Because the seawater that had poured in from above had brought something with it.
Kali back-pedalled in a sea of bubbles. There, hovering before her in the water, was a humanoid figure — but humanoid was as close as it came to anything human-looking she had ever seen on Twilight.
Some kind of… fishman. She'd heard reports that similar creatures had been sighted in Turnitia but she'd dismissed them as the ramblings, perhaps even the ravings, of thieves too gone on flummox to be grounded in reality. But here one was, right in front of her — and it was staring at her.
Communicating with her.
Not talking, though. The thieves she had spoken with had described the fishmen as black-eyed, green-scaled, razor-toothed and bespined, but this one was different, its scales silver, face smooth and mouth toothless, with glowing nodules that hung from either side of its jaw. But neither mouth nor jaw moved as it spoke. Instead, Kali heard its words inside her head.
And, what was even more disturbing, it knew her name.
Kali Hooper. I am pleased that your path has brought you where you should be. That you have achieved what you must.
Kali found herself responding without even knowing how. And finding herself doing so without the need to speak, she found herself asking everything in her head at once.
Where I should be? What are you? Just what the hells is going on?
The creature floated where it was, regarding her, a paper-thin tail moving lazily behind it, and Kali felt a kind of smile — a very cold one.
Questions. Questions all the time, since when you were a child. Even then we could hear you — here, beneath the sea.
What? Are you saying you've been spying on me?
Spying? No. Watching. You, and the others. The Four.
The Four?
Four known to us. Four unknown to each other. Four who will be known to all.
Oh, gods help me, you're one of those who talks in riddles. I've come across your kind before. Statues, mainly, but -
Riddles? No. Only answers not yet formed.
Listen! You're doing it again! Hey, it's been a long day — how about some simple answers to some simple questions?
The creature floated before her, saying nothing. Kali took it as an invitation to continue.
Who are you?
Our name would mean nothing. We are the Before. The After. Those who have always been and will be again.
Will you stop it!
I… we… they… apologise.
Kali scowled, then frowned. The Before? she thought. The After?
My visions? she asked. Were you responsible for them?
Yes.
How? Why?
The first, to offer a solution. The second, to drive you. The third — the third to remind you of your own mortality… and, more importantly, that everything is not as it seems. The creature paused. We know you but… we were uncertain of your resolve.
What? You thought I'd give up? Back off because what I faced was too much? Then, Mister — you are a Mister? — however much you think you know me, you don't know me at all.
From this moment, no. Your path is what it has become. It was important to us only that you were here — at Martak.
Kali trod water. Martak. The way the creature spoke of it — spoke of her — it was almost as if they both had a place in some unknown scheme of things. It suddenly occurred to her once more how un-dwarven the water network had felt.
You were here when all this began, weren't you? You helped the dwarves to build this place — to build the Clockwork King?
They were dying. They had no resources. The balance had to be maintained.
The balance?
Too many of the elven ones, too few of the dwarves. The ferocity of the Ur'Raney was unanticipated, and their numbers after their victory had to be… curtailed.
Curtailed? You're saying you did what you did to give the dwarves an advantage? By all the gods, you wanted the Ur'Raney culled, didn't you? Only it all went wrong — the warriors you helped the dwarves create turned on their own as well — and then on everyone and everything else…
The creature remained silent for a second. We chose our agent badly… everyone makes mistakes.
But why would you do that?
The balance had to be -
Maintained? Kali shouted in her head. What balance — why the hells are you talking abou -
She suddenly choked and realised that, once more, her breathing conch was near to exhausted, something that her conversational partner had also spotted.
I would suggest that you have time for one more question.
One more question, Kali thought, and despite the fact she had a thousand in her head — about the balance, about this undersea creature, about the Old Races — she knew exactly what it had to be. Because, somehow, she knew it was relevant.
Do you know where I come from?
The creature laughed — not laughed in her mind but actually, physically laughed — and was suddenly obscured in a cloud of bubbles that came either from whatever orifice it used to breathe or simply from the stirring of the water created by its thrashing reaction. Wherever the bubbles had come from, when they went away the creature was gone.
Damn you, Kali thought. Whoever or whatever you are, damn you.
More rock fell about her from above, and with her last lungful of air she began to swim upwards, kicking and kicking until at last she passed through a fissure in the ceiling of the throne room and up, out into the sea. She broke its broiling surface and began to swim towards the shore. Slowly, wearily, she ascended the steps, glancing down at the jetty and the stilled warriors that would remain there now, until the weather of the area simply wore them away.
Slowhand, Horse and the ogur were assembled above. There was, however, one member of the party missing.
"Where's Makennon?"
"She skedaddled when the army stopped. Probably halfway back to Scholten Cathedral already, licking her wounds. Glad to see you made it, Hooper. But then, I should have known you would."
Kali waved him away, too knackered to speak. Her banter with Slowhand would, she knew, resume some time soon. There were, after all, things to do, among them find his sister and a cure for Merrit Moon.
Before that, however…
Kali patted Horse and took a bottle of flummox from his saddlebag. She drank deeply, and burped.
And then she stared down at Martak. At the sea. And she thought of what she had just encountered in it.
There were more questions to be answered than ever before. It was good, then, that she liked a challenge. In fact, she felt a renewed determination to discover the secrets of Twilight and the ultimate fate of the Old Races. And in doing so, she knew, she would leave nothing unexplored, nothing undiscovered, nothing untouched.
Nothing, now.
No stone unturned.