in the Old Race site…'
Moon raised his eyes, surprised, then coughed, and this time there was blood. 'Hells of a time for a reunion.'
'Hells of a time,' Kali nodded, sniffed. 'Merrit, I — '
'Don't you dare hug me when I'm down, young lady,' Moon warned, though after a second he, too, smiled. 'Kali, please listen. You were my greatest ever discovery, believe that. You should know that I love you like a daughter. But that it was me who found you isn't what I was going to say. You have to know about the site itself.'
'What? What about the site?'
Moon didn't answer directly. 'There are things happening to you, aren't there? I can feel the changes, see it in the way you move, sense it in your aura. You are more than you were. It's what I always knew, right from the start — that you're somehow different.'
'Different?'
'The site where I found you wasn't like the others, Kali. It was uncompromised.'
'What? What do you mean uncompromised?'
'You know what I mean. Nobody had been in or out in over a thousand years. It was completely sealed.'
Kali stared at him for a moment, speechless.
'It couldn't have been,' she said at last. 'I mean, how did I get in there? What would that mean?'
'I don't know what it means. Only that it marks you out amongst the people on the peninsula — makes you different from them — and that is something you must remember at all times.'
'But what — '
Merrit held up his hand, looked around at the gathered ogur. He was suddenly racked by a spasming cough, and sprayed more blood into his palm. 'No more questions,' he said. 'You have to go — now.'
'Old man, I'm not just leaving you like thi — '
Moon grabbed her hand, squeezed it tenderly. 'Kali, go. I am dying and there is nothing you can do, and as soon as the ogur sense I have passed they will tear you apart. You have to get out of here before I die.'
'I can't do that!'
'You must, young lady.' Moon was struck by another fit of coughing and then laid his head back with a sigh, his hand weak around hers. Kali choked back a sob. Dammit, she had to give him a hug whether he liked it or not.
She leaned in — gently, so as not to hurt him — and, as she did, her hand brushed an amulet resting on his chest. She could have sworn it was glowing slightly. She went to touch it but her hand was unexpectedly swatted away.
'No!' Moon shouted with surprising vehemence for a man on his deathbed. 'It's too… near the time.'
'Merrit, what — ?'
He actually glared at her. The old man actually glared.
'Go, Kali, now,' Moon shouted. And then, more weakly: 'Go now… and don't… look ba — '
Kali knelt there a second longer, stirring only as a series of grunts from the ogur signalled what she wouldn't, couldn't believe — that Merrit Moon was gone. Keeping her eyes fixed on the creatures she backed slowly away, settling the old man gently to the ground as she went. Then, with a final look at her mentor's body, she raced towards the cave mouth and safety.
She did not see the blue glow that suddenly suffused the cave behind her.
Chapter Eleven
Kali had seen more than enough death in recent days and had no desire to be reminded of it — but in approaching Andon she had little choice.
It was here that Killiam Slowhand had killed John Garrison, but he had been only one warrior amongst thousands, and the fields around the city still bore the scars of the pivotal battle they had fought. Andon had been besieged for almost two years while Pontaine's army had grown strong enough to repel the enemy, driving them back across the land that had become known as the Killing Ground. Such protracted and bloody engagements were not erased easily from a landscape, and the Killing Ground was littered still with half-buried skeletons uncovered by driving rain, the remains of defensive and offensive trench systems, and rotting and ruined engines of war. It was a ghastly and ghostly place, made all the more haunting by banks of slowly drifting fog that alternately concealed and revealed the horrors that remained.
It was before dawn, and Andon's gates were closed to traffic as Kali and the bamfcat appeared in the fog near its defensive walls, suddenly, in a blur. Even at this quiet hour guards patrolled vigilantly, on constant alert as many in the city believed it was only a matter of time before the forces of Vos attacked again, using as their base the forts they had constructed in the once-neutral Anclas Territories, only a few leagues away. Arriving seemingly out of nowhere as she had, some strange phantasm clad still in Slowhand's striped tights and Blossom's mangy furs, Kali had likely spooked the guards, and having no wish to feel the sudden thud of a crossbow bolt in her chest needed to make her business in the city known. She couldn't tell them the whole truth, of course, but a generalisation might do.
Kali got their attention by sticking her fingers in her mouth and whistling. Then she shouted: 'Excuse me! I'm trying to save the world. Can I come in, please?'
It was an honest and bafflingly pre-emptive ploy that seemed to work. The guards studied her for a few seconds, shrugged and gave the order for the gates to be opened.
''Yup, Horse,' Kali said.
That she had referred to the bamfcat as Horse was no slip of the tongue. She wasn't sure when, or quite how, the beast had gained her affections but certainly it had started when she'd found it waiting for her on her descent from the ogur's cave — its welcoming and strangely familiar headbutts a display of companionship she'd needed badly when everything else seemed to have gone away. Their bond had grown during the journey to Andon and, after a while, she'd realised she really couldn't go on calling the beast good boygirl because it was just plain daft. Of course, she'd had some hesitation naming it Horse — Horse Too, to be precise — but the bamfcat was hardly a creature that would suit a name like Fluffy or Rex, and in an odd way it was a reminder of the old boy himself.
Horse, however, could not go everywhere, and inside the city it soon became clear that its narrow environs wouldn't take the bamfcat and he'd need to be stabled for the duration. Kali dismounted and walked him into one of a number of stableyards lining the outskirts, manoeuvring his oversized bulk into two stable enclosures, the beast straddling their low, dividing fence.
The stableman appeared and his jaw dropped open. But he did not let surprise interfere with business.
'Two silver tenths,' he said.
'I thought the standard rate was one.'
'That thing takes up two stables so it's two silver tenths.'
Kali was in no mood. 'Horse?' she said.
The bamfcat ate the fence and spat a mouthful of splinters at the stableman.
'One silver tenth,' Kali said.
'Done,' the stableman said, swallowing. 'That's one hells of a mount, lady.'
Kali patted the bamfcat, smiled. 'He sure is. One word of advice — don't feed him anything that hasn't got a face.'
'Face?'
'He likes worgles.'
'Worgles?'
'Worgles.' She pointed across the yard, where one of the furballs could be seen rolling into an overturned bucket. 'Just shake 'em out and he'll handle the rest.'
Horse's lizardine tongue whiplashed out and back again, as if to explain. The stableman did a little dance
