The Trials of Trass Kathra (30 page)

“How is she?” Kali asked quietly, squatting down.

“Her infection has spread,” the archivist said. “In a wound this serious, she should be dead. Tough old girl.”

“Eet issa nothing,” Dolorosa mumbled unexpectedly. “Randy Cromwell Quaid once hadda me impaled witha his throbbing sabre.”

Martha reddened and coughed embarrassedly.

“No-a, wait,” Dolorosa said, only half there, “it wassa the
Robbing Sabre
.”

“I’m sorry,” Martha said. “She’s delirious.”

“No, she’s not,” Kali smiled, stroking Dolorosa’s hair. “She used to be a pirate.”

“
Did she
?” Martha said, impressed. In an effort to keep Dolorosa with them, she asked, “What was the name of your ship?”

Dolorosa sighed happily. “Eet wassa the
Fluffy Bunny
.”

“That doesn’t sound very... piratey.”

“It was the
Run For Your Money
,” Kali corrected.

“Better,” Martha agreed.

Kali paused. “Has she mentioned her husband at all – Aldrededor?”

“Something about running away with a space sheep?”

“Right. That’s not what it sounds like, either.”

It was good to hear Aldrededor had evaded the Faith’s clutches, but, wherever he and the
Tharnak
now were, she couldn’t begin to guess how he must be feeling having left Dolorosa behind. Kali bit her lip. “Martha, is there anything you can do for her?”

The woman shook her head. “Keep her comfortable is all. I’m sorry, Kali.”

Kali nodded, and stood. Mercifully, she had no time to reflect on her friend’s mortal state, as Brundle barrelled up to her and dragged her towards the cliff.

“You should see this,” he said. “Somethin’s happenin’.”

Kali joined the dwarf at the cliff edge, as did a number of others who’d spotted the same thing he had. Directly below was the spot where a portion of the Hel’ss Spawn with which Redigor had communicated had plummeted into the sea. It was still there, and still agitated, though not as agitated as the rest of its mass, farther out to sea. As they watched, it moved to reabsorb itself, but when it did its agitation seemed to be exacerbated, not calmed. A ripple effect headed inland and water began to crash against the cliffs in great spumes, some of it almost as high as the spot on which they all stood, catching them in its spray.

“Aw, shit,” Brundle said. “Ah think there’s a storm comin’.”

“I’m guessing you don’t mean a normal storm, right?” Slowhand queried.

The dwarf ground his teeth. “Nay, mah friend. Ah don’t mean a normal storm.”

“He’s right,” Kali said, pointing. “Take a look out there.”

Everyone’s gaze shifted offshore, towards the main body of the swirlpools, where the maws had begun to spin even more violently than before. Spumes had become plumes, and exploded into the air where the swirlpools clashed, and where they crashed back down again they rolled from the lips of the maelstroms in the form of huge, destructive waves. These, in turn, disrupted the swirlpools further, carrying them with them on their crest, raising them and tipping them so their normal rotation was stretched and skewed, and as a result they began to move through the waves erratically, unpredictably, more liquid tornados than the swirlpools they had been.

The deadly band that surrounded the island seemed to be going absolutely insane.

What was worse, it was heading directly for shore. Directly for them.

“You think we’ve pitsed it off?” Slowhand asked.

“No,” Kali said, frowning. “I think something’s wrong.”

“Maybe Redigor stuck in its throat.”

“Something more. There, where the Black Ship went down...”

There was no exact spot where the ship had sunk, of course, merely great swathes of water filled with its shattered wreckage. But wherever wreckage could be seen, so could something else. A glowing orange tint that was spreading through the swirlpools like a powerful dye.

“What is that?” Slowhand mused.

“The ship’s amberglow reactors,” Kali said. “They’re disintegrating.”

“Why would that affect the Hel’ss Spawn?”

“Gods know.”

“Aye, well, we can play twenty questions later,” Brundle growled. “Right now, we need to get these people underground.”

Brundle was right. The deadly ring of the Hel’ss Spawn was already closing on the island and great splashes of it were pummelling its shores and cliffs, rising higher and encroaching more inland every second. A heavy and viscous orange rain started to splatter the steps and the ruins, and then the edges of Horizon Point itself, and wherever the rain fell chaos was the result. Ground fleetingly became fog-like or gaseous, or as solid as stone, flickering through all the colours of the spectrum and more before liquefying before their eyes. The shapes of boulders changed, spherical one second, square and spear-like the next, taking on the textures of glass or wood or sponge and ultimately nothing at all. Some of the upper buildings of the ruins folded and bent on their foundations, as if viewed through a funhouse mirror, as flexible as rubber one moment, fragile as paper another, before the stresses they suffered made them, too, lose their solid state and drain slowly away.

It was a mind-boggling vista, a nightmare landscape, as if the Hel’ss Spawn was trying, but failing, to find a form that it could maintain, as if this might rid it of whatever poison it seemed to have absorbed. No one wanted to imagine what would happen if it touched a human, and it galvanised them all into action.

“You two,” Pim ordered two of his men, “take charge of the old woman’s stretcher.”

“Be gentle,” Kali said. “Slowhand?”

“Already on it,” the archer said.

He was moving through the crowd, ushering those too stunned to act for themselves towards the hatches to Brundle’s underground warren. The dwarf himself was darting around, using his axe to unseal others, ensuring there were as many routes to safety as possible. Sonpear, Red and even Abra helped but, even so, it was a slow process, each hatch able to take only one refugee at a time, the age or health of some making it a frustratingly arduous descent.

Inevitably, there were casualties, first the stilled Brogmas – whose armour to some degree resisted the rain but smoked and sparked nonetheless, shifting out of shape until they slumped – and then the humans. The orange downpour, soaked a group of three and for a second they became one; a horrible, flailing blur of misshapen limbs, and then all that was left was the fading echo of their agonised cries. Another man stumbled as he tried to take a short cut across some rocks, and the rain caught him mid-fall, and when he hit the ground he burst like a water balloon. Yet another, a woman, stood frozen to the spot, staring at the heavens and screaming with mouth open wide, but the scream soon turned to a gurgle as her mouth erupted with her liquefied insides, coating and disintegrating her from the outside in.

Kali spotted two people towards the edge of Horizon Point, cut off from safety by a river of orange ooze. She moved to help them but found herself forcibly held back by Brundle. The two of them struggled at arm’s length, the wind whipping at their hair.

“No,” the dwarf shouted. “Let someone else help.”

“They’re going to die!”

“
Everyone
’s going to die unless you do what this island’s waited for you to do.”

“Which is?”

“Find out the truth. It’s time for yer little chat.”

“Fark it, dwarf, this
isn’t
the time. Not for more of your riddles. The truth about what?”

Brundle’s free arm pointed at the Hel’ss Spawn, at the Hel’ss itself, at Kerberos. “About that, and that, and that.” He pulled her towards him, as if they were engaged in some strange dance, then growled in her face. “The truth about
everything
, of course.”

Kali stared at him hopelessly, unable to break free, sensing somehow she
shouldn’t
break free, that what Brundle insisted upon was indeed what she needed to do. Her dilemma was alleviated somewhat as Slowhand half ran, half hopped by, slapping her reassuringly on the shoulder as he headed towards the stranded pair.

“Look around ye, lass,” Brundle growled. It wasn’t just Horizon Point that was taking a battering from the Hel’ss Spawn but all of the island, and everywhere the disruption caused by the spawn’s instability was manifesting secondary, natural effects. The island trembled, scrub and rock tumbled from its edges into the sea, and here and there sudden cracks of varying widths sundered the ground, generating clouds of dust that were starting to stifle the surface in a smoking fug. “This is lookin’ to be the worst batterin’ Trass Kattra’s ever taken,” the dwarf said. “Maybe even worse than the day the Hel’ss arrived.”

“So? You said we could survive it.”

“Not the problem. In case yer hadn’t noticed, this entire island is riddled wi’ caves, many o’ me own makin’ but not all. Some are safe enough but others are ancient and ain’t seen shorin’ for a god’s age. If they go, there’s a good chance the Thunderflux’ll go wi’ them.”

Kali stared up at the huge dome, which was trembling like the rest of the island. Brundle’s fears seemed justified as the glow that was emanating from its covering of runes seemed slightly diffused, as if their integrity were breaking down. One particular patch of its convex surface was already spewing a thin beam of brilliant blue light into the sky.

“What does the Thunderflux have to do with this?”

“It’s where yer have to go. For yer little chat.”

“It is?”

“Aye. And
now
, lass.”

Kali swallowed and gazed across Horizon Point, saw the last few of the refugees vanishing through the hatches, and that Slowhand had managed to rescue those she’d intended to herself. She caught the archer’s eye as he passed, supporting one in each arm, and pointed up towards the dome. Kali smiled as Slowhand – bless him – nodded in acceptance, without even knowing what was going on. Neither did she, really, but she’d missed him because of that. He didn’t need to know. He was just always there.

“Fine,” she said to Brundle, starting to march up the hill. “Let’s go.”

“Wrong way, smoothskin,” the dwarf said. “The way we’re headin’ is down.”

“Down?”

“There’s no way into the Thunderflux through the cap, that’s why it’s a cap,” Brundle said. He turned and strode urgently down the steps through the ruins, dodging the rain that continued to fall. Kali followed, instinctively but rather redundantly shielding her head with her hand, knowing all the time that if one splatter – or worse – hit it, the hand might as well not be there at all. There were a couple of close calls – Brundle cursing and ripping off a piece of his leather armour that dissolved even as it was thrown; Kali gasping as a stray spot blistered her cheek, but which her regenerative abilities seemed to keep under control – but at last they made it to cover. It was there, in the interior of a ruin whose floor had remained intact and which had steps leading down, that Brundle continued the conversation of some minutes before.

“And o’ course,” he said, with some hesitation, “first yer have ta go through yer trial.”

Kali stopped dead. “Come again? Trial? What kind of trial?”

“Och, nothin’ legal. Nothin’ borin’ like that. Just a trial of life and, er... death.”

“Life and, er... death? Now I really am confused. You said that I was meant to be here on this island? That I have to have this chat? But you’re going to try to
kill
me before I do?”

“Smoothskin, understand,” Brundle said, unusually flustered. “What yer’ll hear in the Thunderflux is not for anybody’s ears. Addressed to the wrong person, it could cause mass panic, and ta a person wi’ the sense to understand it, grant power they shouldna have. That elf of yours is a case in point.”

“Redigor’s dead, Brundle. All I see is that Trass Kattra – the world – is about to fall apart, and before I can stop it you want me to jump through
hoops
.”

The dwarf scratched his beard. “Ah don’t recall any hoops.”

“You know what I mean, dammit!”

“Ah’m sorry, smoothskin. The secrets of Trass Kattra are just too valuable. Your trial – and the trials o’ the other three, had one of ’em made it here before ye – are designed so only that member of the kattra has a chance o’ gettin’ through.”

A chance!
Kali was about to yell, but then bit her tongue. What Brundle was saying was only, after all, what Merrit Moon had said years before in the
Warty Witch
. A truism she’d taken on board and used as a code throughout her life. That Twilight just wasn’t ready for some things. If the Thunderflux really did contain what Brundle said – the truth about everything – could she really blame him, or blame whoever was ultimately responsible for this trial, for protecting it this way?

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” Kali said. “What do I need to do?”

“Just follow me,” Brundle instructed.

Kali did. Down the steps in the floor of the ruin and into a new cave system. Down into shadow. The rumbles from above quietened as they descended, becoming almost inaudible by the time they came to a cobweb shrouded arch. Beyond it she sensed a larger chamber. She swallowed. The darkness within was total.

“Tell me one thing,” she said to Brundle as he ripped the thick cobweb away. “If I make it through this trial, what can I expect on the other side – in the Thunderflux?”

For once the dwarf’s response was simple and to the point.

“The past, smoothskin. The past.”