The Trials of Trass Kathra (35 page)

Kali dangled in the entity’s strange grip like a marionette whose strings had been severed, glowering, despite her pummelled state, at the viscous form before her. For one fleeting second she was transported back to the observatory at Scholten because the Hel’ss Spawn rearranged itself into a semblance of Redigor’s features and returned her gaze, smiling coldly.

She knew then that she was only suffering the first act of Redigor’s perverse game. The battering he was giving her was not meant to kill her, only soften her up. Redigor wanted her utterly helpless, broken not just physically but mentally, so that she could do nothing when he eventually rammed the Hel’ss Spawn’s hungry tendrils inside her, ripping away her very soul.

Well, she’d felt Redigor’s touch before, when he’d tried to drain her of her essence in the Chapel of Screams, and she’d be damned if she was going to let it happen again. If Redigor wanted to knock the fight out of her, she’d show him just how much fight she had left.

Kali began to kick and pummel in the Hel’ss Spawn’s grip, only for it to fling her through the air towards the cavern’s unforgiving rock walls again. The undulating form followed immediately, ready to snatch her up again, but this time she was ready.

As she flew through the air, Kali grabbed onto one of the lengthy strands of seaweed that dangled from each of the bridges, and swiftly swung herself around so that she smashed back into – and through – the viscous entity that Redigor controlled. As she’d guessed, the manoeuvre was so unexpected that even the Hel’ss Spawn had difficulty adjusting, and part of the shape-shifting entity collapsed, unable to reform itself in time to stop her. Redigor’s avatar did so a second later, of course, but by then it was too late, Kali having used the seaweed in the manner of a vine and swung herself to a point where she let go, flailing through the air towards the hanging detritus of the cavern’s adjacent bridge.

Swinging from marine vine to marine vine, Kali built up a momentum that enabled her to use them all as ropes to evade Redigor, and changing her course frequently and unexpectedly the entity found itself being stretched to the limits of its shape-shifting abilities, breaking apart, as it pursued her about the cavern. Exactly where this was leading, Kali wasn’t sure, but she suspected that the orange taint from the amberglow that had caused so much disturbance to the Hel’ss on the surface – the same glow that infused it here – was damaging it somehow, and hopefully it was a chink in its armour that she could exploit.

All she had to do was keep moving. Survive long enough to find out.

What Kali hadn’t taken into account was that in some way Redigor himself seemed aware that his alien host was damaged, and rather than be cowed by the fact that the Hel’ss Spawn was breaking apart in its crazed pursuit of her, he pushed the entity to double its efforts to succeed. Kali was guessing but it seemed to her that Redigor
didn’t care
that the Hel’ss Spawn might be destroyed, that this was no longer about his survival, or his insane plan being resurrected, but just between he and her. It was revenge Redigor craved. Petty revenge.

This was personal.

There would be no stopping a madman, Kali realised. This coupled with the fact that even she couldn’t keep this up for ever, that she was rapidly tiring from the exertion involved, led, inevitably to a moment where Redigor’s avatar gained the upper hand.

It was an appropriate phrase, for as Kali made a minor error that caused her to miss a leap between seaweed strands, forcing her to swing for it a second time, what remained of the mass of the Hel’ss Spawn exploded from the water and clenched her in what resembled a giant fist. Kali struggled and slithered within it but the fist held her fast, and she roared in frustration as Redigor’s features appeared fleetingly in the viscous matter once more.

The bastard was smiling. He had everything that he wanted.

All that remained was for him to deliver the finishing blow.

Kali swallowed repeatedly, tensed in anticipation, remembering how Redigor had invaded her in the Chapel of Screams, tried to strip away her soul, and would have succeeded had it not been for the intervention of Gabriella DeZantez. It had been the worst pain she had ever felt, agonising beyond words. But this, this was going to be different.

It was going to be one hells of a lot worse.

Kali flung back her head and roared in pain as the Hel’ss Spawn coated her body and began to insinuate itself into her flesh through every orifice, every pore. She watched horrified as it travelled beneath her skin, seeking out muscle, tendon, sinew and bone, every vital organ, and she began to buck and groan as each part of her began slowly to be reworked from the inside. It couldn’t be happening but it was, it was, and as her vision pulsed with blood pumped wrongly through her body, in great, warm washes where it should not have been, she saw that her flesh had already begun to dissolve, her arms and legs shrinking, deforming into shapeless, liquid things, her stomach collapsing and her flesh running from her in streams, like candlewax.

She would be nothing soon, and her universe consisted of one endless, deafening scream.

Then, suddenly, as one small part of her recognised the Hel’ss Spawn had worked its way up, was spreading now over her thumping heart, ready to take that, too, she felt another kind of pain. No, not pain, but the kind of red-hot, nagging insistence in her chest she had felt when almost drowned. This feeling was different, though, not the result of a desperate need to draw air from without, but the need of something to be released from
within
.

Images flashed unbidden into her mind. The moment at the Crucible when Tharnak had told her she shared a legacy with him. Brundle, placing his hand on her in the tavern in Gransk, the gasp he had uttered thereon. Herself, standing in front of a mirror in the
Flagons
that one dark night she had told no one about.

The night that she had become aware of the thing she believed made her what she was.

The night that she had seen the thread within her
glow
.

Oh Gods, Kali thought, as it began to glow again, brighter than ever before. What was this? What the hells was this? And then the pain of what the Hel’ss Spawn was doing to her was forgotten as her spine arched so acutely it seemed to snap in two, and she screamed with an agony she thought could get no worse as something broke from within her and the cavern exploded with light.

Kali felt herself falling, released from the grip of the Hel’ss Spawn, remade miraculously whole. Instinctively, unthinking, she grabbed onto a strand of seaweed and swung there breathlessly as before her the Hel’ss Spawn roared. She had no idea what she had done but suddenly the entity – Redigor’s screaming face within it – was retreating from her and flinging itself about the cavern as though infected with some deadly toxin. Against rock after rock and wall after wall it crashed, each time breaking itself apart into smaller and smaller segments, and then, when there was little of it left, what remained of it collapsed into the waters and, bobbing on the waves, began to drift lifelessly away.

Kali hung where she was, gasping, unable to believe what had happened, waiting for the Hel’ss Spawn, for Redigor, to rear up once more. But after five full minutes had passed, it, and he, did not.

The Hel’ss Spawn was gone.

Bastian Redigor was gone.

Slowly, Kali lifted herself hand over hand up the seaweed strand and then collapsed onto the bridge above. She lay there on her back for a few seconds, her palm caressing her chest, feeling the place the light had come from. It was back within her now, that she could feel, but, despite what it appeared to have done, it was of no comfort.

Gods, what was it? What was
she
?

Was this a part of the Truth?

Kali stood and stared ahead of her. The lightning column that was the Thunderflux waited no more than ten yards along the bridge on which she stood, and somehow she knew that this was the right bridge,
her
bridge, and that whether by accident or design of fate she’d been delivered to the right place. Whatever lay within was the end of the Path of Endurance, the end of the path of Kali Hooper.

Her destiny.

Kali took a breath and strode inside the Thunderflux. She found herself rising and then stopping inside a domed chamber, and she guessed she was inside the Thunderflux cap. The same energies that had danced in the column danced here, too, all around her, beating at the walls, but they did her no harm.

The only shock she felt was when a face appeared before her.

A woman.

An elf.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“H
ELLO,
K
ALI,
”
THE
elf said. She spoke slowly and her words trembled in the air, as if they were the most delicate things in the world. “As I speak, I am separated from you by many thousands of years, and the civilisations I represent are about to end. They shall be gone from this world soon – taken by the entity you will already have encountered. The elves and the dwarfs and all of their grand achievements will be no more. But we leave behind us the seeds of a new race – the human race – whose origins lie in the depths of the oceans of this world, and not, like us, in the skies above... or on other worlds, far beyond your skies.” The elf paused. “I expect you have many questions. Please feel free to ask anything you wish.”

“I, er, don’t suppose you have a towel?”

The elf smiled. “No, I don’t have a towel.”

“Right. Sorry about that. I guess I’m a little nervous. How about who are you? And how can we be speaking like this?”

“My name is Zharn. And I am able to speak to you because I am trapped in a moment of time. A moment created when the Thunderflux was capped, that links the Trass Kattra that is now with the Trass Kattra that was then.”

“You’re here on Trass Kattra. In the past?”

“Not just the past, Kali. The End Time. Even as I speak, the darkness is upon us, and were it not for this moment, I would already be dead.”

Kali swallowed. “Who are you, Zharn?”

“One who tried to help save our world. One of four.”

“Four?” Kali repeated. “You mean like the
Four
four?”

“Yes, that is what I mean. I was of the kattra of this time. And it was I who was chosen to come to the Thunderflux to relate the tale you need to hear.”

“Okay,” Kali said cautiously. “I don’t seem to have anything else on at the moment.”

“We share a singular heritage, Kali – and a singular foe. One that will be difficult to explain because its history is ages in the making. But it must be explained if you are to succeed in what you must do. It is a tale of growing knowledge, of constant adversity, and, until now, of failure. Steady yourself, for we are about to begin.”

What? Kali thought. But then the dome in which she stood was suddenly a dome no more. Its walls vanished and she found herself adrift in a void, floating, and somehow knew she was in the centre of the strange expanse she had seen when she had risen above Twilight in the
Tharnak
. This ‘space’ was as immense as it had been then, her confines utterly gone, and she felt that if she began to travel in any direction, she might never reach its limits.

There was only one difference: where within this void she had then been able to see Kerberos and Twilight’s distant sun, marred slightly by the body she now knew to be the Hel’ss, here there was nothing. Nothing in the void. Nothing at all.

“My gods,” Kali breathed.

“In the beginning,” said Zharn, “there was night. Worlds without light. Rocks without life.”

Kali found herself stunned, backpaddling as she might in water to keep afloat, as a number of blindingly bright spheres appeared out of nowhere in the space all around her.

“And then, the gods came.”

The spheres hung about Kali at various distances – unimaginable distances – illuminating the void and the lifeless worlds she could now see scattered throughout it. Each was also far more than a sphere, Kali sensed, because from them all she could feel the same strange and powerful sentience emanating.