Mike Wild - The Clockwork King of Orl

She could feel herself slipping, and all the time the question.

"The key, Kali. Where is the key?"

In the end, she fled to the only place she could — home. She surrounded herself with the laughter and the banter of the Flagons, the revelry and rivalry that was her tavern's soul. All her friends were there — Aldrededor, Dolorosa, Red — even Horse, alive once more. She swept away a sudden image of him dying and instead lost herself in memories of exploring the peninsula on his back, the discovery of Thunderlung's Cry, the Rainbow River, the mind-numbing Heights of Low…

"Such a shame about the beast," the voice said and, with a vertiginous panic, she realised that it was Munch, and that she must have unwillingly spoken Horse's name aloud. Her panic doubled, for she realised now that in thinking about Horse she was only one step away from thinking about Merrit Moon, and how easy it would be to speak his name out loud.

So she left even home behind, going back before the Flagons, before Horse and before Merrit Moon, back to her childhood and beyond — where lay no memory at all. But in doing so she found herself suddenly remembering what she had never fully remembered before, and she was there on a lonely road, during a storm-lashed night, crying like the babe she was, her tears indistinguishable from the rain. She felt herself being handed from one set of hands to another, caught a fleeting glimpse of a hooded man, and then, above her instead, was Red — a younger Red — smiling down.

Then even Red faded away, and she struggled to fill the gap he left behind. It was getting more and more difficult to concentrate now, she realised, and there was nowhere else to go.

But it seemed there was. Suddenly she felt something pull aside, like a curtain in her mind, and for the first time ever she saw, actually saw, the place where she'd been found.

Despite her escalating delirium, Kali gasped. It was there before her, clearer and more detailed than the memory of a babe had any right to make it. Clearly some kind of Old Race ruin, its interior was adorned with complex runes and trellised with ornate ironwork as artistic as that of the Spiral, or of anywhere she had ever been. But there was more, here — strange panels of light set into the walls, flights of iron steps leading to machine-filled platforms that blinked around the edge, corridors and doors leading away to who knew where. She could feel the whole place tremble with power. Gods — she wanted to get up, to explore, but she was, after all, only a babe and could not rise from where she lay swaddled and helpless, there, in the middle of it all.

Kali found it didn't matter. For the first time she was seeing what she had never seen or known before — her own origin. It was Munch's drugs, it had to be, and though she would never have believed it, she actually had something to thank the bastard for.

It was a revelation.

But nothing like the revelation that followed.

Because just as she thought it was over, the hooded man entered the room. The same stranger that on that storm-lashed night had taken her from this place and given her into the care of Red.

He bent over her, and she saw his face.

And it was the face of Merrit Moon.

Merrit Moon.

No! she screamed inside her head. The image — the memory — was so unexpected, so sudden, so startling, that she couldn't shed herself of it, and as a result couldn't trust herself not to speak his name. The only way — the only way — to beat Munch's drugs was to make herself forget the face, but how — how — could she possibly forget what she'd just seen?

She had to do something.

She cared too much about Merrit to reveal him.

She had to end Munch's flight of fancy. Now!

There was only one thing she could do. Kali rammed her ankles, wrists and neck into the collar's pins, hoping the pain would drop her into a state of oblivion from which even Fitch would be unable to bring her back. Through her agony, she felt him pulling at her, but that only made her the more intent, and instead of simply impaling herself on the pins she began to tug herself to the left and right as much as the collars would allow, letting the pins tear into her flesh, to rip it from her in jagged strips. The pain was excruciating and she felt as if her body was on fire, and her flesh was slick now with her own blood, but still she carried on, roaring not with pain but with unslacking determination. And, at last, she began to feel numb.

She heard distant, echoing curses. And then hands were pulling quickly and roughly at her restraints.

"Damn her," she heard someone say, and realised it had to be Munch. What followed made no sense. "Did you get it? Did you get it?"

"I believe so. But I will need time to absorb what I have."

"Gah! Make it quick."

Kali sighed, and someone took her, then. The collars released, she found herself being lifted from the chair, the room canting at strange angles around her. The figures of Munch and Querilous Fitch were merely blurs, as ghostly in their appearance as their disembodied voices were haunting. She heard the sound of doors opening, saw dark outlines looming, and realised she was being escorted through the underground of the cathedral. But that couldn't be right, surely, because as she moved she caught glimpses of bright lights, of lots of people, of activity that surely did not belong where she was. Had they taken her somewhere else, then, as she slipped between consciousness and delirium — somewhere where she could hear orders being barked, the sound of factory machines, the bustle of an army at work? Or perhaps she imagined it, because now those things were gone, and she was being led down a stairway that spiralled down before her, where it was quieter and darker and colder than even the chamber had been. Other faces swam before her now, peering at her through hatches in doors, faces that were bearded and straggly and desperate, and one that for a fleeting second she thought she recognised but couldn't possibly have. Some degree of awareness was returning now, and Kali realised she was in a corridor of cells, and even in the state she was in, one thing was clear — these faces she saw, leering out at her, these faces and their owners, they had been here a long time and, if she didn't do something right now, so would she be too.

She broke free of her captors and ran, lurching like a drunk, for the end of the cell corridor, to a ventilation shaft set into the wall. As deep and as doomed as they were, the prisoners here still had to breathe, and with a little luck the shaft would reach all the way to the surface. She leapt for a rung that was set just above the hole, and missed. She tried once more and this time found herself slumping down against the wall.

It was no good, the wounds on her ankles and wrists coupled with the loss of blood had left her too weak.

She could do nothing but capitulate as her captors loomed and roughly pulled her up.

Exhaustion overwhelmed her, then. All she remembered was being thrown into a cold, dark cell, and the door being slammed tightly shut behind her. Time passed, and then someone entered her cell and bandaged her wounds.

She slept, without any idea of for how long. And when she awoke, she heard singing.

But it was not the singing she had heard upstairs.

And of all the things that had happened to her in the last few weeks, it was by far the most disturbing.

That voice, Kali thought. It couldn't be. Not him. Oh gods, please tell me it isn't him! Tell me it isn't. But the seconds passed and, as had always been the case, the gods didn't tell her anything at all, and she thought: It is, isn't it? There couldn't be any doubt. That voice, that tune, those lyrics.

Gods preserve her, those lyrics.