by Mike Wild
Munch spoke for the first time. He sounded calm and in control but Kali caught a flash of bloodlust in his eyes that belied his manner — the little bastard was looking forward to this. "This gentleman's name is Querilous Fitch," he said. "Mister Fitch is here to ensure our session lasts as long as is necessary. It is his job to ensure that you remain attentive and do not lapse into unconsciousness, a technique at which he is particularly adept."
"Then I'd better warn you I drop like a stone at the sight of blood," Kali said. "I don't think Fitch's massage is going to help very much."
Munch smiled. "His technique is a little more than a mere massage."
"Oh? What's he going to — " Kali began, and then stopped suddenly, gasping. It seemed to her that the fingers that a moment before had been caressing the back of her skull had somehow just slipped inside it, and while she was pretty sure the sensation couldn't actually be physical, it sure as hells felt like it. She felt cold and woozy and sick at the same time, and the really creepy thing was that she could feel different parts of her brain throb one after the other, as if the fingers were feeling their way around.
Thread magic, it had to be. Fitch was weaving inside her head.
Kali groaned loudly, and as she did Munch wheeled a small iron trolley into the room and locked it into place by the side of her chair. She flicked her eyes towards it. It looked innocuous enough but she somehow doubted it was there to provide her with a manicure to go with the massage. Too disorientated for a wisecrack, she found Munch speaking for her.
"I imagine you're expecting a selection of instruments crafted to cause you physical injury," he said slowly. "Branding irons? Pincers? Thumbscrews?" He lifted the lid. "Unfortunately, the Anointed Lord has decreed that such tools are only to be used should there be a failure in our more advanced techniques. I find these techniques rather uninspiring personally, but who am I to argue? The Anointed Lord has, after all, engaged some of our best alchemical minds to develop both these and their effects."
Kali looked numbly at what Munch had revealed. The trolley held a number of vials of coloured liquids, greens and oranges and reds, some of which looked more viscous than others, and each of which was marked with a strange symbol she did not recognise. They could have been reptile venoms or plant toxins or some other kind of poison and, though some bubbled of their own accord, what worried her most was that each sat next to a strip of needlereed, the hard, strawlike growth that, filled with a dart and the right ingredients, was a favourite tool of the assassins guilds.
But they were not going to poison her, surely.
So what?
Munch picked up a strip of needlereed and dipped it into one of the vials, the green, and then again, into the red. He tapped the end so that the viscous fluids mingled and slipped down inside, then raised and examined the reed, smiling in satisfaction.
"The dosage and combinations of these distillations have to be quite specific," he explained, "or can prove instantly lethal. But used correctly their effect is wondrously telling — though I'm told quite unpleasant — making your mind as pliant and as loose as I wish it to be. They do, however, cause some dizziness and lack of muscular control."
Kali swallowed. "Hey, then why don't you just give me a bottle of flummox? No, make that a case." She eyed the needlereed. "Is this going to hurt?"
Munch smiled. "This… no. But you may still feel some little pricks."
He flicked a lever on the side of the chair and the iron collars holding her clamped tighter, the pins piercing her ankles, wrists and neck. She bucked in her seat but found she could now barely move at all. Her limbs stung and blood flowed into the nape of her neck.
"Uuurngh!"
"As I said, they may cause some dizziness or delirium," Munch reiterated, "and it is essential for Mister Fitch's work that you remain absolutely still."
He dug the needlereed into the bend in her elbow, shoving it hard into her flesh, and Kali felt sick to the stomach as she saw the vein on her arm pulse and tinge green, the colour spreading up.
The noxious substance coursed quickly through her bloodstream, and there was nothing she could do to stop it, no way she could even try. Whatever it was Munch had given her, she felt instantly as if she had been on a week-long bender in the Flagons, the room about her tipping and swaying like a ship on the Sarcrean Sea. Sweat broke from every pore, her skin began to tingle, and as her stomach cramped agonisingly she vomited foam onto her chin. But however bad what was happening to her body was, it was nothing compared to what was happening to her mind. Her vision exploded suddenly with great bomb-blasts of orange and yellow and red that detonated and then spread like spilled paint, coating the inside of her eyes with a vibrant, cloying sea. Her head tipped back deliriously, and that part of her neck that thrust out as a result was pierced more deeply by the pins, making her blood run ever more freely. But she didn't care — the red of her blood was simply part of a rainbow that wrapped itself now around the inside of her skull, dizzying and disorientating, swooping and sick. As the colours swam, so too did her thoughts, and images of anything and everything began to flood her inner eye. Lost inside her own head, aware that she was dribbling and moaning, there was nothing she could do now but listen to the voice.
"The key, Miss Hooper — where is the key?"
"Told you… don't know…"
"Of course you know. The key, girl, where is the key?"
Kali tried to fight, to pull her thoughts into some kind of order, but the awareness of what the voice wanted produced precisely the opposite effect. An image of Merrit Moon flashed unbidden amongst a kaleidoscope of others and Kali railed against it, lest she blurt out his name. She tried desperately to make her mind go blank but it was a feat she had never been able to master — she wondered if anyone had — because there was always something in there, nagging away, even if it was only the panicked assertion to make her mind go blank, which perversely and inevitably conjured up the very images she wanted to forget. Kali consciously summoned other memories instead, the sights and sounds of previous adventures, but Merrit Moon hovered like a spectre in them all, smiling, advising, telling her when to run. She concentrated as hard as she could and shoved him away, back, into the darkness, and in his stead a cryptographic stone wheel loomed before her, set in a vine-strewn wall. Three turns to the right and two to the left. No. Oops. Boulder, big boulder. Run!
She could feel herself slipping, and all the time the question.
"The key, Kali. Where is the key?"
In the end, she fled to the only place she could — home. She surrounded herself with the laughter and the banter of the Flagons, the revelry and rivalry that was her tavern's soul. All her friends were there — Aldrededor, Dolorosa, Red — even Horse, alive once more. She swept away a sudden image of him dying and instead lost herself in memories of exploring the peninsula on his back, the discovery of Thunderlung's Cry, the Rainbow River, the mind-numbing Heights of Low…
"Such a shame about the beast," the voice said and, with a vertiginous panic, she realised that it was Munch, and that she must have unwillingly spoken Horse's name aloud. Her panic doubled, for she realised now that in thinking about Horse she was only one step away from thinking about Merrit Moon, and how easy it would be to speak his name out loud.
So she left even home behind, going back before the Flagons, before Horse and before Merrit Moon, back to her childhood and beyond — where lay no memory at all. But in doing so she found herself suddenly remembering what she had never fully remembered before, and she was there on a lonely road, during a storm-lashed night, crying like the babe she was, her tears indistinguishable from the rain. She felt herself being handed from one set of hands to another, caught a fleeting glimpse of a hooded man, and then, above her instead, was Red — a younger Red — smiling down.
Then even Red faded away, and she struggled to fill the gap he left behind. It was getting more and more difficult to concentrate now, she realised, and there was nowhere else to go.
&n
bsp; But it seemed there was. Suddenly she felt something pull aside, like a curtain in her mind, and for the first time ever she saw, actually saw, the place where she'd been found.
Despite her escalating delirium, Kali gasped. It was there before her, clearer and more detailed than the memory of a babe had any right to make it. Clearly some kind of Old Race ruin, its interior was adorned with complex runes and trellised with ornate ironwork as artistic as that of the Spiral, or of anywhere she had ever been. But there was more, here — strange panels of light set into the walls, flights of iron steps leading to machine-filled platforms that blinked around the edge, corridors and doors leading away to who knew where. She could feel the whole place tremble with power. Gods — she wanted to get up, to explore, but she was, after all, only a babe and could not rise from where she lay swaddled and helpless, there, in the middle of it all.
Kali found it didn't matter. For the first time she was seeing what she had never seen or known before — her own origin. It was Munch's drugs, it had to be, and though she would never have believed it, she actually had something to thank the bastard for.
It was a revelation.
But nothing like the revelation that followed.
Because just as she thought it was over, the hooded man entered the room. The same stranger that on that storm-lashed night had taken her from this place and given her into the care of Red.
He bent over her, and she saw his face.
And it was the face of Merrit Moon.
Merrit Moon.
No! she screamed inside her head. The image — the memory — was so unexpected, so sudden, so startling, that she couldn't shed herself of it, and as a result couldn't trust herself not to speak his name. The only way — the only way — to beat Munch's drugs was to make herself forget the face, but how — how — could she possibly forget what she'd just seen?
She had to do something.
She cared too much about Merrit to reveal him.
She had to end Munch's flight of fancy. Now!
There was only one thing she could do. Kali rammed her ankles, wrists and neck into the collar's pins, hoping the pain would drop her into a state of oblivion from which even Fitch would be unable to bring her back. Through her agony, she felt him pulling at her, but that only made her the more intent, and instead of simply impaling herself on the pins she began to tug herself to the left and right as much as the collars would allow, letting the pins tear into her flesh, to rip it from her in jagged strips. The pain was excruciating and she felt as if her body was on fire, and her flesh was slick now with her own blood, but still she carried on, roaring not with pain but with unslacking determination. And, at last, she began to feel numb.
She heard distant, echoing curses. And then hands were pulling quickly and roughly at her restraints.
"Damn her," she heard someone say, and realised it had to be Munch. What followed made no sense. "Did you get it? Did you get it?"
"I believe so. But I will need time to absorb what I have."
"Gah! Make it quick."
Kali sighed, and someone took her, then. The collars released, she found herself being lifted from the chair, the room canting at strange angles around her. The figures of Munch and Querilous Fitch were merely blurs, as ghostly in their appearance as their disembodied voices were haunting. She heard the sound of doors opening, saw dark outlines looming, and realised she was being escorted through the underground of the cathedral. But that couldn't be right, surely, because as she moved she caught glimpses of bright lights, of lots of people, of activity that surely did not belong where she was. Had they taken her somewhere else, then, as she slipped between consciousness and delirium — somewhere where she could hear orders being barked, the sound of factory machines, the bustle of an army at work? Or perhaps she imagined it, because now those things were gone, and she was being led down a stairway that spiralled down before her, where it was quieter and darker and colder than even the chamber had been. Other faces swam before her now, peering at her through hatches in doors, faces that were bearded and straggly and desperate, and one that for a fleeting second she thought she recognised but couldn't possibly have. Some degree of awareness was returning now, and Kali realised she was in a corridor of cells, and even in the state she was in, one thing was clear — these faces she saw, leering out at her, these faces and their owners, they had been here a long time and, if she didn't do something right now, so would she be too.
She broke free of her captors and ran, lurching like a drunk, for the end of the cell corridor, to a ventilation shaft set into the wall. As deep and as doomed as they were, the prisoners here still had to breathe, and with a little luck the shaft would reach all the way to the surface. She leapt for a rung that was set just above the hole, and missed. She tried once more and this time found herself slumping down against the wall.
It was no good, the wounds on her ankles and wrists coupled with the loss of blood had left her too weak.
She could do nothing but capitulate as her captors loomed and roughly pulled her up.
Exhaustion overwhelmed her, then. All she remembered was being thrown into a cold, dark cell, and the door being slammed tightly shut behind her. Time passed, and then someone entered her cell and bandaged her wounds.
She slept, without any idea of for how long. And when she awoke, she heard singing.
But it was not the singing she had heard upstairs.
And of all the things that had happened to her in the last few weeks, it was by far the most disturbing.
Chapter Seven
That voice, Kali thought. It couldn't be. Not him. Oh gods, please tell me it isn't him! Tell me it isn't. But the seconds passed and, as had always been the case, the gods didn't tell her anything at all, and she thought: It is, isn't it? There couldn't be any doubt. That voice, that tune, those lyrics.
Gods preserve her, those lyrics.
She felt a dizzying swoon that was almost a panic. As the cell seemed to heat up and flex around her, she tried to shut her brain down but it was no good. And as the song concluded, she just couldn't help herself. It was like being some small, furry creature, its ears erect, transfixed by the sound of an oncoming cart, oblivious to the rumbling wheels of doom. She just had to listen.
"… so ever since I've been in a stupor. Because of that lass named Kali Hoooooper."
A tin cup rattled on the bars of a cell door somewhere down the corridor. "For the sake of everything that's holy, will you please stop!" a desperate voice yelled.
"Wait — I think he has. Steaming pits, that was worse than the mangling room," said another.
"Something… I need something to stab my eardrums."
There was a very long, unappreciated sigh that echoed off the stone walls. "Fine," its owner said sulkily. "Just trying to cheer everyone up, that's all."
"We're cheerful, honestly!" someone cried, and then laughed manically, as if to prove it. "Really, really cheerful."
"Is it over? Oh, thank Kerberos… I feel I've been reborn."
Kali ignored the voices. Her heart thudding, she moved beneath the small grille that linked her cell to the next, from where the singing had come. She stretched and curled her fingers over its lip and then pulled herself up with a grunt, her soles skittering on the stonework below. It was something of a strain and her arms trembled with the effort, but as long as she held her grip she could see through the bars.
In the cell next door, there was a man wearing nothing but his undershorts. Just sitting there in the middle of the floor, with his legs folded, picking his teeth with a rockroach leg. Lean and muscular with an unkempt thatch of blond hair, many might have confused him with some debonair lord or playboy type, but she knew that nothing could actually be further from the truth.
Kali dropped back down, shook her head, took a breath, then heaved herself back up, unable to believe it.
The man looked up.
"Hello, Kali," he said.
Kali stared.
"'Liam," she
said slowly and dubiously, in response.
"How are you doing?" he said, as casually as if they had bumped into each other on Freiport high street.
Kali's voice quavered with the strain of hanging on. "Ohhhh, you know…"
"Yeah."
"You?"
"Oh, fine, just fine."
There was a pause.
"So…"
"So…"
"Here we are."
"Yep. Here we are."
Kali dropped down again, and blinked. She knew full well what she had just seen but she couldn't shake herself of the conviction that it was impossible. The last time she had seen Killiam Slowhand — she slammed her eyes shut with a cringe, blanking out the details — had been on the Sarcre Islands, and that had been over two years earlier. After that night, he had seemingly vanished off the face of Twilight.
That night, she thought again.
Anger bubbled inside her, and she clambered back up, yelping as she saw Slowhand directly in front of her, working away at the grille to loosen it. "What the hells are you doing here, Slowhand? Come to rescue me again?"
"Nope."
"Stop grinning at me inanely."
"Can't help it. But it's still nope."
Kali gestured through the grille, indicating his cell, or rather his imprisonment therein. "Why are you here, then? It is me, I know it is — you heard I'd been taken by the Faith so got yourself taken to give me a helping hand!"
"You are unbelievable," Slowhand said, continuing to work at the metal. "Hooper, believe it or not some of the time I don't think about you at all."
"I'm hurt. Also vastly relieved." Kali's eyes narrowed. "So what the hells are you doing here? Don't tell me the great Killiam Slowhand was bettered by the Final Faith?"