The storm outside Martak had worsened dramatically since Kali and the others had entered the sub-aquatic complex, and was now in stark contrast to its shelter, making it seem almost welcoming despite the nightmare the place had been. Forks of lightning split a night sky blackened by the eclipse, the flashes of light so severe it seemed the universe was, with homicidal slashes, slicing itself apart. A freezing wind caught and flung back to the cliffs by the Stormwall chilled and cut straight to the bone. The wind did not prevent the heavy rain from hammering straight down, however, and it was the wet, cold crashes of the raindrops on her flesh that kept Kali from fading into the oblivion she knew was very close.
She wasn't dead, that much was clear, but neither did she have long to live — she could feel it in every fibre of her fading being. Her body had been battered too much, pierced too many times, and she had lost too much blood to hope — even with her newly discovered powers of recovery — to survive. The fact made her feel immensely sad. She had hoped to live long enough to make a difference, but she hadn't. She had come so far, done so much, and yet she had failed.
Failed herself. Failed Slowhand. Failed Twilight.
Most of all, she had failed Merrit Moon.
Her regret and diminishing consciousness was so debilitating that for a while it did not occur to her to question where she was. But then even she couldn't ignore the violent shaking of her head any longer.
She groaned, eyes attempting to take in her situation, but her view bouncing everywhere. Then, what vestige of fear of death remained in her already dying form cut through her much more sharply than any bolt or knife, including Munch's, could ever have done. Because she saw that she was slung in the massive, green-tinted arms of a beast that was pounding up the cliff steps outside Martak, a beast that she dimly recognised — but mainly smelled — to be an ogur. What was more, the ogur was roaring, again and again and again.
This was it, then. The moment.
Her vision come true.
It was too much for her. Finally, too much. She hadn't asked for any of this, and she was no longer strong enough to fight the inevitable. With a great weariness and a long, drawn-out sigh that became hopelessly lost in the stormy night, Kali Hooper felt her body relax and then felt herself die.
I'm sorry, old man…
"There!" Killiam Slowhand shouted as he saw her slump in the ogur's grip. "She's there!"
"Slowhand, keep back!" Makennon warned.
Not a chance, Slowhand thought. The disappearance of Kali's body had been the catalyst he'd needed to flee Martak, his desire to rid Twilight of Konstantin Munch overwhelmed by his concern for his ex. He and Makennon had made for the exit just before Munch's army had begun their slow march through it and, frankly, he had all but forgotten about the dwarf and didn't much care. But if there was anything he could do to stop Kali suffering at the hands of this thing that, for whatever reason, had taken her, then he would do it.
He flung himself over riser after riser, pursuing the ogur all the way to the top of the cliffs, and there stood panting heavily, watching in disbelief as the ogur laid Kali's body gently down onto the rocky ground. Nevertheless, he ran forwards, attempting to shield her from whatever was the beast's intent, but the hulking creature batted him away like some buzzing insect, sending him smashing into nearby rocks. Slowhand picked himself up, wiped blood from his mouth and, roaring, went for the ogur a second time, but a loud roar from the beast that was much, much louder than his own — not to mention a steely grip on his arm from the now caught-up Makennon — held him back.
Panting even more heavily, Slowhand unslung his bow and aimed an arrow directly between the ogur's eyes, impossible to miss even though his grip wavered uncharacteristically with grief and fury. The pouring rain slicking down his hair, running in rivulets down his face and reminding him so much of the walkway on Scholten Cathedral. He addressed the beast through clenched teeth.
"Leave — her — alone."
The ogur stared directly at him, an unexpectedly sad and thoughtful expression in its eyes making him falter in his intent. And then, while the still-wavering Slowhand shook his head to shake the water from his eyes, the ogur did something he hadn't expected at all. It pulled the crossbow bolts and the gutting knife from Kali's body, tossed them aside and then removed a strange blue amulet from around its neck and instead strung it about hers. It deliberately let go of the amulet — almost as if it were giving it to her — and then, after a few seconds, touched it again.
Again, the ogur stared at him, and somehow Slowhand knew it was asking him to wait.
Somewhere behind those primal eyes, Merrit Moon saw the desperate figure of Killiam Slowhand, continued to struggle for dominance of his transformed body and prayed the archer would give him time. He had no idea whether what he was about to try would work — as far as he knew scythe-stones had never been used twice, or in such a way — but if it did then Kali Hooper would live again.
His action would come at a price, though. The transference of his own life essence to Kali would likely kill him in turn, but even if it did not — if Thrutt had made him strong enough — then it would leave him so weak that he would no longer be able to fight the assertion of the ogur within, and he could be trapped within its form for the rest of his life. But it seemed a fair and just trade — after all, it was he who was responsible for her being here in the first place, was it not? Besides, she was his Kali — the closest thing to a daughter he had — so what choice was there, really?
He actually willed his life away.
A blue wisp appeared between ogur and corpse, and, feeling its hungry tug like a meathook through his heart, Merrit Moon had to struggle against his own instinct to survive, forcing himself to remain where he was as the process continued. The wisp became a snake, and then a cloud that filled the air between them, and then Kali's body took on a blue glow as it became suffused with the stuff of himself. Moon felt suddenly as if he had been folded inside out and pulled away, and then the cloud was snatched into Kali, and then it became a snake and a wisp once more, and then it was gone. The sound of the amulet doing what it did — a long sigh — was echoed by one of his own, and then his body slumped to the ground with a thud, breathing shallowly.
Kali Hooper's eyes snapped open. She coughed. And then she sat up, abruptly, ramrod straight.
"Great gods," Slowhand whispered.
"Lord of All," Makennon said.
"Slowhand?" Kali asked.
The archer scurried to her side. His voice trembled, partly in wonder at what he had just witnessed, partly in thanks that — somehow — he had Kali back. "H-hey, how you doing?"
"Ohhhh, you know…" Kali said weakly. "You?"
"Ohhhh, you know. Fled certain death, watched you come back from it, now starting to wonder once again whether we have a chance of stopping an invincible clockwork army intent on destroying the world — in other words, your usual." He hesitated, looked doubtful. "You up to speed with this?"
"Unnh. A-ha." Kali coughed again and held her chest, from where she found her fatal wound had gone. And as she did, she caught sight of the figure beside her, and scrambled back on the ground.
"It's all right… I think," Slowhand said. "I don't know how or why but… the ogur helped you."
"Helped?" Kali said, puzzled. She picked herself up, her own metabolism aiding the effects of the amulet, and studied the creature. It was weak but conscious, and its face seemed almost to ripple before her eyes, caught somewhere between the beast she thought it was and something heart-thuddingly familiar. She touched the amulet around her neck, remembered seeing it on the old man, then moved to touch the ogur's face. And as she did, the ogur's hand moved over hers and moved it gently down, much as another had in the Warty Witch a long, long time ago.
Kali swallowed. There was something familiar there — and the eyes.
"My gods," she said. "Merrit?"
"What?" Slowhand exclaimed.
"It's the old man," Kali said, excitedly. "I don't know how or why but he's here, inside this, this… thing. The cave in the World's Ridge, where I last saw him — he didn't die!"
"Oh, Hooper, come on — "
"Your friend is correct," Makennon said. "Munch told me how this happened, about an artefact. Its effects are meant to be temporary but…"
Kali looked at the ogur, concerned. What had, a moment before, seemed so familiar in its eyes was fading, as if Moon were going away, and as she watched the spark in them faded to something feral — the eyes that she remembered from the beasts in the cave. The ogur emitted a dull growl, then, and as if afraid something worse might follow, roughly shoved her away, rose and stomped along the cliff.
"We have to do something to help him," Kali said.
"Hooper, I'm not sure we can," Slowhand cautioned. "It seems to me that in doing what he did he's sacrificed something."
"Like what?" Kali said.
Slowhand looked grave. "Like himself."
"Then let us hope his sacrifice has not been in vain," Makennon said. Her attention had been drawn by a series of quaking thuds from far below. "Because they're coming."
The three of them turned to look down the steps leading to Martak, and at their base saw that the first units of mechanical warriors had completed their slow march from the throne room and emerged from the cowl. They marched in the same organised lines of five, in rank after rank after rank, filling the jetty with their broad bodies, metal feet pounding into the stone, and, as they gradually drew closer to the steps, rocks at the top of the cliffs began to tremble and shed scree that bounced and skittered below.
Their assault on the peninsula would soon begin.
"We have to stop them," Slowhand said.
"Oh brilliant. Just bloody brilliant."
"I see the old Hooper is indeed back."
"Well, honestly…"
"If you two are finished," Makennon said, "I think someone's already ahead of us on that one." She pointed a little way along the clifftop, where the ogur was pushing its shoulder into a boulder that balanced there, clearly trying to dislodge it and send it crashing below.
"I think it knows what it's doing," Makennon said.
"Damn right," Kali said, smiling. "The old man's still in there somewhere."
"Well, are we just going to stand here or are we going to help it?" Slowhand enquired.
"Him," Kali corrected.
"Fine, him. Come on!"
The three of them joined the ogur behind the boulder and leant their weight to pushing it, and with a dull rumble the giant piece of rock dislodged from its perch and went tumbling away, bouncing first off rocks and then onto the stone steps. With a series of crashes that were audible even over the storm, it continued down, bouncing two then three steps at a time, then more, gathering momentum as it went.
The mechanical warriors did not even react to its approach, their minds — Munch's mind — intent on their single imperative of reaching the surface and the humans who dwelled there. The boulder smashed into their front rank and sent five warriors staggering back, causing a knock-on effect behind them, and as the giant rock continued to roll through the second and third ranks their relentless march was momentarily thrown into confusion, the affected warriors trying to recover from the impact, those behind attempting to march on around them. Then, in unison, five of the giant dwarven battle hammers were swung at the boulder and it was shattered first to rubble and then, to dust. The warriors' march continued, the damage to them insignificant.
"We need more boulders," Slowhand declared. He repeated the statement more loudly to the ogur as if, somehow, being an ogur made it deaf. He then pointed at more boulders, just to make himself extra clear, but the ogur had already stomped towards them of his own volition. "Yes, more boulders!" Slowhand agreed needlessly.
Makennon assessed the ammunition available to them. Short of attempting to smash away the Dragonwings themselves, most of the rocks available to them were smaller than the first. "This isn't going to work," she said. "The last one barely scratched them."
"Maybe not," Slowhand responded, heaving. "But we can at least slow them down."
"And what will that achieve? There are no reinforcements coming."
"I don't know, okay? But I, for one, am not going to just stand here."
He and the ogur sent another boulder tumbling.
Kali, meanwhile, stared down the steps, and then inland, back along the peninsula. She bit her lip. "Slowhand, carry on with what you're doing because it just might help, but Makennon has a point. There's only one way to stop those warriors and that's to destroy what Munch used to animate them — destroy the Clockwork King. But that means first having to finish their general — finish Munch."
Slowhand and the ogur made another rock roll, and the archer nodded. "Finish Munch," he repeated, breathlessly. "Hooper, you have to be kidding. Even if you had a chance against his bodyguards, how in the hells would you get back down to him? Those things would mince you before you got halfway down the steps."
"There's one way," Kali said.
She swept up Munch's gutting knife from the ground and jammed it in her belt. Then, she stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled. A second later, Horse stood next to her, braying, his broken tether dangling around his neck.
Kali mounted him and slapped his flank, welcoming his help.
Now it was Slowhand's turn to stare down the steps, Kali's intention dawning. "Oh, no," he said. "No, no, no. No…"
"Hyyahh!" Kali shouted.
She reined Horse around and galloped him towards the top of the steps, kicking his flanks to spur him on. Horse reached them and jumped, soaring in a determined arc over four of the risers before his hooves thudded back onto stone with an impact that made them spark and jarred Kali to the bones.
"Hyyahh!" she shouted again.
Horse thundered down the steps before them, Kali keeping her gaze straight ahead in the bouncing, rushing diagonal the world had become, and again kicked his flanks, spurring the bamfcat to greater speed.
"Hyyahh!"
They hit the jetty, and the world levelled, and still she kicked, bringing Horse to full gallop, the front ranks of the marching warriors now no more than ten yards ahead. As she'd hoped she would, she heard a distinctive shnak as the horns on Horse's body snapped fully from their housings, the bamfcat reacting instinctively to the danger to come.
Good boygirl, she thought, good, good boygirl.
And then they rammed straight into the army of the Clockwork King.
Kali was aware of little more than a sudden and rapid series of thuds and jarring impacts as Horse ploughed into and then through the advancing warriors, her world skewing this time into a seemingly endless number of fractured tableaux, flashes of hammers and axes and swinging arms, and of red, glaring eyes. There was nothing she could do but ride Horse as a helpless passenger, nothing she could do to affect their progress — all she could do was hope it continued, and that Horse's armour was strong enough to keep him from harm. The great beast ploughed onwards through the warriors, cutting a swathe through their middle, sending them staggering aside, and then, glimpsed through them at last, jarringly and shakingly, was the maw of the cowl. There were still far too many of the warriors between them and it, though, and within it, many, many more, still working their way up from the throne room, and the constant wall of metal and corrupted flesh was beginning to take its toll on Horse, not only in terms of slowing his momentum but in the amount of damage his armour was now taking. She couldn't — and wouldn't — push him any further, but that didn't really matter because it had never been her intention to reach the cowl, anyway. All she'd needed Horse to do was get her close to the water.
And now she needed to make sure Horse was safe.
Kali rose high in the saddle so that she touched only his stirrups, and then patted the bamfcat's neck. "It's time to do that thing you do," she said quickly, and hoped to the gods that he understood. "You know, the thing. Do it, Horse. Do it now!"
The bamfcat roared, and for a second Kali thought that perhaps he hadn't understood, but then she realised it wasn't that at all.
"Yes, you great lump, I'm fond of you, too, but you need to do the thing! Pits, Horse, do the thing and do it n — "
Horse reared, and the air cracked, and then the bamfcat vanished from under her, and suddenly Kali was flying over the heads of the marching warriors, all alone. She knew exactly what she was doing, however, and immediately turned what could have been a flailing tumble into an arched dive, taking her over the edge of the jetty. And then, like Horse, she, too, vanished — head first into the churning sea.
Kali hit smoothly, slicing beneath the surface like a knife. There, however, her smoothness came to an end, the churning maelstrom that was battering the side of the jetty flinging her around like a worgle in a whirlpool. It took her some time to orientate herself, arms and legs slapping and kicking against the currents, but finally she swam in the direction she wished. But she did not head for the surface, as might be expected. Instead, she swam towards the dark foundations of the entrance cowl to Martak. Slowhand had been right — there was no way to reach Munch through the warriors — but there was a way to reach him.
And there it was. Or, rather, they were.
The intakes for the water pipes loomed before her in the murky depths, the churning water around them exacerbated by the pumps somewhere inside Martak that drew it in. Kali had to fight against the pull so that she was not sucked against the grilles she saw protecting the pipe's mouths, and, thrashing and kicking again, manoeuvred herself so that she was able to grab both sides of one of the pipes, and there, amidst a cloud of bubbles as blinding as fog, tugged and wrenched at the grille until it came away. She let it fall to the seabed and then — her breath short — dug in her belt for her breathing conch before she thrust herself upwards and in.
It was almost peaceful inside the tube, the distant thudding of the pumps like a heartbeat, the rotation of the fans — slower now that their job in releasing the king and his army was done — a relaxing thrum. This was the first chance she'd had to appreciate the complex network of pipes that seemed to power the mechanics of the place, and, while she found it an achievement, she also found it rather odd because it was so distinctly un-dwarven. But then, she supposed, they hadn't had much lava to drive their engines here at the edge of the sea.
There was nothing peaceful about what was occurring beneath her, however, and as Kali wiped away the grime on the inner surface of the tube, and looked out, she saw the vaguely distorted forms of the advancing army of clockwork warriors marching in rank after rank along Martak's exit corridor. But she had no interest in them. They were the responsibility of Slowhand and the others now, and her concern was in reaching the man who controlled them and what he, in turn, controlled.
Kali swam along the tube, timing her strokes through the slowly rotating fanblades, heading horizontally and then downwards, rubbing the glass occasionally to determine how far into the complex she was. Eventually the light outside became shadowed and she realised she was passing through the section of tubing that ran through the surroundings of the first door, which meant there was only one short section of corridor remaining. There was, however, a problem. Her breathing was becoming laboured, and she realised the conch symbiotes had almost exhausted their current supply of oxygen. She would need to pick up her pace, get out of the tube quickly, or she'd become part of the flotsam floating around this hellhole for the rest of time.
She swam faster, ignoring her surroundings until a second batch of shadow told her she had at last returned to the throne room of the Clockwork King. But her breathing was becoming desperate now, and she could taste the toxic taint of her own used breath. She'd poison herself if she didn't get out of there right away.
Bubbles exploding from the sides of her mouth, Kali felt desperately around on the base of the tube, searching for some weakness in its length. She found a seal that linked sections and then pulled Munch's gutting knife from her belt, working at the strange, almost organic seal. It was more difficult than she expected, and her movements became increasingly jerky, imprecise, but at last a downwards spiral of bubbles indicated the seal was coming apart, water leaking into the throne room below.
She wondered if Munch would notice — notice that she was coming for him.
She stabbed his knife into the weakened seal, and a sudden lurch in the base of the tube warned her that it was about to give. Just in time she jammed herself inside the tube as the whole section dropped away from the rest of the network and hung down at an angle, water slamming into and over her back as it poured down into the throne room.
Kali released herself and went with the flow which, quite conveniently, washed her right in front of Munch, sitting there, on his throne.
"Miss Hooper," the dwarf resurgent said. "Even I have to confess this is something of a surprise."
"Hi, Stan," Kali said. "Have to say, you look a little rough."
He did, too. Munch was almost slumped in the throne he had so arrogantly adopted, looking drained and fevered. His eyes seemed unable to focus on her — or were, perhaps, focusing on a thousand things — and he involuntarily spasmed every few seconds. The blood that had leaked from where the spikes had stabbed into his skull had not dried, because the sweat that ran from his every pore wouldn't let it.
"Controlling the Thousand is proving to be something of a challenge," he said, wearily. "But one that I will master."
"Can't let you do that."
Munch paused. "Ah. You have returned to kill me."
"Not here to see if you've grown any higher."
"I am afraid," Munch said haltingly, almost as a gasp, "you are an inconvenience I cannot afford."
"Now, where have I heard that before? I suppose this is the part where you set your dogs on me?"
"Indeed." He blinked, and his four bodyguards snapped to face her, their feet thudding down as they adopted an attack stance.
Kali was ready for them. She'd been ready the moment she'd dropped from the tube to the floor. She only hoped that, in trying to do what she wanted to do, she was as capable as the events of recent days had suggested she could be.
Because if she wasn't, she was dead.
Again.
Four hammers slammed down from her left and from her right, impacting hard with the stone floor of the throne room and cracking it wide. They were clearly only warning blows but nevertheless Kali was already gone, backflipping away and feeling the heavy whoosh of the hammers' mass as she went. She straightened, turned and ran, inviting them to follow, which they duly did, their feet pounding on the damaged floor behind her.
Kali ran almost to the end of the throne room, seemingly intent on fleeing from their pursuit but planning nothing of the kind. For one thing, there was nowhere to go — the gallery steps and corridor were still filled with the mechanical warriors' slowly deploying ranks — but for another she knew exactly where in the throne room she wanted herself, and her would-be butchers, to be.
What she wanted to do, in fact, was let them drive her into a corner.
The mechanical warriors came on, hammers raised and axe blades swinging, while a somewhat weak cackling from Munch echoed in the distance. Kali stood her ground, waiting for her moment. As the four approached, she bounced on the balls of her feet, watching their axes, but, particularly, their hammers, not only for which of the warriors would swing the first blow but how they would swing it. She had, after all, learned a new trick in the Spiral of Kos.
The first two disappointed, and she dodged their downward swings by deftly rolling between them, but the third, swinging its hammer horizontally, was exactly what she'd been hoping for. As the hammer swung towards her, momentum guaranteed to carry it onwards and upwards, she ducked beneath and then instantly sprang onto its upper face from behind, letting it carry her into and then propel her through the air. She landed exactly where she wanted to be, on top of the very water tube she and Slowhand had first used to enter the throne room, but she did not use it to leave, instead simply standing there until her attackers swung at her again. This they did, and Kali glanced over at Munch as the hammers smashed towards her, watching to see if he'd realised his mistake. For at her current height, the deadly bludgeons of the bodyguards could not quite reach her, and instead they smashed into the tube itself. Glass shattered and water exploded, sending the bodyguards staggering back beneath its deluge.
Kali had leapt away at the moment of impact, and now ran further up the tube, in the direction of Munch, where she heard him roar in anger. Yes, he'd realised his mistake but, as was the way of these things, it did not stop him repeating it. The bodyguards pounded after her, hammers and axes swinging all the way, and as they swung they shattered more and more of the tube, so that entire sections of it fell away to the throne room floor. They didn't crash down, however, but splashed and sank, the increasing deluge of water from the ruptured system beginning to flood the throne room, the still rotating fans pulling more and more of it in from the sea. Kali continued her flight along the tubes and the warriors followed, almost berserk now, though their rage — Munch's rage — could do little to help them in what had become a forced wade through the rising waters. Again they swung, though more sluggishly now, their giant hammers slowed as they ploughed through the flood and, again, more sections of the tubes disintegrated before them. The water was deep enough for Kali's purpose now, and she stopped her flight, instead diving into the water herself, and there she clenched her gutting knife as she swam beneath the surface in the direction of her mechanical pursuers. There was always a way, she thought, not only to get into places but to defeat things, and swimming into the midst of the pack of bodyguards she slashed the wiry tendons on the ankles of all four, the water preventing them being able to manoeuvre fast enough to stop her. With a series of mechanical groans they collapsed beneath the ever-rising flood to the throne room floor.
Kali swam, and then waded from the water onto the base of the Clockwork King.
Munch, more feverish and manic-looking than ever now, seemed almost to shrink back before her.
"I knew that you were resourceful," he declared wearily. "I never realised quite how much."
As he spoke, an entire run of the water tubing collapsed from the throne room walls, weakened by the loss of the rest of its network, and beyond it, even more began to buckle. A crack appeared in the throne room wall.
"Yeah, well," Kali said, darkly. She was thinking back to the Flagons. "That slashing the ankle thing? Someone gave me the idea."
"Miss Hooper…"
"Stand up and face me, you bastard."
Blood ran slowly down Munch's forehead. "You know as well as I that I cannot — I will not — leave this seat. I am helpless before you. So, go ahead — what are you waiting for?"
"Aaargh!" Kali roared, plunging the gutting knife downwards. But at the last moment she froze, the tip of the knife shuddering in her grip an inch from Munch's heart.
The dwarf chuckled deeply, and Kali regarded him with a hatred that could not manifest itself.
"You may have become some kind of fighting machine," Munch said, "but you will never be a true warrior. Not so long as you cannot finish your opponent. That is what differentiates the victor from the defeated on the battlefield."
"I can't let you continue this…"
"Then do what you came to do, girl. Stop me. Kill me. Go on — do it!"
Munch sounded almost as if he wanted her to. Kali pulled back her arm, ready to plunge the knife downwards once more, but again desire and conscience clashed, leaving the blade suspended and trembling, her whole body doing the same in furious frustration.
"Do it or all that you know will be gone, girl. Pontaine, Anclas, Vos, Gargas. Everything you know."
"You've already taken enough away from me."
"Soon there will be others who do what you do now — only they will be of the dwarven race. And it will be your bones they will pick over. Your bones, Kali Hooper. The bones of a fleeting and inconsequential speck in history."
"Not if I have anything to do with it."
Munch chuckled again. "Then do what must be done. Only you can't, can you? You have let down all those who trusted you, brought about the end of everyth — "
"No."
"The end of everything. You've lost, girl. You have los — "
There was a dull crunch and Munch's eyes widened suddenly in shock and disbelief, and for a moment Kali simply stared at him, wondering what had happened. Munch was staring back, directly into her eyes, but it took her a few seconds, during which a small tendril of blood ran from his left nostril, to realise that his eyes had already fogged and he was seeing nothing.
The arrow quivered slightly where it was embedded in the centre of his forehead.
Kali turned. How he had managed to get past the clockwork warriors she had no idea, but from the far end of the throne room a battered and bedraggled-looking Killiam Slowhand waded towards her through the rising and increasingly tumultuous water. He lowered Suresight to his side, its job done.
"In future, why don't you leave it to the sidekick to do the killing?" he said. He suddenly stretched his arms out and looked surprised. "What? You thought I'd let you do this alone?"
Kali inhaled a deep, trembling breath. There was no time for thanks or celebration, however, because there was still the problem of destroying the Clockwork King. But as Kali began to contemplate the problem, it was solved for her. The cracks that had begun to appear in the throne room walls widened suddenly, and as they did the ceiling itself began to crack and subside. Suddenly a wide gash appeared in what was effectively the sea bed and, along with chunks of rock, water began to pour down on the very spot where she and Slowhand stood.
Kali and the archer staggered back, watching the deluge pour onto the Clockwork King, and as the rocks crashed onto and shattered its cogs and pistons and gears, water poured thunderously onto the crystals that had brought its army to life. There was a series of sparks and then small explosions, and, at the opposite end of the throne room, the warriors that continued to march towards the exit suddenly stopped. Just like that.
Kali and Slowhand stared at them, watching to see if they moved again. But they didn't.
"Okaaaay…" Kali said.
Slowhand suddenly pulled her to the side as a chunk of rock hurtled down and smashed into the deluge next to where they stood.
"The whole place is coming down," he said. "Time to go."
"No argument there."
"After you."
"No, no, after you."
"Hooper, just — "
"Move. I know."
They swam towards the exit, manoeuvring themselves around the frozen forms of those clockwork warriors that had ground to a halt before it, and preparing to do the same with those in the corridor itself. Their red eyes stared as dully as those of Munch now, and they seemed strangely at peace.
The sea can have them, Kali thought.
Slowhand swam through the doors before her, and she was only an arm's length behind him when a sudden surge in the water caught her from behind and sucked her away in its backwash, returning her to the heart of the collapsing and flooding chamber. And, unbelievably, she saw that the doors to the throne room were closing.
"Slowhand!" she yelled.
The archer had already noticed her absence and had turned around, attempting to swim back to her aid. But it was almost as if the water was consciously trying to keep him back, one small surge after another catching him and holding him where he was so that he did little more than tread water. He stared up at the closing doors and roared with anger and frustration.
"Hooper!"
Dammit, Kali thought. Dammit, dammit, dammit! But as much as she tried to reach the closing gap, similar surges to those that frustrated Slowhand held her back. The rumbling of the doors could be heard even over the roaring of the inrushing sea, and the last thing she saw of Slowhand was his anguished face as they closed finally with a resounding boom.
Kali splashed around. The seawater continued to rush in with a roar and she rose slowly towards the throne room ceiling. Then, suddenly, the roaring stopped and she realised she was fully underwater, the throne room completely flooded.
As rocks fell about her in slow motion, an eerie silence descended. Kali fumbled in her equipment belt and withdrew her breathing conch, jamming it in her mouth, then floated there and stared into the murk. She might have been cut off from Slowhand but she was not alone, and below her the lifeless body of Munch drifted from its seat and rose up, ascending above the still forms of his warriors. Kali let the corpse float past her face without reaction, but then another shadowy shape in the water caught her eye and she almost spat out her conch in shock.
Because the seawater that had poured in from above had brought something with it.
Kali back-pedalled in a sea of bubbles. There, hovering before her in the water, was a humanoid figure — but humanoid was as close as it came to anything human-looking she had ever seen on Twilight.
Some kind of… fishman. She'd heard reports that similar creatures had been sighted in Turnitia but she'd dismissed them as the ramblings, perhaps even the ravings, of thieves too gone on flummox to be grounded in reality. But here one was, right in front of her — and it was staring at her.
Communicating with her.
Not talking, though. The thieves she had spoken with had described the fishmen as black-eyed, green-scaled, razor-toothed and bespined, but this one was different, its scales silver, face smooth and mouth toothless, with glowing nodules that hung from either side of its jaw. But neither mouth nor jaw moved as it spoke. Instead, Kali heard its words inside her head.
And, what was even more disturbing, it knew her name.
Kali Hooper. I am pleased that your path has brought you where you should be. That you have achieved what you must.
Kali found herself responding without even knowing how. And finding herself doing so without the need to speak, she found herself asking everything in her head at once.
Where I should be? What are you? Just what the hells is going on?
The creature floated where it was, regarding her, a paper-thin tail moving lazily behind it, and Kali felt a kind of smile — a very cold one.
Questions. Questions all the time, since when you were a child. Even then we could hear you — here, beneath the sea.
What? Are you saying you've been spying on me?
Spying? No. Watching. You, and the others. The Four.
The Four?
Four known to us. Four unknown to each other. Four who will be known to all.
Oh, gods help me, you're one of those who talks in riddles. I've come across your kind before. Statues, mainly, but -
Riddles? No. Only answers not yet formed.
Listen! You're doing it again! Hey, it's been a long day — how about some simple answers to some simple questions?
The creature floated before her, saying nothing. Kali took it as an invitation to continue.
Who are you?
Our name would mean nothing. We are the Before. The After. Those who have always been and will be again.
Will you stop it!
I… we… they… apologise.
Kali scowled, then frowned. The Before? she thought. The After?
My visions? she asked. Were you responsible for them?
Yes.
How? Why?
The first, to offer a solution. The second, to drive you. The third — the third to remind you of your own mortality… and, more importantly, that everything is not as it seems. The creature paused. We know you but… we were uncertain of your resolve.
What? You thought I'd give up? Back off because what I faced was too much? Then, Mister — you are a Mister? — however much you think you know me, you don't know me at all.
From this moment, no. Your path is what it has become. It was important to us only that you were here — at Martak.
Kali trod water. Martak. The way the creature spoke of it — spoke of her — it was almost as if they both had a place in some unknown scheme of things. It suddenly occurred to her once more how un-dwarven the water network had felt.
You were here when all this began, weren't you? You helped the dwarves to build this place — to build the Clockwork King?
They were dying. They had no resources. The balance had to be maintained.
The balance?
Too many of the elven ones, too few of the dwarves. The ferocity of the Ur'Raney was unanticipated, and their numbers after their victory had to be… curtailed.
Curtailed? You're saying you did what you did to give the dwarves an advantage? By all the gods, you wanted the Ur'Raney culled, didn't you? Only it all went wrong — the warriors you helped the dwarves create turned on their own as well — and then on everyone and everything else…
The creature remained silent for a second. We chose our agent badly… everyone makes mistakes.
But why would you do that?
The balance had to be -
Maintained? Kali shouted in her head. What balance — why the hells are you talking abou -
She suddenly choked and realised that, once more, her breathing conch was near to exhausted, something that her conversational partner had also spotted.
I would suggest that you have time for one more question.
One more question, Kali thought, and despite the fact she had a thousand in her head — about the balance, about this undersea creature, about the Old Races — she knew exactly what it had to be. Because, somehow, she knew it was relevant.
Do you know where I come from?
The creature laughed — not laughed in her mind but actually, physically laughed — and was suddenly obscured in a cloud of bubbles that came either from whatever orifice it used to breathe or simply from the stirring of the water created by its thrashing reaction. Wherever the bubbles had come from, when they went away the creature was gone.
Damn you, Kali thought. Whoever or whatever you are, damn you.
More rock fell about her from above, and with her last lungful of air she began to swim upwards, kicking and kicking until at last she passed through a fissure in the ceiling of the throne room and up, out into the sea. She broke its broiling surface and began to swim towards the shore. Slowly, wearily, she ascended the steps, glancing down at the jetty and the stilled warriors that would remain there now, until the weather of the area simply wore them away.
Slowhand, Horse and the ogur were assembled above. There was, however, one member of the party missing.
"Where's Makennon?"
"She skedaddled when the army stopped. Probably halfway back to Scholten Cathedral already, licking her wounds. Glad to see you made it, Hooper. But then, I should have known you would."
Kali waved him away, too knackered to speak. Her banter with Slowhand would, she knew, resume some time soon. There were, after all, things to do, among them find his sister and a cure for Merrit Moon.
Before that, however…
Kali patted Horse and took a bottle of flummox from his saddlebag. She drank deeply, and burped.
And then she stared down at Martak. At the sea. And she thought of what she had just encountered in it.
There were more questions to be answered than ever before. It was good, then, that she liked a challenge. In fact, she felt a renewed determination to discover the secrets of Twilight and the ultimate fate of the Old Races. And in doing so, she knew, she would leave nothing unexplored, nothing undiscovered, nothing untouched.
Nothing, now.
No stone unturned.