Thief of Destiny: The Collected Saga of the Panther Read online

  “You’ll have to pardon General Talamus. A brilliant soldier, but a soldier nonetheless. He possesses quite the myopic focus on the mission.”

  “And what is the mission?” Manwe asked.

  “Simple enough, Panther. The Centaurian Torch lies within this temple,” he replied, nodding to the old structure. “I do not possess the skill to delve into the darkness, however. One needs a lighter touch and a keen mind for puzzles of the more earthly sort. I am my spells and cunning. You are your skills and wits.”

  “But my life isn’t nearly worth either, is it?”

  “A thief is a thief.”

  They came to the foot of the stair. Cleon reached into his robe and pulled from a hidden pocket a small bundle wrapped in strands of linen. “Your tools, sans the knife. I will hold onto that.”

  Manwe grunted as he took the offering, feeling the edges and probes of his lock picks. “How do I know you won’t kill me if I come out alive?”

  Cleon smiled that handsome smile and shrugged silk-clad shoulders. “It will have to be a surprise.”

  Manwe slipped into the shadows of the temple’s first hall, a wide space cluttered in fallen columns and broken tiles that had once been part of a great mosaic floor. Years of running on the hard soil of the savannah had hardened the soles of his feet, leaving the edges of the squares no more annoying than stepping on a hard pebble or sharp twig. Each step crunched, no matter how much he tried to distribute his weight.

  He stopped in the center of the floor and let his eyes readjust to the gloom. In his mind he heard a tap, bone on bone, and for a moment he was transported back to the darkness where Toba had died, a hell blacker than even the temple could gather to its corners. This was not that place, he reminded himself—just another house, ready to be robbed.

  Past the first chamber was a large rotunda, a room carved into a perfect circle of stone set with more effigies chiseled into the walls. It split off into three separate halls, one forward and two that went right and left. In the center rose the statue of a triumphant centaur, the details and features still crisp after unknown centuries in the dark.

  Squatting in the archway, Manwe studied a new pattern set in the tiled floor. This mosaic was made of wider squares colored in pale shades of red and green, bright enough it showed clear in the room’s dimness. A small circle dotted the center of each plate, a curious effect he had not seen in any art known to him.

  He looked about, his gaze falling to a small scattering of rocks and dust he guessed were once part of a relief column. Picking a few handfuls of the heavier debris, he scattered them in all directions, skipping them in a shower that raced across the way to the two passages now blocked by the statue.

  A pop sounded beneath the floor’s surface. Spikes shot up on random tiles, tall and sharp.

  “A fair roll,” he whispered. The pattern formed by the spikes was broken and irregular, too imprecise to stop someone who might traverse the room. He walked carefully to the nearest spike and studied it. At the base was the edge of the center circle, now a ring of yellow.

  The ease of crossing the rotunda brought him no peace as he rounded the statue in the center. He stood before the three passages leading further into the temple. The way to the right had collapsed, closed off by rubble, while the center and the left paths remained open. The center was the darker of the two, ominous enough Manwe shirked away from it.

  The hall of the left passage, a short jaunt of hewn rock, ended in a larger room with a great pool, wide and long enough that only a narrow ledge allowed a way around. An odd glow issued from beneath the water, and as Manwe hovered at the edge, a strange line caught his eye. A lighter shade of white, it writhed against the bottom, long, thick, and languid.

  Slowly Manwe started around the pool’s perimeter, never taking an eye off the creature. He reached the other end of the chamber, where he discovered a set of double doors. No lock or bar closed the way, and taking hold of the half-moon handles set near the seam, he pulled gently until they portals cracked open.

  Gold gleamed, caught in the light of two arcane torches, marvels of an ancient world where such innovation had allowed them to burn for centuries. Even with the final wisps of fibers charred to black, the points of flame glistened and sparkled on the pile of loot laid at his feet.

  Manwe’s breath caught, forcing him to stifle an excited gasp. He checked the pool, not knowing if what lay within the water heard him. The surface stayed still, and secure in his safety, he bent down and picked one of the gold off the pile.

  Each piece, two small squares connected by an adjoining rod, formed an odd coin of the like of which he had never seen. He threaded one into the wrappings on his wrists, knowing full well he had not found the Centaurian Torch, yet also knowing that a little bit of gold was better than none at all.

  He retreated back to the rotunda.

  The center tunnel from the rotunda descended into a great stair. The dim light of another set of ancient torches flickered in the deep, allowing Manwe to make the stone steps. He took each one with care, using rocks he gathered again from the rotunda room to pressure the faces in search of traps.

  At the bottom of the channel stood a massive stone door, its face carved in an intricate lattice. Within the circles swirled jagged geometric patterns of a type Manwe had never seen before. He longed for his knife at that moment, a perfect tool for finding the seams and cracks in such doors. Instead he used fingers, probing and gliding the runs of the stone until he came upon a strange space, a shallow but cleanly cut hole shaped in an “I.”

  Manwe pawed the gold piece he had secured in the linen wraps around his wrists, much more curious about it now than he had been when he first filched it. Examining both the object and the hole, their matching size and shape offered the solution.

  The gold piece slid perfectly into the hole, and a whirring sound preceded the grind of gears and squeaking pulleys from behind the door. The portal slowly rose up, and past it, a small antechamber.

  Manwe waited, frozen as he gazed into what he knew to be the final chamber of the temple. In the center rested another statue of a centaur, but unlike the first in the rotunda, this one did not stand proud on a raised platform. Instead his hoofs connected to the stone floors, more real and life-like than any sculpture Manwe had ever seen. In the beast’s hand was a sword as long as his arm. Sunshine from a skylight in the domed roof sparkled at the edge of the adamantine blade, cold and sharp.

  The sight of daylight itself invigorated Manwe, who strode to the room’s center and looked up at the skylight. He could see the glaring skies behind them, the freedom of an escape far out of reach. His gaze back to the ground, he looked about for the item he had come for.

  Set on a stone table in a rear alcove, a foot-long tube glittered dully in its holder. Polished smooth with a silver sheen, it went unadorned, a rod of nondescript presentation so simple Manwe wondered if he had actually found the item of Cleon’s desires. He came to it with care, blowing the dust off the table to better find any sign of traps. Certain nothing of ill-design, he gingerly lifted the rod from the holder, its weight light but sturdy.

  “Never once did I think I’d see this.”

  Manwe spun around, rod in hand and ready to fight. For a moment he wondered if Cleon succored himself in the few small shadows of the room. He tried to find the origin of the voice, its baritone strong but wizened.

  “Who comes?” Manwe called.

  “How can one come when they are already here?”

  He froze. No real shadows stained the walls or the floor, save one. He stared at the back of the centaur statue, to the delicate runs chiseled into its human back, the powerful curves of his haunches. Manwe forced himself not to blink, making sure he missed not one crucial detail. The dusty hide of the horse-half, striped in streaks of black and white, twitched its muscles, and when he looked long enough, the human shoulders of the centaur rose once and fell in a breath.

  And then the centaur turned his head.

&
nbsp; Manwe startled, taking a step back in shock.

  Muscle and sinew moved at once as the sculpture-made-flesh clopped in a half circle to face him. Old red eyes were framed in the woolly square of his tawny face, the top of his head crowned in a pair of slight black horns. Dust fell from his joints and curves as he took the first few steps, his hooves echoing off the stone.

  “Pardon my silence,” said the centaur. “I was napping.”

  “You’re...” Manwe mouthed some incomprehensible words, at a loss. “You’re impossible.”

  “Well, nobody’s ever called me that,” he replied. “And what are you? A spy from the plain folk?”

  “The plain folk?” Manwe shook his head, trying to accept the being before him. “No. Not a spy—I’m a thief.”

  The centaur threw his head back in a deep laugh. Dust fell from his shoulders. “A thief! Oh, it must be an odd age now. Tell me, did you pass my kin on the way in?”

  “They’re not here. There hasn’t been a Centaurian Empire for...well, a very long time.” Manwe lowered the rod. “How are you alive?”

  “To the chosen goes the curse of their prize. I am Roald, Guardian of The Dome.” The centaur brushed off his muscular chest and arms and shook his equine tail. “You must be a good thief to get past the guards and the traps in the hall. Strange that you did not try to steal the door keys, though. It was why we made so many.”

  Manwe held his arms out to his side, the rod clenched in his right hand. “I’m not here of my own accord. I had no plan to rob you, nor do I truly wish to.”

  “No?” Roald came closer. “So a slave as well. My indignity continues.”

  “Prisoner,” corrected Manwe. He held up the rod. “Is this the Centaurian Torch?”

  Roald froze, all ease banished by the question. “How do you know that name?”

  There was no way past the guardian, Manwe knew, no path or dodge quick enough to bypass this personification of power and speed. The warrior skills of the centaurs out in the fields of Juut were legendary, and in cases like this, his only avenue was trickery.

  But this centaur, a remnant of an older world, was not deserving of such.

  Manwe, so used to illusion and double-speak, chose the truth. “It is sought by my folk for protection or destruction, while the Gypians wish to use it to further their dominance. I was...picked...to serve the latter.”

  “Fools! You damned fools!” Roald stamped and reared. “You fought us, forced us to surrender, all to ensure such horrid weapons never reached the world again. Have you forgotten the suffering we enacted upon you? Have you forgotten the sins of the past?”

  “I know nothing of them.”

  “Pray to your gods that you never do.” Roald snorted through his aquiline nose. He looked over his shoulder to the stair leading back to the main floor of the temple. “How many of these Gypians have come to steal the power of the past? You may be a thief, but at least your words ring true. They, on the other hand…I’ll be damned if the Torch is used as a weapon again.”

  “There are four upstairs. Two soldiers, a general, and a very competent sorcerer.”

  “Sorcerer?” Roald narrowed his eyes at the word, its tone bitter in his mouth. “Now the plot thickens. And you still need to get past the final trap.”

  “What trap?” asked Manwe.

  The centaur nodded toward the entrance of his dome. “Two stone doors will shut in the antechamber to this dome when you pass the midway point on your return. This is a test, human—a test for all centaurs who wish to guard the Torch until the end of days. In the olden times my kind fought for such honor, but those times...” He sighed. “Well, no matter.”

  Manwe moved closer, within reach of Roald’s mighty arms. “How do we get through?”

  “With perfection. The first door will fall down while the second will push upwards. Only an impossible leap will clear it.”

  “And have you ever made this impossible leap?”

  Roald smiled, his square yellow teeth large in his mouth. “Never with a man on my back.” He knelt, the knees of his equine forelegs to the stone. “Climb on.”

  Manwe threw a leg over Roald’s powerful midsection. The coarse hair of the centaur’s striped flanks bit into the flesh of his inner thighs as he squirmed for a comfortable position.

  “Just get on, human,” Roald cajoled, rising to his full height. He cantered around the back-half of the dome for a few laps, winding and stretching his shoulders. “Ready?”

  Hugged to the centaur’s equine back, Manwe clutched the Centaurian Torch. Its smooth shank had warmed in the flesh of his palm, but a cold thought defeated any sense of triumph. “Can this weapon be destroyed?”

  Roald chewed on the question. “Better it were lost. If one man can deduce its location, another will as well. If you truly intend to protect it or destroy it, I will throw my sword in with you.”

  “A fair deal,” admitted Manwe. “If this rod is as dangerous as you say, then it can never be used.”

  The centaur whipped his sword out in a circle, exercising his shoulder one last time. “Ready?”

  The answer was torn from Manwe’s mouth as Roald charged. Crossing the mid-point of the room, a grinding noise echoed as hidden gears somewhere in the room caught, the ropes snapping after years without movement. The two doors of the antechamber started to close, the nearest rising from its seam and the floor while the rear door descended.

  “Stay down,” Roald roared, his upper body leaned forward until he was perpendicular to the floor. Manwe shut his eyes as he felt the centaur’s hooves leave the ground in a mighty leap. Air rushed in his ears, and for a moment stone grazed his back.

  Roald laughed as he landed hard on the staircase. The vault doors to the dome slammed shut.

  “Still there?” he asked.

  Manwe sat up on his back, dazed for a moment. “That was terrifying.”

  His laughter booming, Roald waved his sword before him. “To battle, then.”

  They reached the top of the stone stair, Roald’s hooves clopping on each step. Manwe winced at every echo in the darkness, hoping some small hope that neither Cleon nor his accomplices had heard their clamor.

  Manwe signaled for Roald to halt. “Let me check the chamber,” he whispered.

  The centaur nodded, thumbing the edge of his sword.

  Creeping up the last of the flight, Manwe peered over the top step into the rotunda. No one waited in the shadowy space. The spike traps remained sprung. He waved for Roald, who ascended to the landing.

  “I...” Roald stopped, his weapon limp in his hand as he took in the temple’s state. His mouth worked for the words, but as the frown dominated his blockish face, only sadness seeped out. “I’ve been down there a long time, haven’t I?”

  Manwe stood there, looking from Roald to the rotunda and back. He wondered at how different the world would be for this creature once they left the caves, a world where his kind were scattered like his, a once proud folk discarded to the savagery of the savannah and jungles, never deemed to be more than beasts by the kingdoms in the west. Manwe did not miss the comparisons to the plight of his own people.

  “The world carries on,” he said, hopeful. “And what was old can be refreshed, with time and effort.”

  The centaur glanced to him with an appreciative grin. “And some things will always be, like the potential of man.”

  They walked the floor, covering the tiles at a slow pace when a shriek echoed from the first passage, the one that led to the pool and room filled with the golden keys.

  Roald raised his sword, stunned by the sound. “No, not that!”

  “What?” asked Manwe. “What is it?”

  “The Destined Beast,” Roald answered, terrified. “Someone woke it.”

  At that moment, the two Gypian soldiers who served Cleon and General Talamus burst from the passage, unarmed and with their clothes singed to tatters. Thick yellow juice covered the metal of their armor, and the red crests of their helms were burnt to the c
omb. They skidded to a halt before Roald, who reared at them, his equine forelegs clawing the air. One of the Gypians reached for the short sword strapped to his belt, only to be quickly met with a hoof to the skull. His helmet dented and blood streaming out of his face, he dropped to the floor while the other ran for the temple’s exit.

  Roald paid him little attention. “To the pool!”

  Manwe and the centaur sprinted across the floor, leaping over spikes and tiles, and dashed down the steps. Another scream, high-pitched and warbled, rang the room as they entered. Cleon waved his wand, throwing a streak of light against something at the pool’s edge. The serpentine trunk of some hellish thing writhed, its skin slick and slimy as it squeezed the dead body of General Talamus. Cords of light skirted across the soldier’s cooked flesh, the skin black and hardened.

  The sorcerer looked back, surprised to see Manwe and Roald. “Flee,” he shouted. “Flee, Panther!”

  He leapt as something darted out of the water, a worm’s head complete with a pair of dull blue orbs for eyes. The doors to its wretched soul flickered, lidless, and the thing reared back. Its helmet cracked into four seams that met at the tip. Lips parted, and four mandibles lapped the air, dotted in rows of razor teeth. A sucking hole of darkness groaned open, the weird sound of a lamprey.

  Manwe stood in horror of it. A beast of a world long dead, it bellowed in its terrible beauty, and from the maw came a crackle of electricity. It drove for Cleon, sloshing the water of the pool.

  “We must flee,” Manwe implored Roald.

  The centaur bared his teeth. “Never! Such a thing was not meant for the world. Not in my time, nor in yours.” Casting his sword away, Roald stuck his open hand out at Manwe. “The torch.”

  Manwe looked at his treasure for a moment before handing it to its rightful owner. “What do you need me to do?”

  “Run for the top of the stair. Wait for me there, if I arise.”

  Cleon shouted in surprise as the lamprey brushed him. His body shocked ridged, he fell into the water with a splash. Without hesitation, Manwe dove into the pool. Roald charged in beside him, headed straight for the lamprey with the Centaurian Torch bared.