The Crucible of the Dragon God (6 page)

That clinched it.

"
Dolorosa?"
she said again, emphasising her question. "What will I 'notta like'?"

Dolorosa squinted at her, saying nothing, but from the corner of her eye Kali saw Red Deadnettle pointing towards the rear of the tavern, mouthing something that looked like 'band.' Kali turned and stared up the few ramshackle steps that led up to her Captain's Table and saw that what had traditionally been her domain, had been filled with a number of strange musical instruments, including a road-worn, sweeping, stringed affair that looked almost elven - what she thought was called a theralin. Frowning, she mounted the steps and saw that the Captain's Chest - storehouse of her papers and sanctum sanctorum of the peninsula's history - had also been buried beneath a spread of tattered music sheets for such appropriately forgotten classics as 'Boom Bang-a Thud', 'What A Wonderful Pie' and 'Yes, She's Heavy, She's My Mother.

"What," she asked Dolorosa, "is this?"

The thin woman threw up her hands in protest but, nonetheless, looked guilty. "Wotta you theenk eet is? Eet is, eet is -"

Her words were lost as one of the thick timber beams, supporting the rooms above, suddenly curved downward with a stressed and prolonged groan that drowned out every other sound in the bar. Kali looked upward, blinking dust from her eyes. The next beam along bowed down, as did the floorboards in between, and then the next, and then the one after that. It was almost surreal, as if the whole infrastructure of the tavern had suddenly turned to rubber.

Then the top step of the stairs sounded as if it were splintering.

"Oh Gods," Pete Two-Ties said. "They're waking up."

Kali double-taked. "What? Who? Pete -
who's
waking up?"

"Them," Pete pointed.

Kali span. Whatever it was she expected to see, the last of it would have been a small mountain range, but that was exactly what appeared at the bottom of the stairs. A small mountain range squeezing itself into the bar and made up entirely of flesh. One of the mountains spoke. "Coo-ee, boys," it said, with a wink.

Oh Gods
, Kali thought.
No, it couldn't be. Not here.

"The Hells' Bellies," she mouthed with dread. Her ordeals of the last few weeks notwithstanding she turned as white as a sheet.

The eyes in the peaks of the talking mountain lit up. "Our fame has spread! This young lady, she has heard of us!"

Kali was tempted to point out that the entire peninsula had 'heard' of them and that their fame wasn't the only thing that had spread. But she held her tongue and, instead, glowered at Dolorosa.

"Explain," she demanded, darkly.

"What issa there to explain?" Dolorosa said in a slightly high pitch, clearly going on the defensive. "We thoughta you dead and so we thoughta we woulda make a few changes..."

Kali caught Aldrededor waving from behind his wife, desperate to catch her attention. He was shaking his head vigorously and pointing at Dolorosa.

"Changes?" Kali asked, flatly.

"Entertainment!" Dolorosa declared. "Cabaret! Culture! And so I contracted the most popular dancing troupe in the two provinces!"

Kali felt her heart seize. "Contracted? For how long?"

"They havva performed for three nights," Dolorosa said, "and they havva forty one left."

Kali did a quick calculation. "You've contracted them for a
month
?"

Pete Two-Ties head thudded down onto his table in defeat and shook back and forth slowly.

"The whole of Cantar?" Kali said in disbelief. She signalled to Aldrededor to pour another thwack, which she grabbed and downed in one. "No, no, no, no, NO, NO, NO! Cancel it, Dolorosa,
now
."

A small moon suddenly orbited in front of Kali's face. Except that it wasn't a moon but another face. It took a second to fold itself into a jowly frown. "Cancel... contract?" it said, and Kali wished that Merrit Moon was there so that the Hells' Belly and the Thrutt side of his personality could communicate on equal terms.

She swallowed and used her words slowly. "Yes. Cancel. Contract."

"Pff," the moon said, throwing up its arms. Hairs the length of mools tails sprang forth from dim and horrible pits. "How can
you
, wisp of a thing, demand she cancel contract?"

"Because
I
own the place."

The Hells' Belly guffawed and Kali was blasted with the odours of stale and cheap wine, cigars, and the assorted yellow remains of potato crunchies still providing their money's worth where they were stuck between huge, horse-like teeth. "Missus Dolorosa, she owns the place. She told us this is so."

Kali turned to Dolorosa, but the door to the
Flagon's
courtyard was already slamming shut behind her.

"Look," she said, wearily. "I'll pay you twice your contracted fee to cancel the remaining performances."

The moon loomed again. A hand snapped a garter on a thigh the thickness of a tree trunk and Kali turned away before she was involuntarily mesmerised by what happened to the flesh around it as a result. "Our fee is nothing compared to the tips we receive from our...
gentlemen
."

Across the room, Red Deadnettle and Ronin Larson coughed in embarrassment. Kali stared at them and sighed.

"Fine. I'll give you
three times
your fee. How's that?"

The offer was clearly tempting but a frown still crossed the Hells' Belly's face. It thrust itself at Kali interrogatively. "If we leave now, how will you guarantee our safety?"

"Your safety?"

"These are dangerous times, strip of a thing. What if we are attacked on the road?"

Kali pictured bruised and screaming grabcoins flying through the air. "Are you serious? Who in their right minds would take on you lo -?"

She stopped as a hand suddenly rested on her shoulder and Aldrededor whispered in her ear.

"I do not think she is talking about grabcoins, Kali Hooper. I believe she refers to the k'nid."

"The k'nid?"

"Those things that have flooded our land and will soon be everywhere. The...
Wait, you do not know?
"

"There wasn't much news where I've been." Kali frowned. "Tell me."

Aldrededor told her of the reports of strange creatures coming from the west, of the deaths and invasions of towns, and Kali absorbed the information, worried but simply nodding. Again, she sighed. "All right... ladies. For now you can stay. But under one condition. While I'm around I do not, repeat do
not
, want any danc -"

Her words fell on deaf ears. The Hells' Bellies were already skipping, if that was the word, to the makeshift stage, clapping their hands in glee, and Red and Ronin turned their stools toward them appreciatively. As if from nowhere, a number of small, thin and sallow looking men - their husbands? - appeared and took up the instruments that lay on the stage, stroking, blowing or strumming them respectively to produce a discordant wail that would have repelled a Vossian army. Then, without any tuning up, any rehearsal, it just... began.

Thudding
.

Kali grabbed her tankard of thwack before it wobbled off the bar and looked around as others did the same. She stared up at the ceiling as streams of dust began to fall in columns. She gazed at the windows, expecting them to crack at any moment. She bit her lip. There was nothing she could do here. But there was something she could deal with outside. And her name was Dolorosa.

Kali slammed the main door to the
Flagons
behind her and stood with her back to it for a second, sighing in relief. Then she jumped away as the entire tavern shook. She moved across the relative silence of the courtyard and then frowned darkly as she spotted Dolorosa pottering about near the stables. Kali moved up behind her slowly and quietly, saw that the old woman was hastily wrapping what looked to be a new tavern sign in folds of cloth. It appeared that the
Here There Be Flagons
had been in the process of being renamed - as
The Olde Crow's Nest
.

Should be the Old Crone's Nest,
Kali thought.
By the Gods, I go away for a few weeks and when I get back my pub's been boarded by pirates.

She was about to prod Dolorosa in the back, give her the fright she deserved, when her attention was distracted by a noise from the main stable. A low rumble, in fact. A strangely familiar sounding low rumble.

Horse?
Kali thought.

Horse!

Kali slammed open the stable doors, making Dolorosa jump, and there he was, a living, breathing armoured tank desultorily poking his snout into a pile of hay. His big green eyes looked up as she entered and, as Kali said "Horse" once more, his head rose and a serpentine tongue curled out and slobbered itself with abandon all over her face. Kali moved forward and slapped his neck.

You came back
, she thought.
You didn't return to the Drakengrats, after all. Hells, it's good to see you, boygirl.

There was, however, something wrong. As pleased as Kali was to be reunited with her mount, Horse's whole demeanour seemed off kilter, eyes duller than usual, chitin plating less polished, and his general presence - usually quite comment worthy - less, well,
imposing
. Kali patted the bamfcat, murmuring a soothing
hey, hey...

"Eet ees the worgles," Dolorosa explained from behind her. "They havva all gone away."

"Worgles?"

The small furballs were Horse's favourite snack - almost his staple diet, in fact - and were usually to be found in abundance all over the peninsula. It had taken Kali some time to get used to Horse's habit of scooping the poor little creatures up with his serpentine tongue, but used to it she had got, and the fact that they were apparently not around was even more unsettling than Horse's carnivorousness
before
their disappearance.

"Worgles, poongs, bladderrips, all of the small creatures they hide a fromma the k'nid. But the worgles, especially, seem to fear them greatly. It ees almost as eef -"

"These k'nid? Where do they come from? What do they look like?"

Dolorosa shrugged. "Where they come from, no one knows. Whatta they looka like is difficult to say. I have hearda many reports. All I know is thatta they are deadly. Butta you need notta worry, Dolorosa doubts they will find their way here to the
Cro
- erm, to the
Flagons
."

Kali frowned. "It doesn't strike you that the worgles and the rest have gone into hiding because the k'nid might be somewhere near?"

"
Fff
. No, the
Flagons
is special, isolated. Dolorosa feel it inna her plumbing - they will
notta
come here."

Kali grimaced and forced a certain image from her mind. But the grimace froze as, in the vitreous of Horse's eyes, she caught a glint of something low and dark behind her, moving into the
Flagon'
s courtyard. "Think again," she said.

Working its way around a bush into the courtyard was an almost indescribable shape. It reminded Kali of the brackan she had encountered in the Sardenne Forest, but of many other things also. Somehow that made it seem many times worse. Moving slowly, and crackling strangely, like an open fire, it began to work its way around the edges of the courtyard, probing in a way that made Kali think it was some kind of scout. And where there was a scout, there would be the main party not far behind.

"I take it," Kali said with some distaste, "that's a k'nid."

She moved slowly out of the stable, shutting and bolting it behind her. Then she peered along Badland's Brook where, in the darkness, she could just make out what appeared to be a blanket of deeper darkness on the ground, extending back to the horizon. The blanket undulated and rippled slightly.

"Walk slowly back to the
Flagons
," she instructed Dolorosa. "Make no sudden moves."

The old woman nodded and did as bade, walking sideways so as not to lose sight of what lay outside the tavern's grounds.

They had only made it halfway across the courtyard before the scout k'nid reared and its friends tumbled forward, as if they were leaves swept into the courtyard on a breeze. Before either of them knew what was happening one leapt straight for Dolorosa, and the old woman screamed.

Kali stared, shocked and unable to believe what had just happened. One second beside her, the next not, Dolorosa was gone, as if she had never been.

That
bloody
woman
, she thought, watching the door to the
Flagons
once more slamming behind her.
Hidden athletic depths or not, she and I are going to have to have serious words. But not now. Because, right now, there are more pressing things to deal with. Namely, thanks to a certain someone, that I'm now the only target.

As the k'nid rushed at her in a sudden, swarming sea, Kali did the only thing she could to get out of their path. With a grunt of pain from her bad leg, she leapt upwards to grab the guttering of the stable roof, using this to flip herself up and over so that she ended up crouched on the lip of the roof itself, watching as the k'nid impacted with the stable wall.

As they recovered from the impact, it was a good position for her to study the creatures. She certainly couldn't disagree that they were ugly little bastards, flooding the courtyard like a colony of insects that had been disturbed from beneath some rock. But whatever rock that had been, she had certainly never come across one like it. These things struck every fibre of her being as unnatural.

They did not, however, seem to be quite the destructive force Aldrededor's reports had suggested. They were certainly making no moves to destroy the
Flagons
.

Now, why exactly was that?
she wondered.

It took her a second to realise that the k'nid seemed to be reacting to the vibrations from inside the tavern - actually shying back each time a thud occurred. Was it possible, she thought, that these things had worked their way across the peninsula, attacking all in their path, only to be stopped here, by a dance troupe?

Kali chided herself, almost laughed. No, that was plain daft. In fact, it was the stupidest thing she'd ever -