"I'll remember this," he said.
Slowhand nodded and, with a bow to Kali, Freel was gone.
Makennon stepped up to the threshold of the portal. Like Freel it seemed that she, too, was going to depart without another word but then she turned to Kali and beckoned her to her side.
"That girl in the Chapel. Who was she?"
"Her name," Kali said, "was Gabriella DeZantez."
"DeZantez… DeZantez," Makennon repeated as if she were dredging the name up from some dark and forgotten depth. "Ah, yes."
Then Makennon — and the portal — were gone.
"Well, they could have offered us a lift," Slowhand said. But the only response he got from Kali was a crashing of the undergrowth. "Hooper? Hooper?"
Kali was storming away from the necropolis as fast as she could go. Slowhand hurried to catch up.
"Farking woman!" Kali cursed.
"Hooper, I'm not sure you should be storming through the forest like this."
"No? You know any better way to get the hells out of the pitsing place?"
"Hooper, what I mean is slow down, or you'll bring every freak and monstrosity within a league's radius down on us!"
"Bring 'em on."
"Don't be stupid."
"I said, fark 'em, Slowhand!"
The archer pulled a face, grabbed her by the shoulders with his good arm, and turned her around. "Hey," he shouted. "Hey!"
Kali wrenched herself out of his grip, turned in a frustrated circle, not knowing what to do with herself, and finally kicked a nearby tree trunk. Something with wings that flapped like wet cloth took to the sky but Kali didn't care, her breathing fast and hard.
"Hooper," Slowhand gasped, "if you don't stop crashing around you're going to get us both killed."
Kali bent and ran the back of her hand across her mouth, speaking breathlessly. "Leave it alone, Liam."
"I can't do that. Because this isn't about Makennon, is it?" Slowhand challenged. "It's about Gabriella."
Kali shot him a look, found his firm but concerned blue eyes holding her gaze, and gradually brought her breathing under control. The archer was only partly right, but right enough. It was about Gabriella, yes, but about Makennon, too — the way the woman had swanned off just now. Pits of Kerberos, she didn't want any gratitude herself — gods knew, she hoped she wasn't that petty — but she did want some kind of acknowledgement for the people who had died to win her the freedom to go home. Not only Gabriella DeZantez but those many who had died at the hands of the juggennath or in their subsequent flight from it. Still, it was Gabriella that stuck in her mind, and what stuck more than anything were Makennon's words about her.
Who was she?
Who was she?
Kali pulled away from Slowhand and continued, with him trailing behind. The pair managed to negotiate a couple of leagues without incident, but found themselves freezing at a sudden thrashing from the bush beside them. Kali drew her gutting knife, ready to wield against whatever warped denizen of the forest had them in its sights. Nothing came at them though, and, after a few seconds, Kali pulled the undergrowth aside.
The source of the thrashing was a warped denizen all right, but not the kind that she or Slowhand had expected.
Querilous Fitch lay in a ditch beneath them, having presumably landed here after he had been struck by the juggennath. The extent of his injuries were plain to see.
Fitch saw Slowhand and the broken body of the psychic manipulator spasmed in the ditch, hands desperately trying to rise and wield some kind of magic, offensive or defensive, but his arms simply flapped by his sides ineffectually.
"That old problem again, Fitch?" Slowhand growled. "You really ought to see a doctor about that."
The archer moved in and took Fitch by the neck, staring him in the eyes as he tightened his grip.
"Liam, don't kill him," Kali said.
"What?"
"I'm asking you not to kill him. He has information that I need."
"What the hells do you mean, he has information that you need?"
Kali hesitated. "Something… well, I don't know if it's important, but it might be."
"Oh, really," Slowhand hissed without loosening his grip. Fitch was struggling, turning blue, his tongue bloating between twisted lips. "Hooper, this guy was responsible for the death of my sister and in case you hadn't noticed has tried to kill me twice, both times without compunction or hesitation, and frankly I don't want him running around anymore. You tell me — what could be more important than that?"
"I — " Kali began, and stopped.
She rocked back and forth on her heels, torn. Share this with someone, Gabriella had said. Don't bear it alone. But how could she burden her sometime lover with the knowledge that the world he knew — and all of the beds and women in it — might soon be coming to an end? The answer was, she couldn't — at least until Slowhand, with a sigh, suddenly released his grip on Fitch, dropping his choking victim back into the bottom of the ditch, and turned to face her, more concerned than she had ever seen him.
"Dammit, Hooper, this is about that night at the Flagons, isn't it? The night you stormed out of the party? Because you learned something in the Crucible, didn't you? Something you haven't told anyone?" He took her by the shoulder again, and this time Kali didn't pull away.
She did just the opposite, in fact.
"Kal, what is it?" Slowhand asked, as she sobbed in his arms.
She told him everything. About what the dwelf had said about the coming darkness and about what she had learned about 'the Four' and how she had come to believe they might have a role in preventing it. When she had finished, Slowhand said nothing, his eyes like those of a drowning man. In the end, it was Fitch who broke the silence.
"Everything your girlfriend says is true," the manipulator admitted, "and I have the information she needs to make sense of it."
"Then spill it," Slowhand said.
Fitch smiled. "Not here. Hidden. I can tell her how to find it, how to retrieve it, but first you have to get me out of here."
"No deal."
Kali looked at Slowhand, hesitant. She knew the decision she was about to make was not going to be popular. "Deal," she said. "Can you help me get him up? We should be near enough to the perimeter now for me to whistle Horse."
"No," Slowhand said.
Kali shook her head and clambered into the ditch. "Fine. I'll do it myself."
Slowhand held her arm. "I mean no, he's not coming, Hooper. The bastard stays here, takes his chances."
"Slowhand, please."
"No."
"No?" It was the first time Slowhand had ever openly disagreed with her.
"No, Kal," Slowhand said more softly. "Because it strikes me that if it's your destiny to do these things, your destiny to find these things out, then you're going to find them out whichever way things happen. If it's Fitch who's destined to tell you what you need to know then he'll find his way out of this and he'll tell you, but I'll be damned if I'm going to help him do so."
"What if that's your destiny? To help him?"
Slowhand slapped his forehead in frustration. "No, Kali. No, I'm not having that. I'll not accept that my every move is predestined." The archer felt the need to explain further, sought an analogy. "Look, I believed it was Pontaine's destiny to win the Great War — every one of us did, which is why we fought so hard and for so long — and in the end we did win, spilling the blood of thousands on the Killing Ground. Thousands, Kal — but you know that. The point is the battle was won as a result of thousands of decisions that I and those fighters made each and every second we fought — split second choices to cut or to thrust, parry or raise shield, shoot or hold that made the difference between our lives and our deaths. And all of those decisions were based on what our enemies chose, out of thousands of choices of their own. Just how many choices is that in all, Kal? It was chaos on the Killing Ground, chaos, so can you really tell me that every one of those decisions was predestined?"