The end of the world began with a scream. A very high-pitched, girly scream.
Not Kali, then. She wasn't a girly scream kind of girl.
No, the scream in question came from her guide, one Maladorus Slack, hired only hours before in the Spider's Eyes when he'd claimed to know the location of a lost passage leading directly to the fourth level of Quinking's Depths. It was an audacious claim and it wasn't every day Kali trusted the word of some ratty little chancer in a seedy tavern, but there had been something in the way he made it — with wariness as well as greed in his eyes — that had made her take a gamble and hand over fifty full silver for the privilege of having him share what he knew.
As it turned out, it was money well spent, Slack guiding her at twilight into a cave in the hills above Solnos and, deep within, tearing creepers off an ancient cryptoblock he swore, once unlocked, would enable her to bypass the Depths' upper levels and find treasure of such value that she might, as he put it, come over all tremblous in the underknicks. Kali had been forced to have words with him about this, pointing out that it was her business what went on in her underknicks and also, while she had him pinned against the wall, that she wasn't your common or garden tomb raider doing what she did for the money. Unless her taxes were due, of course.
Later, she would feel a bit bad that Slack had spent some of his final moments being throttled, especially when she recalled the hungry roar that followed the poor sod's scream. Not that what happened to him was her fault. Nor Slack's. In fact, there was no way either of them could have guessed what was going to happen after she picked up the Claws.
Okay, okay, okay, she'd been at this game long enough so perhaps she should have known better. Perhaps, given the way things had been going until then, she should have sensed the whole thing was going to go tits up.
"This cryptoblock…" Slack had queried as she worked on the numerous etched blocks that formed the seal. The conditions in the cave were cramped, and he was balanced awkwardly between the skeletal remains of earlier treasure seekers who had found their way to the threshold, trying to ignore the fact that all their bones were utterly and inexplicably shattered. "It is some kind of puzzle, yes?"
"Not some kind of puzzle," she replied. "A very specific kind."
"You have seen such puzzles before?"
"Once or twice. Cryptoblock seals are typical of an ancient race called the dwarves."
"The Old Race?" Slack said. "Tall with pointy ears and bows?"
Kali sighed, but took time to set the man straight because he had at least heard of the Old Races, which was more than could be said of most people on the peninsula, especially out here in the sticks. "No, the other lot. Short-arsed with attitude and axes."
"But surely both are stories for the children, yes? These Old Races did not exist?"
"Oh, you'd be surprised…"
Slack sniffed. It was the kind of rattling snort where you could hear the contents of his nostrils slap wetly against his brain and Kali grimaced in distaste. But the man seemed to accept the truth of what she was saying.
"The dwarves. They were supposed to have been masters of deadly traps, were they not?"
"Not supposed."
"Then this door is a trap?"
Kali glanced at the skeletons on the floor of the cave. "Either that or these guys had a very bad case of the jitters."
Slack glanced fearfully around the cave, looking for hidden devices.
"You won't see a thing," Kali advised. "They were master engineers, too."
"You do know what you are doing?"
"Wish I did," Kali said. She ran a finger down the join between two blocks, concentrating hard, tongue protruding between teeth. "Trouble is, no two cryptoblocks are the same… springs, balances, counterbalances… you just have to feel your way around." She gasped as something suddenly sprang inside the cryptoblock and slammed together where she delved. "Farker!" She cursed, whipping out her fingers and sucking their tips. Then she almost casually grabbed Slack's sleeve and pulled him aside as a solid stone fist the size of an outhouse punched down from the cave roof onto the spot where he'd stood, reducing what remained of the skeletons to dust. With a grinding of hidden gears, the fist retracted, and Kali returned to her work, smiling slightly as Slack had, himself, come over all something in the underknicks, a small stain forming on the front of his pants.
"Sorry about that," she said, wrinkling her nose. "Might be a while."
She'd worked diligently on the puzzle well into the night, Slack staring warily about him all the time, flinching or whimpering each time there was a click, clunk or clack from the door. At last, though, there was a sound that was different to the others — somehow final — and, as he watched, Kali stood back with a sigh of satisfaction, brushing the dust off her hands.
Slack regarded her and the cryptoblock with some puzzlement, because, at first, nothing happened. Then, with a soft rumbling and puffs of ancient dust, the blocks making up the door began to punch in and out. Some then slid behind those next to them, which in turn slid in front of others next to themselves. Yet more ground up or down, obscuring or obscured by their neighbours, or simply retracted backwards into darkness, never to be seen again. The movements became faster and more complex, the cryptoblock shrinking all the time, until at last all that remained was a single block, floating in the air, which Kali grabbed and casually tossed aside. Slack found himself staring at the discarded stone.
"I do not understand," he said. "It is gone. How can it be gone?"
Kali frowned. Questions, always questions. "Translocation mechanics," she said, adding in response to his puzzled stare, "It's a dimension thing." It might well have been, for all she knew; the truth was, despite having cracked a few of these bastards, she really hadn't a clue where they went.
Luckily, Slack hadn't been interested in analysing her statement too deeply. His attention had been side-tracked by the passage that lay beyond the cryptoblock, and the ore that glittered in its walls. It was only triviam, all but worthless, but its shine held the promise of greater things, and as Slack wiped sweat from his lips with his arm, she frowned. The man might have saved her the trouble of negotiating the first three levels of the Depths, but there was a growing air about him suggesting that, while he'd been happy to guide her to the cryptoblock, he'd never really expected her to open it, and now that she had was having second thoughts about who deserved the treasure beyond. Her suspicions were confirmed as Slack raced ahead of her into the opening.
Kali cursed and threw herself forward, grabbing his tunic from behind — just in time, as it turned out. Slack was already skidding helplessly down a sharp incline and, now a dead weight on the end of her arm, wrenched Kali onto her stomach and pulled her down after him. The stone floor of the passage was rough beneath her, tearing her dark silk bodysuit, and grazing her exposed torso with sharp scree. She ignored the pain, concentrating instead on jamming her legs against the sides of the narrow incline in an effort to slow their progress. The walls tore at her ankles, stripping them of skin, but she ignored this,too, groaning as she stretched out her other hand to get a firmer grip on Slack. He suddenly yelped and lurched, and Kali willed all her weight onto the floor of the incline, praying for enough traction. She was yanked forward and her arms were almost pulled from their sockets, but the two of them came, at last, to a tentative stop — again, not a moment too soon. Kali sighed. Below her, Slack dangled over a seemingly bottomless abyss, too terrified to struggle or even object to the rain of stones that bounced off him, clattering down into the dark.
Kali twisted herself into a stable position and heaved him up. "Looks like I need to keep an eye on you in more ways than one," she growled.
"I was only… making sure it was safe," Slack said, breathlessly.
"Of course you were." Kali winced and rubbed her bare stomach, ignoring Slack's hungry stare. "But there are rules to this game," she added. "Rule one is watch every step."
A flash of resentment crossed Slack's face as he dusted himself down, but he turned to stare into the dark, swallowing deeply. It was not in reaction to the end he had almost met, however, but a stare of undisguised greed.
Kali joined him at the edge of the abyss, wondering fleetingly whether it might have been less bothersome if she'd just let him fall, but considering what it was they faced, it was obvious Slack could make no move without her.
As always, her research had given her some idea of what to expect when coming here, but the expectation never quite did the reality justice. The two of them were staring into a vast cavern that must have extended beneath the whole of one of the hills above Solnos, an underground expanse hung with immense stalactites and dimly lit by a strange, golden glow in front of them. The glow was the only illumination and emanated from the top of an isolated pillar of rock, maybe six feet across, which thrust thinly and dizzyingly up from the abyss. It appeared unreachable from their position. Kali bit her lip and studied her goal. She could not yet make out the source of the glow, but was sure she knew what it was. The light was pulsing, dreamlike. The glow of something magical.
Kali had no doubt that she'd found what she'd come for. All she had to do was reach it.
"There?" Slack observed incredulously. "But there is no way across!"
"Rule two," Kali said, pulling a small object from a pocket in her bodysuit. "Plan ahead."
Slack stared at a small, ornate piece of stone — some kind of key — that Kali held in her hand, then watched her move along a narrow ledge to a carved niche. She brushed lichen away from an indentation in the stone, inserted the key and, with a grunt, turned it solidly to the right, the left, and then twice more to the right. Something grated behind the niche as, below in the darkness, something rumbled. Slack watched in amazement as another rock pillar rose judderingly from the abyss, shedding thick cobwebs, dust and the detritus of ages as it came. The top of the pillar stopped level with the ledge on which they stood, some hundred feet out into the void.
Kali withdrew the key from the niche and smiled. Slack, meanwhile, stared at the pillar and then Kali, regarding her quizzically.
"I do not understand," he said. "That is still too far away to reach."
Kali nodded. The fact was, it was too far away for a running jump, even for her. But even had she been able, she wouldn't have tried. Revealing her abilities to a man who would, for the price of a shot of boff, tell all and sundry about it was not a wise move in a backwoods such as this. It could easily reach the ear of some overzealous Final Faith missionary, and she had no wish to be dragged to a gibbet and burned as a witch. Besides, jumping would take the fun out of it all.
"Rule three," Kali said. "Be patient."
She smiled again as, from under the lip of the ledge where they stood, a scintillating plane of blue energy snaked out towards the newly risen pillar, zigzagging around the stalactites in its path to form a translucent bridge wide enough to take them both. Slack squinted, frowned, and Kali realised he hadn't a clue what he was looking at. It was easy to forget that while she'd come to live with such wonders on an almost day-to-day basis, the average peninsulan hadn't much experience of magic.
"It isn't witchcraft," she explained. "The bridge is made of something called threads."
"Threads?"
"An elven thing but the dwarves weren't averse to their use when needs suited. They — " Kali paused and contemplated. How exactly did you explain the threads of magic to a man such as Slack? "They allow you to use the world around you… to do things with invisible tools."
Slack looked enlightened. "So, I could use these tools to dig a new dump-pit?"
Kali pulled a face. "Uh, yeah, I suppose," she conceded, thinking that she was the only one digging a hole around here. "Let's move on, shall we?"
A wary Slack dibbed a toe onto the bridge, clearly not trusting its solidity, while Kali strode casually by him into the void, slapping the stalactites she passed and humming a happy tune. She reached the pillar and waited for Slack to catch up before inserting the key into a second indentation carved in its centre. This time she turned it left three times, right and then left again. There was another grating sound, and another rumbling from below.
"Six pillars," Kali explained as another rose ahead of them, "six combinations. If all are entered correctly, they form a bridge all the way to where we want to go…"
Slack sniffed. "This is really quite easy, then."
"Easy?" Kali chided as she waited for the bridge to form before skipping onto it. "You think I got this key from some adventurer's junk sale? Oh, no. This key is a complex construct of separate components, each of which was hidden in a site rigged to the rafters with every kind of trap you could imagine. These past few weeks I've been shot at, scalded, suffocated, stifled, stung, squeezed, squished and squashed, so maybe, Mister Slack, you should rethink your 'easy.'"
"And you say you're not doing this for the money?"
"Nope," Kali said. "Holiday."
"Holiday?"
"Holiday."
The fact was, she was still reeling from recent revelations about 'the darkness' coming to Twilight — so much so she'd had to get away, from friends, the Flagons, all of it. Not that there were actually that many friends around right now. Slowhand was off avenging the death of his sister, and she'd barely seen hide or hair of Moon or Aldrededor since she'd rescued the Tharnak from the Crucible — the old man, whose shop was being rebuilt after the k'nid attacks, and the pirate were spending all their time tinkering with the ship in Domdruggle's Expanse. Dolorosa had dismissed it as boys and their toys but there was a serious side to their tinkering, readying the ship for when — and for what — it might be needed. Not that she missed any of them — her holiday had been chosen specifically to keep her busy. She had, in fact, lost count of the times she'd barely avoided it becoming a funeral. In short, she'd had one hells of a time, and the acquisition of what lay ahead was the last challenge she had to face. Because what she had so far not told Slack was that forming the bridges was only half of it.
"One wrong move," she said, "and the entire mechanism resets itself. Bridges gone, pillars back where they came, carrying us with them into the depths."
Slack peered down and glimpsed something huge, white and serpentine slither through the darkness. "But there is something down there! Something horrible!"
Kali looked over her shoulder, smiled. "Of course. There's always something horrible."
With the more restrained Slack in tow, Kali negotiated more bridges, coming eventually to the last one — the one to the resting place of the artefact.
This time she wielded the key but hesitated as she held it before the lock, drawing a worried glance from her companion.
"There is a problem?" Slack asked.
"No, no, no problem," Kali responded.
Well, not much of one. It was only that at this point she might most likely get them both killed. The fact was that while her studies of the dwarven key had revealed a pattern to her, she'd been sure of all the combinations except this last. The combinations represented a really quite simple series of nods to the inclinations of the dwarves' multifarious minor gods — lightning equalling from above, or up; sunrise, east, so right; sea, which at this point on the peninsula was to the west and therefore left. The problem with the last combination was that it contained a glyph for the god of wind and, frankly, that one had left her stymied. Wind, after all, could come from any direction, so how in the hells was she meant to know which was correct? In the end, she'd whittled the possibilities down to two answers — up, because the wind in this valley was predominantly northern, and down, or south, because… well, because.
Hesitantly, she inserted the key in the final niche, turned most of the combination and stopped before the final twist.
North now, or south? If she guessed wrong, the last thing she'd see would be Slack wetting himself again, and she could think of better images with which to depart the world. She stared at the odorous little man and, in doing so, made up her mind. It had to be, didn't it?
Kali turned the key south, locked it in place and, after a few seconds, the bridge appeared.
She sighed heavily; she'd gambled correctly. On a dwarven joke. A crude but effective joke, much like the dwarves themselves, and she could imagine them roaring with laughter when they had thought of it.
Hey, Hammerhead, how about this? There's more than one kind of wind!
Kali was not about to tell Slack that she'd just gambled both of their lives on the strength of a fart gag, so instead she sauntered nonchalantly across the bridge, finally setting foot on the reassuring solidity of the central pillar. And right in front of her was what she had come for.
The Deathclaws.
Legend had it they had been forged by the renegade blacksmith Dumar, who had pledged his allegiance to an elven rather than dwarven court. Commissioned by that court's Lord, the mysterious metal from which they were made was said to have washed up as jetsam near Oweilau millennia before. That the metal could wash up — that it could float — was just one of its unusual qualities and had led many to speculate its origin lay with those said to live deep under the sea. True or not, the metal was unlike any worked before. It was pliable yet all but indestructible. When fashioned into the claws, they were sharp enough to slice through anything, natural or man-made, most importantly the unbreachable brodin armour in which the dwarves of that time garbed their warriors. It was even said that, wielded with skill, they could bypass the armour completely and slice away a dwarf's soul.
Unsurprisingly, the Lord who wielded the Deathclaws became unstoppable on the battlefield, and thousands of dwarven warriors had fallen before him, until, one night, the claws had simply vanished from the Lord's chambers.
The fact that, thereafter, Dumar returned to live among his own people in such circumstances that ten lifetimes' smithing could never have paid for may or may not have had something to do with the disappearance. But, by whatever means the dwarves acquired the claws, they had thereafter sealed them here, on the lowest level of Quinking's Depths, so that they might never be wielded again. They were, in short, a priceless treasure, a one of a kind artefact that Kali had had on her 'to find' list for as long as she could remember.
She sighed and lifted them from the podium on which they rested, then slipped them onto her hands. As light as silk, each of the metal handpieces was attached to five curved rune-etched blades by intricately crafted hinges and studs that allowed for perfect freedom of movement. It was hard to believe that something so delicately and lovingly constructed could have been intended for such deadly use. It wasn't simply the workmanship that belied their purpose, however. The legend also said that the elven Lord had imbued the runes with additional sorcery that ensured the blood of the fallen never tainted their beauty, and it was this that gave them their golden glow. Kali couldn't resist wielding them for a short time — slashing at the air like a cat, grinning as they cut the air with a hiss — and then she moved to return them to the podium.
"What are you doing?" Slack asked, aghast.
"Putting them back," Kali said.
"Are you insane?"
"Nope. I made a promise to a friend a long time ago that certain things should stay where they are, for the good of Twilight."
Behind her back, Slack hopped up and down, gesturing at the key, the bridges. "Then why all this?"
"Because I could."
"Because you could?"
Kali nodded. "It's about the thrill of the chase."
For a moment, Slack stared at her open-mouthed, then moved with hitherto unsuspected speed, putting a knife to Kali's throat. It was as dull as a twig compared with the treasure she had found but could still cause a nasty gouge. More uncomfortable by far was the fact that Slack was pressing himself tightly up against her rear, rubbing her exposed midriff slowly and panting in her ear. Kali sighed, but only with bored resignation.
"I will be taking the claws, Miss Hooper," Slack said.
"You sure about that?" Kali responded.
"What? Of course I am sure!"
"Only it's just that if I drop them to the ground you'll have to pick them up, and while you're doing that I'll kick your nuts so hard people'll be calling you 'four eyes.'"
There was a pause.
"I told you, Slack, plan ahead…"
"Then pass the claws to me slowly, between your legs."
Kali drew in a sharp breath in mock sympathy. "Or 'no nuts.'"
"Over your shoulder, then!"
"'Twilight's silliest hatpins'?"
Slack tightened his grip. "You are toying with me, woman."
"Actually, I'd prefer to get this over with. Have you any idea how much you stink?"
"Give me the claws."
"Won't."
"Will."
"Won't."
Slack sighed in exasperation and Kali smiled. All you ever had to do was wait for the sigh that said your opponent was off guard.
She elbowed Slack in the ribs and flung him around in front of her, kicking his legs out from under him as he came. It should have pinned him to the ground with the Claws at his throat, and that was exactly where they would have been had the entire cavern not begun to quake violently, almost spilling the pair of them into the depths. As it was, Kali stumbled to her knees, the Deathclaws skittering from her grip, and Slack took advantage of the moment to grab them and run. Kali growled and made after him, then suddenly stopped dead in her tracks.
What the hells?
That some kind of quake was occurring was beyond doubt, the cavern shaking and thick falls of rock dust pouring from the roof. The rumbling was almost deafening. The quake, though, was not what had caused Kali to stop in surprise. Something seemed to be interfering with the thread bridges throughout the cavern. As Kali watched, they faded and flickered. The magic seemed to be destabilising for some reason and, if it disappeared completely, she and Slack were going to be trapped down here.
Slack himself had a more immediate problem, however. Oblivious in his flight, the rat was already running across the fifth bridge and, from her vantage point, Kali could see it was the most unstable of them all.
"Slack, come back!" Kali shouted, but the only response she got was a backward flip of a finger. "Fine, you moron, run, then! Just get off the farking bridge!"
She'd meant the warning to galvanise him but it actually had the opposite effect. Slack paused in his tracks, turning to face her. That he was listening was good, but it was also the worst thing he could have done.
Kali stabbed a finger downwards, trying to make the man aware of his situation, and comprehension slowly dawned as Slack looked down. His mood turned from triumphant glee to undisguised panic as he saw the bridge flickering in and out of existence. The sudden realisation that, at any moment, there might be nothing between himself and an abyss filled with something horrible spurred the thief into running for his life but, unfortunately, time had run out for Slack.
"Aaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeee!"
"Bollocks," was Kali's honest response. But she couldn't help raising her eyebrows when she saw the Deathclaws remained where Slack had been, still held in his bloody, severed hands, amputated by the flickering bridge the moment he'd fallen through. For the bridge, like the others, had not yet gone for good. She had time — though not, necessarily, any to waste.
Kali ran. As the six bridges continued to blink on and off, she knew that crossing each successfully was going to be a matter of a timing, using the pillars that connected them as staging posts.
The first bridge was, at that moment, in an either/or state of flux, and she ran on the spot until she felt it safe enough to traverse, then put on a sudden burst to reach its other end. She did the same with the second, and then the third. The fourth presented a problem, almost as unpredictably erratic as the one on which Slack had met his doom. The effects of the quake on the cavern were worsening. What the dwarves had intended to be a protective sanctum for as long as the hill above existed was now starting to come down about her ears. While she ran on the spot waiting for safe passage a rain of dust and stones left her coated in a grey shroud, and she had to dive out of the path of several large chunks of debris.
Then, when the bridge finally seemed stable enough for passage and Kali began to race across, all of the pillars began to move up and down.
Kali felt her stomach lurch as the pillar ahead rose and the one behind sank, taking the bridge with them so that she suddenly faced an uphill flight.
Oh, you have got to be kidding.
Kali pumped her legs until she neared the rising pillar ahead, and, with a bellow, threw herself onto it, rolling into a ready position for the next, crouched to leap.
There were only two bridges left now, but she was painfully aware that the next was the one that had so abruptly ended Slack's time on Twilight. It was once more flickering every half second or so but, interestingly, the claws had still not fallen through, which suggested it was stable enough to take her. The problem lay in timing it right, because if she moved at the wrong moment the pillar ahead would have risen too far and she'd once again face a steep incline to reach the end.
Kali ducked as the cavern shook violently and further falls of rock poured from the roof all about her, and then scowled at the bridge ahead. It looked as right as it was ever going to be.
Kali moved, faster than even she thought possible, but once again the quake scuppered her plans. As she began to race for the final pillar a massive boulder detached itself from the cavern roof and plummeted straight down. The boulder seemed to hit the pillar in slow motion, splitting asunder before bouncing off into the abyss, and in its wake the pillar started to crack and break apart. What was worse, it severed the link with the last two bridges. Kali staggered and yelped in protest as the threads there began to sputter and die, and now it was her mind rather than her body that raced. She took in all of the possibilities presented by the changing circumstances and moved again, heading not for the pillar but for the Deathclaws. It had never been her intention to remove them from the cavern but now they were coming with her whether she liked it or not. In fact, they might even save her life.
Kali didn't even slow to pick the ancient weapons up, executing a rolling somersault as she ran, one hand slipping into each of the claws and shaking to lose Slack's disembodied grip. His appendages spun down into the abyss, arcing trails of blood, until something white snatched them out of the air to join the rest of him, but Kali was already gone.
Her sole interest now was in reaching the collapsing pillar before the bridge died or it broke apart completely. The pillar was more or less level as she reached it, though far from intact, and as Kali landed on its buckling and crumbling surface it finally relinquished its hold on the bridge ahead, which blinked out of existence before her eyes.
She didn't need to turn around to know that the bridge behind her was also gone, but neither did she let the fact that she was seemingly now trapped on a disintegrating finger of rock hinder her pace. Kali ran full pelt across its surface and then, even as she felt the pillar tipping and tumbling away beneath her feet, she let out a loud "gaaaaaah!" and launched herself into the air.
Arms and legs flailing to stretch as much distance out of the leap as possible, she seemed to hurtle though the air for ever. But then she thudded into the stalactite ahead of her, the claws embedding themselves effortlessly into the spine of rock.
Kali simply hung there for a second.
"Oh, yes," she breathed to herself.
From the stalactite to the ledge and the exit was now only a minor jump, and Kali made it with ease. She would have taken a moment to pay her respects to Slack but the cave was rapidly filling with rubble. But as Kali moved into it she did cast a backward glance into the cavern that had almost claimed her life. The last of the bridges were flickering out now, leaving the ages old resting place in darkness but even as the roof caved in, she sensed that it hadn't been the quake that had caused the bridges to go away. No, something else had killed the magic.
Maybe when she reached the surface she'd find out what the hells was going on.