The Crucible of the Dragon God (35 page)

Kali had had her escape route mapped out from the moment Andon had appeared on the horizon, a sequence of buildings she intended to use as stepping stones to get her safely down to ground level, starting with the steeple of the Final Faith church. She was sure the Archimandrite in charge of the place wouldn't mind the sacrilege, after all it was his lot that had started this mess in the first place. Of course, she would have to contend with the k'nid on her way down, but she still had her crackstaff and that should keep her safe enough until she could reach the Three Towers and hand over the crystal whereupon - hopefully -
that
particular problem would become academic. All she had to do was time her drop right so that she didn't break her legs.

She was beginning to unfurl a rope from her equipment belt, intending to tie it off and lower herself part of the way, when the ship shook violently and unexpectedly beneath her. She glanced worriedly ahead, saw that the ship was veering off course slightly. And if it continued the way it was going, it would veer away from the portal and into one of the towers themselves.

Dammit!
Kali thought, dropping the rope and returning to the controls.

She had little, if any, idea of their internal workings and so did the only thing she could - thump them.
Hard
. She thumped them again but there was no response. And then, for the sake of variety, she kicked them. There was a slight response then and the course of the ship corrected slightly. But only for a second. Clearly the ship had leaked too much charge to continue without some persuasion and the implication of that couldn't have been worse.

She couldn't abandon the ship. She had to ride with it into the portal. And this time she doubted she would be coming back.

Kali looked up. The portal was directly in front of her now, fully formed, filling her world. The junction between realities seemed to slow the world around it, so that the ship edged rather than raced forward, but Kali wasn't sure whether that was a good thing or not, because it gave her more time to see what was waiting for her
inside
. Looming large, directly on the other side of the portal -
filling it
- was Domdruggle's face. That angry, wizened, no longer human face. And it was roaring at her.

"Hooper!" it shouted.

Or did it? The voice seemed to come from behind and below her, faint on the wind, and somehow not possessing the rumbling, vocal
gravitas
one might expect from an ages old, spectral wizard.

"Hooper!"

No
, she thought.
It couldn't be
.

Kali raced to the rear of the deck and looked down.
Oh Gods, no, it really, really couldn't be...

But it was.

There was a naked man on a horse following the ship.

Correction. There was a naked man on
Horse
following the ship.

Riding him across the rooftops.

Kali stared, and despite her predicament couldn't help but smile. The fact was, Slowhand wasn't so much riding Horse as Horse was allowing him to stay mounted as he galloped in pursuit, the great beast taking the gaps between buildings with powerful leaps, flinging the archer about in the saddle. Quite how he had gotten here so quickly she could only guess at, but presumably filled with indignant anger at being unceremoniously - and literally - dumped, Slowhand had survived the Rainbow River and hot-footed it to the
Flagons
and coaxed Horse from his sickbed with warnings about how she was in mortal danger. The bamfcat's unusual abilities took care of the rest. Kali's heart lifted to see how well the beast had recovered under Merrit Moon's tender ministrations, and having him nearby made her feel less alone against what she faced. The archer, too, she supposed begrudgingly.

"Hooper, jump!" Slowhand shouted, his voice faint across the distance between them.

"I can't!" she shouted back, hoping that he not only heard but realised there was a reason for her refusal beyond the dizzying height. Fortunately, the ship juddered once more to illustrate her point.

A second passed, Slowhand sizing the situation up. As Kali corrected the ship's course once more, she heard: "Hooper, just time it!"

Time what?
Kali thought.

Because despite their mutual effort, Slowhand and Horse remained too far away. But at that second the nose of the ship impacted with the portal, squelching as it entered, and the effect the portal had on seeming to slow time was magnified tenfold as it slowly began to suck the ship through the bridge between worlds. Two things became immediately apparent to Kali - one, that this would give Slowhand and Horse time to draw closer and, two, that the ship no longer needed to be steered. It was entering the portal now no matter what and that made the difference between heroism and suicide. The jump itself might be suicide but at least she could
try
.

Again, she raced to the back of the ship, saw Slowhand and Horse had drawn closer, galloping now across some of the higher rooftops surrounding the Andon Heart. But they were still some way away and one hells of a long way down. She'd never make it.

Still, Slowhand had to have some kind of plan. She knew he thought she thought he was an idiot but he was an idiot she had learned to trust. Even Slowhand wouldn't suggest she leap to her death. She
had
to trust him, whatever his plan.

As he had said, she had to time it, wait until the last possible moment before she leapt. Decided, Kali returned to the bow of the ship and stood directly before the portal, drawing a deep breath to steady herself against Domdruggle's immense, looming visage. And as the ship penetrated ever further into the portal she began to back up, keeping the threshold at a safe distance all the time. As she did, she mentally envisaged the deck shortening behind her, waiting for the
exact
moment when it had become just short
and
long enough to make her leap a viable one. And then, with a roar of determination, she turned and ran.

Kali pounded along the remaining deck, legs thumping, arms pumping, her panting drowning out every other sound as she watched the Andon skyline bob before her. And then she was in the air.

She soared from the end of the ship, legs still pumping, arms windmilling as, behind her, the ship continued to be absorbed by the portal, but she was no longer interested in what was behind her, only what was in front and below. As the air whistled about her she tried to orientate herself enough to spot Slowhand and there he was, spurring Horse up the sixty degree slope of the roof of an Inn. And then, at full gallop, he spurred Horse off it so that the great beast seemed, momentarily, to be making a jump towards the heavens.

Then the pair of them disappeared.

Suddenly they were gone. Completely.

Oh crap
.

She had recognised the disturbance in the air about Horse enough to know that he had just made one of his 'leaps' but she had no idea if the leap had been made by accident or design. Maybe Horse had simply panicked at what the archer had made him do, or maybe it had been a deliberate, if mistimed, attempt to somehow reach her.

Alone now, Kali watched the rooftops grow beneath her and tried not to anticipate the impact she would soon feel. It wasn't the first time she had been in a situation such as this but it
was
different. Falling from a suicide slide above the rooftops of Scholten was one thing but here she was, having leapt from somewhere almost forty stories high, and that was something else entirely.

Suddenly Horse appeared directly in front and a little below her, a roaring Slowhand on his back. The shock was so great that Kali almost dropped right past them thinking:
Hey, that was neat.
Then her survival instincts kicked in and she grabbed for the beast - and missed. Luckily, in the second she'd made her attempt, Horse's momentum had carried him slightly further forward and, with the aid of a horn that he suddenly thrust forward, she was able to flail and grab again, flinging herself up onto his back behind Slowhand. At the exact moment she did, all three of them succumbed to gravity and they fell.

The world disappeared around her.

Reappeared.

Horse impacted with the ground so hard that his hooves shattered the stone flagging.

But they were down.

Safe.

Almost.

"Thanks, Slowhand," Kali said, and leaving a stunned and naked archer behind, began to run off along the street.

"Where the hells are you going?"

Kali produced the prism from her equipment belt, waved it in the air.

"Have to see a man about a god!"

Chapter Eighteen

The sky above the
Here There Be
Flagons
raged with a storm unlike any heard or seen before - a storm of turbulent, clashing clouds and roaring thunder, green forked lightning and a strange syrupy rain. The same storm as raged over Tarn raged over the rest of Pontaine and over the Anclas Territories and Vos too. Coast to coast as far as the Storm Wall, reaching every edge and every corner of the land to cleanse it of those who would have destroyed it. There was nowhere for these things - for the k'nid - to escape, because this was a storm visited on the land not by nature but supernature. A phenomenon born somewhere between the ancient magics and the final, doomed technological achievements of the Old Races.

The storm had raged for three days now, and would rage for three more. It was not a time to go out.

Watching the tumult at the windows of the
Flagons
, its violence muted by the thick glass and offset by the warm glow of the fire, Kali sipped from a tankard of thwack and reflected that the contrast between where she stood now and what she had seen and done in recent days couldn't have been more dramatic.

The crackling of the fire, the whinnying of horses from the stables and the simple talk around the bar - of work needed to repair the fields, of blacksmithing new tools and of the coming harvest - only served to heighten the difference between her world and that of the Old Races. There were no damned airships here, no damned mad scientist laboratories and, most importantly of all, no damned race against time. The pace was slower, gentler, and she realised how much she appreciated that right now. How much she
needed
it. That wasn't to say that she might not be off on her travels once again when the storm died down, but for the moment she needed time to think.

And, of course, to drink.

Kali downed the remainder of the thwack in one and went for another, squeezing in at the bar. She found one waiting for her, already poured by Red, who had volunteered to play host for the festivities; giving Dolorosa and Aldrededor a break from their usual duties, a break which Kali felt they had wholeheartedly earned. Red's displacement from barstool to his position behind the bar seemed to suit him, and despite the fact that the
Flagons
was jam-packed, he was doing sterling work.

Kali wandered through the crowd, nodding to those she knew and those whose acquaintance she had made in the past few days, pleased that she had invited them all here. The fact that the storm effectively stymied any normal outside activity had, to some, presented a problem. Namely, how to occupy themselves while it lasted, but the solution had seemed obvious to her.

Let's get betwattled
.

At the Flagons
.

On me
.

Kali smiled. Her unusual tolerance for alcohol had, of course, given her the advantage in this prolonged session. Looking around now, it was clear that some of her guests were becoming somewhat the worse for wear. Sitting by the temporary stage, Jengo Pim and his lieutenants were waiting patiently for the appearance of the night's cabaret - if the slumped and, in some cases, face down on the table positions they had gradually adopted could be called waiting patiently. Still, they weren't completely out of it yet, stirring with a groan every time there was a creak on the stairs, only to collapse again despondently when the objects of their affections - Pim's, in particular - failed to appear. She could hardly blame the Hells' Bellies for taking their time in getting on stage. After all, they had been nowhere else for a week and they had only agreed to one final performance when, on his behalf, she had told them that Jengo Pim was their greatest admirer and fan. It hadn't hurt that the Grey Brigade's leader had personally agreed to treble their fee too.

Kali looked towards the crowded bar and smiled again. At first she had thought Poul Sonpear and his friends from the League were holding up - somewhat surprisingly - better than the streetwise, heavy drinking thieves, but now she saw that the mages were hardly playing fair. Sonpear himself appeared to be handling his drink naturally, standing tall amongst them, downing shot after shot, but his companions were clearly using a couple of old tricks to maintain the illusion that they were still one of the boys. Kali noticed the giveaway pink puff of smoke following a belch that denoted a sobriety spell and, further along the bar, two mages who were taller than when they had arrived, due only to the fact that they were hovering a few inches above the floor so as not to betray any unsteadiness on their feet. Kali moved past them, gave them both a nudge and they rose like balloons, crashing back to the floor when their heads hit the ceiling. She noticed as she did that Sonpear appeared to be muttering to himself between slugs. Ah, so that was it, she thought. He wasn't handling his drink naturally at all, it was the old Hollow Legs invocation.

Kali turned and crashed right into Dolorosa, who was weaving her way back from the bar with two more 'stalkers' for herself and Hetty Scrubb. The two women had been hitting the lethal cocktails - so named because they lurked before hitting you from behind - since the morning, and even the fact that both umbrellas flew out of the drinks in the collision didn't stop the Sarcrean making a narrow-eyed and dedicated beeline back to her seat, where she and Hetty continued cackling as if Kali had never been there. Kali shook her head, hoping that Aldrededor served up some food soon, not only because it might help to sober the old bat up but also slow her down so that she and the herbalist didn't bankrupt the
Flagons
with their drinking.