by Rob Scott
‘Blame Garec,’ Marrin replied, ‘he rows too bloody slow.’
‘It wasn’t my idea to row over here with an anchor in the boat!’ Garec said. ‘I’m not much of a sailor, but I’ve been around the water enough to know that anchors are supposed to go outside the boat.’
‘That’s a good tip,’ he called back. ‘Now shut yourselves up and hustle back to those rocks. I want to be out of here and on our way as soon as possible.’
‘Ah, Captain?’ Marrin’s voice was ethereal through the fog; it came from everywhere at once.
Ford shook his head. ‘What now, Marrin?’
‘Have you noticed the fog, sir?’
‘Three hundred Twinmoons I’ve been at sea, Marrin. Of course I’ve noticed the rutting fog!’
‘Well, sir, how are you planning on getting underway in this fog? There’s rocks and shoals and mud and shit out here, not to mention the islands. There’s hundreds of those lying about. We’re bound to run into something. Not that this morning was your fault, but sir, there’s a lot out here to hit; this place needs a clean-up, and I mean in a raging hurry.’
‘We’ll be fine making way through the fog,’ he said.
‘Again, begging your pardon, sir, but how?’
‘You and Garec are going to guide us,’ he said calmly.
Neither answered, but from their silence it was apparent that they weren’t looking forward to spending the day rowing blind, especially with the Morning Star in tow.
Kellin and Steven emerged from below and joined Captain Ford at the rail, looking for Garec.
‘Can you see them?’ Kellin asked.
‘Not right now,’ he answered, ‘but if you follow that length of anchor line into the fog, you can get a fix on them. They’re out behind those rocks.’
‘Is this dangerous?’
He shook his head. ‘Not much. We won’t get far, but the bit we navigate before high tide will be slow enough that if we should run aground again, it won’t be too bad.’
‘We won’t sink?’
The captain laughed. ‘There’s no place to sink, Kellin. On tip-toe you could just about walk to Pellia from here. I thank the gods that you all drink so much. If we had even an extra few crates of beer on board, we’d have to toss them over the side for fear of being too heavy.’
Kellin smiled in return. ‘That would be a tragic waste.’
‘Anyway, once we get a bit of water coming north again, we’ll be able to make better time, but for now, this journey is going to get a touch tedious.’ Garec and Marrin appeared through the gloom. ‘Ah, there they are,’ the captain said, then hailing them, called, ‘There’s fine. We’ll heave her off. Marrin, watch that line. Shout for your mother if it breaks off or pulls free. I don’t want us floating around up here.’
‘Very good, sir. I’m sure my mother will be happy to help.’
Kellin laughed, then waved to Garec. ‘Good morning.’
‘Well, hello.’ Garec blew her a kiss. ‘What’s a nice Falkan girl like you doing in a shithole like this?’
Kellin said, ‘I understand it’s an excellent place to meet eligible young men.’
Marrin interrupted, ‘So they told you I was here? Stand fast, my dear: as soon as I’m through rescuing Captain Ford’s broken-down old barge I’ll be back to sweep you thoroughly off your feet.’
Captain Ford said, ‘Garec…’
‘Now’s fine with me, sir,’ Garec shouted back.
‘Go right ahead – but one thing: you realise with him gone, you’ll become my first mate.’ He winced, regretting the joke the moment the words left his mouth. No one said anything. Tubbs and Sera’s loss was still too close, too raw for this degree of levity. The time for joking had passed, at least for now. After a moment, he announced, ‘To the capstan; let’s get her out of here.’
Everyone moved at once, happy to have something to do. Brexan joined Ford at the rail. ‘Captain,’ she started, ‘I want to-’
‘No,’ he cut her off, ‘please, just help me at the capstan. We’ll be through this channel in a moment. It’s going to be a long day.’
‘Of course,’ she said. As she helped to take up the slack in the anchor-line, Brexan was able to see the way the capstan worked. With six wooden levers rigged at right angles from one another, they all pushed and rotated the great spindle, reeling in the hawser Garec and Marrin had dragged through the channel. Once taut, the capstan fought back, grinding to a halt as the full weight of the Morning Star came to bear on the anchor line.
‘Great rutters,’ Kellin said, ‘but this ship didn’t look that heavy!’
‘With your nose buried in the mud, you’d be hard to extract as well,’ Captain Ford said. ‘Keep at it, though. She’ll come loose.’ He grunted encouragement.
‘Use your legs,’ Gilmour instructed, straining as well. ‘Get your backs into it.’
The company pushed and heaved, pressing against the unwieldy capstan with all their might. Even wiry young Pel hurried from the quarterdeck to help break the muddy seal.
‘I want you at the helm, Pel,’ the captain ordered, his face flushed and sweaty.
‘I’m doing no good there, Captain,’ Pel said. It was about the only thing Brexan had heard him say since their departure from Orindale. The quiet young man, when not swabbing the brig-sloop from bow to stern, was generally to be found in the rigging, checking cleats, mending frayed ratlines and keeping a wary eye out for the navy. The last encounter had scared him to within a few breaths of the Northern Forest, and simply watching Steven pith the tan-bak had started the Pragan seaman quaking all over again. Talking only to the captain, and keeping his head down, the shy youngster said, ‘I’ll be back as soon as we get her loose, but let me help.’
The anchor line was taut, as tight as the small group of determined travellers could manage. Brexan waited for something to snap, or for the anchor to pull free from its place in the rocks behind the fog. With only wood, hemp and muscle in the equation, something had to give; the strain was too great.
Finally, groaning in protest, the Morning Star moved, just a slight shift to starboard at first. Brexan felt the capstan spin, taking in a bit of line as the deck righted itself.
‘One more like that should do it,’ the captain encouraged. ‘Pel, get back to the helm, now.’
As quickly as he had arrived, the youngster was gone.
Captain Ford called after him, ‘Bring the keel to starboard, just enough to get our backside clear, but as soon as she breaks off, get her back to port. I don’t want us off the mud and onto those rocks, understand?’
‘Aye aye, Captain,’ Pel shouted over his shoulder.
‘Marrin!’ he cried.
‘Captain?’ The reply came from somewhere over the side.
‘Get ready!’ On his mark, everyone redoubled their efforts. ‘Here we come!’
With that, the hull slipped free, the capstan spun easily, unexpectedly, and both Steven and Kellin fell to their knees, cursing.
The captain was gone, calling, ‘Keep taking up the slack, not too fast now, just keep it coming in steady. Then pawl that and wait for me amidships.’ From the rail, he checked their heading, then ordered, ‘Pel, back to port now, back to port.’
The Morning Star bobbed in the channel, turning to take in her anchor line and waiting for a northerly breeze. With another half-aven of slack water, they would have ample time to get through the narrow passage and reset the anchor before another sudden gust threatened to leave them in the mud or push them onto the rocks.
Taking the helm, Captain Ford watched as his crew of seamen and partisans reeled in the anchor line, then guided the brig-sloop carefully through the channel, beyond the island and into deeper, if still fogbound, water.
When the Morning Star passed the rocks, Marrin called, ‘I didn’t think you could do it, Captain, but she’s clear.’
Smiling, he said, ‘I told you we were thinking thin thoughts!’
Steven said, ‘That’s more work than I expect
ed to do today.’
‘You and me both, cousin,’ Gilmour agreed, ‘but I don’t think we’re finished yet.’
‘Grand.’ Kellin wiped her forehead on her tunic sleeve. ‘Don’t you two know anything that might help us speed this process up a bit?’
‘Nothing we can risk right now,’ Steven said. ‘With any luck, Mark is honed in on the magic keeping that… whatever it was-’
‘Tan-bak,’ Gilmour supplied.
‘Keeping that tan-bak alive out there somewhere. We’re in enough danger simply from the fact that he might stumble across the mystical energy coming from the far portal and the spell book down in the cabin.’
Brexan said, ‘I thought that with Carpello’s shipments running north, Mark wouldn’t notice the difference between a ship loaded with that Ronan tree bark and one with your Larion toys.’
‘We have to hope not,’ Gilmour said, ‘but judging from our trip thus far, we haven’t been very lucky at keeping ourselves invisible. I made a mistake the day we encountered that naval cruiser. I don’t know if that’s why Mark sent the tan-bak, but I’m unwilling to risk using magic again until we are closer to Pellia. Once there, I’m betting we can use a bit of sorcery and Mark won’t be any wiser.’
‘Because it will… what? Mix with the other magic already in Pellia?’
‘Correct,’ Gilmour said, ‘if even one of those shipments is moored in the harbour – and with the tides and the traffic in the Northeast Channel, we have to hope that at least one of them was delayed – my magic shouldn’t make much noise at all.’
‘But he detected enough powerful magic to decide to destroy that other ship and then send the tan-bak for us,’ Brexan said hesitantly. ‘Won’t he do that again?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Gilmour replied. ‘When the Malakasian sorcerer was having at us from his ship, his spells were noisy, like pebbles dropped into a dead-calm mill pond. When I cast the spell protecting Steven, it was a bigger pebble, like a small stone.’
‘And Mark felt the difference,’ Kellin said.
‘He did. But the schooner I discovered from Wellham Ridge was radiating so much energy, I believe I could be hammering away with everything I have and Mark wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.’
Brexan untied her cloak and draped it over the forward hatch. ‘So a shipment is like a big rock in your mill pond.’
‘A boulder,’ Gilmour agreed. ‘Once we get near Pellia, if we’re lucky, Mark will have no idea that we’re still alive, still after him.’
‘And then what?’ Kellin looked at him expectantly.
‘By then, it won’t matter. If we can’t sneak into the city, we’ll have to go in the front door, and that will mean using everything in our arsenal.’
Kellin recalled their battle in Meyers’ Vale, and for the first time all Twinmoon, the idea that she was travelling with two deadly sorcerers was comforting.
Brexan broke the silence. ‘Tell me about that book, Gilmour. What’s it say? What’s in there?’
The familiar look of uncertainty passed across Gilmour’s face. He checked on Garec and Marrin’s progress, then said, A very long time ago in Gorsk, a man named Lessek-’
‘The Lessek?’ Brexan interrupted, ‘as in all the stories we heard when we were young?’
‘That’s him.’ Gilmour rooted in his tunic for a pipe and, unable to find one, looked suddenly like a two-thousand-Twinmoon-old man who didn’t know what to do with his hands. Giving up, he went on, ‘Lessek used an exceedingly small bit of… well, call it magic, coupled with his knowledge to create spells. At first, they were nothing terribly impressive, so I understand – this was Ages and Eras before I was born – but he learned to move air around a room, to wilt a flower, to get water to freeze, carnival tricks, really, but over time, he continued his research and generated a long list of spells. He would investigate the nature of something, study it, interact with it, pick it apart – sometimes even tear it apart, and then use aspects of his previous spellwork to create a bigger and more powerful incantation.’
‘Common phrase spells?’ Steven asked.
‘Exactly,’Gilmour replied, ‘spells with parts of various incantations in common so as to harness exponential power, layered magic.’
‘Good gods,’ Kellin whispered.
‘When you think about it, there were few greater discoveries in the history of Eldarn. It’s the innovation that made magic such a dominant force in our cultural history. You two have never been to Steven’s world, where there’s little history of magical innovation, so the culture there is based on religion, common social values and traditions, the family, and democratic and economic ideals. Magic has played almost no role at all in defining who they are; actually, the extent of its thread through the fabric of Steven’s cultural history is as entertainment, and it appears in a handful of religious stories. But here, Lessek’s contributions to Eldarni history, as a researcher and a scholar, are just that: he made magic one of the building blocks of Eldarni culture. It is a stone in the foundation of who we are.’
Brexan said, ‘So before Lessek, there was no magic?’
‘Oh, there was plenty-’ Gilmour gestured as if the seeds of cultural mysticism were all around them, ‘but its purpose had not yet come into focus. It was potential energy, freely floating, essentially useless until Lessek channelled it together.’
‘So the book is a listing of his spells?’ Brexan jumped ahead.
‘Actually, no,’ Gilmour said. ‘You see, what Lessek did was more than generate an array of spells. By bringing magic to the forefront of Eldarni social development, he started a rock rolling down a mountain. There was no way to stop it; people saw what magic could offer, the role it could play in their lives: in education and medicine, in warfare and yes, even entertainment. Over time, they embraced the notion that magic would be going on around them all the time. It went from something people feared to something they accepted, and a few of them discovered that with training, they could wield it.’
‘The Larion Senators,’ Kellin said.
‘Right,’ Steven broke in, ‘recognising that there were people amongst them who could perform magic – everyday people, neighbours and friends – would have made it easier for anyone to accept magic and its widening impact.’
‘Yes and no,’ Gilmour said. ‘Like anything difficult to understand, magic had its naysayers, and a sad number of sorcerers were outcasts, ostracised by their communities.’
‘But I’d wager they were all there, lined up and waiting for their due, when it came time to heal the sick, to bring in a bumper crop or to revolutionise the shipping industry,’ Steven added.
Gilmour shrugged. ‘People will be people.’
‘Nice to know nothing’s really different.’
‘You sound like Mark.’
‘Go on, Gilmour,’ Brexan said, ‘you still haven’t told us about the spells in the book.’
‘Right, sorry, the book.’ Gilmour waved to Garec through the fog, then said, ‘The book is a spell book, but at the same time, it’s more than a spell book.’
‘Great, that’s helpful. Thanks, Gilmour. Anyone know what’s for breakfast?’ Brexan grinned. ‘I hope you’re going to elaborate a bit for us.’
‘If you’ll give me a chance,’ he said, smiling himself. ‘There are spells in that volume that are evident, while others are hidden, though implied, just waiting for the right reader to come along and take them for his or her use. It is a comprehensive look at the nature of magic and mysticism, but it doesn’t read like a normal book. Granted, the pages are filled with Lessek’s handwriting, but it’s what lies between the pages and within the pages that makes this particular book so powerful.’
‘I still don’t understand,’ Kellin said. ‘So the book carries more than just the words on the pages?’
‘Oh, great gods, yes. That book is the gateway to worlds and worlds of information on magic and mystical energy. You see, Lessek’s work didn’t end with the general acceptance of magic
as a fundamental tenet in Eldarni culture. Instead, he went on researching, studying, experimenting and improving his ability to tap into the magics of our world, and of worlds beyond the Fold, as evidenced by our new friends from Colorado.’
‘Stop it; I’m blushing,’ Steven teased.
‘With Lessek’s leadership, the Larion Senate was able to find, tap and retrieve magic from planes of existence, memory, emotion, good and evil that we can barely imagine. It was a boom that so changed Eldarn there was no going back. The Larion Senate, a group of mystics, many of whom had been thrown out of their communities, were suddenly the world’s teachers and leaders. They had to be; no one else could understand, never mind manipulate, that power.’
‘It sounds like things were taking a turn for the worse,’ Kellin said.
‘They would have, if Lessek hadn’t invented a safe means by which to tap into the reservoir of power the Larion Senate had accumulated. With that done, tension and fear in the five lands eased, and Eldarn breathed a sigh of relief.’
‘That was the spell table?’ Brexan asked.
‘Exactly,’ Steven said. ‘It was an elaborate… safe deposit box, for lack of a better term.’
‘So the book tells how to operate the table?’ Brexan said.
‘I wish it were that easy,’ Gilmour replied. ‘No, the book outlines magic’s place in Eldarni culture. It uses Lessek’s spells coupled with aspects of Eldarni history, social innovation, creativity and a variety of other common values and cultural cornerstones to describe the very nature of the magic Lessek and the Larion Senate were able to amass in the spell table.’
‘So, the good and the bad,’ Kellin said, looking for Garec herself.
‘More than that,’ Gilmour said. ‘It describes the possible and the impossible, the nebulous regions between the real and the unreal, the future and the past, the truth as concrete, hard and fast and the truth as malleable, uncertain and out of reach. The book is legendary for sometimes showing what a sorcerer wants to know and other times what a sorcerer needs to know. There have even been times – although I can’t say for certain if this truly happened – when the book showed a sorcerer something false and led the poor sod astray.’
