Kali shifted onto her side, cradling her head in her palm. "I know. And if you don't want to tell me, that's fine. But I think you need to share with someone, Slowhand, and after what we've been through in the past few days…"
Slowhand sighed, and his eyes flickered as if viewing some distant memory. "I have a sister," he admitted, eventually. "A twin sister."
Kali had to admit she was gobsmacked. Somehow she had never thought of Slowhand as being, well, human. Not in the way of his having family, at least. She'd never really imagined him being a child, growing up — always seen him as he was now, having arrived in the world fully formed, grinning, winking and stroking back his hair. That there had been a sister that he had grown with was a double revelation to her.
"I never knew."
"There's no reason why you should have. Jenna was… taken before we met."
"Jenna," Kali said. "Hold on. What do you mean — taken?"
"The Final Faith," Slowhand said. "In their early days, and maybe still now — to build up their numbers — they had an indoctrination programme… actually, more like forced assimilation. Jenna was working in Freiport when the Faith's recruiters paid her a visit."
"She went willingly?"
Slowhand shook his head, took a long swig from his flummox. "Jenna didn't have a religious bone in her body. Before that day."
"What are you saying? That they brainwashed her?"
Slowhand stared at her. "You've experienced Querilous Fitch's manipulations first-hand. Yes, I believe they turned her, somehow — her and others."
Kali swallowed. "But why Jenna? And where is she now?"
"Jenna was a battlefield tactician for the Freiport Independents — I guess they had a use for her talents. As for where she is, I don't know — but not for want of looking. She could be garrisoned somewhere remote, maybe even a member of the Order of Dawn. But I'll find her, Hooper — if I have to tear the Final Faith apart, eventually I'll find her."
"I know," Kali said.
Slowhand lapsed into silence after that, and after a few minutes turned in his bedroll, settling himself down for sleep.
Kali lay there staring at him for a moment, deciding.
Maybe it was the flummox, but more likely it was the fact that Slowhand had just revealed a side of himself that she'd never suspected before.
She stroked his cheek.
"In the meantime…" she said.
And agony hit. Another vision. Only this time she was outside of herself, looking at her own body as it lay slung in the arms of an ogur. Her flesh was grey, her clothing thick with blood, and worst of all, she did not appear to be breathing.
The ogur pounded through the night, carrying her body and, as it went, it roared and roared and roared.
Kali heard herself scream.
"Hey, hey, hey!" Killiam Slowhand said urgently, soothingly, and as quickly as it had come, the vision was gone. Kali realised that she had screamed out loud and was wrapped in his arms and he was rocking her back and forth. "Bad dream, bad dream," he said. "Shush, shush."
The night had not turned out quite as she expected, but Kali did not move from Slowhand's arms. She continued to lie there and he continued to rock her back and forth, and she stared up at the stars.
So much had happened to her since this whole thing had begun — so much she didn't understand — but now at least she knew how it was all going to end.
She knew she was going to die.
Here. Soon.
And she knew what was going to kill her.
Chapter Sixteen
Dawn came — and at the same time, didn't. The eclipse that had been on the cards for weeks was now finally coming to fruition, and instead of daylight replacing the azure twilight that had bathed them during a fitful sleep, a different kind of halflight made it seem as if the night simply continued on, imbuing the air with a languor that seemed to depress and slow the morning down. It was an atmosphere that failed to make Kali feel any better about her vision.
The languor did not last for long, however. The imminent cosmic conjunction also brought with it one of the worst storms Kali or Slowhand could remember, beginning with heavy and warm drops of rain that soon became splatters and then a downfall, this whipped by an increasingly tumultuous wind that Kali reckoned would be a full-blown hurricane within the hour.
The light and the weather worked to their advantage, though. Both of them donned squallcoats and, from the ridge that had sheltered their camp, watched and waited as Makennon and her expedition broke their own, ready to move out as soon as they did. Guiding Horse by a horn, they walked him through the gorge perhaps a hundred yards behind the Final Faith, their presence so close to the enemy group obscured and obfuscated by the driving storm. As soon as their party had passed through the gorge, Kali and Slowhand veered to the east, and when they were a sufficient distance away both of them mounted the bamfcat and rode him on. They could not spur Horse on to full gallop — the terrain near the edge of the peninsula was simply too treacherous, unpredictable and prone to landslip even in good weather — but that didn't really matter because, even at the rate they travelled, they had soon drawn ahead of Makennon and Munch.
They were going to find the site and they were going to beat the Final Faith to it. The only thing they had to do was work out what to do when they got there.
They continued on for another hour, checking occasionally that Makennon's party remained behind them and that they hadn't missed something obvious — unlikely but still possible in the continuing storm. The sky darkened more and more as each minute passed, until it was a deep purple verging on black. It seemed logical that the worsening light would make finding Orl more difficult but, in fact, it was becoming an increasingly more simple task because they were running out of land. They could hear the Sarcrean Sea breaking violently on the far western edge of the peninsula now, and ahead of them Kali was just able to make out the looming and jutting stone of the coastal feature she had heard about but to this point never travelled this far west to see — the so-called Dragonwing Cliffs. The peculiar rock formations did sweep up on the horizon almost like wings, reminding them both of the fossilised remains in Scholten, but these were merely inanimate rock, carved over the years into their current shapes by the rather unique weather patterns of the nearby Stormwall. A meteorological anomaly that defied all natural explanation, the Stormwall wrapped the end of the peninsula about a league offshore, like a giant hand formed out of cloud, thunder, lightning and rain. No one had ever passed through it, only around it, and all shipping — what shipping dared this roughest part of Twilight's already tempestuous seas — avoided it by as much wheelage as they could. Why it was there — and why it maintained its roiling, booming and flashing presence in all weathers — no one knew, only that what lay beyond it — the Sarcre Islands — basked in a tropical weather system that was unknown anywhere else in the known world, and that, strictly speaking, should not exist.
The Stormwall and the Sarcre Islands, Kali thought. If she were to believe all normal accounts of this desolate part of the peninsula, there was nothing beyond them and nothing else here. But according to other accounts, there had to be.
Kali decided to tether Horse before they went any further, the terrain becoming too dangerous for his large and heavy form to negotiate. And, as it turned out, she did so just in time. Kali and Slowhand were making their way forwards, their long squallcoats flapping about them, when Twilight's distant sun moved fully behind Kerberos and its eclipse became full, plunging the Dragonwing Cliffs into almost total darkness. The pair could still see where they were going, by starlight, and just, but for the most part now the only guide they had to how close to the edge they were was the increasingly deafening roar of the waves crashing onto the rocks below. Even this, though, was only an intermittent guide, and they had to pause quite frequently when the sound of the sea was obliterated by the whistling and insanely howling wind.