now only end one of two ways, neither of which she had any say in at all.
On through the waters she continued, until at last the current transported her into one of the many passages that led off the gauntlet, which Kali was only aware of because of an increased darkness about her. Down, then sideways, then up she travelled, the slight shifts in her posture occasionally misjudged, her body scraping the passage wall
s but unharmed, the rock worn to an organic smoothness by the force of the water that travelled through it. But the darkness around her wasn’t the only darkness, now, her body finally succumbing to lack of oxygen, and heavy shadows began to close in on her mind. As unconsciousness loomed, insidiously, like slipping into a dream, any attempt at manoeuvring was forgotten and, less Kali Hooper now than piece of living flotsam, her body began to drift in the current, bouncing and then slamming with increasing force off the passage walls as it was carried seemingly forever onward.
And as it did, her mouth yawned opened, and water began to enter her lungs.
Kali’s eyes snapped open. The cold shock of the liquid inside her brought her back from the brink of oblivion, extinguishing the fire within her breast but not welcome for doing so, and with a loud blub she expelled it back from whence it came. The urge to inhale again was immediate, and she almost did, but, angry now – angry that she had almost allowed herself to die, angry that these Trials conspired to kill her when she was so close to the truth – she decided that she wasn’t dead yet.
No way. No farking way.
Kali forgot everything except reaching the end of the Trial. Her body already black and blue from the battering it had taken against the walls, she cared little what further damage it took, because this was do or die. Instead of allowing the current to simply carry her along, she began to kick, punch and throw herself off the walls, rolling, flexing and punching herself ever forward, like a sentient bullet trying to find the end of the barrel of a gun. Her progress was lost in a welter of bubbles, thrashed water and flailing limbs as on and on she went, but, so long as she felt the current still pushing her from behind, she was going to be all right.