by Rob Scott
Kellin swallowed, summoned her courage and said, ‘I’m afraid of you.’
Steven sat up, genuinely surprised. ‘Why?’
‘Watching you kill that little girl was… unnerving,’ Kellin whispered. ‘I know it wasn’t really a little girl, but it’s been difficult to forget the look on her face when you cast her away.’
‘Nerak was terrified, beaten, and he knew it. He knew where he was going and he had no recourse but to beg. The fact that he did it from inside his own daughter’s dead body just reinforces what kind of a monster he really was. I don’t want to kill anyone, Kellin, I really don’t. I want to save Mark, find Hannah and go home, but I can’t do that until I’m sure that things here are set right. I’ve been given a gift, and I admit that I don’t know why. The staff’s magic…my magic… is a critical component of your fight. But it isn’t anything to fear, because I’m not someone to fear.’
Kellin wasn’t convinced. ‘It may take me some time. Nothing in my life prepared me for what happened in that clearing.’
‘Me neither, Kellin.’
She sighed, then moved a pot of snowmelt onto the coals. ‘Tecan?’
‘Please,’ Steven said. ‘We haven’t had coffee since Sandcliff. That’s too bad; I bet I could convince Mark to break free if I could just brew up a pot. He’s an addict; I’d be catering to his one real weakness.’
Kellin ignored his attempt at a joke. ‘What will you do today?’
‘Swim down there, try to unravel the spell protecting that underwater moraine, move some rocks and boulders around and hopefully retrieve the spell table without killing myself in the process.’ He pulled a pouch of tecan leaves from his pack and tossed them over to her. ‘How about you? Any plans for the day?’
Kellin’s smile was genuine this time. Beneath the crusty exterior of a hardened partisan lurked an attractive young woman. ‘I understand there is a wonderful hot springs spa near here. I thought I’d go and enjoy a relaxing day in the sun.’
‘Ah, great. Well, bring me back a margarita, no salt.’ Steven wanted her to trust him, but if she didn’t, it would change nothing. He had his goals and couldn’t stop to worry about every Resistance fighter who found him frightening.
‘You think you’re ready for this today?’ She sprinkled several pinches of the dark leaves into the boiling water.
‘Oh, sure,’ Steven joked, ‘they’re always better with salt, but that stuff is so bad for you.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I hope I am.’ He pulled on his jacket and quietly zipped it up. ‘The difficult part will be unravelling the tendrils of Nerak’s spell. I haven’t done that before and I don’t really know how it works.’
‘Can’t you just create a stronger spell to cancel the existing one?’
‘I wish it were that easy, but I’m afraid I’d destroy the table or kill myself – all of us – in the process. From what little I understand about magic, the most powerful spells actually change what is real. They alter reality, and then allow time and space and Twinmoons to go on as if nothing had happened. The magic is still there, churning away, but the world keeps going on as if nothing’s different. Reality isn’t suspended momentarily – although there are spells that do that too. Instead, what is real is shifted, and then permitted to fill its own niche in who we are and where we are and what we’re doing.’ He broke a small stick and handed Kellin half. When she raised her eyebrows, he made a stirring motion with one finger.
‘Oh, right.’ She stirred the bubbling mixture, and said, ‘I won’t pretend I have any idea what you’re talking about. How will you know what to do when you get down there?’
Steven said, ‘I’ve been lucky so far.’
‘Lucky?’
‘The magic has shown me what to do.’ He mulled over this another moment, then added, ‘Actually, it has shown me what not to do, what’s not important. Figuring out what is important has been my job. So, yes, I’ve been lucky.’
‘And skilled,’ Gilmour rolled over and rubbed his hands above the flames. ‘Don’t let him fool you, Kellin. He’s been very deft at figuring out what needs to be done.’
‘I don’t know about this one, though,’ Steven said.
‘Because you’re distracted by the water and the cold and the possibility of drowning,’ Gilmour said.
‘Well,’ Steven chuckled, ‘it’s hard to get past those, my friend.’
‘Nonsense.’ The teacher in Gilmour took over. ‘Don’t think about it as an underwater moraine in an icy river.’
‘That’s easy for you to say.’ Steven smiled over at Kellin. ‘You’re not the one going down there, Gilmour.’
‘You must think of it as a pile of rocks on the shore, someplace warm and dry. Deal with the cold and the air first; then forget them. You said yourself: the most powerful spells change what’s real. Change the water temperature; change your lungs and then get busy working on the moraine. You need to unravel the spell inside the rocks and the riverbed; that’s what we’re doing here. The rest of it is extraneous detail.’ Gilmour handed Kellin his goblet and she filled it. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Think of it like the doorway to Prince Malagon’s cabin on the Prince Marek. Remember that spell?’
‘What I remember is that I couldn’t unravel a damned thing, so I blasted it to matchsticks with the hickory staff.’
Gilmour looked disappointed. ‘Right. So you did.’
Kellin said, ‘I still don’t understand what you mean by unravelling the magic. I thought you said once reality was changed, it was changed for ever.’
Gilmour said, ‘Yes, it does change. But as Steven also said, the magic is still there, still churning away – like a diverted stream, it’s a layer of refocused energy in our existential plane. As long as a wily sorcerer can get at it, he – or she – can change it again, change it back, even paint the goddamned thing yellow if he wants to.’
‘Yellow?’ Kellin said.
‘Insider joke,’ Steven said.
Gilmour went on, ‘So all Steven has to do is find that place where Nerak’s magic comes together, where all the scattered threads have been woven into something new. In this case it’s something dangerous. It’s probably somewhere near the base of the thing, especially if he cast a spell on the rocks and the riverbed simultaneously. Then, the rest of it becomes-’
‘Geometry,’ Steven finished his friend’s thought, ‘the mathematics of untying knots, imploding old buildings or folding paper into complex shapes. It’s all just one turn, one brick, one fold at a time.’
‘Exactly.’ Gilmour handed back his goblet for a refill. ‘So, Kellin, there you have it. That’s all our young friend here has to do today.’
Steven smirked. ‘Again, that’s easy for you to say. You’re not going down there.’
Gilmour frowned. ‘Of course I am. Don’t be silly; I wouldn’t miss this for anything.’
‘But the cold, and the water, and the rest of it,’ Steven said, ‘are you really up for all that, all those extraneous details?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Gilmour admitted, ‘but I’m certain that you are.’
It was one o’clock by Howard’s watch, some time after dawn in Eldarn, when Steven sat on the fallen pine to remove his boots and socks once again. The river rolled inexorably through Meyers’ Vale.
‘Ready?’ he said to Gilmour.
Gilmour had already stripped to the waist and was standing barefoot in the dusting of snow that had fallen overnight. He looked unfazed, as comfortable as if he were on a tropical beach. ‘I suppose I am,’ he said, turning his arms in great spiralling loops like an Olympic swimmer warming up. Gilmour’s body was an emaciated, bandylegged leather sack, ribs pressing out against the paper-thin skin of his chest. The fisherman Caddoc Weston, whose body Gilmour now wore, had spent many Twinmoons hauling nets on the Ravenian Sea, and that time had toughened the old man’s flesh into something near-impenetrable, otherwise Steven was sure that Gilmour would have frozen, cracked and collapsed into
a pile of jagged pieces right there beside the river.
‘Don’t warm me up right away,’ Gilmour said. ‘I want to see if I can still handle a Winter Festival swim.’
Garec laughed. ‘And if you can’t?’
‘I guess you’ll have to gaff me and sell me at the fish market in Orindale.’
‘With all that meat on you?’ Garec said. ‘A half-bucket of eddy fish and a slimy eel are worth enough copper Mareks to buy a round of beers. For you we’d be lucky to get enough for a loaf of day-old bread.’
‘Trust me, I’ve got it where it counts, Garec,’ Gilmour crowed, puffing out his narrow chest.
Brand and Kellin laughed at that.
Garec, lightening the mood in the cold grey of another sunless winter morning, looked around and asked, ‘Where? In a box under your bed? Because from where we’re standing, it doesn’t look like that old fisherman left you with much – or is that just a wrinkle that won’t iron out?’
‘And what would I do with more than a handful, Garec?’
Preparing for an equally hearty dose of ribbing himself, Steven pulled off his jacket and started concentrating on a spell to warm air and water. ‘So, size is an issue here, too, huh? Christ. A guy falls through a magic portal into a mystical world, and it still comes down to the size of the packet under the godforsaken Christmas tree.’
Garec roared with laughter, nearly slipping on an icy rock and tumbling into the shallows. Brand and Kellin joined in as Gilmour struck several ridiculous poses, his leggings sagging over his bony backside.
Steven focused his will; his skin tautened into gooseflesh, and he felt the familiar sensation of something charged moving through his body. The air began to thicken; the pines, the Blackstones and the snowy riverbank all blurred into a distant, waxy backdrop.
Gilmour stopped his posturing and moved to stand beside him. ‘Is it working?’ he asked softly.
As Steven nodded, the others quieted as well and Gilmour asked, ‘How close do you need me?’
‘Until I get it right, stay here beside me, please.’
‘Get it right?’ Gilmour put a hand on Steven’s shoulder. ‘My boy, if I don’t get in that water soon, the heat out here is going to leave me senseless.’
‘You can feel it?’ Steven wished he had thought to bring along the hickory staff. Somehow having it in his hands gave him confidence; it helped him to feel that magic was tangible. His battle with Nerak had taught him he didn’t need it, but for the first time since defeating the fallen sorcerer, Steven missed the wooden staff.
‘You’re doing fine. Let’s go.’ Gilmour waded in, gave a quick wave to the others and dived beneath the surface.
Steven stripped off his own tunic and jeans. Standing in his boxers, he turned to Garec and said, ‘I don’t know how long this will take.’
‘We’re not going anywhere. Take your time. Give a shout if you need anything.’
‘I will. Watch out for bone-collectors. There were one or two we didn’t kill back there, and this spell might alert them.’
Kellin’s face was grim. Steven wished she would smile again; it had been good to hear her laughing with Garec.
‘We’ll be back,’ he said, his voice deep and accented. Even though he knew they wouldn’t get the joke, he smiled.
‘Good luck,’ Kellin, Garec and Brand called.
Steven let the spell burgeon and as it enveloped him, stronger now, almost malleable, he cast it out. It found Gilmour paddling in the shallows and wrapped the old man in its embrace. One down. Get it started and it will go on for ever, like the Twinmoons, the fountains at Sandcliff. One down.
He dived into the steely-grey, forbidding water, ignoring the chunks of ice from somewhere upstream. The river was as warm as a summer pond. Beneath the surface, it was clear and clean, untainted by industrial pollution, soil erosion or acid rain. Like the forests high in the Blackstone Mountains, this river was perfect to American eyes. Steven and Mark would have had to trek deep into the national forest above Estes Park to find anything similarly unspoiled; Clear Creek, the crystal stream dancing its roundabout way through Idaho Springs, was oily and foul by comparison.
Steven held his breath while he called up the magic; it was ready now, waiting at his fingertips. He reached out for Gilmour, whose toothy grin assured him it was working fine. At first the air that filled his lungs was cold, a painful shock after the torrid folds of their mystical blanket. A quick adjustment, and the air filling and refilling his chest was positively balmy.
That’s better, he thought, then gestured, let’s swim.
Gilmour grabbed his forearm. Wait a moment.
Steven raised his shoulders dramatically, asking why, then his vision, blurry despite the flawless clarity of the mountain water, sharpened itself little by little until he could see as clearly as if he were wearing a scuba mask.
Holy shit, he thought, that’s an impressive bit of sorcery. He grinned and gave Gilmour the thumbs-up. An inquisitive look from Gilmour meant he had no idea what that meant, so he patted him enthusiastically on the back instead and swam towards the centre of the river, careful not to touch the muddy bed.
It wasn’t long before he spotted it, in the distance. He had been right; halfway between the fiery maples and the granite cliff face above the opposite bank was the rocky moraine. The pagan altar seemed larger than it had on Steven’s last visit, and he wondered if somehow Nerak’s spell included a bit of fine print, a clause ensuring increased fortification of the spell table’s fortress over time.
Hoyt wept. Outside, dawn was unfurling a grey flag over Pellia. It would be another day without sunshine, another icy day spent ducking the Palace Guard, and quietly mourning Churn. His breathing was laboured but soft, his sobs muffled by his woollen blanket.
Hoyt didn’t want Hannah to see him like this. For five days he had managed not to fall apart, weeping and raging that his best friend had been left, dead, outside Prince Malagon’s haunted keep, but this morning, Hoyt broke down. Every night he had been tormented by dreams of Churn playing that absurd rock-paper-scissors game with Hannah, then slipping off the buttress. Last night had been the worst yet. Churn had tried to tell him something, and in his nightmare, he couldn’t understand. Just before he fell, the Pragan giant had looked over Hannah’s shoulder – had he really done that? – and mouthed something to Hoyt, standing safe on the snowy balcony. And try as he might, Hoyt couldn’t make out what Churn was trying to say.
Now the reality of Churn being fired upon, all those arrows piercing his back, falling, the big man falling to the greensward below and being left for those Malakasian monsters to rip apart – rutting whores, those things probably ate him – was more than Hoyt could bear. And he wept for his friend.
Hannah Sorenson, oblivious to Hoyt’s suffering, stripped to her underwear and washed using the basin of tepid water in the corner of the room. While Hoyt still slept she planned to dress and find breakfast for both of them. Alen and Milla were in a smaller room across the hall, the little girl sleeping on the mattress while Alen curled up in a nest of blankets on the wooden floor. All through their flight from Welstar Palace, their journey using the small boat they ‘borrowed’ and subsequent passage north on a civilian barge they encountered, Alen had not left Milla’s side. There was no sound from their chamber now, and Hannah assumed they were both still asleep.
She would find breakfast: tecan, warm bread, cheese, fruit, maybe even some meat. Hoyt needed nourishment. He hadn’t been well since they had arrived in the capital city and Hannah was worried. The young thief was as taut as a piece of piano wire, tightening a bit each day. He looked drawn and haggard, worn to the nub, stretched near to breaking-point, Hannah thought. She hoped sleep and a good breakfast might help him find some peace.
Hoyt watched Hannah in the half-light, stifling his tears. She didn’t know he was awake, hadn’t heard him crying. For the past two Twinmoons they had spent many nights together, elbowing one another playfully out of the way as they shared
rooms, blankets, wine and food and firelight. They had been on a mission, working their way north: Hoyt working for the Resistance, Hannah seeking a way home. For all he liked the foreign girl, Hoyt hadn’t really noticed her before now. She certainly hadn’t noticed him.
Hannah was striking, standing in her underclothes, those little pants she refused to discard for the bigger, more comfortable Eldarni underclothes. Her firm, rounded breasts were rosy, even in the dim light. The hard buttons of her nipples were like twin copper Mareks. The skin of her back, disappearing beneath that thin band of clinging material, was smooth, perfect. Her stomach was flat, too flat, for she was so thin now after long days walking, riding and eating whatever they could forage along the trail…
Hoyt had seen her strip to those little shorts countless times before, but it hadn’t meant anything – they’d lived, travelled and worked together for two Twinmoons, and trapped in one another’s company, it was unavoidable.
This morning, it was different. Hoyt wanted her. This morning he needed her.
He felt his stomach knot itself up and he came out in a cold sweat. He feared he might be sick right there in the bed as the candlelight shone on the firmly delineated muscles of Hannah’s legs that shifted when she bent to wash her feet. Gods take me, Hoyt thought, just take me now. He coughed, and stifled it, and closed his eyes. Then, sliding one hand below the waist of his own underclothes, Hoyt let grief take him, and as he gave in to his need, he wept as he stroked himself, slowly at first, and then quicker. He watched Hannah wash herself, an intimate act he would have turned away from a Moon ago. She thinks you’re asleep, you rutting horsecock, he thought. Turn your back; this isn’t your private show.
But he didn’t; he couldn’t. Like a voyeur, he was unable to tear his gaze away from the supple perfection of her candlelit body.
Now Hannah heard something and whirled around, grabbing up her tunic and clutching it close about her body. She strained to see him through the gloom. ‘Hoyt? Are you all right?’ she asked, trying to decipher the strange noises.
