Kali blew out a long breath to calm herself, fully aware of how Jayhinch's fate could so easily have been her own. The unwanted thieves guild companion Jengo had thrust upon her had proved himself useful, yes, but in a way she would never have asked for, never have desired.
A gorgon trap was no way for anyone to go. The invidious magic could perhaps be thought merciful if it caused petrification in an instant, but Kali had heard that sometimes it took the internal organs — and most perversely the brain — as long as a day to fully turn to stone.
One minute in, one man dead — or as near as made no difference. That kind of put the Three Towers' quagmire cards on the table. No — it slammed them down with all the arrogant confidence of a winning bogflush, in fact. Suddenly the Three Towers seemed less of an entertaining, professional challenge and more the indiscriminating deathtrap that the thieves guild leader had threatened it would be. From here on in, if she didn't want to share Jayhinch's fate, she was really going to have to watch her step.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly to his immobile form, trying not to notice how a section of his skull — almost scalpless as a result of the lethally traumatic magic — remained as yet unpetrified and glistening, a bloody reminder of the man he'd been only moments before. She stared into his agonised, frozen eyes, wondering if Jayhinch heard her inadequate words, and then turned and continued on alone.
She didn't get far before the next of the defences hit. She experienced a sensation almost like a swoon, and then suddenly the conduit seemed to stretch away endlessly ahead of her, wavering slightly in her vision. Kali craned her neck and looked behind her, seeing that the conduit stretched into the distance that way, too, seemingly without end. But something was clearly wrong with the picture — apart from the fact she knew she hadn't crawled that far, the remains of Jayhinch were nowhere to be seen along its yawning length. It was also obvious to her that what she saw could not be real because the Three Towers, individually or as a whole, were simply not that expansive.
The sight that met her eyes, therefore, had to be some kind of illusion. An infinity illusion. But she couldn't see the point of such a trap. Any intruder who made it this far was unlikely to be dissuaded from progressing further as they'd know what they saw wasn't real, so why bother unless -
Unless it was a delaying tactic, meant to confuse while -
Kali's mind raced, wondering which way to go. Her natural inclination in such close confines would be to flatten against the floor as she had not long before, but the mages of the Three Towers clearly liked to play, to twist things, and dropping to the floor seemed wrong — wrong! Instead, she slammed her hands and feet against the conduit walls and with a grunt quickly heaved herself up above the floor, hoping to hells she'd made the right choice. At the exact moment she did a wave of ice hurtled towards her from along the conduit, turning the metal beneath her blue-white and sizzling and cracking it with cold. Limbs trembling with the effort it took to keep herself suspended, Kali hung above it, swallowing as she watched her breath condense into crystals over the super-chilled metal only a few inches below. The cold was spreading up the curve of the conduit, too — she could feel it in her palms, and, if she didn't let go soon, she'd be bonded to the metal so badly the only way to break the grip would be to rip the flesh off her palms.
Thankfully, the magically generated ice vanished as quickly as it had appeared, presumably because its job, for those with slower reactions, would have been done. Kali lowered herself back to the conduit floor with a groan, rubbing her palms to restore circulation to the throbbing skin, then did the same to her nose to alleviate a touch of frostbite.
She proceeded upwards, finding that the conduit levelled out some now, and as a result found her feet squelching in patches of alchemical waste that had not been fully flushed away. She avoided the muck as much as she could, stepped lightly and quickly through that which she could not, spurred to such action by the small skeletal remains of floprats who had chanced to crawl here. The remains of the rodents hadn't just been eaten away, their skeletons had been twisted and changed.
Her slightly increased pace made Kali no less aware of the danger around her, and she deftly avoided the triggers for another couple of traps — one apparently designed to release a cloud of living biomagical toxin into the conduit, another — which she purposefully triggered once she'd passed by — to make that section of the conduit momentarily discorporeal, meaning anyone unfortunate enough to be traversing it at the time would become part of the conduit on a permanent basis.
Pits of Kerberos! These guys really are bastards.
She continued on, relieved to find that at last the traps seemed to have stopped. Quite right, too, because anybody who had made it this far bloody well deserved to make it the rest. She couldn't relax until she was out of the conduit, however — the number of delays she'd suffered had eaten into the time she had for safe passage, and she reckoned she had less than a minute left before the alchemical laboratories were purged.
She hurried, the seconds ticking, and spied at last the access hatch marked on the map. The moment she reached it she heard dull, echoing rumblings from above, and grabbed quickly for the hatch wheel to swing it open.
Thread magic coursed through her, a crackling storm of blue energy that paralysed her momentarily before blowing her off her feet and slamming her into the conduit wall. Kali groaned and slipped to the floor, lay there stunned, bucking and spasming involuntarily as small discharges continued to spark off her body.
Dammit, one last trap. They'd lulled her into a false sense of security and caught her unawares.
One thing she couldn't help but be aware of, though, were the noises. The echoing rumblings from above had become a series of metallic clangs, and as she lay there she realised with a dull knot of fear that the drop-hatches from the labs were opening.
Gods! She had to move now! Only she couldn't, not an inch. Not even to thump the conduit in frustration. Annoyingly, all she could do was dribble.
Dammit, Hooper, come on, come on. You've been an idiot, but do you want to die here? Do you want to die and prove Jengo Pim right?
The conduit filled with the sound of sloshing.
Hooper, she screamed inwardly, do you want to fail the old man?
Kali roared with exertion and, consciously forcing every movement of her body, lurched forwards, twisted the hatch wheel and heaved the cover open just in time. The last thing she saw before she dived head first through the hatch and it clanged shut behind her was a raging torrent of rainbow sludge.
She plummeted with a yell and thudded onto the floor below as if she had just been birthed by a pregnant mool, embryonic, twitching and covered in splashes of gunk. After a second she thrashed the gunk away, but stayed down while her spasms subsided, coughing and retching loudly. Only then did she perceive where she was — the middle of a corridor in the first tower — and lying there exposed and all but helpless, it occurred to her that her entrance had not exactly been the stealthy one she'd planned. She comforted herself, however, with the fact that the last trap would have killed — or at least hammered the final nail into the coffin of — anyone less bloody-minded than she.
She frowned, wondering. Was it just bloody-mindedness that had got her out of there? Or was it something to do again with the changes happening to her, the things that made her able to do the things she did? One thing was certain — now was not the time to think about it.
Kali groaned and picked herself up. The corridor in which she'd landed was a shimmering, smooth affair and, thankfully, empty, though it felt oddly not so. The corridor thrummed quietly to itself, as if the power of the Three Towers were contained within its walls, and Kali had the uneasy feeling that, while she saw no one, she was not alone. She felt as if she were being observed from all angles, almost as if she were being watched by the building itself, which, considering the nature of the place, it was just possible she was. Nothing happened as a result of her feeling, though, and she wondered if perhaps it was just a magical suggestion that hung in the air, designed to unnerve anyone who shouldn't be here. Even so, it was pitsing creepy.
Pulling out Jengo's map, she orientated herself and crept slowly forwards, thankful for the fact there'd been no alarms. She'd had more than enough alarms in Scholten. She began to weave her way through a maze of corridors towards the stairs that would lead her upwards and from there, across the bridge, to the third tower and her destination. The Forbidden Archive.
Despite Jengo's concerns, she moved with relative ease. Now that she was within the outer defences, there was little to be wary of in the way of traps, and as most League members were busy blowing up or dissolving things in the labs she passed, they presented little problem. Those mages that she did encounter in her path she simply avoided, a task made easier by the fact that in their flowing and colourful patterned robes it was easy to spot them before they chanced upon her.
Those robes. She found it perverse how these bastards still garbed themselves in the garish showbusiness style of parlour entertainers when their business was no longer entertainment but death. Still, she couldn't help but think that one or two of them were wasted here in the towers and should actually put themselves up for sale as a nice pair of curtains.
As she moved steadily on, only one thing hampered her — here and there certain corridors were blocked by shimmering curtains of different coloured energy and, while the mages moved through them with ease, presumably having protected themselves against whatever the energies did, a stray floprat that attempted to follow ended up as a small puddle of fur and blood. Kali did not want to chance her arm — or any other part of her body — by emulating it. Instead, she found the bottom of the stairs by a different route.
Following echoing, whispering corridors, they appeared before her at last, and Kali looked up their spiralling heights and cursed. According to the map, the connecting bridge to the Forbidden Archive could be found on the thirty-fifth floor. There was no lift. The hells with a lift, she thought. These guys were mages so why hadn't they magicked some kind of… lifty-uppity zoomy tube. But they hadn't, had they? No. Knowing her luck, they probably just spouted some kind of incantation that stopped them getting absolutely bloody knackered.
She began the long ascent, but it soon became clear that she would never make it all the way up without being detected — the stairs were simply too busy with mages crossing between floors. There was only one alternative. Much as she hated the idea of having to take one on, Kali secreted herself in an alcove near the base of the steps, reasoning that the best way to tackle a mage would be to surprise him from behind. This she did, waiting until she caught one alone then, as he passed cracked him on the head and caught him as he dropped. His robe came off in one.
The body concealed in the alcove, and suitably attired, Kali continued quickly on. She did not want to be anywhere near him when he woke up.
Thirty-five storeys later she emerged gasping through an exit into the open air, which led directly onto the bridge she wanted. Thirty-five storeys was a dizzying height and Kali expected a worse buffeting than she had received above Scholten, but to her surprise the bridge was totally calm and silent, protected, she assumed, by some invisible magical canopy. Made sense, she thought, smiling. After all, if they needed to visit the archive the last thing the League's mages needed was a nasty draught up their robes disturbing their forbidden musings.
Had Makennon got some of her own information from here? Kali wondered. After all, if ever a place needed to be infiltrated by a sender, this was it. The bridge leading to the Forbidden Archive looked harmless enough but Kali had by now seen enough of the things to recognise that the barely visible but variously coloured curtains of shimmering and sparkling energy that separated the bridge into sections promised something nasty the moment she tried to step through them. These were particularly powerful, no doubt about that — she could feel them buzzing in her brain.
She studied the bridge. It had no walls or railings and, naturally enough, no conduits, no side passages and no ledges. None, in other words, of her usual shortcuts. She tentatively touched where she imagined the magical canopy to be, and while her hand moved through it with ease, she guessed that if she passed through it completely there would be no way back in.
Handy enough for suicidal sorcerers but useless as far as she was concerned.
She had to admit, she felt stymied. There was no way across without indulging in some serious lateral thinking. She was beginning to think she was completely out of laterals when, fortunately, one arrived in the form of a mage coming through the door behind her. As soon as she heard the door open Kali twisted to the side and flattened herself against the wall, watching as a League member came through and began to amble across the bridge, seeming almost to float in his long robe. His relaxed attitude made her presume that he was not about to be frozen, incinerated or generally done to death by any of the traps so, like his brothers below, he had to have some kind of protection about him.
Normally, she would not have welcomed his presence at all, but this, she hoped, was her way through. She had to take the gamble, there was no other choice. She had to stick to him as close as a second skin. Used as she was to sneaking about places, she was about to find out just how stealthy she could be.
As the mage moved past her, Kali moved into step behind him, a living shadow, crouched but moving on tiptoe, matching his every move. As his left leg moved, so did hers, as his right, the same. Every pause, every hesitation and every subtle twist and turn of the mage's body was matched perfectly as he — and she — passed through the first of the defensive curtains and she felt nothing other than a slight fluttering in her muscles. But that she felt even that while she was protected proved her suspicion of how powerful these final traps were.
Two curtains, three curtains, four. Her plan was working — and then it wasn't. She was one curtain away from the end of the bridge when the mage stopped dead in his tracks, causing Kali to wobble and almost bump into him it was so unexpected.
There was what seemed to be an eternal pause. What are you doing? she thought. Come on, come on, tell me what you're doing.
The mage patted a pocket of his robe, shook his head in self reprimand and tutted loudly.
He's forgotten something, Kali thought. The bloody idiot's forgotten -
Oh, cra -
She moved as he did, a hundred and eighty degrees in perfect silence and synchronisation, staying in the same position behind him all the time. She couldn't believe she managed it, but she did, and the mage didn't even have a clue she was there. Though outwardly calm and in control, as Kali watched him walk back the way that he had come, she was surprised he didn't hear her heart threatening to burst out of her chest.
He disappeared through the door and she was left trapped between the last two curtains.
She threw her hands in the air and walked quickly around in a circle. There was no way forwards, no way back — and absolutely nowhere to hide when Mister Duh! Forgot My Head returned.
Idiot!
There had to be a way through — and she had to work out what it was fast. The first step was finding out what kind of trap she was looking at. Kali quickly tore a small patch from her dark silk bodysuit and tossed it at the curtain. There was a zuzzz, a puff of smoke and then nothing — the patch was gone. This was some kind of electrical trap and if she tried to step through she'd end up doing a dance that would put the Hells' Bellies to shame.
A very brief dance.
Dammit! She wasn't going to find out the location of the keys this way.
The keys, she thought, something nagging at the back of her brain. These differently coloured curtains with their different magics — surely the mages couldn't constantly invoke protection against each? What, then, if they instead carried with them some kind of key? She hadn't seen anything actually being used and so what could it — ?
She looked down. The pattern on her stolen robe scintillated slightly, more so when she moved closer to the curtain. Gods, she thought, was that why the mages still wore them — because the robes themselves were the keys?
Again, it was a gamble, but if she didn't take it she was stuffed anyway. Kali took a deep breath and walked slowly forwards, passing through the energy field with ease.
She cringed. All the effort she'd put into marking Mister Duh! Forgot My Head when she could have passed through any time.
Idiot!
She opened the door ahead of her and she was inside at last. The Forbidden Archive.
Her eyes narrowed.
Or… not.
What in the hells was this? Kali wondered, aghast. There was nothing here. After all her effort, the upper half of the third tower was an empty chamber, completely featureless apart from a solitary, podium-like structure at its centre and a red glow that suffused the place and seemed to emanate from the walls.
Okay — if this had been a guided tour, then she'd have demanded her money back.
She moved towards the podium, her footfalls clattering despite the fact she wore shnarl-hide soles. Of all the things she had encountered so far it was the clattering that made her shiver. This place was weird.
Kali mounted the podium and found it inscribed with a number of symbols, none of which she recognised, the symbols being magical not linguistic, and not her area of expertise. She pressed one, then another, and then each in turn, but nothing happened. She tried a different order and, again, nothing. On her fourth unsuccessful attempt she threw up her arms in frustration, then quickly stepped back as the air in front of her seemed suddenly to change. Then, spiralling down seemingly from thin air above came a number of tiny shapes that began to gather before her eyes, and as they did an object began to assemble itself from these tiny building blocks. Some kind of container — elven by the look of it — marked with the familiar circular symbol of their race.
Kali moved her hand forwards to touch the container but found nothing there.
An idea struck her, and she waved her hands again. As rapidly as it had appeared, the container disassembled itself and spiralled back towards the heights of the chamber, replaced by another object spiralling down and assembling itself in its place. This time it was a manuscript containing, by the look of it, some kind of outlawed spell.
Kali's gesticulations became more varied, and she dismissed and summoned more and more objects, each redolent to some degree of evil and possessed of an ominous aura. She had no idea what magics were involved, but it was becoming clear to her what was happening here — the League of Prestidigitation and Prestige obviously considered the collection of the Forbidden Archive too dangerous to keep physically in one location and so had devised this method of virtually retrieving each object for study from elsewhere — perhaps some plane that could not be physically reached at all.
It was an indication of their power and it was wondrous, but it did her very little good. How out of all the collection was she meant to find what she needed, because if she had managed to summon the items she had at random then the collection itself had to be immense, with infinite combinations of symbology. And hells — she didn't even really know what it was she was looking for.
There had to be a way of narrowing it down. Kali looked at the symbols on the podium again, reasoning that not even the League's mages could reasonably be expected to remember every combination, and that maybe they were subdivisions — some kind of cataloguing system. Instead of pressing it this time, she replicated the first symbol on the podium with arm movements, feeling what she had missed before, some kind of receptive magical field slightly thickening the air, and a second later a box not dissimilar to the first she had summoned assembled itself. Kali took a gamble and tried waving it on, and to her surprise the gesture worked — another curiosity assembling itself in its place. But she was clearly in the section for artefacts when what she wanted was manuscripts. She replicated the next symbol — spells — and the next — ancient relics. Only on the fourth and last did she find what she was looking for, or at least a place to begin.
Kali's gesticulations increased in pace and she began to summon, study and dismiss manuscript after manuscript, growing more and more adept with the practice until she looked as if she were conducting some complex symphony. She found she was able to pull writings towards her for closer study, turn them around or upside down to seek hidden illuminations and, in the case of actual tomes, flip from page to page with ease. The number of ancient documents stored astounded her, but her joy at discovering such a treasure trove was tempered by the knowledge that she had no time to truly study any but those she sought. Having still not found them and increasingly aware that the forgetful mage could return at any time, her efforts became more urgent, a degree of frustration creeping in as she hurled each document on with a snap of her hand.
Then suddenly, there. Images similar to those Slowhand had described from Makennon's archive in Scholten. There, on the first manuscript she saw, and on more following, diverse and variously decomposed references presumably collected here from different sources and different times.
Kali stopped cycling, hands moving slowly so that she could fold back and forth between the most telling documents, an illuminated manuscript, a map, and what appeared to be some ancient bard's tale of events. It was all there just as Slowhand had said. The hellsfire, the damnation, the vast horde marching under what appeared to be the crossed-circle banner of the Final Faith — not to mention the people kneeling before the horde in apparent worship. Also, looming over them in the background, a figurehead that could have been a representation of the Lord of All — what Makennon believed to be the horde's leader — but to less subjective eyes could equally have been anything else, including, troublingly, a gigantic and stylised version of your typical — how could she put this? — small, warlike person.
In fairness, Kali could see how Makennon had inferred what she had, but there were things here the woman must have been blind not to notice, that leapt off the pages and were simply wrong. For one thing, as had occurred to Slowhand, it seemed to her that the kneeling figures were not human, their physiognomy, though stylised again, more Old Race, elf and dwarf. For another, it struck her that they were not kneeling in worship but in supplication, praying to the marching horde and its leader, not for their help in divine ascension but for their mercy.
All of this, of course, was a matter of perception, but as Kali studied the text of the illuminated manuscript and then cycled to the bard's account, it became more a matter of interpretation. She was fluent in neither dwarvish or elvish — hells, who was? — but she had over her explorations picked up enough bits and pieces to recognise key words and put together the bones of a story.
The… middle times? A war between a clan of dwarves and a family of elves… dwarven defeat… no, near-annihilation. Survivors… and a sorcerer. Belatron? Belatron the Black? The Butcher? Anyway… a war machine… a leader… built to avenge… no, to satisfy?… the dwarven dead. But something wrong. Yes… something gone horribly wrong… a massacre. More death than in the war itself… genocide for both elf and dwarf… and a desperate alliance to stop it…
Kali blew out a breath. That, as far as she was concerned, clinched it — mostly. Everything here tallied with what Merrit Moon had told her, and was, in turn, totally at odds with what Katherine Makennon believed. The only thing she couldn't understand was why the symbol of the Final Faith and its prominence was on not one but two of the manuscripts she studied? Surely this was no representation of the Final Faith's future, it was a warning to everyone on the peninsula from the past.
So much for the history. Merrit Moon had wanted her to stop this thing and what she needed to do was find the information relevant to the here and now, to the threat they faced. She cycled to the map and studied it. The old man had said that between them the elves and the dwarves had built four containment areas for the keys, and there they seemed to be, marked in four widespread locations by two circles and two crosses, each with a representation of a key drawn in above. Why they were not marked by four circles or four crosses, instead of both, Kali wasn't sure, but she supposed the differing symbols were simply elven and dwarven equivalents of X marks the spot. Yes, she thought, remembering the runic circles at the Spiral of Kos, because as one of the circles here lay in the Sardenne Forest at the approximate location where the Spiral had been, that had to be what they were. Knowing that, even though the map was old and parts of the peninsula coastline looked different, she should be able to extrapolate the locations of the other keys from there. Only one thing confused her — the small amount of text on the map made passing reference to five keys not four. Had the old man been wrong and there was actually another, missing location? No, that didn't make sense — the map itself contradicted it. What, then, if there was a fifth key needed to access Orl itself? Yes, that could be it, even though there was no indication of a location for a fifth key on the map. Dammit, she thought, looking at the text again, she wasn't that good so maybe she'd just interpreted it wrong.
She had to concentrate on the matter at hand. She possessed the rough locations for the four keys but, for insurance, she needed the location of Orl itself. If this map, for whatever reason, had been meant to be some kind of overall guide, then it had to be here. Somewhere.
Kali took a deep breath and studied the map again, something nagging at her. Suddenly she pulled it towards her for a closer view of the key in the Sardenne. The whorls in the ornate head of the key looked familiar, and with good reason — the drawing was a stylised map of the topography of the area centred on the Spiral of Kos, a more detailed map of its location! But important as that was, there was something else — some of the whorls on the key seemed extraneous, nothing to do with the local topography and seeming to belong somewhere else entirely. Her heart thudded as she realised she was looking at part of a map within a map.
She waved her hand, flipping the document from side to side and slightly up and down, pulling it towards her to zoom in on each key in turn. For the moment she ignored the locations of the containment sites each gave, concentrating instead on the extraneous whorls, overlaying each set in her mind. Together, they formed a topography she recognised, part of the peninsula far to the west.
Kali zoomed to that part of the map. There did appear to be some kind of site marked, but the map was damaged around it, barely legible, and the marking could apply to anywhere within a number of leagues. But what she could make out appeared again to be the symbol of the Final Faith.
No, she thought, that had to be wrong! Because if it wasn't, what would that mean? That Makennon was right? That she was destined to find Orl?
There was something else that shook her, too — more dwarven text, but text that made no reference to the site being called Orl but… Mor… Mar… no, it was no good, she couldn't make it out.
Pits of Kerberos, she'd come in search of answers and all she'd found were more questions. But at least she had a rough location, and that would do as a start. She zoomed again, searching for landmarks that might help further, but then everything before her eyes suddenly faded. Kali blinked. The Forbidden Archive was a featureless red chamber once more.
"Find anything of interest?" a voice asked.
Kali spun and found herself facing a bearded figure who had to be Mister Duh! Forgot My Head. Only, seeing him from the front, his eyes and expression did not strike her as forgetful at all but instead rather threatening and intense.
Disliking tackling them head on or not, Kali didn't know what else she could do. She rushed the mage, intending to silence him before he could alert others of his kind, but with a sweep of his hand the man did something with the air in front of him and she found herself bouncing back off an invisible field of force that felt like rubbery water. She flung a fist at him instead, hoping that would penetrate, but another sweep of the hand wove a different thread and, this time, she was slammed back and away from him, without any physical contact at all.
Kali yelped as she crashed into the podium and flipped over it, then smashed jarringly and numbingly into the far wall. She picked herself up, wiping blood from her lip.
Again, she ran at the mage, and this time he simply raised an arm and she found herself rising with it, treading air before she could get anywhere near him. The mage smiled, slowly rolled her over in the air and then manoeuvred her helplessly floating body to the side of the chamber. Kali felt herself pressed against the wall and, as she struggled futilely against the invisible grip that held her there, the mage moved his arm again and she found herself being slowly dragged all the way around the circumference of the tower, as if she were dirt to be smeared from his hand.
It was, frankly, embarrassing. But embarrassing was all it seemed to be. Presumably the mage could have flung her around like a doll if he so wished, but he simply continued as he did, smiling, as if this were his way of proving a point.
He even let her down gently, positioning her back on her feet before him.
"Okay, that wasn't fair. You've got me, so what happens now?"
The mage smiled. "Absolutely nothing. I mean you no harm and will defend myself only as and when necessary. I have been employed to provide a client with the same information you now seek, and that employment is now done. It would be churlish of me to censure you for obtaining the same knowledge by your own means, would it not? And I could have turned you in the moment you fell through that hatch."
"It was you watching me."
"I… sensed you, yes."
"You're the sender," Kali realised. "The Final Faith's source."
The mage bowed. "Poul Sonpear at your service. Trusted archivist for the League of Prestidigitation and Prestige. But the Final Faith are quite generous when it comes to persuading people to bend the rules a little. Tell me," he added with genuine intrigue, "just why is it you and they find this material of such great interest?"
"You've seen it. What the hells do you think?"
"I have no opinion. I have seen many thousands of such manuscripts and these, as are they all, are open to subjective interpretation."
You can say that again, Kali thought. People saw what people wanted to see. Never more so than when they pursued their interest with religious zeal. And that remained exactly the problem here.
"What if I were to tell you these things warn against the end of civilisation as we know it? That unless I recover a key that the Final Faith took from a friend of mine, they're a quarter of the way to unleashing something — "
Kali paused, unsure how to go on.
"Something?" Sonpear urged.
"I don't know yet, okay?" Kali shouted at him, piqued. "But something very, very bad. A clockwork king."
Kali frowned, aware, after the intensity of her search, of how unthreatening that sounded.
Sonpear laughed. "Then I would suggest that you will not be able to stop them."
Kali balled her fists. "What are you saying? That this is, after all, where you call your friends to finish me off?"
"Not at all. I wish only to point out to you that the Final Faith's journey along their path of discovery has progressed somewhat further than you think."
"Say again?"
Sonpear sighed heavily. "My… exchanges with the Final Faith's receiver work two ways and, though I do not intend to, it is sometimes hard to avoid absorbing… peripheral information. This key that you refer to — the one taken from your friend and that I believe you originally acquired from the Spiral of Kos? — it is not the first to fall into their hands."
Kali swallowed. Suddenly what Munch had said in the Spiral about hazards he'd recently encountered made sense. "They have more?"
"There have been two previous expeditions — to forgotten sites called, I believe, the Shifting City and the Eye of the Storm."
Names that sounded suitably trap-like, Kali thought. And they must have been two of the sites the map referred to, but she — and, presumably, Merrit — had never heard of them. But then they didn't have the resources the Final Faith had — the bastards.
"And they were successful?"
"I gather so." Sonpear stared at her. "Young lady, the Final Faith are already in possession of three of your keys and are about to acquire possession of the fourth."
"What? Where?" Kali said, urgently.
"A site that has so far caused them considerable problems and loss, and by inference therefore the most dangerous of them all. And it is located beneath the most convenient and unexpected place you can imagine — the Final Faith's headquarters at Scholten Cathedral itself."
Kali's mind flashed back to her and Killiam's escape — the curious lift shaft, the place she had wanted to go.
"Slowhand, you fark," she said.
"Excuse me?"
"I have to go," Kali said, knowing she needed to reach the key first. "Listen, you're the spy — is there a back way out of here?"