by Mike Wild
"Merrit," she said, "be careful, up there, please."
The old man smiled, reassuringly. "I am never anything else, young lady. Believe me, you do not get to my age in a world as surprising as ours without constantly being so." As Kali mounted Horse, Moon tossed his one-time steed a bacon lardon, and Horse bounced it off his nose into his mouth and munched down gratefully, eyeballs spinning. "Besides," the old man added, "it will not be the first time that the World's Ridge Mountains have welcomed these old bones into their cold embrace."
Kali raised her eyebrows and then nodded. She should have known.
"Another tale, Merrit?"
"For another time."
Kali smiled and squeezed her heels into Horse's flanks, then reined him in the direction of the road out of Gargas. "I'll be in touch, old man," she said, and urged Horse forwards. The old mount swung its head in the direction of Moon, whinnied a goodbye, and then began to clop slowly forwards.
"Safe journeys, Kali Hooper… and you, too, my faithful old friend," Merrit Moon said, smiling to himself. "Safe journeys."
The relic-monger watched Kali and Horse until they had fully crossed the market square and begun to descend the slope to the town gate, then turned inside to his parlour. The fire crackled, as welcoming as ever, but as he closed the solid wooden door behind him, the old man's smile faded. It was indeed not the first time that he had had cause to journey to the World's Ridge Mountains, but he did not regard the coming prospect quite as casually as he had led Kali to believe. The mountains were a wild and rugged place, as untamed as the Sardenne and as anywhere on the peninsula, and their dangers were not to be underestimated. To travel there alone, as Kali had reminded him, would be considered suicide by most.
Luckily, he was not most.
But he would need to prepare.
Merrit Moon bolted the outside door behind him, took a last swig of his remaining wine and then headed through to the shop and back down the ladder into the reliquary, this time bolting its hatch above him. As far as the reliquary went, he had never been wholly truthful with Kali about it — it was indeed where he stored his rarer items, but what Kali did not know was these items were neither the rarest, nor the sum total of them. Waving another light cylinder into life, Moon took a small key from his pocket and inserted it into the lock of a display cabinet against the far wall, turning the key not clockwise as might be normal but anti-clockwise, twice, until there was a dull click that did not come from the lock but from the wall behind it.
With the slightest touch of his hand the wooden cabinet swung away from the wall on iron hinges, revealing yet another room — a round chamber — beyond.
A small collection of objects glistened on stone shelves in the light of the cylinder outside.
Sighing, his heart heavy, Merrit Moon stepped towards them.
Chapter Four
Killiam Slowhand had become used to every kind of reaction to his performances, from laughter and tears to boos and hisses, showers of flowers and hails of rotten fruit. He'd had standing ovations and he'd had people who'd stood up and walked out. He'd been welcomed in towns, run out of towns, almost lynched in towns and had, in some, been called names which even he had not heard before. Most hurtful of all, he'd had women who'd cackled at his tights.
But before tonight he'd never felt the tip of a dagger pressed coldly and threateningly against his spine.
A tad overcritical, he thought.
The performance had gone well, and the sound of the audience's laughter and applause still ringing in his ears, Slowhand had exited backstage, it being divided from the front stage by a curtain slung over a rope — a method of construction which, in fact, made up his makeshift theatre, wherever he went. Once there, he had quickly begun to wipe off his greasepaint with a damp cloth, attempting at the same time to strip his torso and legs of his spotted tunic and stripy tights, the colourful costume he wore on stage. The ritual would normally have been a far more leisurely affair, done with a good stiff drink or three, but the night's show had been a good one, loud and raucous, and not only in terms of the numbers in the crowd but the number of them he had seen react to his little vignettes. Quite a few more seeds had been planted, this night, and if Slowhand didn't miss his guess there was a good chance he was going to be paid a visit because of it.
Sure enough, though a little too soon for his modesty, visitors had arrived, and he had heard the other curtain — the one behind him, the one leading to the outside world — suddenly ripping open, and in a flurry of activity had found himself cornered and grabbed by both arms while the cold, pointed metal was rammed into his flesh, almost but not quite piercing the skin.
Critics, he thought again.
He coughed and turned slowly, the dagger tracing a thin red line around his waist until it settled in his navel, and he found himself — wearing his tights around his ankles — facing three robed figures.
The three were strangers to him, but he knew exactly who they were. One was female — and cute. Or at least would have been had she not been the one sticking the dagger into him — or represented what she did.
Slowhand played it casual, ignoring the crossed circles on their sleeves. "Sorry but I never do autographs after a show. It's making the fluffy animals out of the balloons, you know… makes the wrists ache."
"We have no interest in your autograph, Mister Slowhand, or your fluffy animals. We are here regarding a different matter. That of your growing reputation."
"My, er, growing reputation?" Slowhand said. He couldn't help himself — he looked down then back up with a smile, winking at the girl. Rather disappointingly, her gaze remained impassively and steadfastly fixed on his face and didn't drop an inch. Not that an inch would have done the job, he reflected. Nope, not even close.
"It has come to our attention that certain… subject matter may not be serving the best interests of our church."
"Certain subject matter?" Killiam repeated. He adopted the same dramatic pause as the man who had spoken. "Are you talking about my… little play?"
"Your little play. The Final Faith does not take kindly to being portrayed as the Final Filth."
"Oh," Slowhand said, "dear."
"As a result, the Anointed Lord wishes to converse with you. Now."
"The Anointed Lord?" Slowhand said, feigning shock. Bingo, he thought. "Right… well. How can I resist? May I dress first?"
"We wish you would."
"Thank you."
Killiam turned to his wardrobe — a pile of clothes strewn on the floor — then turned back, indicating with a toss of his head that he'd like his visitors to turn their backs. In actual fact, despite what he was slipping on, he wasn't remotely concerned whether they turned or not — he just wanted to see if the girl had problems doing so. And yep, she was lingering, lingering…
Ha! Got 'em every time!
Satisfied and dressed, Slowhand found himself escorted from his makeshift theatre, noting as he was led outside that others in the robes of the Faith were already tearing it down, folding and packing the cloth into sacks for removal, probably to be taken away for burning. Some members of his audience who still remained milling about in Ramblas Square made discomforted noises but, of course, none of them said anything to the demolition team. None of them dared.
Slowhand didn't mind. The Faith was doing itself no favours with this kind of behaviour, and it was something else that would hopefully lodge in his audience's minds.
It was a measure of the Faith's sensitivity that his little play had attracted such attention, but then by bringing it here to Scholten he had rather hoped that it would.
The Final Faith, he reflected. As churches went, Twilight had never known anything like it, or those that ran it. Appearing out of nowhere not so many years before, and rapidly growing to become the largest organised religion on the peninsula, the Faith preached belief in a single god named the Lord of All, said to be the creator of all things. Slowhand wasn't a religious man but he did know that before the
Faith's arrival there had at least been a choice of gods, and to his mind this single deity must have made for much rubbing of hands in the church because its followers knew exactly who to give their money to. Oh, yes, the Faith had got quite a little business going on that front.
It wasn't, of course, the first church that had supported itself by means of its followers' donations, but what disturbed Slowhand was that with the Faith there was a price to be paid for everything. Its followers prayed to the Lord of All for little other than for what followers had always prayed — a good harvest, prosperity, or the simple wellbeing of their loved ones — but in each case there was a price — a price for prayer — that was all too eagerly levied by the Faith, more often than not on those who had little or nothing to spare in the first place. He had actually seen people reduced to ruin in their desperation to please the Lord of All, but the Final Faith's answer to these tragic turns of events? Prayer.
As he was led through the city, Slowhand scowled. Would that that was the all of it. He had travelled far and travelled wide, and in those travels had seen or heard examples of the Final Faith's influence in spheres where churches should really have no business — influence in spheres that made him feel at best uneasy and at worst actually fearful of their ultimate aim. The priesthood of the Faith — from the Enlightened Ones at the bottom of the hierarchy to the Eminences at the top — were taught that the Lord of All did not simply desire but demand unity for humankind, a distinction that made the heavenly helper seem less benevolent father figure and more malevolent dictator. Only through such unity, it was said, could humanity achieve ultimate and complete ascendance as a divine creation, but one only had to look at events in Turnitia and other cities in recent years to realise that unity sometimes came about by means of the rod, and was merely a euphemism for their true objective — nothing less than the complete and utter control of the peninsula, under the law of the Faith and the Faith alone.
And here, looming in front of him, was the heart of it. The base of Final Faith operations. The multi-spired monstrosity that was Scholten Cathedral.
Slowhand, dagger still held at his back, was ushered along Enlightenment Avenue towards it, the broad approach lined with red-tabarded cathedral guard and thronged with cathedral-goers and the officially sanctioned hawkers of religious tat who preyed upon them. The most blatant misuse of donated funds he could imagine, the structure towered over and dominated the city, serving not only as head office for the Faith but as a place of pilgrimage for those faithful who had clearly been sufficiently indoctrinated not to share his opinion of the place. They came from every region on the peninsula to bask in its magnificence, to worship in its endless banks of pews, or, if they arrived at the right time and were selected by the guard, to attend the weekly audience of the Anointed Lord — one of which, by the incessant clanging of the cathedral's bells, was happening now. Each of them would go home happy — if lighter in the pocket — because the pomp and the ceremony that was trowelled on to blind them to the truth made the experience seem like a little bit of Kerberos on Twilight.
Slowhand was spared the pomp and the ceremony. He had to settle for being shoved roughly along side corridors, any pretence of being a group of mates out for a stroll gone now that he was away from the public eye.
Again, he didn't mind. Being backstage, as it were, gave him chance to see with his own eyes the operation at work. All down the side of the corridor along which he was shoved, one after another until he was in danger of losing count, he could see into booths where the faithful were in consultation with priests. Alone or in groups, they passed over coin to the superficially sympathetic and nodding clergy, they in turn passing on benedictions in response to requests for divine favour ranging from fertility for their mool to a cure for a village's collective pox. And hells, they were good — so good they could have gone on stage themselves the way they made the money disappear, surreptitiously slipping it into tubes behind them and benedicting ever more loudly as it clattered down some central shaft into a communal coffer in the basement. It was a treasure trove that ever grew and never stopped, and one thing was certain — if for whatever reason the Final Faith didn't eventually subjugate the peninsula by rod, then they'd have no problem buying it outright. Even he hadn't realised just how massive a business it was.
Slowhand was shoved on, and his surroundings, other than for the sound of a distant choir, grew quieter. He was brought to a halt in a large chamber designed in such a way that anyone entering was channelled immediately and directly towards a raised dais in its centre, the path by which they entered unobstructed so that they might depart without turning, stepping backwards all the way. He knew the reason for this was that, as the Lord of All's supposed representative on Twilight, no one was allowed to turn their back on the Anointed Lord, the ruling no mere fancy of power but written — apparently — in the holy scriptures and enforced by its hard men — the Order of Dawn — as a crime punishable by death. Handy, that, he'd always thought, because if the Anointed Lord wished someone gone, then presumably all the Anointed Lord had to do was order them to turn around.
Speaking of which witch, here she was now. The head of the Final Faith swept into the chamber fresh from her audience with her flock, flinging off her holy vestments with a theatrical sigh of annoyance that suggested she was more than glad to see the back of them — in a manner of speaking.
Slowhand studied her, stimulated despite who she was. That the Anointed Lord was striking was undeniable, being tall and statuesque in build with a face that was handsome, if somewhat stern, this topped by a long, flowing mane of fiery red hair reaching down to her buttocks. Her eyes a bright green, they would have been attractive were it not for the way she used them, looking upon her underlings with some degree of disdain. They made him think that the term striking could also be applied to her in the way it was applied to a cobreel, fangs bared and about to lunge for your throat, and in that respect she certainly had the sinuous curves.
They had never met face-to-face, but Slowhand knew her.
Her name was Katherine Makennon. And the last time he had seen her, she had been a Five Flame General in the Army of Vos.
Makennon mounted her dais and flicked a glance at him, noting his presence, and he was about to step forwards, say 'Hi', when his escorts pulled him firmly back by his arms. It appeared that it wasn't yet his turn.
A man slammed through the main doorway and strode towards her, iron-capped boots thumping on the polished floor, though there was nothing polished about the man himself. A squat, barrel of a thing, he struck Slowhand even from a distance as being distinctly ugly and unlikeable, and his dishevelled appearance hinted he had just this second returned from some assignment in the outside world. Wherever it was he had come from, it had to have been somewhere hot. The man was charred and blackened as if he had been caught up in some great fire, and Slowhand swore that parts of his clothing still seemed to smoke.
He was announced as Munch, and Makennon's expression darkened as he approached her — he had obviously not brought good news. There was an altercation. Words were exchanged. At one point, the Anointed Lord slapped him across the face. Slowhand wondered why he took it — statuesque or not, Anointed Lord or not, he could have snapped Makennon like a dry twig.
The exchange ended and she dismissed him, holding out the back of her hand in a clear sign that his audience with her was over. Munch kissed it, not once, twice, but three times, and Slowhand could almost hear the mantra that would have accompanied each contact of his lips — the very same mantra he heard almost everywhere he went.
The One Faith. The Only Faith. The Final Faith.
It should have been over, but the small brute of a man lingered still, his lips hovering over her flesh. He actually looked likely to go in again. Ah, that was it, Slowhand thought. The little bastard had the hots for her. Okay, that was understandable — he might, too, given a moment of flung-about-the-bedroom masochism. But really…
He sighed, lo
udly. "Look, I hate to interrupt, but have you done with the tonguing yet?"
The pair shot him a fiery glare, then Makennon ordered Munch to the sidelines with a flick of her finger. Another flick followed, this time commanding the lapdogs who held Slowhand to bring him closer.
He and Munch passed midway, and Slowhand bent to whisper in his ear. "Little tip, pal. If you wanna get your hands on the boss's bazooms, try to grow higher than her knees."
Munch roared and spun towards him with a balled fist, but Killiam caught it readily and solidly, stopping it dead and holding it, unwavering, six inches from his face. He held Munch's stare, veins pulsing in his temples, an unexpected steeliness in his eyes matching that in his grip.
"I wouldn't do that," he said.
Munch considered, a gamut of emotions crossing his face, not least surprise. Then a cough from Makennon reminded him that he had just turned his back on her. Growling, he snatched his hand from Slowhand's grip, turned, and continued to shuffle backwards.