by Rob Scott
The old man filled his pipe and began puffing. ‘I ask, because from what Brand says about the underground cavern and the partisans’ caves, we are two or three days’ ride from the canyon you found.’
‘That makes sense,’ Steven said, ‘it’ll be just a day or two before we are well into the foothills, and then maybe another two or three days to the place on the river – although that’s the bit I can’t really predict, because we were on the raft and most days we were happy to be there because the terrain on either bank didn’t look like the most hospitable place to travel – and that was during autumn.’
‘Perhaps we’ll get lucky and find a smooth way through.’
‘Here’s hoping,’ Steven agreed.
‘How are you doing with that spell?’
‘Which one? Our camouflage blanket? I hardly think about it now; it feels almost as though it will just keep itself going until I tell it to stop.’
‘Or until you grow old and die. Many spells are like that. That’s why it was so easy for me to open the doors at Sandcliff, to turn on the fountains and ignite all the torches. Magic is funny that way: once you get it started, it has a wonderful – if sometimes terrifying – propensity to spin itself out over and over again.’
‘As if you change what is real, and then step away,’ Steven mused.
‘That’s exactly right.’ Gilmour patted his horse contemplatively. ‘Sometimes what’s real does change; other times, well, it’s just an illusion. That’s what separates us from carnival magicians.’
‘It’s an emotional undertaking,’ Steven said, wondering if the Larion sorcerer would agree. ‘I mean, I know the staff is more powerful when I’m motivated by the right emotions. Does that make sense to you?’
‘Yes, I think you’re right: the power we wield is so malleable, it can be almost-’
‘Wait,’ Steven cut him off.
‘What is it?’ Gilmour turned in the saddle, checked the forest around them and looked back at the others to see if any of them had detected anything.
‘The trees up there.’ Steven gestured to the edge of a hillside that fell away to an area along the river they couldn’t see.
‘What about them?’ Gilmour raised a hand to stop the others.
‘They’re blurry.’
‘Blurry?’
‘Blurry, melting, you know, like things have been getting ever since Lessek’s key knocked me down at the landfill. They’re softening up, as if, when I get closer, they are going to begin to run together, and-’
‘Critical elements will become clear.’ Gilmour tentatively finished his thought.
‘The magic has been doing that for me ever since Idaho Springs,’ Steven explained. ‘It’s happened a few times; it seems to get rid of everything I can overlook, allowing me to focus on what’s most important.’ His voice faded to a whisper. ‘When you are running, run.’
‘What’s that?’
‘When you are running, run,’ he said. ‘My old cross-country coach was a man of few words.’
The line of trees continued to soften as they approached. Steven dismounted, pushed his way into the undergrowth and dropped to his knees, where he started digging frantically in the snow.
‘What are you doing?’ Mark called.
‘He’s here, just over that hill,’ Steven answered, reaching into his pocket and removing Lessek’s key. He could feel his heart pounding, thrumming in his temples, rushing blood to his cold fingers and causing him to fumble awkwardly with the crooked little stone. He looked up at Gilmour and waited. When the old man nodded, he dropped the key into the hole, covered it with snow and burned a black cross in a nearby tree with one end of the hickory staff.
Steven stood. ‘I don’t know how he could have known we were here.’
Gilmour deliberately tapped the ashes from his pipe and replaced it inside his tunic.
‘Please,’ Steven implored the others, ‘stay here. Don’t come up. Even better, go back to Wellham Ridge and wait there. We were fools to bring you down here.’
No one moved; Steven climbed back into the saddle and rode forward. Gilmour moved to ride beside him. When they reached the top of the short rise, Gilmour said, ‘Yes, you’re right. I can feel him now.’
The hickory staff began to glow, warming Steven’s hands.
The hill sloped down gradually to an irregularly shaped clearing interrupted in several places by isolated clumps of trees. The snow was pristine, with not even animal tracks marring its surface. To the east, the clearing narrowed, and a thin line of snow ran down into the glen and up to the water’s edge. The river there was dark, shadowed, even in the bright midday sun. Several large boulders, some as big as houses, were scattered in the water, creating deep, swirling eddies.
Darkness, deep water, cold shadows, and a wintry clearing that narrowed to a point where rushing water met sedentary earth, and in the middle of it all, a titanic boulder reared out of the water. A young girl sat on top of the boulder, dangling her feet over the edge and gnawing on an apple. She was pretty, with shoulder-length hair, a narrow face and oval eyes set perfectly over the thin bridge of her nose.
‘Who the hell is this?’ Steven whispered.
‘That’s Bellan Whitward,’ Gilmour said, ‘Princess Bellan. Malagon’s daughter. Look at her hands.’
The girl sitting there – she couldn’t have been more than seventeen years old – was wearing black leather gloves. She was already dead, her soul imprisoned alongside her father’s, somewhere in the profound emptiness of the Fold.
‘Welcome Fantus, Steven Taylor,’ she called, her light voice making them all shiver. ‘I must commend you on your powers of deduction, Fantus. I admit, I don’t know how you did it. But given your presence here, I must assume that you have somehow worked out where to find the spell table – maybe you’ve even worked out how to extract it.’
Bellan tossed the apple core into the river, reached inside her tunic and withdrew a red, white and blue pouch of Confederate Son chewing tobacco. She delicately teased out a lump and popped it into her mouth and sat there chewing quietly for a while, savouring the flavour, then she spat bubbly brown juice into the swirling eddy below.
‘I suppose I must blame myself,’ she said. ‘I obviously said too much at Sandcliff, and now here we are.’
Steven rode into the clearing as the trees around him faded from view, melting into one another and leaving just the wintry carpet, the boulder and the girl for him to consider.
Bellan continued, ‘Remind me, Fantus, did I mention the guards?’
Gilmour reined in beside Steven. ‘You said the table was warded by Eldarn itself, and Eldarn’s most ruthless gatekeepers.’
Bellan’s face split in a smile that managed to be both gruesome and coquettish. ‘I did say that, didn’t I? Well, grand. Would you like to meet them, Fantus? Steven? Would you like to meet Eldarn’s most ruthless gatekeepers? Because I have been literally dying to introduce you.’ She giggled and waved a hand; the river started to bubble as small ripples spread across the water, churning white when a number of the horribly familiar bone-collecting monsters tumbled out and skidded across the clearing.
Steven was ready for them. The staff flared to life, glowing red-hot with impatient rage and untapped power. He slid from the saddle, trying not to worry about his horse as the animal reared, whinnied in terror and bolted.
‘I’ll handle these things,’ he said to Gilmour; ‘you keep your eye on Bellan, or Nerak, or whoever it is up there.’
‘Careful, Steven, careful,’ Gilmour warned. ‘There is much more to face here than just these monsters.’
Steven moved purposefully, intent on engaging the bone-collectors before they could reach the slope and his friends, but he was just a few paces away when something inside him – the staff, Lessek’s key, or even some primitive survival instinct – shouted a warning, On your left!
Steven ducked, and whirled to his left, swiping the hickory staff through the air between him and the blurry trees
. There was a tear, a rip in the world like those he had seen in the hills above Idaho Springs, and flying out at him was a wraith, one of Nerak’s immortal slaves. He barely brought the staff around in time to slice through the gossamer body and send the ghostly shards reeling through the clearing like so much tobacco smoke; killing it was easy, but there had been something oddly familiar about this wraith and Steven froze as the creature’s wild-eyed, homicidal visage flashed into his mind’s eye.
‘No!’ he screamed, and killed the first bone-collector with a massive bolt from the staff; the subterranean monster exploded in front of him, hundreds of armour-plated legs like so much chitin shrapnel firing through the clearing, into the river and out among the trees.
Steven’s mind raced. It couldn’t be. Please don’t let it be true; not her… please tell me I didn’t just send her soul back into the Fold -
‘When you are running, Steven, run.’ Gilmour’s voice reached through his anguish. ‘When you are running, run, and when you are fighting, fight.’
When you are fighting, fight,’ Steven repeated. ‘When you are fighting, fight.’
We might not make it.
When you are fighting, fight,’ he said again, the rhythm of the words helping him regain his composure.
‘It was her,’ Bellan called sweetly from her perch on top of the boulder, ‘and you just sent her soul back into the Fold for ever. Some friend you are, Steven Taylor. Poor old Myrna Kessler.’
Steven fought to contain his rage. Compassion, Steven. Fight with compassion. It is the strongest emotion in the world: stronger than rage, stronger than fear and stronger than hatred.
‘She will be in there for ever now – and let me tell you, it is an unpleasant place; I’ve been in there once or twice myself,’ Bellan laughed, a cackling chortle that made Steven’s blood rush to his head.
When you are fighting, fight, Steven,’ Gilmour called again. ‘Don’t think about anything else.’
Steven tried to clear Myrna Kessler’s face from his mind, but it burned there, leaving an indelible impression: Nerak had killed her and then sent her against him, and he had damned her soul to the Fold for ever.
THE ATRIUM
The third level of Welstar Palace was as far up as anyone outside Prince Malagon’s personal staff was able to go without permission: a long, wide carpeted hallway hung with tapestries. Torches burned in wall sconces, and the whole floor felt homey, comfortable. Hannah wondered who lived here.
From the main hall lots of smaller hallways ran east or west, some emptying into large rooms and others spilling out through etched-glass doorways onto balconies overlooking the encampment and the river beyond. Halfway down the hall, Hannah nearly ran into a Malakasian soldier, a woman. She had obviously been off duty, for she was struggling to buckle on her tunic belt when Hannah rushed by.
‘What’s happening?’ she asked.
Hannah allowed her terror to diffuse into her lies. ‘Back there. It’s some kind of attack. We’re going to get Colonel Strellek. He’s supposed to be here in the atrium. But you go, they need help – second level.’
The woman nodded obediently and turned towards the commotion, but she had gone barely two steps when Churn grabbed her by the throat.
‘Churn,’ Hannah cried, ‘what are you doing?’
‘Go,’ he signed, then drew the woman’s sword from its scabbard and tossed it across the hall.
‘Churn!’
‘Go.’ He tightened his grip and lifted the soldier from the ground; she kicked furiously and pried at his fingers, trying to break free.
What-?’ she croaked, her face turning red and her eyes bulging.
Churn lowered his face to hers, and a horrifying moment of recognition passed over the woman’s face. She remembered him.
‘You- you were dead,’ she croaked, ‘the- the tree.’
Churn nodded, lowered her to the floor and relaxed his grip long enough for her to take a breath; a moment later, he closed his fingers again.
‘Please don’t,’ she rasped, ‘so sorry.’ Her face was red, and her eyes had begun to bulge from their sockets again. Churn wondered idly if he squeezed hard enough, would they would pop out and bounce across the floor? What kind of noise might that make? She had such a pretty face; he remembered it so well, her pretty face, and the way she had climbed the tree so nimbly. She had been the most beautiful woman he had ever seen; he would have told her that if he could have summoned the strength to speak that day. But he couldn’t speak, and his parents, his sister and the baby had all died that day. This pretty, nimble woman had left him there, a crucified joke, hanging in the cottonwood tree.
And now here she was, a gift from the gods. Churn thought about letting her take another breath, but the noise from the other end of the hall was too loud now. They were too close. He didn’t have time to torture her, though he had dreamed of this moment for so long. From the atrium, he heard glass shatter: Hoyt and Alen had broken through the window.
I’m not going out there, he thought. I don’t care if it’s dark, and I can’t see down. I’m not going out there.
Looking back, Churn saw the first soldier reach the third-level hall. There would be a few moments of confusion before they realised who he was… he still couldn’t jump. I guess this won’t help my case, he thought as he slammed the woman’s head into the stone wall. It was quick, crushing her skull, and gruesome, but what made it worse was that he didn’t feel anything; there was no great wellspring of satisfaction. He dropped the woman’s body and ran down the hall behind Hannah. He had nearly reached the atrium when the first arrow struck him in the shoulder.
‘You go first,’ Alen said. ‘Get a good grip, and I’ll hand Milla out to you. Then I’ll come out and take her while you jump across.’
‘And then?’
Alen didn’t want to say it out loud; instead, he gestured, I’ll throw her to you.
All right. There’s no time to think about it, anyway.’ Hoyt smashed out the window over the sloping stone buttress with the hilt of his dagger, then bashed out the remaining shards from the lead frame. He nearly slipped off the stone precipice, not realising how steeply it sloped, but he clamped his thighs together and gripped either side of the buttress, then reached up to take Milla. The little girl came willingly, giggling as she was folded into Hoyt’s arms.
‘This is high up,’ she said. ‘Do we have to stay here long?’
‘No,’ Hoyt said, ‘not long at all. Ready?’
‘Ready.’
‘Here we go.’ He loosened his grip and began slipping backwards, towards the raised end of the buttress; it wasn’t much, just a few stones and some mortar, but it would be enough to stop him from tumbling into the darkness. He could already see Alen sliding towards them.
‘This was a great idea,’ Hoyt called. ‘I tell you, a view like this would cost a fortune anywhere else.’
Alen glanced quickly across the encampment towards the river. The watch-fires lining the path between the palace’s main gate and the wharf were great blazes, and there were literally thousands of campfires, looking as though Nerak had scattered handfuls of fiery gemstones to flicker on the frozen hills around Welstar Palace.
‘Funny,’ said Alen, ‘but I’m afraid if we don’t hurry, we’ll be getting a much closer view.’
‘Take her,’ Hoyt shouted. ‘I’m going over. You’re right; it isn’t far to the courtyard.’
Alen let go with his hands and felt his stomach clench into an iron knot as he lost his centre of balance, but that was enough to get what remained of the dead sergeant’s adrenalin flowing and he felt his legs strengthen to an almost inhuman degree. ‘Come here, Pepperweed. I’ve got you,’ he said encouragingly.
‘Where is he going?’ she asked, apparently nowhere near as afraid of heights as either of her self-appointed protectors.
‘Just over to that snowy patch of grass right there.’
‘That’s not far.’
‘Do you want to jump it together with
me, or by yourself?’
‘I’ll go by myself. Will he catch me?’
‘Yes he will,’ Alen assured her. ‘Just don’t look down.’
Hoyt made the leap easily, rolling to his feet when he landed. The ‘courtyard’ was in fact a second-level balcony laid out as a miniature botanical garden, now winter-bare, with just a few patches of grass poking through the snow.
‘I think I’m scared,’ Milla said. ‘Can we go back inside?’
‘Just another moment, Pepperweed,’ Alen said comfortingly, allowing himself to slip down to the raised stones at the end of the buttress.
‘It’s cold.’
‘I know, Pepperweed, but it’s just another moment.’ He checked to be sure Hoyt was standing, arms raised and waiting for her. ‘All right, turn around.’
‘I really don’t want to.’
‘Pepperweed, you have to.’ He held her fast, gripping the buttress with all the strength in his fit young thighs, then lifted her up until she was standing on the end the sloped beam. ‘Close your eyes now.’
‘I don’t want to,’ she whined, ‘I don’t want to.’
Ignoring her, he said soothingly, ‘Close your eyes and-’ he tossed her with all his strength, ‘go!’
Hoyt couldn’t hear over the sound of the wind rushing between the wings of the old castle. As he stood waiting, he squinted into the darkness, to make sure he saw Milla when Alen threw her over the short but deadly-deep abyss separating them.
There she was! Hoyt pressed himself into the wall, feeling like his timing was off; something about the darkness had first made the girl appear much closer, but now she seemed to be falling from a great height, or maybe taking an inordinately long time to come down.
Then she was there, light as a feather pillow, landing softly in his arms. Hoyt realised this child was special. ‘You can fly!’ he exclaimed, hugging her to his chest and twirling her round.
‘People can’t fly, silly,’ Milla said. ‘I just know how not to fall bad. I used to fall a lot when I was little, well, littler than now, and I made that up so all the bonks wouldn’t hurt.’
