Slowhand looked exasperated. "Why?"
Kali leapt onto a slight rise of rocks at the tunnel's edge, avoiding the lava that had now caught up with them. Slowhand did the same on the opposite side, looking down warily as the red river overtook them and began to flow into the dip.
Kali smashed at the section of the fossilised remains with the rock. "'Liam, just help me!" she pleaded.
The urgency of her tone persuaded him and — though he still didn't have a clue what she hoped to achieve — Slowhand joined in. It took a fair number of strikes but finally the dark mass came loose from its resting place of ages and crashed down into the lava-filling dip, flipped over to become a bowl shape floating on the surface.
Some kind of carapace, it could just as easily have been a boat.
Kali began to hop from rock to rock at the side of the tunnel, towards it. "Move," she shouted.
Slowhand did as he was bidden, mirroring Kali, and it did not take him long to realise what she had in mind. And it was just a little bit frightening.
Kali reached the rim of the dip and hurled herself forwards, crashing into the bowl with an explosion of air and a grunt. Slowhand was half a second behind and almost didn't make it, but, as he threatened to shortfall into the roaring red river, Kali stood, balancing unsteadily, and grabbed his flying form by the scruff of the neck. She yanked him to safety and Slowhand crashed down next to her, winded.
The makeshift boat rose on the lava until it rode above the opposite side of the dip. And there, sailing the lava with its speed building slightly, it continued along the tunnel.
Slowhand stared at the passing rock walls, and down at the lava river, thinking it was a little like being on some carnival ride, only hotter. Like that new thing they'd had at Scholten Fair, the Tunnel of Luurrvv. The blupping of the lava even sounded quite romantic.
"Hooper…" he said, sweeping back his hair.
"Get your head down," Kali said.
Slowhand raised his eyebrows, looking surprised. "Don't you want to take things a little more slowly?"
"Down, you idiot!" Kali repeated and, as she spoke and Slowhand obeyed, the carapace slammed into a thick stalactite dropping from the tunnel roof. The impact sent the makeshift boat into a spin and it began to careen along the tunnel, crashing into its walls and generally out of control. As the pair of them clung to the carapace's sides, lava splashing all about them, it seemed to Slowhand that his Tunnel of Luurrvv had suddenly become a tunnel of soon to suffer very painful death.
Kali, though, didn't seem too perturbed.
"You get up to this kind of thing every day?" Slowhand asked, swallowing.
"Course not. Maybe once a week. Not enjoying the ride?"
Enjoying was not perhaps quite the word but Slowhand had to admit it was exhilarating, but only after the carapace had taken enough knocks without splitting open to reassure him that it might, after all, be safe enough to survive the trip. The flow of lava had sped up again beneath them, and now the carapace moved through the tunnel at dizzying speed, impacting and spinning with each new twist and turn as it made its inexorable way towards the tunnel's end. Then, suddenly, the tunnel began to slope downwards, its exit visible ahead. But the exit, too, was blocked.
"Hooper?" Slowhand said.
Kali smiled. "We'll be fine… fine."
Slowhand did not look convinced as they hurtled towards the pile of rocks blocking their only way out of the lava. He imagined the carapace shattering on impact, spilling them both into the lethal surge that would inevitably envelop them.
"You're saying you think this thing's strong enough?"
"Definitely," Kali said.
"How can you know?"
"Because," Kali began as the carapace slammed into the rock fall and broke through it. "This thing we're on," she continued as they sailed out into daylight, "has been down here a long, long time."
The carapace plummeted down some unknown hillside, the wind roaring past them, skimming the erupting lava flow as it went.
"Meaning?" Slowhand shouted.
"It belonged to something you don't see around any more!" Kali shouted back.
"What, for hell's sake — "
The carapace impacted with the hillside, bounced and flew. It bounced again, this time more violently, throwing them both into the air.
Kali flailed towards a landing and yelled, "A drraaagggonn!"
Slowhand stared at her and, while staring, thudded into the ground. He tumbled down the hillside, rolling, bouncing and cursing until, like Kali, he at last came to a bruised and aching stop. "A dragon?" he repeated.
"Oh, yeah," Kali said with exhilaration. She stood and stared at the carapace as it screed past them and then stopped further down the hill. Kali hadn't felt like it for quite some time but she whooped.
Slowhand stood and stared at the aftermath of their flight from the dome. The lava on which they had ridden was still gushing from the tunnel mouth above them, but the majority of it that had spilled forth was thickening in the outside air, turning grey and mottled on the slopes, smoke and steam rising from its curdling surface.
Kali stared into the distance. There, she could see that smoke also rose above the city of Scholten, and on the air she could just make out the distant ringing of the cathedral's alarm bells. She smiled. Makennon actually had something to be grateful to her for. If she hadn't opened the tunnel, giving the lava an escape route rather than letting it build as if in some huge pressure cooker, then there would be little left of the underground complex, and perhaps even her cathedral itself might now be reduced to rubble.
It was quite ironic. Kali Hooper — saviour of the Final Faith. Ah well, they could thank her later.
In the meantime, there was the small matter of a key to pursue. Four keys, actually.
"There's just one problem," Slowhand said. "We're stuck in the middle of nowhere and, in case you haven't noticed, we don't have any transport."
"Actually, we do," Kali said, and to Slowhand's surprise stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled. "Little thing I've been teaching him," she said.
Slowhand looked baffled. "Teaching him. Teaching who?"
"Horse."
"Horse?"
"A-ha. Horse Too, to be precise."
"And where is this Horse Too?"
"Stabled in Scholten, where I left him."
"And you expect him to hear you whistle from here?"
"Horse is not your normal kind of horse."
"I see. Okay. Then just how is he going to get out of the stable, exactly?"
"Oh, he'll find a way."
Slowhand shook his head. Maybe the heat in the tunnel had got to Hooper after all. He was about to say something else when there was a sudden blur accompanied by the sound of heavy hoofbeats, and where there had been empty space between him and Kali a moment before he now found himself staring at something that resembled a Vossian siege machine. A large chunk of stable fencepost attached to a rope dangled from its neck.
"Slowhand, meet Horse. Horse, this is Slowhand."
The mysterious creature stared at him balefully, and snorted.
"What in the pits is that?" he heard himself asking.
"Bamfcat," Kali said simply.
Horse's tongue suddenly lashed out and wrapped itself around Slowhand's face.
Kali smiled. "I think he likes you."
"Mmmmrrrrumfff."
"Definitely."
"Grruuurrkk."
"Okay, Horse, that's enough. Let him go."
Seconds later, Slowhand found himself sitting behind Kali on the beast's back, Hooper leading him back to Scholten, a move he wasn't entirely sure was wise given the circumstances of their last visit. But Kali, as it turned out, only wanted to speak to the gate guard — and did so from a distance so she wouldn't be recognised.
"The Anointed Lord?" she shouted. "Has she left the city?"