The Hickory Staff e-1

by Rob Scott

  ‘Gita doesn’t know,’ Steven admitted. ‘They think most of the bones date from long ago, Eras before King Remond, even before the Larion Senate.’

  ‘But some of them might be fresh?’ Brynne felt her skin tighten into gooseflesh.

  Garec nodded. ‘Gita said she’s sent scouts down here before now who never returned.’

  ‘But didn’t she say she’d seen the other inhabitants of this cavern?’ Brynne protested.

  ‘Apparently she was bluffing.’

  ‘She’s good at that.’

  ‘Why were all three hundred of them down here yesterday anyway?’ Mark wondered aloud.

  ‘They heard us, and they saw Steven’s fire,’ Garec replied, as if the answer was obvious. ‘Some of Brand’s men came down to get some water. They thought Malagon’s forces had discovered the cavern and were flanking them.’

  ‘So they prepared for their last frontal assault,’ Steven added, ‘and were mightily surprised to find our little rag-tag coterie vacationing down here.’

  ‘Not enough sun,’ Mark glanced upwards. ‘And the bars close too early. Not sure I’ll be coming back. Maybe the Caribbean next time?’

  Brynne elbowed him in the ribs. ‘Stop it! What are their plans now? Will they attack the blockade outside the city?’

  ‘They seemed pretty determined to do that last night,’ Mark said, ‘but it would be suicide.’

  ‘No,’ Garec replied, ‘they’re listening to reason. They’ll lead us to the surface, then make their way north.’

  ‘Why north?’

  Mark thought for a moment. ‘To meet us.’

  Steven nodded. ‘Assuming we get to Lessek’s Key before Nerak, we may need them to help us cross the border into Gorsk and get into Sandcliff Palace.’

  ‘Although Gita’s heard nothing from them, she thinks the northern and eastern corps of the Falkan Resistance are moving towards Orindale right now,’ Garec said. ‘She’s going to break up the remains of her force so she can send scouts out to intercept those groups and guide them to a rendezvous somewhere south of the Remondian Mountains.’

  ‘So, what do we do?’ Mark was curious.

  Steven smiled ironically. ‘We move towards Orindale, make our way behind enemy lines, attack Malagon’s ship, seize the far portal, retrieve Lessek’s Key and escape across the Ravenian Sea, whereupon we will find Hannah and Kantu. We will then convince Kantu to help us and travel back into Falkan to meet Gita, Timmon, Hall, Brand and the others near a small town called Traver’s Notch. Oh, and we have some two or three Twinmoons to achieve all this.’

  Brynne feigned relief. ‘Oh, well, is that all?’

  Mark was stupefied. ‘That’s six months! Steven-’

  ‘I know, but given what we need to accomplish, I think that’s probably how long it’s going to take us.’

  ‘And what’s this about attacking Malagon’s ship? When did we become pirates?’ Mark wished he’d had the sense to sit in on their conversation that morning. ‘Why would we assume he has the far portal on his ship?’

  ‘In case we don’t have the key,’ Garec said. ‘He assumes we have got it, but none of his creatures have been able to get it back for him – and, thankfully, Sallax obviously never got around to telling Gilmour’s murderer that you two underestimated the key’s importance and didn’t bother to bring it with you when you set off adventuring in a strange and far-off land. And thanks to a bit of magic and a bit of luck, none of his other minions have lived long enough to report back that we don’t have it – not yet anyway. We still don’t know what happened to Versen, of course, but since Nerak’s still trying to get the key from us I think we can assume he hasn’t told them anything, either willingly or not.’

  ‘Why hasn’t Nerak used the far portal to go looking for himself?’ Brynne asked.

  ‘Because he’d have to abandon Malagon’s body.’ Steven shuddered. ‘Then he’d need another host.’

  ‘And because he assumes we have the key,’ Garec reiterated. ‘Now that Gilmour is dead, Nerak isn’t in any tearing hurry – he’s probably quite happy to wait for us in Orindale. But he’ll have the far portal with him in case he catches us, devours our minds and discovers the key is sitting on Steven’s desk.’ Garec began to feel queasy.

  ‘Why not wait for us in Malakasia?’

  Steven felt himself grow cold as he answered, ‘Because he must be ready to operate the spell table.’

  Brynne swallowed hard and Mark shifted uneasily.

  ‘He came here to find us, kill us and to retrieve the key if necessary – but his primary reason for coming must be now that Gilmour’s dead, Nerak feels he’s quite safe going back to Sandcliff Palace to continue his studies, or to release his master from the Fold.’ As Steven spoke, the enthusiasm drained from the small group.

  Brynne put Mark’s thoughts into words: ‘So, he is ready to use the spell table.’

  Garec sighed. ‘He’s either ready now, or he wants to continue his preparations with the table at his disposal. Perhaps he can learn faster if he has a chance to experiment, to work things out firsthand.’

  ‘So he feared Gilmour enough to have him hunted down and killed, but he doesn’t fear Kantu,’ Mark mused aloud. ‘I wonder why.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Steven answered. ‘Maybe Gilmour knew how to kill him, or how to banish the evil possessing his soul.’

  Mark looked as though he had been slapped hard across the face. His soul, the essence of his life. Nerak feared Gilmour, because Gilmour could kill him and banish evil’s minion: that’s the only thing in all Eldarn that frightened Nerak. Gilmour had it, but Kantu did not: but what was it? Knowledge? Magic? Power? Why had he planted such a seed in Sallax’s memory, so long ago? Twenty-five Twinmoons ago – that meant Nerak had been afraid of Gilmour for a long time. Nerak might not know his own weaknesses, but maybe Gilmour had… but if that were the case, why had he waited so long to attack? Why was it important that Gilmour died before Nerak travelled to Sandcliff?

  Mark thumped his own head, as if to shake up his thoughts: he growled with frustration as he wondered whether Nerak’s weaknesses would be exposed at Sandcliff Palace – but no, he was convinced Nerak had no idea he had any weaknesses.

  ‘It must have something to do with the table,’ Mark said out loud. ‘Maybe Nerak will be vulnerable when he operates it.’

  ‘I hate to take that chance,’ Steven commented dryly. ‘I’d hate to wait until he is there, actually working the table, before we do anything.’

  ‘But we are going to do something,’ Mark retorted. ‘We’re going onto that ship and back to Idaho Springs for the key.’

  ‘Assuming he doesn’t kill us all and go back for it himself,’ Garec said, feeling nauseous again.

  ‘We can’t think about that now.’ Brynne tried to imagine what her brother would do in this situation, but drew a blank. She’d have to go with her own best guess. ‘We have to get there first. Then we can work out who’s going to board the ship and take those risks. It may well be pointless for all of us to go.’

  ‘She’s right,’ Steven agreed. ‘Without magic, you’d all be marching to your deaths.’

  ‘You might be doing the same,’ Brynne pointed out.

  ‘That’s true, but at least Garec and I have been able to use the magic. I think it should be just Garec and me going on board.’

  The Ronan bowman nodded.

  ‘I’ll be coming as well,’ Mark added quietly.

  ‘Why?’ Brynne asked under her breath.

  ‘Because I’m going to figure out how to kill him.’

  Mark took his place in Timmon’s longboat and hefted an oak oar into the adjacent oarlock. He had insisted on rowing alongside those soldiers who had not been too badly injured in Steven’s stony hailstorm. Each of the remaining longboats was outfitted with sconces running along the gunwales which Steven ignited with a quick touch of the hickory staff – after Gita had suggested, ‘Let’s just light them one at a time this morning, shall we?’

>   Steven’s laugh reassured Mark: he was glad to see they were getting along. He had no idea what was waiting for them in Orindale, but it was comforting to know they had the confident support of the local Resistance forces, even if they were a little threadbare.

  Brynne sat in the stern with Garec, mending arrow fletching and sharpening arrowheads; Garec would make new arrows once he found suitable trees from which to cut shafts. In the meantime he attended to those he had, fastidiously grating stone against stone to create a rough edge and then working over each tip and blade with what looked like a thick wad of chamois. He made final alterations with the tip of his knife and a small wooden brush with coarse bristles.

  Mark was curious; he was sure he had seen more conventional arrowheads in Garec’s quivers before and asked, ‘No metal?’

  Garec shrugged. ‘No money.’

  ‘Ah, I see,’ Mark laughed.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, gesturing at the array of stones and tools in his lap, ‘this is a skill I like to keep up.’

  ‘Like falling off a bike, I guess.’

  Garec waved his knife. ‘Some days, Mark, it’s impossible to understand you.’

  Steven was on board Gita’s longboat so they could work out a code the Ronans could use when they got to Traver’s Notch. It was obvious the entire Falkan Resistance wouldn’t be barracked in town, so they needed passwords to ensure their safe passage from Traver’s Notch to the Falkan encampment.

  Somewhere near the bow, a rough voice began calling out a slow but steady rhythm: ‘Stroke, stroke, stroke.’

  Mark fell to rowing and allowed his thoughts to wander back to Idaho Springs.

  He remembered smelling the pizza Steven carried as they approached their house; they had been drinking and Mark was hungry. He grinned to himself: he’d gone hungry a time or two since their arrival in Eldarn, but nothing could rival the need for food after too much beer – the kind of hunger that bore no relation to how much one had eaten or how recently. He and Steven called it foraging, because so few places were open that late at night in Idaho Springs: Owen’s Pub and the diner were pretty much it. Despite his burgeoning appreciation for good tecan, Mark suddenly pined for a steaming mug of coffee, served in a white ceramic mug.

  That night was typical: when they got back to 147 Tenth Street he and Steven had fallen on the pizza like starving serfs. They’d finished most of it, washed down with more beer, and finalised plans for their assault on Decatur Peak. Finally Steven had opened the briefcase. What happened next was hazy. Mark’s brow furrowed as he tried to recall overlooked details. There had been a rosewood box, padded inside with something like felt; they had been amused that William Higgins had created such a beautiful box for a commonplace chunk of rock. Then Steven had opened the cylinder. It had unscrewed smoothly, as if it had been oiled once a month for the past century and a half.

  ‘Stroke, stroke, stroke,’ the voice called, muted, as if from across the lake. Slow and steady, slow and steady.

  Wait. Go back again. He was missing something. The cylinder. The cap opened smoothly, no stiffness or rust or corrosion. The rosewood box. That was it. The box. Rosewood. Where had he seen rosewood? In Rona: tight-grained rosewood grew in those forests – Garec’s bow was rosewood. That wood had come from Rona. There had been hinges on the box as well. They had opened smoothly too, like the cylinder, with no rust or squeaking. The rock was the only thing inside – no, not a rock , Lessek’s Key. That rock was Lessek’s Key, the keystone to the spell table, the most powerful collection of magic imaginable, and Mark couldn’t remember anything.

  Go back to the box. They had opened it; the hinges had not creaked. The key had been inside, and they had thought nothing of it. They had laughed and set it aside. Mark had made a joke about mercury poisoning; he had even given the rock a name, Barry… Bernie… Betsy. Steven had set it aside, but there had been something about the key, it had made him feel something, a familiarity, as if he had suddenly happened upon someone he had known for a few moments many years before.

  A shrill scream burst through the haze of Mark’s recollections and he jumped suddenly, dropping his oar and disrupting the rowers’ rhythm. Scrambling to retrieve it before it disappeared over the side, he cried, ‘What the hell was that?’

  The scream came again, a piercing wail that retained its intensity without fading or tailing off. Mark wondered if whatever was emitting the horrible shriek had just found the remains of their camp on the pebbly beach. He froze, waiting for something to happen, or someone to tell him what to do.

  Everyone had stopped rowing and two of the tallest men stood on their benches, craning their necks in an attempt to spot the shrieking creature. No one spoke, or even moved, as a feeling of foreboding blanketed the longboats.

  Far in the distance, Mark heard a heavy splash. He looked up: he couldn’t see the stone ceiling above them, but the image of the bone ornamentation was etched in his memory. He tried not to think about the possibility that whatever had entered the water had dropped from the ceiling.

  The sound of the splash broke the spell and people around him began simultaneously shouting questions and orders. The coxswain took up his charge again; his, ‘Stroke, stroke, stroke’ was a little shaky, but the rhythm helped. Mark realised this was why soldiers marched into battle, all together in step. He fell back into pace with the others and they made their way quickly towards the far shore.

  Mark had no idea how long he’d been lost in his reverie. He nudged the man beside him and asked, ‘How far is it to the opposite shore?’

  ‘Half-aven, last time across,’ he said helpfully, but Mark was still lost. What had Steven said? An aven was about two and a half hours. So seventy-five minutes to cross – but he had no idea how long they’d been rowing. He wondered how fast the shrieking thing could swim, and whether it was chasing them. Maybe there was more than one…

  The soldier interrupted Mark’s panicked calculations, adding, ‘But we were coming very slowly, trying not to make a sound, and without torches. It shouldn’t take much more than a third-aven or so to make it back at this rate.’

  Great, Mark thought, what’s one-third of two-and-a-half? Steven would laugh if he were here – the maths genius had probably already figured it out. Mark set to the task and, grimacing fiercely, came up with five-sixths of an hour.

  ‘Well, shit! That’s no damned help,’ he barked in English, making his companion jump. ‘Bugger – no, wait-’ He grinned at the man beside him. ‘Fifty minutes. That’s just fifty minutes. We’ve been out here nearly that long already, I’m sure.’ He had started to feel better when he saw Garec spring to his feet in the stern. ‘Oh no,’ he groaned. ‘That looks like trouble.’

  Garec steadied himself and nocked an arrow while peering up at the ceiling. Then Mark heard them too.

  It began as a distant clatter, sounding as if someone had dropped a handful of marbles down a wooden staircase, then the flurry was replaced by a steady tapping: something solid against stone. Three or four taps marked time for a few moments before the rattling clatter began again. It sent chills through Mark’s already cold body. When the noise reached their longboats the second time, he realised it was coming closer. It was running across the ceiling. Mark imagined clawed toes clicking off stone. ‘It must have multiple legs,’ he said aloud, ‘or hundreds of toes, to be making that racket.’

  He leaned forward and pulled with all his might. Where was the opposite shore? Fifty minutes: that wasn’t very long. One class period. Not long at all. Mark realised he lived most of his life in fifty-minute increments: open with a warm-up question, five minutes, move into a reading or a few minutes of lecture or discussion, give them some guided practice, or extend the discussion, circulate while they work independently, answer questions or clear up problems and close with a reminder of the day’s objectives. Fifty minutes. There was nothing to it. He did it five times a day. Fifty-minute increments were in his blood. Where in all the circles of Hell was the opposite shore?


  The unholy scream came again, much closer this time, and Mark was not the only one to cry out in response. He felt his skin crawl, as if the yelp had pierced his flesh and buried itself in his bones like a tiny burrowing parasite. They were being hunted. The clattering came from somewhere up above, like clamorous rain, and Mark hunched down, an involuntary response. ‘Please don’t let it drop down on us,’ he whispered, but somehow he knew that was inevitable. It was dark, so dark… his throat tried to close and he struggled to swallow. ‘Surely it’s too dark for anything to live down here,’ he muttered, knowing he was kidding himself.

  By now they were all rowing madly, pulling with all their might. As the strangely terrifying tapping drew ever closer, the coxswain’s rhythm began to speed up. ‘Stroke, stroke, stroke.’ Mark could see Steven standing in the stern of Gita’s longboat; his friend raised one hand and sent a glowing fireball up towards the ceiling. All eyes were on the hazy light of the magic orb as it wafted ever closer to the distant stone ceiling and the boats slowed to a drift. There was a short cry, and a quick bustle of inhuman footsteps as the creature retreated from the light. Mark thought he had seen something, a shadow, maybe the irregular outline of a misshapen form. He coughed, and tried to mute the sound. Above, Steven’s fireball moved slowly back and forth, and each time it came near the creature, there was a brief shriek and a commotion as the monster hustled off.

  The light. That was it! Mark craned his neck over the side and called to Steven, a hoarse whisper that emerged much louder than he had intended, ‘The light, Steven, intensify the light.’ Steven shot him an understanding look and almost immediately the light grew brighter, changing from a warm yellow to an intense white. As it did, a hulking dark mass dropped from the ceiling a hundred yards away and crashed into the water with a resounding splash. So he was right: despite the weirdness of any living creature calling such a place home – this monster obviously did – living in constant darkness meant it couldn’t stand light. And if it was the bone-collector, then judging by the size of its charnel-house, it had been down here for some time. Mark imagined it with great round eyes, with pupils as large as his fist; even the smallest pinprick of light would be blinding.