The Trials of Trass Kathra (39 page)

“Fair enough. Unite Lucius, Silus and Gabriella. But isn’t there one small flaw in your plan?”

“There is?”

“Gabriella DeZantez is dead.”

“Need I repeat that so, child, are you.”

“
Riiigghhtt
,” Kali said hesitantly. “So we’ve united and powered up this rod – what next?”

“You must travel beyond the World’s Ridge Mountains and there use the rod to restore the Circle of Power.”

“Whoa, stop.
Beyond
the World’s Ridge Mountains? But I thought there was nothing there?”

“It is true that your journey will end beyond the mountains. But also begin. Be patient, Kali, and you will see.”

Kali’s mind flashed back to her rescue of Merrit Moon. And to the journal she’d read.

“At least I think I know a way through. Or a start. A place called the Hall of Tales?”

“Indeed.”

Kali frowned. “The old man finding it is a bit convenient, don’t you think?”

“Convenient, or destined?”

“O-ho, no, don’t you start that. Don’t you dare start that.”

The dome rumbled and parts of the energies that surrounded Kali and Zharn started to diffuse. The dome wall reappeared and Kali saw cracks appearing throughout its structure. As Brundle had warned, the cap was beginning to fall apart.

“I think,” said Zharn, “that our moment in time is almost over.”

“Problem our end,” Kali replied. “We’re taking a bit of flak at the moment.”

“Kali,” Zharn said, her image starting to flicker, “Listen to me. You have the means to finish this once and for all, but I cannot tell you how because I do not know. But you have time to ask me one more question that might help you, and I will answer it as best I can.”

Kali could think of a hundred, but her brain was so busy that she couldn’t pin down one. Finally, she asked something that, despite sticking in her mind, she immediately thought may not have been relevant at all.

“Have you ever heard of someone called Marryme Moo?”

“The name” said Zharn, “is Marryme Moon.”

And then the dome exploded.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I
T WAS OVER.

Kali found herself standing suddenly in what remained of the Thunderflux cap, wind whistling through the shattered structure, less dome now than a ring of jagged projections. The Thunderflux was gone, diffused, and with it the link to the past that had existed for uncountable centuries. She was alone, and any more questions she might have, she’d have to answer herself. Including the most personal ones of all.

Poor Kali Hooper, the girl who never was.
And
the name is Marryme Moon
.

Kali shivered, exposed in more ways than one. She was therefore grateful when behind her a crunch of boots on debris signalled the arrival of Slowhand. She didn’t even need to turn to know it was him, merely sensed his comforting presence, and murmured her thanks when the archer slipped his shirt over her naked body, helping when her aching arms struggled with the sleeves.

Now she did turn, looking up at him. Slowhand’s shirt draped her like a tent, hanging below her knees, but it still couldn’t fully disguise the bruises and burns, the patches of crusted muck and weed, and here and there the spots of blood that were already seeping through the thick cloth.

“Fark, Hooper,” Slowhand said. “What happened to you?”

“Long story,” Kali replied, numbly. “Old story.”

“Want to share it?”

“Not yet.”

Kali cocked her head. It had only just occurred to her that, other than the whistling of the wind, the island was silent. No more tremors, no more screams.

“The Hel’ss Spawn is gone,” Slowhand said. “Come see.”

He took Kali by the hand and led her out of the ruin. They walked slowly up the slope to the clifftop that was Horizon Point. The bodies – what had been left of the bodies – of the Faith and their own people were gone, the landscape normal once more, and the only signs of the struggles that had taken place were the half-melted remains of the Brogmas, standing there slumped and still on the bleak promontory. Maybe one day, Kali thought, someone like herself would come to the island and see these things, wonder at their meaning and the role they had played in its history.

If there
was
a one day.

She took a breath. At least, as Slowhand had said, one small part of the battle was done. Gazing out to sea, she saw that the waters around the island were smooth, that the dra’gohn magic that had burst from her in the cavern far below had indeed delivered the killing blow to the alien entity and the bastard who’d possessed it. In a way, it had been the Hel’ss and Kerberos who’d fought the battle – their essences clashing in a preliminary skirmish – and for now, at least, Kerberos had won.

Kali took no comfort in the fact. Though the sea looked quite beautiful, coloured by the remains of the amberglow engines, as if lit by the rays of a glowing sunset, she knew now what she was really looking at. And all she could see was a series of majestic, spectral forms swooping above a slowly diffusing bloodstain that, when it was gone, would once again make Twilight an emptier place.

“Do you know what they did, Liam?” she said quietly. “Do you know what they did to the dra’gohn?”

The archer stepped up beside her, surprised to see tears on Kali’s cheeks. She seemed only half aware of his presence, staring out to sea, haunted somehow, and he noted her fingering her breastbone, as if contemplating something a long way, or a long time, away.

“Do you want to tell me?”

Kali did, and Slowhand pulled her to him as she related the tale, and when it was over he found all he could do was hold her, because there was nothing to say.

“We’re all that’s left now,” Kali said eventually. “The Four.”

“So what happens now?”

“We get the dra’gohn magic out of us and where it’s meant to be. One way or another, we end the wars of the Pantheon once and for all.”

Slowhand moved her to arms’ length, lips forming a small smile. “You never do anything
small
, do you?”

Kali laughed. “Well, the first thing we have to do is get off this farking island.”

“Being sorted as we speak. The others are below.”

“Then what are we waiting for?”

The two of them wound their way down the steps through the ruins, back to the beach where Redigor and his forces had landed. The place was a hive of activity, Sonpear and Pim and his men tinkering under Brundle’s supervision on the flutterbys, while Hetty, Pete Two-Ties and Martha DeZantez were helping the rest of their people, who had taken refuge underground, out from the access hatches, assembling them back on the surface. Kali bit her lip, looking in vain for the stretcher carrying Dolorosa, and fearing the worst when it didn’t appear. But as it happened, she shouldn’t have been looking for a stretcher at all.

“You arra the mess,” a voice criticised at the same time a bony finger prodded her in the shoulder. “We cannot take-a you anywhere.”

Kali span. “Dolorosa?”

The old woman loomed in her face, eyes narrowed, though there was a hint of humour in them. “Who elsa you theenk speaka thees way?”

“But how?” Kali said. Her gaze was drawn to Dolorosa’s wound, now nothing more than a patch of dried blood on her torn clothing with a hint of strange, gold stitching on her skin.

“If there’s one thing yer can say for me wife, it’s that she knows her ’erbs,” Brundle said from where he lay under a flutterby, bashing it with a spanner. He rose, wiping his hands with a rag. “That an’ a bit o’ the old knitting, eh?”

“Clack-clack,” Dolorosa said.

Kali smiled, patted the old woman on the shoulder, and moved towards Brundle.

“I wanted to thank you.”

“Me? It’s Brogma yer shou –”

“That isn’t what I meant,” Kali interrupted. And punched the dwarf hard in the face.

Brundle crashed onto his backside, hand over nose. Three streams of blood ran between his fingers.

“Owww! Wod de fark wad dad for?”

“The Trials,” Kali said. “You did design them, didn’t you?”

“Aye, well,” Brundle said, but was spared further defence when Kali offered him a hand up.

“Forget it,” she said. “They kept me on my toes, and I’ve a feeling I’m going to need to be kept on my toes.”

The dwarf, like Slowhand and Dolorosa before him, looked her battered and bloody body up and down. “Looks like yer made a bit of a worgle’s arse of it, to me.”

“Hey! There were complications, all right?”

The dwarf’s expression turned to one of surprising concern, knowing full well what the complications must have been. “If ah had a badge yer could have one. Bu ah don’t. Good to see yer made it, smoothskin.”

“Me, too. So what’s happening?”

Brundle pointed at the flutterbys.

“It’s taken a bit o’ tinkerin’, but these beasties should get most o’ yer people home.”

“That’s a long way. I thought they were short range flyers?”

“They are. Which is why I’ve had to cannibalise some ta handle the journey. It’ll take a week or so an’ ah can’t guarantee they’ll make it intact through the Stormwall, but they should come down within’ range o’ the peninsula’s shipping.”

Kali nodded. “Good enough. But if you’ve stripped them down, there won’t be enough room for everybody, surely?”

“No,” Brundle said, and hesitated. “But with those lost on both sides, fewer’ll have ta remain behind than yer think. Ah reckon five or six volunteers.”

“My hand’s up.”

“Ah don’t think so, lass. Yer know by now where yer should be.”

“And I know where these people should be,” Kali said, looking at the freed prisoners. “I’ll get there, Brundle, don’t you worry. Meantime, like I said – my hand’s up.”

“Fair enough,” the dwarf conceded. “An’ ah don’t think yer’ll havta look far for the rest.”

Kali jumped, suddenly aware of the forms of Slowhand, Dolorosa, Sonpear, Pim and Freel beside her. She studied the Allantian, glad to have him back with her, but aware also that his efforts to help since he’d been freed of Redigor had left him exhausted. His experience wasn’t something recovered from easily. “Jakub,” she said, calling him by his given name for the first time, “please, go with the others. We might need your strength when we get home.”

The Allantian faltered, then nodded, tromping wearily towards those who had been assembled to leave. Slowhand slapped his back as he departed.

“So the rest of us swim?” he asked Brundle. “Or do you have another plan?”

“Me scuttlebarge, o’ course,” Brundle said. He made an obvious point of staring at Kali’s behind and then added, “She’ll be a little low in the water, but we’ll make it.”

“Hey!” Kali protested.

“Hey yerself,” the dwarf replied. “Now let’s get these people on the move.”

Brundle moved among the flutterbys, starting up their engines, and the beach was filled with the sound of their insect-like drones. The choice of pilots was left to Kali, and she chose those whose determination she knew would get them home – Martha, Hetty, Abra and Freel himself among them. Civilians were led to the flutterbys in small groups, settled in, and then with a series of complex hand gestures that Kali was sure were more to do with showing off than actually necessary, Brundle walked from machine to machine, signalling each pilot that they were ready for take off.

“Good luck to all of you,” Martha DeZantez said.

“You, too,” Kali replied.

“See you at home, Kalee!”

“The gods be with you, girly, lady, madam, missus-woman.”

One by one, their noses dipping slightly, the flutterbys rose from the beach and headed out to sea. They skimmed the waves at first but then began to rise until they were silhouetted against the coming sunset, which was already starting to paint the waters. A few minutes later they were dots, and then they were gone.

“They’ll be fine,” Slowhand said, sensing Kali’s concern.

“I hope so.”

Kali studied the archer. He hadn’t turned as he’d spoken, but continued to stare out to sea. No, Kali thought, not out to sea but across it, doubtless seeing the distant shoreline of the peninsula in his mind’s eye. A peninsula that had one less thing to offer him when he returned.