But wait — of course he had. So many, many times.
Hadn't he?
Moon began to pound down the slopes below him, passing a place where tracks intersected, forcing himself to think about anything and everything that made him what he was. He thought of his shop, he thought of Horse, he thought of his adventures and, inevitably, he thought of Kali. He was glad that he had been able to tell her how much she meant to him because he had never been able to do that before, as he had never been able to share with her the secret of how he had found -
There was a sudden stinging sensation in his right side, and he paused, rumbling curiously. Another such sensation stung him on his left, and this time he slapped at the part of his body where it had occurred. The sting transferred itself to his hand, and he lifted it — bigger than he remembered, and tinged slightly green — to see what had stuck there. It was a tiny dart that had caught in the soft flesh of the palm. And it looked like a piece of reed. Needlereed.
Moon's low rumble turned into a growl, and he sniffed the air around him, his nose jerking roughly as he did. There were men nearby. Men in hiding, at least four of them, and one of them smelled strangely familiar to him. Yes, he had the smell of one of the oomans who had invaded his cave…
No! Merrit Moon thought. Not his cave, the ogur's cave — but the smell of the man remained familiar all the same. And it made anger grow inside him — dark, uncontrollable, feral anger. He tried to stop it but he was losing his grip, could feel it, his thoughts running together, and the things that had stung him in his side, he saw that some substance dribbled from their ends, that it was on his skin and in it and…
Gods, no, what was happening, and why now — why?
As Merrit Moon roared more loudly, more primally, than ever before, the men with the needlereed darts came from behind the rocks and at him, but the toxins that had been fired into his system — the ones he had dimly thought had been meant to subdue him — had instead the opposite effect and stripped him of any fear of their coming. Primitive survival instincts taking over completely, Moon felt himself subsumed — drowned — by the primal reactions of a wounded beast and, dropping down into the depths of the dual consciousness he now seemed to possess, he found himself experiencing what happened next only as a kind of semi-aware observer. The observer was dully conscious of the fact, however, that it was not he who met the unexpected ambush but Thrutt the ogur.
Unfortunately, even he was not capable of defending himself against the ambush for long as the toxins were indeed working, albeit slightly more slowly than they might have done before, and as Thrutt batted away first one attacker and then another, the adrenalin — and strength — that had flooded his veins was slowly sapped by their effects until, by the time he had batted a man away for the seventh time, he was slowly sinking to his knees. As he did, three of the men picked themselves up from where they had fallen, examined the one who had been shattered against a rock and then cautiously moved forwards to loom above him.
Orders were given. And then he found himself being bundled into a wagon whose sides had been built as a makeshift cage. And as Thrutt stared out between the thick wooden bars, from somewhere within him Merrit Moon stared, too — right into the eyes of the man who had killed him.
"Make sure the wagon is secured and prepare to return to Scholten," Konstantin Munch ordered, slapping its sides. He stared at the ogur in captivity and himself growled. He did not like plans that did not go according to plan, especially when the plan was his own.
He thought back to the moment it had formed in his mind, the moment when, from his hiding place in a narrow crevice, he had observed the Hooper girl running from the ogur cave. That she had apparently somehow escaped Scholten's deep cells had come as little surprise — she was extremely resourceful, after all — but that she had seemingly recovered from her interrogation to such a degree had surprised him, though not as much as what had occurred after she had gone. The strange blue glow that had suffused the cave had drawn him from his hiding place with an overwhelming curiosity, and despite the danger he had eased himself painfully back down the cave, ignoring his own injuries from the ogur attack, to discover its source. What he had witnessed there, again from hiding, he knew of, but had never thought he would see. Perversely, though, the miracle of elven magetech was less important to him than the fact that the old man would live again — because now that he knew Kali Hooper was on the loose once more, it struck him that he might come in very useful as a hostage-cum-bargaining chip should the girl try to thwart his plans in the future. He would have taken the old man there and then, if he could, but the presence of the ogur and the fact that Moon seemed to have drawn a little more than life essence from his victim, stayed his hand. Instead, he had returned to his base camp and ordered his men there to construct the holding wagon in readiness for what would be the old man's inevitable descent from the hills. He knew he would be wanting to find his irritating pupil after all.
That, though, was when it had all gone wrong. Moon had descended from the hills, certainly, but the man he had caught in his ambush had borne scant resemblance to the man he had been when he had inserted his blade in his chest and guts and, in fact, had borne less resemblance as the ambush had progressed. Clearly, something had gone wrong with the scythe-stone process, which was tragic for the old man but even more so for him — for how was he meant to use Moon as a hostage when Hooper would be unable to recognise her mentor at all? No, unless this strange transformation reversed itself — which of course it might, which made it unwise to slaughter the beast — all he was stuck with was a sideshow freak, good only for the circus when it came to Ramblas Square.
Munch growled again and turned away from the holding wagon, wincing with pain. His injuries from the ogur attack were… troublesome and he ought to get them seen to. He turned to the mage he had left with the base party, intending to solicit some relief, but then saw that the woman was concentrating hard and staring into the distance in the way that those blessed — or cursed, he thought — with telescrying abilities did. Still, they did make life in the field somewhat easier.
Munch waited until she had finished, returning to reality hollow-faced, and with a shiver and a sigh.
"Well?" he asked.
"News from Scholten, sir. From the Anointed Lord. She wishes to inform you that she is in possession of the fourth and final key."
Munch drew in a deep breath. At last.
"There is something else, sir. A location where she wishes you to rendezvous with her party — the site known as Orl."
Munch laughed. Yes, Orl, he thought. Orl indeed.
He ordered his remaining people to break camp, and mounting the holding wagon instructed its driver to move out.
Towards the Final Faith's destiny.
Towards his own.
Chapter Fifteen
Everyone seemed intent on hot-footing it to Orl, and that included Kali Hooper. It was just that for the moment — oddly self-defeatingly — she was telling Slowhand not to move. Not an inch. In fact, she would have preferred it if he didn't even breathe.
It was nothing personal. Granted, it might have been very personal at one time but, since his recent reappearance, Slowhand had been somewhat helpful so the least that she could do was try to save his life.
The lava lake had calmed somewhat and was no longer belching out angry plumes of fire, but it was continuing to rise. It had almost reached them now and, any second, threatened to bubble over the lip of the rock on which they stood, at which time they would be hot-footing it whether they had escaped or not.
Thankfully, all was not lost — and, in a manner of speaking, Orl was not lost, either. The pair of them stood no longer on the island but on a small shelf of rock behind and across from the dome, on the opposite side to the incinerated bridge. They had managed to reach it through a combination of her gymnastics and Slowhand's ropes and arrows, an exercise in teamwork that had resulted in a couple of embarrassing tangles but had got them there in the end, she with a sprained thigh and he with a smile on his face.