by Mike Wild
Moon rose from the cave floor, slowly and cautiously, noting as he did that his resurrection seemed to have booned his old and tired limbs with a renewed resilience and strength that he had not felt for a good many years. This was hardly the time to celebrate the fact, however, because while the ogur's state of confusion seemed to have passed, their agitation had grown markedly. Their grunts were becoming more frequent now, their mannerisms more threatening — and their gaze more hungry.
Slowly, Moon bent to retrieve his staff and backpack, and then with equal slowness he eased towards the tunnel that led out of the cave. The ogur gathered about him as he moved, sniffing at him, clawing curiously at his clothes, and Moon realised that it was probably only a matter of seconds before one of them actually lunged. He was having to push his way between them now, and could feel their clawings becoming heavier, more insistent. And then one of them did what he'd been expecting and grabbed him roughly by the arm, attempting to rip the limb away.
Moon batted the ogur off and roared.
What? he thought. What had that just been? What had he just done? That he'd actually been able to physically repel the ogur? That he'd made that noise?
Oh, this wasn't good. This wasn't good at all.
It was not, however, the ideal circumstance to dwell on the matter, and for now all he could do — what he needed to do — was take advantage of it. The remaining ogur, it seemed, had been as disturbed by his unexpected actions as he had himself, and their clawings had become more hesitant, in some cases even ceased. And the ogur that had lunged for him was actually retreating submissively back into the cave.
What is happening? Moon wondered. Were the ogur, after all, deferring to him? Or were they perhaps sensing some of the alpha whose life essence he had stolen away? Whichever of the two it was, he knew that he needed to press the issue before they changed their minds again.
Instinctively, he roared for a second time. And this time, without even thinking about doing it, he repeatedly thumped the rock of the cave walls in warning.
By all the gods, what was happening?
The ogur — all of them, now — backed off into the cave, and, free from their threat, Moon turned towards the exit. A second later he emerged onto the ice plateau and, again before he knew what he was doing, began inhaling deeply of the air.
No, he realised, he wasn't inhaling it, he was sniffing it.
And on it, he could smell Kali Hooper.
Impossible. It was just impossible. He had no idea how long he had spent in the cave but it was not an inconsiderable amount of time, and yet Kali was there on the air, as if she had left him only a moment before, her scent traceable despite the stench of the ogur cave and the blizzard that still numbingly blew outside it. She was as clear as day to him, as vital as if she had remained nearby — but she hadn't, he knew and he realised he was smelling a scent that should long ago have become undetectable to the human nose. A human nose but not that of a creature that survived by…
Moon remembered the resilience and strength he had felt as he had risen from the cave floor, remembered the batting away of the ogur and his roar, remembered his hammering of the cave walls. Most of all, he remembered that he had not felt… quite right. Gods, he knew there was meant to be a fleeting transference from a victim but was it possible the amulet had somehow — ?
He lifted his palms to his face, feeling the features there. He half-expected to feel those of an ogur bulging beneath his fingers but, no, his face still felt like his own. He looked down at his body, and it too seemed to be the same. Only…
He gazed at one of his own footprints, frozen in the plateau ice. The footprint was from before he had entered the ogur cave and he turned to place his foot beside it. And the footprint was smaller.
Merrit Moon's heart sank. So, he had changed, then. Perhaps was still changing. The only question was, to what degree and at what pace? The artefact that he had brought with him into these mountains in the hope that it — if it became necessary — would buy him more time to complete his mission had, instead, infused him with not only the ogur's life essence but part of the ogur itself. How and why that should happen, he didn't know — perhaps it was something to do with the ogur's body chemistry, or perhaps the fact that their species were so different that it was the only way the amulet could cope with the transference — but whatever the cause it left him with but a single thought: Oh gods, Kali, what have I done?
Thinking of his protEgEe made Moon's heart sink even further. He had taken no pleasure in not telling her about the amulet, in fact it had pained him greatly, but how could he have told her when even he was not sure whether the artefact would work? As she had knelt over his dying form, what right had he had to build up her hopes by telling her he might yet live if there was a danger those hopes would be shattered if the artefact failed to work? No, he couldn't have done that to her, any more than he could have let her touch the amulet at the moment of his passing. Damn Munch, he thought, because if that little thug had finished the job instead of leaving him to suffer then it would be him who would now be lying on the cave floor, as dried and as drained and as dead as he deserved to be.
Moon caught Kali's scent on the air once more, and he wondered where she now was. Had she succeeded in finding the information she needed, and was she on her way to protect the other keys? One thing he did know, he needed to find her, not only to help, if he could, but to let her know that he lived, even if it was not in quite the same fashion as he had lived before.
He began to trudge down the mountain, his legs feeling strangely powerful beneath him, and he drew a deep breath into his lungs so that they expanded as he had never known them to do before. There were obviously some advantages to his changing form, and if he could use his apothecarial skills to prevent any further changes — if they were to come — then he had to admit that he might not be too discomforted by his strange fate, after all. If he was going to find Kali, however, he would need to seek medicines or potions in Andon or Fayence, because there would be no time to sweep north to…
Merrit Moon faltered. He suddenly realised that he couldn't remember where he lived. Gar — ? Garg — ? Oh, this was ridiculous. Damn the hells, where was it that Thrutt lived?
Thrutt? he thought. No, his name wasn't Thrutt, it was -
Ah. So that was how it was going to be. Clearly, he was still changing, and the changes to him were not going to be merely physical, they were going to be mental as well. However much of this creature — this Thrutt — now resided within him, he was possibly faced with a battle for dominance that only one of them might win.
Far from fearing that possibility, the idea intrigued him. The ogur obviously had the advantage on the physical side, but on the mental he would equally obviously be the victor. This thing was a creature of instinct and sensation, a hunter and a cannibal, but nothing more. In other words, for such a big head, there was remarkably little going on upstairs. It had no rationality, no logic, no intelligence with which it would be able to hold its own, and so…
Again, Moon faltered. Did that make sense? he wondered. A situation such as this had no precedent after all. He wasn't talking about a possession here, and this was no mere battle of body and wills, this was something completely different, a process forged in the minds of beings who… of beings who…
Moon suddenly found himself confused by his own chain of thought, and then a wave of blackness washed through his brain that left him momentarily dizzy and blank. He tried to pull the thoughts back but suddenly realised that he no longer knew what they were. He'd been thinking about… thinking about…
The sound of Thrutt's roar echoed through the mountains.
No! Moon thought. He had to get a grip on this, on himself, at least until he could find those medicines or potions that might help. But if he was going to do that then he had to hurry, hurry, hurry, because Andon and Fayence were both so very far away and he had never been there before.
But wait — of course he had. So many, m
any times.
Hadn't he?
Moon began to pound down the slopes below him, passing a place where tracks intersected, forcing himself to think about anything and everything that made him what he was. He thought of his shop, he thought of Horse, he thought of his adventures and, inevitably, he thought of Kali. He was glad that he had been able to tell her how much she meant to him because he had never been able to do that before, as he had never been able to share with her the secret of how he had found -
There was a sudden stinging sensation in his right side, and he paused, rumbling curiously. Another such sensation stung him on his left, and this time he slapped at the part of his body where it had occurred. The sting transferred itself to his hand, and he lifted it — bigger than he remembered, and tinged slightly green — to see what had stuck there. It was a tiny dart that had caught in the soft flesh of the palm. And it looked like a piece of reed. Needlereed.
Moon's low rumble turned into a growl, and he sniffed the air around him, his nose jerking roughly as he did. There were men nearby. Men in hiding, at least four of them, and one of them smelled strangely familiar to him. Yes, he had the smell of one of the oomans who had invaded his cave…
No! Merrit Moon thought. Not his cave, the ogur's cave — but the smell of the man remained familiar all the same. And it made anger grow inside him — dark, uncontrollable, feral anger. He tried to stop it but he was losing his grip, could feel it, his thoughts running together, and the things that had stung him in his side, he saw that some substance dribbled from their ends, that it was on his skin and in it and…
Gods, no, what was happening, and why now — why?
As Merrit Moon roared more loudly, more primally, than ever before, the men with the needlereed darts came from behind the rocks and at him, but the toxins that had been fired into his system — the ones he had dimly thought had been meant to subdue him — had instead the opposite effect and stripped him of any fear of their coming. Primitive survival instincts taking over completely, Moon felt himself subsumed — drowned — by the primal reactions of a wounded beast and, dropping down into the depths of the dual consciousness he now seemed to possess, he found himself experiencing what happened next only as a kind of semi-aware observer. The observer was dully conscious of the fact, however, that it was not he who met the unexpected ambush but Thrutt the ogur.
Unfortunately, even he was not capable of defending himself against the ambush for long as the toxins were indeed working, albeit slightly more slowly than they might have done before, and as Thrutt batted away first one attacker and then another, the adrenalin — and strength — that had flooded his veins was slowly sapped by their effects until, by the time he had batted a man away for the seventh time, he was slowly sinking to his knees. As he did, three of the men picked themselves up from where they had fallen, examined the one who had been shattered against a rock and then cautiously moved forwards to loom above him.
Orders were given. And then he found himself being bundled into a wagon whose sides had been built as a makeshift cage. And as Thrutt stared out between the thick wooden bars, from somewhere within him Merrit Moon stared, too — right into the eyes of the man who had killed him.
"Make sure the wagon is secured and prepare to return to Scholten," Konstantin Munch ordered, slapping its sides. He stared at the ogur in captivity and himself growled. He did not like plans that did not go according to plan, especially when the plan was his own.
He thought back to the moment it had formed in his mind, the moment when, from his hiding place in a narrow crevice, he had observed the Hooper girl running from the ogur cave. That she had apparently somehow escaped Scholten's deep cells had come as little surprise — she was extremely resourceful, after all — but that she had seemingly recovered from her interrogation to such a degree had surprised him, though not as much as what had occurred after she had gone. The strange blue glow that had suffused the cave had drawn him from his hiding place with an overwhelming curiosity, and despite the danger he had eased himself painfully back down the cave, ignoring his own injuries from the ogur attack, to discover its source. What he had witnessed there, again from hiding, he knew of, but had never thought he would see. Perversely, though, the miracle of elven magetech was less important to him than the fact that the old man would live again — because now that he knew Kali Hooper was on the loose once more, it struck him that he might come in very useful as a hostage-cum-bargaining chip should the girl try to thwart his plans in the future. He would have taken the old man there and then, if he could, but the presence of the ogur and the fact that Moon seemed to have drawn a little more than life essence from his victim, stayed his hand. Instead, he had returned to his base camp and ordered his men there to construct the holding wagon in readiness for what would be the old man's inevitable descent from the hills. He knew he would be wanting to find his irritating pupil after all.
That, though, was when it had all gone wrong. Moon had descended from the hills, certainly, but the man he had caught in his ambush had borne scant resemblance to the man he had been when he had inserted his blade in his chest and guts and, in fact, had borne less resemblance as the ambush had progressed. Clearly, something had gone wrong with the scythe-stone process, which was tragic for the old man but even more so for him — for how was he meant to use Moon as a hostage when Hooper would be unable to recognise her mentor at all? No, unless this strange transformation reversed itself — which of course it might, which made it unwise to slaughter the beast — all he was stuck with was a sideshow freak, good only for the circus when it came to Ramblas Square.
Munch growled again and turned away from the holding wagon, wincing with pain. His injuries from the ogur attack were… troublesome and he ought to get them seen to. He turned to the mage he had left with the base party, intending to solicit some relief, but then saw that the woman was concentrating hard and staring into the distance in the way that those blessed — or cursed, he thought — with telescrying abilities did. Still, they did make life in the field somewhat easier.
Munch waited until she had finished, returning to reality hollow-faced, and with a shiver and a sigh.
"Well?" he asked.
"News from Scholten, sir. From the Anointed Lord. She wishes to inform you that she is in possession of the fourth and final key."
Munch drew in a deep breath. At last.
"There is something else, sir. A location where she wishes you to rendezvous with her party — the site known as Orl."
Munch laughed. Yes, Orl, he thought. Orl indeed.
He ordered his remaining people to break camp, and mounting the holding wagon instructed its driver to move out.
Towards the Final Faith's destiny.
Towards his own.
Chapter Fifteen
Everyone seemed intent on hot-footing it to Orl, and that included Kali Hooper. It was just that for the moment — oddly self-defeatingly — she was telling Slowhand not to move. Not an inch. In fact, she would have preferred it if he didn't even breathe.
It was nothing personal. Granted, it might have been very personal at one time but, since his recent reappearance, Slowhand had been somewhat helpful so the least that she could do was try to save his life.
The lava lake had calmed somewhat and was no longer belching out angry plumes of fire, but it was continuing to rise. It had almost reached them now and, any second, threatened to bubble over the lip of the rock on which they stood, at which time they would be hot-footing it whether they had escaped or not.
Thankfully, all was not lost — and, in a manner of speaking, Orl was not lost, either. The pair of them stood no longer on the island but on a small shelf of rock behind and across from the dome, on the opposite side to the incinerated bridge. They had managed to reach it through a combination of her gymnastics and Slowhand's ropes and arrows, an exercise in teamwork that had resulted in a couple of embarrassing tangles but had got them there in the end, she with a sprained thigh and he with a smile on
his face.
The shelf, though, was a precarious perch, only a few inches wide and crumbling in an ever-increasing number of spots beneath their feet. But it did lead to a way out. Possibly.
Kali's reasoning that there had to have been an original entrance to the dome had, in their time of need, led her to seek it out as an escape route and, while successful in doing so, the tunnel she had found was blocked as she'd suspected it might be, manifesting itself now as a vague tracery of rocks beyond the remains of a long-collapsed stone bridge, some of the component parts of which had been visible as tiny islands in the lava before they had been consumed by the bubbling mire. Kali wasn't sure that the tunnel behind the tracery of rock was going to be passable and the only way she could find out was by removing the rocks from the tunnel mouth. The problem was, she had to do it very, very slowly and very, very carefully, otherwise the resultant rockslide would sweep them both into the hottest — and last — bath of their lives.
"You have to think of it like a jigsaw," she said slowly and quietly to Slowhand. She gently removed a rock with an archaeologist's hands, dropping it into the burgeoning lava with a plop. "Each piece dependent on the other to construct — or, in this case, deconstruct — the whole picture without forcing any one piece."
"Really?" Slowhand said, nodding, his arms folded tightly against his chest. He would have smiled at the way her tongue stuck out between her lips as she worked, other than for the fact the lava had reached the soles of his boots and they had begun to sizzle slightly. "Is this an easy jigsaw?"