The Trials of Trass Kathra (31 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

B
RUNDLE MOVED INTO
the chamber, taking a flint from his pocket and striking it four times. A matching number of torches flared into life with a rush of sound like a sudden squall.

As their strange, greenish light revealed their surroundings, Kali saw that each torch lit an archway carved through the chamber wall ahead. Each archway, in turn, possessed a curving lintel of gold inscribed with a large, ornate, ancient looking symbol – a different one for each arch. From left to right, Kali saw what she first took to be a snake but then realised might represent a magical thread; then a pair of hands, palms pressed tightly together as if in prayer; then a rolling crest of a wave; and finally, a clenched fist. Clenched, Kali felt, not in anger but determination, rather in the way she’d been known to clench her own.

Hanging from the lintels was the accumulation of ages, great sheets of cobweb stirring in response to sighing breezes from beyond.

“Spooky,” Kali said over the flutter of the torches. “So this is the start of the Trials, huh?”

“Aye, this is the start. Each o’ these arches leads to a path built to challenge the abilities of one the Four, and be traversable only by them. The first is the Path of Magic, the path of Lucius Kane. The second, the Path of Faith, the path of Gabriella DeZantez. The third, the Path of Water, the path of Silus Morlader. And the fourth, the Path –”

“The Path of Confusion, right? The Path of Kali Hooper.”

Brundle gave another of his strange looks.

“The Path of Endurance,” he corrected.

The chamber shook slightly, the conditions on the surface clearly worsening. A skitter of dust fell from the roof.

“There isn’t much time,” Brundle said.

“Okay. But if there are four paths, shouldn’t all four of us be here? I mean, if this ‘truth’ the paths lead to is so world-shattering, shouldn’t we all be here to listen?”

“The Truth awaits all four, but not all four need to hear it. The first will pass the Truth to the others... to the world.”

“Four known to us, Four unknown to each other,” Kali countered. “Four who will be known to all.”

“Is that meant to be some kind o’ weird cod philosophy?”

Well, at least Brundle was in the dark about one thing, Kali thought.

“No. You just reminded me of something a fish once told me,” she said mischievously. “But if I told you, I’d have to brill you.”

“Hah!” Brundle laughed, appreciating, if not the bad pun, having the tables turned. But he wasn’t going to let her get away with it. “I’m glad to hear you still have your sense of humour,” he said, his face looming up at hers and darkening. “You’ll need it.”

Kali’s face, too, darkened, but not in response to his comment.

“There are only three of us, now – you know that? Gabriella... she died.”

“Did she?” Brundle said.

Without another word, the dwarf moved towards the entrance to the Path of Endurance, seemingly ready to usher Kali in.

“Wasting no time, I see?” Kali said, swallowing. “Is there anything I need to do?”

“There’s an antechamber beyond the arch where you can pray if you wish, or bless yourself with holy water after removing your kit and clothes. ’Course, I don’t expect you –”

“O-ho-ho, back up there, shorty,” Kali broke in. “Naked? You want me to do this naked?”

“The Path tests you and your abilities, not the tools at your disposal,” Brundle said. “But don’t worry, smoothskin, ah promise ah won’t peek.”

“And how am I to know you haven’t got more strategically placed vertispys in there?”

Brundle sighed. “Because ah’d be letchin’ over summat so thin ah could use it to clean me ruddy pipe, is why. Ah’m a dwarf, and you ain’t. Yer might as well accuse me of fancyin’ a worgle.”

“There are some who do.”

“There are?”

“Sure,” Kali said. “They meet in secret. In, er, furry costumes. And they, um, have this secret handshake. Well, not a handshake exactly as worgles don’t have hands but they do this kind of wobbling thing with their...”

Jerragrim Brundle’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Yer wouldn’t by any chance be tryin’ to delay goin’ in there, would ye?”

Kali swallowed, caught out. “Why would I do that?”

“Oh, ah don’t know, but here’s a stab in the dark.
Because yer might die
?”

Kali turned to face the arch. The fact was, she
was
trying to delay the start of the Trial, but not because of the danger. No, if she were honest with herself, after all her years of trying to solve the mystery of what happened to the Old Races, it was
that
she was afraid of. Finally learning the truth. Would it place more responsibility on her shoulders? Or take that responsibility away? What was she to do in either case, being at the centre of things or being out of it completely, her job done? It wasn’t death but
survival
that she feared, the knowledge that whatever happened from here on in was going to change things –
change her
– for ever.

Right then, as she stared at the billowing curtain of cobweb draped from the symbol of the clenched fist, she would have given anything for Lucius Kane to be standing before his arch in her place. Let the shadowmage burden the responsibility, when she’d encountered him in Andon he’d seemed capable enough, after all. Or Silus Morlader. She didn’t know the man but was aware of his supposed legacy and somehow this place – far out to sea and battered by the swirlies – seemed more appropriate to his skills. Even poor Gabriella, had she lived. Despite the doubts the Sword of Dawn had started to feel about the Church she had served all her life, surely her own admirably unshakable faith would have carried her through?

But none of them were standing here, were they? It was just her. Alone. And she could either stand here all day talking pits with the dwarf or get on with it.

“I’m ready,” she said.

Brundle nodded and moved to the arch, slowly pulling away the thick cobweb. Taking a deep breath, Kali moved towards the shadows beyond.

“Smoothskin,” Brundle said, placing a hand on her side as she passed, “if it’s worth anythin’ ah know yer can do this.”

“Thanks, shorty.”

“See you on the other side, eh?”

“’k.”

Kali moved through the arch, and the world behind her was gone. Not gone physically but in her mind, subsumed by the feel of the chamber she found herself in.

It felt indescribably old and, despite the rumbles from above, indescribably lonely. The knowledge that this place had been created for her and her alone – that no one else had ever,
ever
set foot here and likely never would – weighed heavily on her mind. Kali examined its meagre contents; a stone trough of water and a stone bench, illuminated by what appeared to be glowing crystals in the walls, and then another cobwebbed arch which led out from the chamber opposite to the one by which she’d entered. Through there lay the Trial and whatever it had in store for her, and where in any other circumstances she would have ignored Brundle’s instructions, tackled it under her own terms, here that somehow felt wrong. Here she suspected she should follow the rules to the letter.

Even if it was so farking cold.

She sighed and stripped off her bodysuit, folding it neatly and laying it on the bench. She stood over it for a second, shivering in the breeze that came from further within, allowing her naked body to acclimatise to the environment. She looked at the trough and wished that instead of blessed water it held a few gallons of thwack. That was the only spiritual aid she needed, right now, thank you very much.

Despite the temperature, she scooped up a handful of water and splashed her face and neck. She hissed but the cold liquid invigorated her and reinforced the reality of her situation. She took three deep breaths, then turned to the second arch.

She was ready.

She stepped through into the darkness.

Found the floor ceased to exist under her feet.

And fell.

Kali’s yelp of surprise segued into a longer wail of alarm as she tumbled down a steep slope. Whatever she’d expected beyond the arch it wasn’t to be wrong-footed from the word go, and in the seconds it took her to come to terms with her situation she repeatedly impacted hard with the walls of the passage as its curving descent bounced her down and down, left and right, deep into the bedrock of the island. Then her survival instincts kicked in and she flung out her arms in an attempt to halt her progress. For a few seconds her flesh grated against rushing rock but then the walls of the drop were no longer within her reach. Feeling only air on her palms, and then suddenly also beneath her, it didn’t take much to work out the passage had ended and she was now in freefall in some kind of vertical shaft. Knowing the nature of this place, it wasn’t likely there was going to be a cushion beneath her.

She flailed in the darkness, seeking a means to prevent her ending the Trial almost before it had started as a mass of shattered bones. Her hands closed on some kind of rope – ancient hemp but tarred, it felt, to preserve it – and with an organ jarring
oof
she halted her fall, bringing a shower of clattering stones and dust from far above. The respite was only momentary, however, as, while she swung there, she heard the metallic
klik-klak
of some kind of ratchet releasing itself as a result of her weight, and suddenly the rope was snaking heavily down about her and she was dropping once more. She flailed again, made contact with another rope, and the sound of another
klik-klak
made her heart thud.

Shit
!

But part of her had already worked out what was going on. She leapt into dark space again, found another rope –
klik-klak
– and then another –
klik-klak
– each time falling further towards the base of the shaft, and with increasing speed. To her left and her right, throwing herself upwards and downwards amidst what she now knew to be a veritable forest of dangling deathtraps of different lengths, she moved from rope to rope all the time sensing the ever accelerating approach of whatever lay beneath her. Still shrouded in total darkness, she at last clutched a rope that seemed not to produce a response from a ratchet, and she hung there gasping, the ancient hemp creaking as she moved slowly on its end.

Klik-Klak
.

Bastard!

Kali lunged, desperately, instinctively, and so violently that the next rope she grabbed onto swung wildly back and forth, crashing her against the walls of the shaft and sending her spinning in the opposite direction. This didn’t exactly improve her mood but, after a few seconds one thing did.

It held. As it stilled, the rope held.

Her weight on it also seemed to activate some kind of mechanism, and to her right part of the blackness rumbled. A square of light – a doorway to another passage – appeared in the shaft’s walls. As it did, it illuminated the area where she dangled. Directly beneath her Kali could now see the entire base of the shaft was rooted with spikes taller than she was, and though they were clearly as ancient as the ropes she was willing to bet they had lost none of their keenness. Kali flexed a foot, dipping the flesh off her big toe onto the tip of one of them, then snatched it away with a hiss as a bead of blood appeared.

Clichéd
, she thought, but couldn’t help but admire the design of the trap that could so easily have left her impaled upon the spikes. Right from the second she’d stepped through the arch, the whole thing had been a test of reaction – the kind of reaction only she, as one of the Four, would possess. That this was, she suspected, only the start of what her Trial had in store for her, brought a summation of its designer’s ingenuity that consisted of just one word.

“Twat.”

Despite that, Kali did now feel advantaged. She had some measure of the Trial. And if the rest of it consisted of the same perverse, impossibly difficult challenges she had just faced, it might even be fun. With a grunt of determination she began to inch her way up the rope to draw level with the doorway, then swung, let go, and landed.

The passage she was in was lit by the same growths as in the preparation chamber, but the fact that she could now see where she was going did not make Kali any less cautious. Just as well, too, as a sudden grinding of ancient gears gave her a moment’s notice of the crescent shaped blades that began to scythe rapidly across the passage before her, all along its length. The
vwoop
,
vwoop
,
vwoop
of the blades was constant, and though Kali had encountered similar deathtraps in other locations, this one differed in one vital respect. The gaps between the blades were unforgiving, no wider than she was, making the old run and stop, run and stop strategy impossible, and unless she wanted to lose the bits that Brundle had fondled in the bar in Gransk, or the arse he’d commented on at Horizon Point, she’d have to use a different technique.

The sudden rumbling of a wall behind her, closing the exit from the passage and moving forward to shunt her towards the blades, forced Kali to act without thought, and she crossed her arms tightly against her chest, sucked her stomach in, and began to pirouette through the blades.