by Rob Scott
‘It’s still down there.’ Steven dived for the riverbed, mustering all the hope he could summon. The end this time would be different. He knew how it felt to have nothing but hope; it had been a staple since the moment his best friend disappeared through the far portal in their living room. Now he would use that to his advantage.
The two sorcerers took a break to dry out and warm up. Brand built a bonfire, and both men, despite having been artificially warmed all morning, sat as near to the flames as they could. Steven and Gilmour answered question after question until Steven threw up his hands and begged a half-aven to rest.
‘So where’s the table now?’ Garec asked as Steven unrolled his blankets.
Steven pointed. ‘Just over there in the shallows. We’ll haul it up here after I’ve had a bit of a sleep.’
‘Why’d you leave it?’ Kellin asked.
‘It’s a big table, it’s heavy and cumbersome,’ Gilmour said. ‘Getting it out was one spell. Out of the water it’ll be an entirely different animal.’
‘It will be heavier,’ Garec said.
‘A great deal heavier,’ Steven agreed.
‘And you don’t have a spell for that?’ Kellin asked. Remembering what Gilmour had said, Steven noticed that she and Garec had been sitting next to each other through the midday meal. They stood beside one another now, looking comfortable together.
‘Sure we do,’ Steven said. ‘It’s just different, and it takes a bit of concentration.’ He rested his head on his pack. ‘We’ll get it done… later.’ He yawned and closed his eyes.
‘Did you destroy that last spell?’ Garec asked.
Steven sat up again. ‘Did the gods send you here to keep me awake, Garec?’
The Ronan laughed and agreed, ‘They might have, yes.’
‘I didn’t destroy it,’ Steven said, lying back and pulling his blankets tight beneath his chin.
‘But Gilmour said-’
‘I didn’t destroy it,’ Steven interrupted, ‘but a weak-willed, terrified bank manager from Idaho Springs did.’
Garec looked quizzical.
Steven smirked. ‘It was about the easiest spell I’ve cast since I got here. No kidding. It just fell off my fingertips and tore the thing to ribbons.’
Garec said, ‘Nothing but hope.’
‘I know that song, my friend.’
‘Sleep well, Steven.’
‘Watch for Mark. I probably shouldn’t be resting at all, but I’m afraid I’ll screw up royally if I do too much while I’m wiped out.’
Gilmour sat on a folded blanket, his back resting against a pine trunk and his feet propped on a flat rock.
‘How are you?’ Garec asked.
Gilmour shrugged. Not bad, I suppose.’
‘Did you…’ Garec awkwardly mimed what he couldn’t find the words to describe.
‘I did all right,’ Gilmour said, nibbling at a piece of venison. ‘I couldn’t get free from the riverbed or untangle the web, but I managed a few decent explosions and I did outwit Nerak’s hopelessness trap, so all in all, I’m pleased.’
‘You have the spell table, and you’re sitting here intact,’ Brand said. ‘By my reckoning, that’s a successful morning.’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Gilmour said. ‘I think I’ve reached a new phase in my life – one I could never have predicted. I thought I had to be a great magician, on par with Nerak, to win this battle, but I don’t.’ He grimaced comically. ‘At least I think I don’t.’
Garec smiled. Regardless of how his life’s work might be evolving, there were things about Gilmour that would never change, especially his propensity for engaging life from a comfortable sitting position. Now, with Lessek’s spell table successfully excavated and waiting in the shallows, Gilmour was stretched out languidly beside the fire and Garec waited to see one of the old man’s ubiquitous tobacco pipes appear suddenly in his bony fingers. ‘So what’s your charge then?’
‘To teach, to mentor. It was always my role, from my first Twinmoons at Sandcliff when I knew I would never be a great sorcerer. I lost sight of that over the last few hundred Twinmoons. With only me and Kantu left, I thought I had to be as powerful as Nerak to beat him.’
‘But you weren’t?’ Kellin asked.
‘Great gods, no,’ Gilmour replied, ‘even if Steven’s claims about Nerak are true, that he was just a hack, a weakling who lied to himself about how good he was, the old bastard was still too powerful for me. The last few Twinmoons have been the worst. I’ve tried spells that have failed; I’ve been terrified to open that spell book. I’ve come face to face with my own weaknesses, and all these things have distracted me from what I was really supposed to be doing.’
‘Guiding him?’ Garec motioned towards Steven.
‘Exactly,’ Gilmour said, then brightened. ‘And what I’m discovering is a new appreciation for everything I had before.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Brand said.
‘I did a lot of work over the last thousand Twinmoons, and before Sandcliff fell I amassed a great deal of knowledge, and a not-insignificant grasp of Larion magic. But recently, especially since Port Denis was destroyed, I’ve been honing skills I knew I lacked and never took the time to stop and appreciate the overall package of who I had become.’
‘You were focusing on the wrong things,’ Garec said, echoing Steven’s own realisation.
‘But now that I’ve had a chance to clear my head, I feel as though I’ve regained my perspective, and some of my strength is returning. I felt it for a while at Sandcliff, especially that first day when we battled the acid clouds and the almor. It was as if everything I needed to know was hidden behind a gossamer-thin curtain; I was so close to clarity there that I could taste it on my tongue like spring rain, but then Nerak arrived and I got distracted again.’
‘He wasn’t playing fair, either, Gilmour,’ Garec said, ‘using Pikan and that sword, and using poor old Harren’s brittle bones to attack us… it’s no wonder you were a bit off-centre.’
‘So what was different today?’ Kellin asked.
‘Today, I stayed inside myself, I trusted that if I showed Steven how to find the right magic, he would free us and find the table. When that didn’t happen, I tried not to panic’
‘Did it work?’
‘Actually, it did.’ Gilmour finally produced a pipe and began smoking. ‘I trusted what I knew, rather than what magic I wished I had with me. Even after I was drawn beneath the river, I kept my wits, tapped my strength and managed to bring the table back out.’
‘So you were stronger than the hopelessness snare,’ Kellin said.
‘No, I was smarter,’ Gilmour corrected her. ‘In the end, my wits are what saved me.’
‘What was down there?’ Brand asked.
Gilmour puffed at his pipe. The embers glowed red a moment before a wisp of sweet Falkan smoke escaped. ‘It was a chamber of sorts, about chest-deep with water. The ceiling – the riverbed – was a dark blanket, just out of reach. I never realised how noisy a river is until I spent those few moments beneath this one. The whole place echoed with the sound of perpetual motion. It was black as pitch, damp, smelling of mould and decay – and guarded by five or six of those bone-collecting creatures we faced in the glen.’
‘Rutting whores,’ Garec exclaimed, ‘how’d you handle so many?’
Gilmour shook his head. ‘I didn’t. They were all dead, just hulking masses of stinking rotten flesh. It looked like they’d been feeding on each other, until the last one, a big bastard with about ten-thousand of those nasty pincers, died of its wounds – I’m guessing from its final battle. The humidity down there made it even worse, like wandering about in a big city’s sewage.’
‘I wonder why they killed one another?’ Kellin mused.
‘There wouldn’t have been enough food in that chamber – not even in this whole stretch of the river – to keep even one of those beasts alive for very long,’ Gilmour said. ‘Nerak most likely had them guarding the new Larion spell
chamber for a few days at a time in turn, replacing each other when it was time to feed. When Nerak decided to retrieve the spell table on his own, he probably called off the rest of the monsters and forced those inside to remain where they were. They were probably killing and eating one another after a couple of days. I’m sure it didn’t take long.’
‘And when we arrived in Meyers’ Vale-’ Garec started.
‘Or when Nerak received word that we were coming this way,’ Gilmour added.
‘Who could have told him?’ Garec interrupted.
‘His men would have alerted the southern occupation officers when we gave that mounted battalion outside Orindale the slip.’
‘Oh, right.’ Garec winced and avoided looking at Kellin. ‘I’ve tried to forget that day.’
Kellin wrapped an arm around the bowman’s shoulders; Garec allowed himself to be drawn in, snuggling beside her.
‘No matter,’ Gilmour said. ‘When we started south along the river, Nerak marshalled the rest of the bone-collectors to meet us in the glen. By that time, if this bunch wasn’t already dead, any hope of getting replacements was lost.’
‘How did you get the table out?’ Brand asked.
‘That was an old spell,’ Gilmour admitted. ‘Any Larion sorcerer could have cast it. One of our duties was the loading and unloading of barges at docks half an aven’s ride from Sandcliff. Often we’d have to endure nasty stinging rain showers – even in summer, the weather in Gorsk can be positively petulant. Anyway, when it was rainy, the duty, however coveted on nice days, was delegated and re-delegated down to the greenest sorcerer on the campus. So even the most wet-nosed of beginners quickly learned the spells that helped the lifting, moving, shipping and shifting of heavy cargoes.’
‘So you hefted it up and pressed it through the mud of the ceiling? The riverbed?’ Garec asked.
Gilmour nodded. ‘Just as if I was unloading a pallet of lumber from a Ronan schooner.’
‘But the hopelessness snare…’ Kellin began.
‘I was trapped beneath the river in a death chamber full of decomposing bone-collectors. For all I knew, Steven had failed, and I would have to spend several days, Twinmoons even, eating rancid meat and waiting for our young friend over there to figure out the river trap and come down to retrieve me. For lack of a better option, I employed a beginner’s spell to help get the table up and into the mud. And when I encountered the hopelessness snare a second time, to say that all I had left was hope would be to understate my condition significantly.’
‘Then Steven destroyed the snare,’ Kellin said.
‘Right again. I outwitted it to save my life. Once he figured it out, he eviscerated it, literally ripped it apart from the inside out.’
Brand blew a low whistle through pursed lips.
‘I couldn’t have said it better myself. There is enormous power in that young man, enormous power.’
Garec glanced at Steven, asleep on the opposite side of the fire. ‘Why don’t you rest for a while, Gilmour? The three of us can work on fortifying that cart, and you two can… do whatever it is you need to do when Steven wakes up.’
Stretching his feet even closer to the flames, Gilmour refilled his pipe, smiled contentedly and said, ‘If you insist, Garec’
MONTHS AND TWINMOONS
Gabriel O’Reilly moved undetected through the Malakasian ranks, flitting between rocks and trees in his search for Mark Jenkins. It was obvious the dark-skinned foreigner might look less conspicuous than he had in the Blackstones, when he had been wearing a bright red pullover and a pair of unusual leather boots, but Gabriel was still hopeful.
The infantry battalion stationed at Wellham Ridge did have several soldiers with dark skin, natives of the Ronan South Coast whose families had emigrated to Malakasia generations earlier. Gabriel passed as close to these few as he dared, careful not to make contact for fear of alerting them to his presence. The soldiers were weary and footsore, and it looked like most had been marching about as long as they physically could without a break. Some moved as if in a trance, mumbling strange sounds, barely able to lift their feet. There was a nervous lieutenant and an angry captain, both on horseback.
A rank of horse-drawn wagons loaded with all manner of engineering equipment, shovels, picks, heavy digging tools, pulleys and great coils of rope passed next. Even the horses looked tired out by the forced march. A soldier, a corporal, Gabriel thought, sat astride a splintery wooden bench in one of the wagons, loosely holding the reins and staring south along the trail through slitted eyes, seeing little, allowing the horses to meander down the path at their own pace.
Something – someone – was pushing these men southwards, Gabriel thought, but which one was it? Which one was Mark Jenkins?
A second company followed the wagons and Gabriel searched their ranks, coming as close as he dared to the dark-skinned soldiers but still finding nothing but angry, sick or terrified conscripts on the march into an unknown engagement with an unknown foe. There were two more tired lieutenants and another irritated captain, but no one Gabriel could sense in command of the battalion, no one obviously hell-bent on moving such a large force south into the foothills so quickly, with neither adequate provisions nor rest.
As the last of the soldiers passed him, Gabriel considered actually searching within their ranks; so many were nearly crippled with fatigue that he was sure he could move right through them and no one would be any the wiser…
Then she was there, materialising as if from behind a mystical cloak, a woman, the markings of a major on her sleeve, sitting astride a roan horse, and Gabriel cursed himself for a fool: he had been searching for a man.
‘Lovely to see you again, Mr O’Reilly,’ Major Tavon said.
‘I saved your life in that storm, Mark.’
‘You shouldn’t have.’
‘You wanted to go home.’
‘And you were going to come with us,’ she said as the last squad disappeared over a snowy rise, ‘back home, after one hundred and thirty-five years.’
‘Come with me now, Mark.’
‘You were going to Heaven to see your God.’
‘Our God.’
‘Not any more, O’Reilly.’ Her nostrils flared. ‘And this time, I want you to stay dead.’
Gabriel tried to flee over the river, to let his spectral body fade to fog, but he was too slow. Mark had him. Reaching out, the major – of course it was the major, stupid – caught him in midair, his mystical grip as strong as a blacksmith’s vice. Gabriel dived for the protection of the earth, hoping to bury himself in the frost and frozen mud of the riverbank, but Mark wouldn’t allow it.
Holding fast to the wraith, the major said, ‘You have been a troublesome fellow, Gabriel, troublesome indeed. But not any more.’
The former bank manager and erstwhile Union Army soldier watched as the forest itself began to melt. The colours, green, brown and white, ran together like a child’s drawing left out in the rain, and a dark cleft opened behind the major’s horse. Gabriel had seen it before and the realisation was quick to sink in: this time it would be for ever.
A recalcitrant Mark tried to rise up, to scream, but the presence keeping him inside Major Tavon’s body cried, ‘Shut up, you! Gods, but you are annoying! I expected more from you, more toughness, more resilience.’
‘Don’t,’ Mark pleaded, ‘stop this – he’s never harmed anyone.’
‘Shut up!’ Mark felt the hand again, that invisible weight pressing against his chest, against the major’s chest, stopping his air and leaving him gasping.
It’s killing itself, Mark thought. Jesus Christ, it’s willing to kill itself to make a point.
‘I’m not doing anything to him,’ the voice boomed, ‘you are, Mark Jenkins. I can’t do anything, I can’t harm one forgotten hair on his translucent head without you. So before you start assigning blame, remember, you represent half of this marriage, my friend.’
‘No,’ Mark wheezed, the pain in his chest too great. He saw expl
oding points of yellow light and then fell back into the space he had been allotted, his arms and legs paralysed, his senses dulled and his breathing jagged.
He watched through Major Tavon’s eyes as Gabriel O’Reilly disappeared inside what Mark guessed was one of the tears Steven had seen at the Idaho Springs Landfill. Mark hadn’t been able to see them before. He could now.
‘Blackford!’ Major Tavon screamed along the ragged line of Malakasian soldiers.
The lieutenant hurried to her side. One of the sergeants in Captain Hershaw’s company had built a small fire and was brewing tecan and preparing a hasty meal for the officers. Blackford gulped his tecan, scalding his mouth and throat, and hustled to the front of the line despite aching feet, blisters and a throbbing twinge in his lower back. As dawn approached the major had agreed to a much-needed break. The battalion had marched nonstop since the previous evening and the men were in sore need of rest. They had arrived at the glen where, unbeknownst to them, Steven, Gilmour and Nerak had battled to the death just a few days earlier. Major Tavon rode down to the riverside and stared as if expecting Bellan Whitward to peek out from behind the field of boulders. The ravages of Steven’s fire had been covered by new snow, likewise the chitinous remains of the dead bone-collectors.
‘We’ve made it here in a day and two nights,’ she said to Lieutenant Blackford.
‘I am impressed. You can tell the soldiers that.’
‘Thank you, ma’am. I’m sure they’ll be pleased to hear it.’
‘They are to have a full aven’s rest. My orders are to drink plenty of water – the river is clean enough – and have them eat their fill.’ The major herself had not rested since their departure from Wellham Ridge. She had twice dismounted to allow her horse to feed, but other than that, she had been in the saddle the entire time. ‘Feed them now, and have them go directly to sleep. I want to make twenty, perhaps twenty-five miles, before the dinner aven tonight.’
Like dozen, Blackford had no idea what a mile might be, but he didn’t question the officer, who had been saying indecipherable things for the past five days now. Lieutenant Blackford had resigned himself to the fact that made-up words must be another symptom of the major’s illness.
