by Mike Wild
"Now?" Slowhand asked.
"Now." Kali said.
The two of them turned and began to run like the hells, the engine demolishing trees, boulders, everything behind them, and still coming. The pair snatched glances over their shoulders and wished they hadn't, as it was beginning to look as if they had turned to run just a little too late.
The engine, seemingly unstoppable, continued to tear up the ground as it advanced, creating a solid tsunami of soil, rock and shredded vegetation. It would not, both of them reflected, be a very nice way to go.
The first ripples of soil and debris nudged at their ankles.
They looked at each other, and gulped.
Then Katherine Makennon was standing before them and the Anointed Lord was not alone. A group of ten mages, who had presumably teleported in to be by her side when they had witnessed the arrival and demise of the Engines, stood to either side of her. Makennon gestured to them and, as one, they raised their arms, releasing visible pulses of energy over Kali and Slowhand's heads, designed to slow the rampaging Engine down.
The strain was written on their faces. Veins pulsed beneath their flesh. From the noses of one or two blood began to trickle, and then pour.
The Engine began to slow. Gradually, the sounds of destruction from behind Kali and Slowhand quietened. And then it was over, the two of them rather embarrassingly pushed right in front of Makennon on the crest of a final, slow wave of soil.
"Thanks," Kali said, after a moment.
The Anointed Lord regarded her. The cloak she wore to restore her dignity had, it seemed, been 'donated' by the mayor of Gargas, who stood shivering in his britches behind her.
"I think that makes us even," Katherine Makennon said. Her tone made it clear that there would be no discussion as to what had happened. Ever.
Kali nodded. As she did, Freel emerged from the undergrowth and stood by Makennon's side. He snapped his fingers at those mages who weren't holding handkerchiefs to their noses, and they began to weave the threads. After a few seconds, the air before Makennon and Freel parted into a rift through which Kali glimpsed a view of Makennon's inner sanctum back at Scholten Cathedral. The rift hovered a couple of feet off the ground but, in an ostentatious touch presumably designed to ease Makennon's passage, a small flight of steps formed so that she could reach it.
As if they were departing after a simple day in the countryside, Makennon's retinue filed through one by one, until only the Anointed Lord and Freel were left. Then it was Freel's turn. At first it seemed that Jenna's husband was going to leave without a goodbye but he paused, one foot on the steps, and turned to Slowhand.
"I'll remember this," he said.
Slowhand nodded and, with a bow to Kali, Freel was gone.
Makennon stepped up to the threshold of the portal. Like Freel it seemed that she, too, was going to depart without another word but then she turned to Kali and beckoned her to her side.
"That girl in the Chapel. Who was she?"
"Her name," Kali said, "was Gabriella DeZantez."
"DeZantez... DeZantez," Makennon repeated as if she were dredging the name up from some dark and forgotten depth. "Ah, yes."
Then Makennon - and the portal - were gone.
"Well, they could have offered us a lift," Slowhand said. But the only response he got from Kali was a crashing of the undergrowth. "Hooper? Hooper?"
Kali was storming away from the necropolis as fast as she could go. Slowhand hurried to catch up.
"Farking woman!" Kali cursed.
"Hooper, I'm not sure you should be storming through the forest like this."
"No? You know any better way to get the hells out of the pitsing place?"
"Hooper, what I mean is slow down, or you'll bring every freak and monstrosity within a league's radius down on us!"
"Bring 'em on."
"Don't be stupid."
"I said, fark 'em, Slowhand!"
The archer pulled a face, grabbed her by the shoulders with his good arm, and turned her around. "Hey," he shouted. "Hey!"
Kali wrenched herself out of his grip, turned in a frustrated circle, not knowing what to do with herself, and finally kicked a nearby tree trunk. Something with wings that flapped like wet cloth took to the sky but Kali didn't care, her breathing fast and hard.
"Hooper," Slowhand gasped, "if you don't stop crashing around you're going to get us both killed."
Kali bent and ran the back of her hand across her mouth, speaking breathlessly. "Leave it alone, Liam."
"I can't do that. Because this isn't about Makennon, is it?" Slowhand challenged. "It's about Gabriella."
Kali shot him a look, found his firm but concerned blue eyes holding her gaze, and gradually brought her breathing under control. The archer was only partly right, but right enough. It was about Gabriella, yes, but about Makennon, too - the way the woman had swanned off just now. Pits of Kerberos, she didn't want any gratitude herself - gods knew, she hoped she wasn't that petty - but she did want some kind of acknowledgement for the people who had died to win her the freedom to go home. Not only Gabriella DeZantez but those many who had died at the hands of the juggennath or in their subsequent flight from it. Still, it was Gabriella that stuck in her mind, and what stuck more than anything were Makennon's words about her.
Who was she?
Who was she?
Kali pulled away from Slowhand and continued, with him trailing behind. The pair managed to negotiate a couple of leagues without incident, but found themselves freezing at a sudden thrashing from the bush beside them. Kali drew her gutting knife, ready to wield against whatever warped denizen of the forest had them in its sights. Nothing came at them though, and, after a few seconds, Kali pulled the undergrowth aside.
The source of the thrashing was a warped denizen all right, but not the kind that she or Slowhand had expected.
Querilous Fitch lay in a ditch beneath them, having presumably landed here after he had been struck by the juggennath. The extent of his injuries were plain to see.
Fitch saw Slowhand and the broken body of the psychic manipulator spasmed in the ditch, hands desperately trying to rise and wield some kind of magic, offensive or defensive, but his arms simply flapped by his sides ineffectually.
"That old problem again, Fitch?" Slowhand growled. "You really ought to see a doctor about that."
The archer moved in and took Fitch by the neck, staring him in the eyes as he tightened his grip.
"Liam, don't kill him," Kali said.
"What?"
"I'm asking you not to kill him. He has information that I need."
"What the hells do you mean, he has information that you need?"
Kali hesitated. "Something... well, I don't know if it's important, but it might be."
"Oh, really," Slowhand hissed without loosening his grip. Fitch was struggling, turning blue, his tongue bloating between twisted lips. "Hooper, this guy was responsible for the death of my sister and in case you hadn't noticed has tried to kill me twice, both times without compunction or hesitation, and frankly I don't want him running around anymore. You tell me - what could be more important than that?"
"I -" Kali began, and stopped.
She rocked back and forth on her heels, torn. Share this with someone, Gabriella had said. Don't bear it alone. But how could she burden her sometime lover with the knowledge that the world he knew - and all of the beds and women in it - might soon be coming to an end? The answer was, she couldn't - at least until Slowhand, with a sigh, suddenly released his grip on Fitch, dropping his choking victim back into the bottom of the ditch, and turned to face her, more concerned than she had ever seen him.
"Dammit, Hooper, this is about that night at the Flagons, isn't it? The night you stormed out of the party? Because you learned something in the Crucible, didn't you? Something you haven't told anyone?" He took her by the shoulder again, and this time Kali didn't pull away.
She did just the opposite, in fact.
"Kal, what is i
t?" Slowhand asked, as she sobbed in his arms.
She told him everything. About what the dwelf had said about the coming darkness and about what she had learned about 'the Four' and how she had come to believe they might have a role in preventing it. When she had finished, Slowhand said nothing, his eyes like those of a drowning man. In the end, it was Fitch who broke the silence.
"Everything your girlfriend says is true," the manipulator admitted, "and I have the information she needs to make sense of it."
"Then spill it," Slowhand said.
Fitch smiled. "Not here. Hidden. I can tell her how to find it, how to retrieve it, but first you have to get me out of here."
"No deal."
Kali looked at Slowhand, hesitant. She knew the decision she was about to make was not going to be popular. "Deal," she said. "Can you help me get him up? We should be near enough to the perimeter now for me to whistle Horse."
"No," Slowhand said.
Kali shook her head and clambered into the ditch. "Fine. I'll do it myself."
Slowhand held her arm. "I mean no, he's not coming, Hooper. The bastard stays here, takes his chances."
"Slowhand, please."
"No."
"No?" It was the first time Slowhand had ever openly disagreed with her.
"No, Kal," Slowhand said more softly. "Because it strikes me that if it's your destiny to do these things, your destiny to find these things out, then you're going to find them out whichever way things happen. If it's Fitch who's destined to tell you what you need to know then he'll find his way out of this and he'll tell you, but I'll be damned if I'm going to help him do so."
"What if that's your destiny? To help him?"
Slowhand slapped his forehead in frustration. "No, Kali. No, I'm not having that. I'll not accept that my every move is predestined." The archer felt the need to explain further, sought an analogy. "Look, I believed it was Pontaine's destiny to win the Great War - every one of us did, which is why we fought so hard and for so long - and in the end we did win, spilling the blood of thousands on the Killing Ground. Thousands, Kal - but you know that. The point is the battle was won as a result of thousands of decisions that I and those fighters made each and every second we fought - split second choices to cut or to thrust, parry or raise shield, shoot or hold that made the difference between our lives and our deaths. And all of those decisions were based on what our enemies chose, out of thousands of choices of their own. Just how many choices is that in all, Kal? It was chaos on the Killing Ground, chaos, so can you really tell me that every one of those decisions was predestined?"
"Of course not!" Kali said defensively, aware of the strength of Slowhand's argument. "But I'm talking about the bigger picture." She struggled. "The way it needs all the pieces to fit together... like a jigsaw."
"Didn't you once tell me that you were crap at jigsaws?" Slowhand said.
Kali stared up at him, tearful, then down at Fitch, torn.
"Hooper," Slowhand said, "wars are won as they're meant to be won, through dedication to a cause and a determination to see it through. I know you - you might hate every minute of this, but I also know you will see it through whether you're one of these fabled 'four' or not. And you know why? Because that's who you are, and not because it's your destiny. But if you let Fitch manipulate you like this, you'll be just as much one of his puppets as Jenna was."
"Will you... see it through with me?"
"I don't know, Kal. I just don't know."
Kali bit her lip, then nodded. She whistled for Horse and, a few minutes later, the bamfcat appeared. Kali mounted, slapping the thick of his neck hard in thanks for coming to collect her. "Sorry, Querilous," she said to the protesting, groaning figure in the ditch, and then, to Slowhand, "You coming?"
"Give me a second," Slowhand said, "I'll catch up." He watched as Kali nodded once more then walked Horse forward through the forest, and then he turned back to Querilous Fitch.
"Are you going to kill me now, archer?" The manipulator said. He nodded at Suresight. "I should imagine that would prove difficult, with only one arm."
Slowhand whipped an arrow from his quiver and held its tip shaking above Querilous Fitch's chest. "I only need one arm."
"You really should listen to your girlfriend, you know. It's your destiny."
Slowhand almost plunged the arrow down right then, but he held it, his unblinking blue eyes looking into Fitch's, through him. Thousands of choices a second, he thought, and through those wars are won. He stood and began to walk away. Whether it was the low, sick cackling from behind him or the sibilant, murmuring, protesting voices in his own head he didn't know, but a moment later he turned, returned to Fitch and, with a shout, rammed the arrow into the manipulator's chest with such force that it pinned him to the ground. Wide eyed, Fitch was so stunned that he couldn't even wail.
"I make my own destiny," Slowhand said, and followed Kali's trail.
Both Kali and Slowhand wanted to take the journey slowly, and, camping at their leisure, took three days to return to the Flagons. The last thing they expected when they arrived was an invitation to attend a memorial service in Scholten for those who hadn't made it out of the Sardenne. Kali thought for a second that she had, after all, misjudged Makennon - but on closer inspection it turned out that their invitation had been signed by Jakub Freel. At any rate, the service was scheduled for the next day at Midchime and, after both she and Slowhand had been thoroughly polished and preened by Dolorosa - "you notta go in anything from which your bum sticka out, young lady!" - the two of them set out on Horse, reaching the Vossian seat of power overnight, in four jumps.
They spent the morning in the Gay Goblin, the Kegs O'Kerberos and the Bloody Merry, marking time in the way of those aware that, on a fundamental level, things were moving on. Gradually, eventually, they worked their way towards the cathedral, the front of which, by the time they arrived, was filled with people considerably more sober than they. The two of them were content with a place in the jostling crowd, but one look from a guard at their invitation had them elevated to the front platform where they were positioned instead alongside Freel, the Anointed Lord and a number of dignitaries including Cardinal Kratos and General McIntee.
Freel nodded as they took their places. Makennon, however, did not even acknowledge their presence, remaining aloof. Whether that was because she was maintaining her public face or, as Kali suspected, this whole thing and their part in it had been Freel's idea and Makennon resented it, she didn't know - but it was interesting to note that the Faith's new enforcer seemed far more willing to adopt a prominent public role than Konstantin Munch had ever done.
Quite what he intended to do with it was a matter for another day.
Bells rang, silencing the crowd, and Makennon's address began. Kali was hardly surprised that in the Anointed Lord's account of the events in the Sardenne, neither she nor Slowhand got a mention, and in fact she had difficulty recognising any of it. All the crowd seemed to want to hear, however, was that - aided by the Lord of All - the forces of the Final Faith had defeated their First Enemy and that once again its flock could look forward to the glory of the day of ascension. The very mention of the word brought a rousing cheer from the crowd, and both Kali and Slowhand shuffled uneasily as the all too familiar mantra began to sound from the crowd, growing in volume with each repetition.
"The One Faith!"
"The Only Faith!"
"The Final Faith!"
Eventually, the Anointed Lord raised a hand, and the crowd lapsed into silence. Bells rang once more, but this time more slowly, a dirge rather than a call to attention. Makennon nodded to Cardinal Kratos and the robed figure moved solemnly forward. He began, as was way of these things, to intone platitudes about the dead.
The names were read out, the accompanying comments saying nothing at all about the people who had died, or what had led them to make the sacrifices they had made. As banality followed banality, Slowhand saw the growing tension in Kali's face. The thing
about Hooper was that she never got drunk unless she wanted to or she was upset. It was almost as if she could open a sluice gate somewhere halfway down her throat, and all the alcohol she consumed simply went somewhere else. Today, however, that sluice gate had remained firmly closed, and while he'd thought she was handling herself well, considering the amount of thwack they'd poured down their necks, he now saw that slightly unfocused look in her eyes.
Trouble was brewing, he knew it.
Sure enough, as the roll call of the dead reached Gabriella DeZantez and the platitudes began to spout, Kali suddenly lurched forward and shoved the cardinal out of the way. The noise Kratos made as he tumbled down the platform's wooden steps were amplified by the complex arrangement of shells positioned around the podium to amplify speech, and three quarters of Scholten gasped.
Behind Kali the Swords of Dawn honour guard reached for their weapons, but a subtle shake of the head from Makennon halted them.
"You want to know about Gabriella DeZantez?" Kali began. "I'll tell you about Gabriella DeZantez..."
As Kali began to speak about the woman she had known, her loyalty, her dedication, her embarrassing laugh and even her eyes, Slowhand stared at the back of Kali's head and mouthed, goodbye. He had decided that morning that it was time to go, that he had to spend time away from Hooper and work out what was to happen in the future on his own, and now was as good a time as any. Maybe he'd be back, maybe not, but whatever happened he knew that at least Kali had another friend she could rely on, one within the Faith itself.