The Call of Kerberos (37 page)

Kali sighed and picked up the Breachblades from their resting place in the pillar of light, swinging them about her experimentally. Some sources said they were even capable of slicing an elf's soul from its body and, while she held little belief in the whole Soul-goes-to-Kerberos thing, she couldn't deny a certain aura about them as they cut the air with a sibilant whoosh. She weighed the weapons in her hands, feeling as if she were barely wielding anything, their metal as light as a feather...

Which was something that could hardly be said about the rusty, serrated blade she felt suddenly pressed against her throat. Kali sighed again, but this time with a weary resignation.

Well,
that
was a surprise.

"I will be taking those, Miss Hooper," Maladorus Slack said from behind her. His blade wasn't anywhere near as uncomfortable as the fact that he was pushing himself up tight against her, his other hand rubbing slow circles on the exposed midriff beneath her torn bodysuit. His breath was hot as he added, "Drop them to the ground."

"You sure about that?" Kali responded.

"What? Of course I am sure!"

"Only it's just," Kali went on, "that if I drop them to the ground then you'll have to pick them up, and while you're doing that I'll kick you in the nuts so hard people'll be calling you Four-Eyes."

There was a hesitant pause.

"I told you, Slack, plan ahead."

"Then pass them to me slowly, between your legs."

Kali drew in a sharp breath. "Or No-Nuts."

"Over your shoulder, then!"

"Mister Knife-head."

"Damn you, woman. You are toying with me. Buying time."

"Actually, no. I'd prefer to get this over with quickly. Have you any idea at all how much you
stink
?"

"I sympathise. But you will not be able to stink... smell me when you're dead."

"Don't kid yourself, swamp boy."

"
Give me the blades
."

"No."

"No?"

"No."

Slack sighed in exasperation and Kali smiled, having waited for it. All you ever had to do was wait for the sigh of exasperation because at that moment you knew that whoever
thought
they had the upper hand was momentarily off guard. She took advantage of this subtle shift in his stance to elbow Slack in the ribs then fling his gasping form around in front of her, kicking his legs out from under him as he came. It was a manoeuvre that should then have enabled her to pin him to the ground with her much sharper blades at
his
throat, and that was exactly where they would have been were it not for the fact that at that very moment the entire cavern trembled violently, so much so that it almost spilled them off the column. Kali stumbled and dropped to her knees, the Breachblades skittering from her hands. There was another tremble and Kali looked upwards, thinking
what the hells
? She hardly cared as, with a cry of triumph, Slack grabbed the blades and ran for the bridge, then she remembered the hand on her stomach and with a grunt of irritation made to pursue him. But she abruptly stopped about four yards onto the bridge.

What the hells
? she thought again.

The tremors, the quake, whatever the pits it was, seemed to be interfering with the energy bridges throughout the cavern and, as Kali watched, each faded or flickered dangerously on and off. In his greed, Slack seemed not to have noticed but the very surface on which his filthy little feet pounded was already beginning to sparkle with the very same pattern it had when it formed. For whatever reason, the magic seemed to be destabilising.

"Slack, come back!" Kali shouted, but the only response she got was a backward flip of a finger. "Fine, you idiot, run, then! Just get off that farking bridge!"

This actually had the opposite effect to what she intended, and Slack paused in his tracks, turning to face her with a curious glance. It was the worst thing he could have done. And as Kali suddenly leapt back onto the security of the central island with a startled yelp, Slack's perspective on his situation turned his mood from triumphant glee to undisguised panic. For as his gaze shifted from Kali down to his feet he saw that the bridge was flickering more rapidly now, blinking in and out of existence every half second, the rapidity of the transition the only thing that was stopping him from falling through. There was no guarantee that it was going to continue blinking in that fashion, though, and the sudden realisation that at any moment there could be nothing between himself and an abyss filled with
something horrible
galvanized the thief into turning and running for his life. Unfortunately, the exercise was pointless, the man having realised his predicament at approximately the half way point of the crossing, so whichever way he went he seemed doomed. And a few seconds after he began his run for his life Maladorus Slack found himself treading air, and then, with a whimper, a dog-eyed glance at Kali and a scream, he was gone, flailing into the abyss.

"No!" Kali exclaimed with a stamp of her foot, but couldn't help raising her eyebrows when she saw the Breachblades resting on the still-flickering bridge, still held in Slack's severed hands, amputated the moment he'd fallen through. As sorry as she felt for the prat, even if he'd brought his fate upon himself, at least the blades had survived. And if they remained where they were long enough, all she had to do was reach them.

Which led Kali to her current predicament.

Reaching the blades was not her biggest problem. The tremors that seemed to have disrupted the magic of the bridges were continuing, dust and small stones cascading down from above, coating her in a grey shroud and forcing her to occasionally dodge a fall of heavier rocks. Whatever was causing the tremors was powerful enough to have disturbed this sanctum of ages and there was no guarantee that the whole lot wasn't going to come down on her head at any moment. She had to get out of there fast. But that was going to be easier said than done considering the current status of the bridges - there was no order, pattern or meter to their flickering at all. They seemed simply to be responding to some unknown, outside interference, which meant she had no way of judging what was coming next. Still, what was the alternative? If all of the bridges vanished completely, she'd be spending the rest of her life taking very short, circular walks. All she could do was make a best guess with each bridge, starting with the first - and do it fast.

Kali studied the stretch of energy and crouched down, poised like an athlete in blocks, ready to make her move. The bridge went through a cycle of non-existence, translucence and then the half second fluctuations that had occurred before Slack had vanished. As soon as these began she burst forward, legs and arms pumping, until she neared the Breachblades. She did not slow to pick them up, instead performing a rolling somersault as she ran, grabbing a blade in each hand and tucking them under her arms, and as she came upright again swinging them forward and clenching them in her fists like batons, flashing at her sides. The Breachblades sliced the air as she continued to run, almost as if they were slicing away any wind resistance she faced, and she seemed to run faster.

But would it be fast enough?

Kali made the first column safely and kept running there, in a circular fashion, taking deep breaths while the second energy bridge reached a point in its fluctuation cycle that she felt stable enough to make a move, and then again she launched herself onward, reaching the second pillar just as the bridge behind her flickered out completely. This time, she did not continue running but stopped and narrowed her eyes, muttering a curse as she studied the remaining bridges. She cursed not because the state of the bridges had worsened but because a second spanner had been thrown into the works, namely that the columns themselves had begun to slam themselves up and down, as if someone had entered the wrong combination sequence in their niches. No one had, of course, it was just that whatever was causing this interference seemed to be affecting
everything
. And it was clearly worsening.

Now it wasn't just the across she had to contend with, it was the up and the down, too.
Of course, it had to be
, she thought, rolling her eyes. Gods forbid she ever encountered anything that was farking
easy
. Her mind raced, trying to think in three dimensions how each column acted with each bridge. If she went immediately, the bridge would vanish before the next column rose, if she went in a second she'd make the end of the bridge but by then the column would have dropped, and if she waited until each were half way up and half way over...

Gods, it was no good. It was like being in the middle of some kind of weird
game
.

The only decision she could make came to her unbidden. Fark it.

Kali roared and raced forward, jumping the insubstantial sections of bridge ahead, panting and running on the spot in those places where she needed it to cycle back to some state of stability, throwing herself onto the next column as it rose towards her. As it did she leapt up towards the next bridge, flipped herself onto it and pounded onward, making the next bridge with half a second to spare. Only one to go now, but it was flickering with greater and greater rapidity, but at least there was no dancing column at the end of it, only the ledge that led to the exit. Breachblades whooshing against the air, her own breath heavy in counterpoint, she began to pound along its length. She was going to make it. She was going to-

A rockfall obliterated the ledge and the exit. At the same time the bridge flickered out of existence about thirty yards ahead of her. Crap.

Kali didn't stop running, her mind racing for a solution, eyes scanning the cavern ahead of her for something,
anything
she could use. Then it loomed out of the darkness, and Kali knew it was her only hope. She continued to run and without hesitation leapt out into space towards it, arms and legs wheeling, hoping fervently that the Breachblades did exactly what they said on the tin.

She thudded into the stalactite with an
oof
, both of the blades held solidly in her hands embedding themselves deeply and effortlessly into the rock.

"Oh, yes!" she cried, elatedly.

Kind of. Because then the blades began to cut down
through
the stalactite, and she looked down the length of her body past her feet. Beyond, she saw the last of the bridge flicker away completely, and all around the cavern, the others, too, and beneath where they had been, all there was was the abyss. She was dangling in a blackness alleviated only by the shaft of light now some way behind her, but somehow it managed to pick out the broken body of Slack far below being consumed by something... well, by something horrible.
Okaaay
, she thought. I've done it again, haven't I? Leapt before I looked. But hey, look on the bright side - at least the sun seemed to be coming up.

The bright side dimmed somewhat as, while she hung there over the abyss, it illuminated her predicament rather too well. Muscles straining to maintain their grip on the Breachblades, they were continuing their work, slowly slicing their way down through the stalactite that had proven to be her saviour. The pressure of the blades in the growth was already proving too much for it and, above her, a half-inch crack suddenly appeared across the horizontal, making a loud, cracking sound in the silence and spewing streams of rock dust into her face. Kali swallowed. Clearly, she couldn't hang around here all day.

As the stalactite jolted and dropped above her - the half inch gap widening to an inch, about to separate at any moment - Kali once more looked up, working out a possible route to safety and determining that the hole through which the light streamed was her only chance. She said her goodbyes to Slack and then, taking a deep breath, folded her legs up so that the soles of her feet rested on the stalactite and then kicked herself off it, maintaining a tight grip on the blades as she somersaulted backward. The stalactite she had left behind broke away, turned end over end through the air and then plummeted to the cavern floor, and Kali grunted as the blades impacted with another, slightly higher stalactite behind her.

"Gahhh!"

It was a precarious series of moves but gradually the hole in the cavern roof drew closer.

Maybe when she reached it she'd be able to find out just what the hells was going on.

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