The Larion Senators e-3

by Rob Scott

  ‘No, Steven, I can’t. My… my so-called friends and colleagues arranged that in the wake of my disappearance, sometime around the beginning of the second Age, almost five Eras ago.’ She removed her glasses again and ran bony fingers over the lines etched in her face.

  A heavy silence fell over the sunlit dining room. Two joggers, bundled up against the cold, passed by on the hard-packed sand near the waterline; neither noticed that the restaurant doors had been forced open. Beyond them, the North Atlantic, glittering gold in the sun, rolled with the tide, unconcerned that it had swallowed an army less than an hour earlier.

  Garec, intrigued by the bright colours of the jackets and footwear, watched the joggers disappear into the distance. The world around him slowed, even time seemed to grow weary, trudging along to a soft dirge. They were done. They had won. He ought to feel better about it, but now all he wanted was to go home, to find Kellin and to sleep for a Twinmoon. He hadn’t felt safe for much of his life, not until this moment. He honestly hadn’t expected it, and now he was afraid even to consider what might lie ahead. How would he handle the realisation of everything he and his friends had ever worked to accomplish? The notion of success, hard-fought and harder-won, unnerved him. Garec decided he would go home and he would sleep. Then he would lock his bow and quivers away and ride for the Blackstones and Renna. The thought of his fiery little mare comforted him and he turned from the windows to ask, ‘What do we do now?’

  At first, no one answered. The challenges they had met stood taller than those that now lay before them. Saving Eldarn – saving Earth – had seemed so unlikely a battle to win: none of them had ever thought they would live this long. Now, faced with the task of rebuilding Eldarn, of starting over again a thousand Twinmoons later, the breadth of the work ahead was staggering.

  Mark, the history teacher, started on their list. ‘Education, public health, decent food supplies, shelter, clean water, working farms, shipping, roads, industry, a reliable judiciary, a set of reasonable laws – formative, not summative, not now, no way – and a representative government, right from the start. It might seem like it would be easier to start off with a monarchy and then switch over after a while, but that’s not the way to rebuild. They have to own it; there have to be some common values, simple – and I do mean dirt-simple – things the people of Eldarn can agree upon; we’re talking about a people with basic literacy, not the crew who spent the past fifty Twinmoons under Gilmour’s tutelage, but the rest of the population. That’s where you start a true grass-roots effort. Holy shit, it’ll take lifetimes to get that place put back together. I don’t… I can’t even get it all straight in my head. It’s too big a problem to even conceptualise without getting dizzy.’

  ‘Was there any beer in that fridge?’ Steven whispered to Hannah. ‘He works better after a beer or two.’

  ‘I’m sure the school board would be interested to know that little factoid, and no, there isn’t any beer back there. You’re home now; you can’t be drinking beer at ten o’clock in the morning.’ She slugged him playfully in the arm.

  Mark ignored them. ‘And the Larion Senate, the independent states of Gorsk, Praga, Rona and Falkan, even Malakasia. There’ll be civil wars, border disputes. The shipping industry will probably come near to collapse before it rights itself again. People will starve. There’s no army to speak of, no one to police the populace. Jesus, it’s going to be a mess.’

  ‘What about Gita?’ Steven said. ‘She can probably help.’

  ‘Yes, her, certainly, we’ll need to find her,’ Mark said. ‘Man, this’ll take weeks.’

  ‘Weeks,’ Hannah said, ‘that’s not so bad. They can hold together for a few weeks.’

  ‘I mean weeks just to get it all written down, just to get the problems outlined and the resources listed. That’ll take weeks. We’ll all be old people with see-through skin and brittle bones before Eldarn gets to the stage where people are living healthy, productive, free lives.’

  ‘Oh,’ Hannah said. ‘Sorry, I misunderstood.’

  ‘Mark-’ Steven sat next to Mrs Winter, ‘Mark, is this truly what you want to do? Are you suggesting that you’re ready to go back, to take up the mantle of some leadership position you never asked for?’

  ‘Look at me, Steven. My own family aren’t going to recognise me. And what about you? Do you think there’s a place in this world for a sorcerer? You’ll be grossly misunderstood, or exploited; you’ll either be dead or locked up inside a year: prison, maybe, or some psych hospital.’

  ‘You’ve been through a great deal, Mark,’ Garec said. ‘Perhaps you ought to take some time before you commit countless Twinmoons of your life to Eldarni cultural reconstruction.’

  ‘It has to start somewhere,’ Mark murmured, not to anyone in particular.

  Steven said, ‘But we’ve only been home for a couple of hours. We came a long way to get here; can’t we just enjoy this for a while? You can take a break: a month or six or whatever, get used to your new… self.’ Steven avoided looking at Mrs Winter. He hadn’t expected to feel selfish, but he couldn’t deny the sensation suffusing through him at the moment. His desire to protect Mark was equalled by his need for a few days’ of normalcy, some fried food and maybe a real mattress. He knew he would be returning to Eldarn if the opportunity arose, but bringing Mark along hadn’t crossed his mind, not since he’d been taken in Meyers’ Vale. Trying hard not to sound condescending, Steven added, ‘This is supposed to be where you ride into the sunset, cousin. I hadn’t thought about what we would do after today, but I promise it didn’t involve dragging you, or Hannah, back to Eldarn. That’s one mistake I prefer to make just once in a lifetime.’

  ‘It isn’t your choice to make,’ Hannah said quietly.

  ‘Hannah!’ Jennifer jumped up, looking startled and indignant.

  ‘Sorry, Mom, but if they’re going back, I’m going with them.’

  Hannah’s mother glared at Steven; she would always blame him.

  Garec interrupted, asking Mrs Winter how the Larion Senate could possibly rebuild without the spell table.

  ‘That’s a great question, Garec.’ The others postponed their disagreement to listen in. ‘You see, we don’t need the spell table to reconvene the Larion Brotherhood. All we need is Steven, Milla and that book.’ Again, she gestured to the leatherbound volume Gilmour had carried across half of Eldarn. ‘I was able, in my youth, to capture the essence of magical powers from different places, and all of it I channelled into the spell table. However, while doing so, I studied the magic of Eldarn, the lifeblood of our world, the energies and forces that ran through the very ground beneath our feet.’

  ‘Weren’t they in the spell table, too?’ Garec asked. ‘Would they have been lost when Steven broke it all to bits this morning?’

  ‘Steven?’ Mrs Winter raised her eyebrows. ‘Would you do the honours, please?’ She tossed the empty peach can towards the high dining room ceiling. Steven reached with one hand, captured the can in mid-flight and guided it gently back to the tabletop. There, the can crumpled itself into a compact silver ball and floated in a high arc, across the room, to land in a corner trashcan.

  ‘Nice shot, buddy,’ Mark said.

  ‘It was,’ Steven said, ‘but that wasn’t me.’

  Mark held a hand out to Milla, who, uncertain what to do, simply stared at it.

  ‘It’s called a high-five, sweetie,’ Mark whispered. ‘Just give it a good whack.’

  ‘All right,’ Milla cried and wound herself up for a resonant slap.

  ‘So you see, Garec,’ Mrs Winter went on, ‘the magic of Eldarn is alive and well. Granted, the spell table is lost, but with my writings and the purity of Steven and Milla’s skills, I have great hopes for the next generation of Eldarn’s Larion Senate.’

  ‘All right, then,’ Mark said, clearing the table, ‘let’s go.’

  ‘Go where?’ Jennifer said.

  ‘To my parents’ house,’ he replied. ‘They’re about half an hour from here. We
can stay there as long as we need to get our bearings and then, if that portal still works, we can go back, round up the key players and get busy. I don’t envy us the task ahead, but screw it, we were able to come this far.’

  ‘You think your parents will recognise you?’ Jennifer asked. ‘If they’re anything like me, they’ve never given up hope, but seeing you like this, do you think they’ll call the police and have you dragged off the lawn?’

  ‘I’m trusting Steven and Milla to convince them,’ Mark said.

  ‘Very well,’ Steven said, wrapping an arm around Hannah’s waist. ‘If we don’t help them, who will?’

  EPILOGUE

  Crossroads

  LINDEN TREES

  Barrold Dayne adjusted his eye-patch and guided his horse along the line of partisans, resting now beside the thawing Falkan roadway. Spring was not yet in the air, but he could feel the frozen ground softening beneath his mount: it would be muddy going before they reached Orindale.

  He felt good for the first time since leaving Capehill.

  He spotted a lieutenant, a woman from Gorsk, giving curt orders to her platoon as they prepared a hasty meal by the roadside. Two soldiers, each laden with multiple leather skins, scrambled through a fallow field towards an irrigation pond a few hundred paces away, while others sifted through packs, cut strips of dried meat and sniffed dubiously at ageing blocks of cheese.

  Seeing Barrold, the lieutenant asked, ‘We going to be here long?’

  ‘Probably overnight,’ Barrold replied. ‘We’ll wait for the order from Gita, but I’m betting there’s no need to rush.’

  ‘What’s up there?’ She nodded toward the forward ranks. The Falkan Resistance had grown to nearly three thousand, not an army, but still one of the largest fighting forces mustered in the Eldarni Eastlands in generations.

  ‘Get your crew settled, then take a ride up to that crossroads. You’ll see.’ Barrold didn’t know if General Oaklen’s infantry still held Rona or Orindale or southern Falkan; there had been no credible intelligence since Brand Krug’s arrival. But the way the locals described it, the Malakasian exodus had been as swift as it had been unexpected. ‘Where is she?’ he asked.

  ‘Back a bit, still trying to convince that group of farmhands they’re needed here.’

  ‘We could use them.’

  ‘So could that farm; the bloody thing’s bigger than any ten patches of greenroot we’ve got growing up in Gorsk, I can tell you.’

  Barrold gave the woman a rare, tight-lipped smile, then urged his horse towards the tail-end of the partisan ranks.

  Gita Kamrec had dismounted and was looking up into the faces of eight or nine young farmhands, mostly school-age boys, from the look of them. A few had worn canvas packs hefted over their shoulders, ready to march, and at least two carried field tools, the closest they could come to weaponry, Barrold guessed.

  Gita, looking every bit this group’s grandmother, was entreating them to return to their homes. ‘-And I really appreciate your sense of duty, boy, I do, and I am going to use you – just in a different way. Boys, someone’s got to feed us, and that someone is you – all of you. You’re too important, all of you, to be running off to war with the spring Twinmoons only days away. Too important, and I don’t want to hear another word about it. You get yourselves home. You listen to your planting bosses and your farm foremen. Feeding the people of Capehill is your job, and gods rut us all, I’ll be back through this way, and I’ll want to see that you’re breaking your backs at it. Understand?’

  A few of them offered a muffled Yes, ma’am, clearly disappointed.

  Barrold smothered a laugh, then cleared his throat loudly to signal his presence.

  Gita climbed into the saddle and turned to the boys again. ‘I’m not joking, boys: we really do appreciate the offer, but you’re needed far more where you are. So thank you again.’ She watched the would-be soldiers shuffle dejectedly towards a large farmhouse at the far end of a field that looked big enough to feed a nation all by itself.

  To Barrold, she said, ‘What is it? And why are we making camp? There’s still a half-aven of decent light left.’

  ‘You need to see this, ma’am,’ he said, and spurred his horse back through the ranks, Gita hard on his heels.

  The naked linden trees at the crossroads were stark black against the setting sun, their skeletal branches an unanticipated break in the monotonous Falkan plain. They lined a dirt road leading away from the Merchants’ Highway. Gita followed Barrold to the intersection, then reined in and shielded her eyes against the sun.

  ‘Unholy mothers,’ she whispered.

  Hanging from every tree, for as far as Gita could see, were Malakasian soldiers, officers, mostly. They dangled like macabre ornaments, sometimes two and three to a branch, all with makeshift signs around their necks spelling out their crimes against the Eldarni people. It was a massive tag hanging, that very same punishment the occupation army had used to keep Falkan’s populace subdued for five generations. The dead soldiers’ naturally pale skin, bereft now of blood as well, matched the dusty beige hue of their ragged uniforms.

  Some of the tags were misspelled; others looked to have been written in blood. Some had been nailed into the dead men’s chests. Gita read a few of them:

  Lieutenant, murderer.

  Captain, rapist.

  Corporal, thief.

  Captain, killed my son.

  Major, burned homes.

  Lieutenant, rapist, murderer.

  Gita sighed. ‘Well, this answers six or seven of my nine hundred and thirteen questions.’

  ‘What do you suppose happened?’

  ‘I guess their men deserted, most likely, realised that they were over here alone.’

  ‘And that’s a long way from home, especially if you’re all by your lonesome,’ Barrold laughed. ‘Good for them.’

  ‘What I don’t understand is how it happened – I mean, where are we? What’s here? Who did this? Do you see another Resistance army out here anywhere? We’re in the middle of nowhere; there’s nothing but fallow fields and these few trees for as far as I can see.’

  ‘Maybe they’re up from Rona, or maybe it’s Sallax’s forces, following Oaklen up the Merchants’ Highway.’

  ‘Too many maybes,’ Gita said. ‘Well, regardless, I think the road to Orindale is going to be an interesting one, my friend. I’m sorry Sallax isn’t here to see this.’

  ‘This is his kind of entertainment.’

  Gita took a last look at the corpses and said, ‘Have them cut down. No rites. Just burn the bodies, over there in that field. I want us on our way again with the dawn aven.’

  Barrold rode for the Falkan ranks, while Gita stared west into the fading twilight.

  Rob Scott Jay Gordon

  The Larion Senators

  $6.3 MILLION

  After his parents had finally stopped hugging him and gone to get some sleep, Mark joined Hannah and Steven on the porch. It had taken most of the afternoon to convince his mother and father that their son was actually living inside the body of a young sailor from another place and time. He had answered all their questions, esoteric facts that only Mark would know, but it was Milla, levitating and then rotating – gently – the family cat that finally convinced them something uncommon and wonderful was happening in their front room. The sight of their son, returned to them but not as he had been, ignited smouldering fires of protection deep inside Mr and Mrs Jenkins. They had wept openly, without embarrassment, desperately clinging to him, as if trying to keep him safe from whatever horrors might be lurking in the suburban streets outside. Like Jennifer Sorenson, they refused to entertain any discussion that involved his return to Eldarn and after a while, Mark let the conversation drop, content to address it with them in private, after they had had a few days to get used to his return.

  Now Mark pulled on his coat and, after checking several times beneath a porch chair, leant against the railing.

  Steven asked, ‘You lose something?’ />
  ‘No,’ Mark checked the chair again, ‘just looking for snakes.’

  Hannah laughed. ‘Snakes? Are you kidding? It’s freezing out here.’

  ‘I know. I just think… well, I’m going to be a bit gun-shy around snakes for a while, a few decades, maybe.’

  ‘Anything we can do?’ Steven asked.

  ‘Nope,’ Mark replied, ‘just shout if you see anything poisonous slithering up behind me.’

  ‘Done,’ Hannah said. ‘I’ll take the first watch.’

  Mark stared across the sleepy island neighbourhood. ‘How did we get here?’ he whispered.

  Hannah took his arm. ‘For starters, Steven robbed the bank. After that, it was all an unstoppable rollercoaster ride for me.’

  ‘Hey,’ Steven defended himself, ‘I was always going to put that stuff back. It was just a little curiosity.’

  ‘Any way we can get our hands on the money?’ Mark huffed out a wintry cloud over the driveway. ‘Old whatshisname’s, Haggerty’s?’

  ‘Higgins,’ Steven said. ‘William Higgins, and if I’m not mistaken, I damned his soul to eternity inside the Fold, so I think we probably ought to leave his money alone.’

  ‘How much was he worth?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘Six point three million dollars,’ Steven said.

  ‘Holy cats. He did well, didn’t he?’

  ‘It was Nerak,’ Steven said. ‘He opened the account with silver he stole from hard-working miners, William Higgins included, in Oro City – Leadville.’

  ‘We could do a lot with that money, Steven,’ Mark said. ‘It would get us rolling in Eldarn. There’s a lot we could bring through the portals with six million and change.’

  ‘We don’t need money,’ Steven muttered, ‘we need to be able to bring Lessek back with us. We need Gilmour or Alen. Gilmour would be better, because Alen was in hiding for so long. Gilmour knows more about Eldarn and Eldarni culture than anyone – sorry, he knew more about it.’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Mark said, ‘him and Alen living all that time and then dying five minutes apart.’