‘Beer for me,’ Garec said.
‘Oh, sure,’ Steven joked, ‘I’ll just pop into the nearest pub.’
Garec said, ‘I’ll get a fire going.’
‘In the lee of that boulder over there, please,’ Gilmour warned, ‘and a small one at that. Mark has had plenty of time to get to Wellham Ridge and begin making his way back here.’
Garec looped his reins around a low branch. ‘How do you know he’s gone to Wellham Ridge?’
‘I think we would have seen him by now if he hadn’t. He has the key; he’ll want the table. My guess is that he’s marshalling some local ruffians, mercenaries perhaps, interested in a few pieces of silver. He’ll bring them along either to kill us, to distract us while he kills everyone – them included – or to help him excavate and transport the table if we have failed to do so already.’
‘That’s a grim list of options,’ Garec said.
‘He’s not coming alone,’ Steven said. ‘He knows us too well. He knows what we can do. Together, Gilmour and I would be too formidable. While one of us locked horns with him, the other might blast the spell table into rubble; Mark’s too smart to risk that.’ He considered the wooden cart. ‘My bet is that he’s coming with a huge force, enough to overwhelm us all, even you and me, Gilmour.’
‘Because he knows you won’t engage in wholesale slaughter,’ Garec finished.
‘Right,’ Steven said.
Gilmour dismounted and rummaged through his pack for the tecan leaves. ‘Let’s hope we don’t have to face him then.’
Garec looked hopeful at that, an option he had forgotten existed. ‘I’ll get the fire going.’
‘A small one, Garec,’ Gilmour repeated, ‘just enough to heat the water, and no smoke.’
‘We don’t need a fire; I’ll heat the water,’ Steven said. ‘You two take a break.’
‘Wait,’ Garec warned.
‘If you want to warm up a bit, go—’
‘Quiet,’ he said harshly, then, ‘listen.’
‘I hear them,’ Gilmour said. ‘Steven, cloak the cart.’
‘Got it. Mom’s old blanket.’ Steven closed his eyes in concentration. Time slowed. The air thickened to a paste and the forest of green and brown melted into a waxy curtain. Draping the small company, their horses and Brand’s stolen cart, Steven said, ‘Done. We’re hidden.’
‘Excellent,’ Gilmour whispered, dropping to one knee and peering back towards the river. ‘They’ll be along in a moment.’
Garec crossed to Gilmour’s side and considered nocking an arrow. He placed his hand palm-down in a frozen footprint the old man had left in the snow. Nothing, not the slightest vibration; the riders were close now, but not making much noise, no pounding the earth in great numbers. He wouldn’t need his bow … not yet, anyway.
‘There aren’t many,’ Gilmour whispered.
‘No,’ Garec agreed, ‘a handful at the most.’
‘Let’s hope it’s Brand and Kellin.’
When the Falkan partisans came into view, Garec was both relieved and alarmed. Seeing Kellin safe, obviously uninjured, lifted a stony weight from his chest; he was glad to see her and wondered briefly if it would be inappropriate to hug her when she slipped from the saddle.
Garec’s amorous musings faded quickly, as he saw how hard Kellin and Brand were riding. The Falkan soldiers had loosed their reins and were frantically galloping, guiding the horses south. Chasing one another along the winding path would have been dangerous at half their speed; Garec looked away, afraid he might see one of the mounts slip on an icy patch or even shatter a limb on an exposed root or a snow-covered rock.
‘Something’s wrong,’ he whispered.
‘Yes,’ Gilmour said, and cupping his hands over his mouth, he murmured a spell and whispered, ‘Brand, Kellin,’ across three hundred paces of empty forest.
As if they had been struck, Kellin and Brand reined in and searched the woods, patting the frothing animals gently, thanking them for what had obviously been a harrowing flight.
Their voices came in garbled snatches of adrenalin-charged conversation:
‘Hear that?’
‘… over there?’
‘Don’t see—’
‘… keep going …’
‘…just the wind.’
Gilmour cupped his hands and whispered again, ‘Brand, Kellin.’
Garec barely heard his raspy whisper from less than two paces away. How they heard him from the riverbank was astonishing.
‘Here,’ Gilmour said into his cupped hands, ‘east of you, three hundred paces.’
The Falkans turned as one, peering through the late-day shadows; even from this distance, Garec could see them looking perplexed.
‘Let them see me, Steven,’ Gilmour said.
‘All right,’ Steven answered, ‘just wave an arm or something.’
Gilmour did, and suddenly Brand pointed in their direction.
All Garec’s fears were realised when instead of coming at a gentle trot they plunged into the trees at a gallop. They were still a hundred paces out when Garec heard Brand shouting. ‘Mount up! Get in the saddle now!’
‘What is it?’ Gilmour said as Steven let the cloaking spell dissipate; Brand reined in, a little surprised at suddenly discovering Garec, the foreigner and the spell table all secreted amongst the trees.
‘How did you—? Never mind. It’s an infantry company, at least one, maybe more – there were several mounted officers, so it might be an entire battalion.’
‘How far?’ Steven asked.
‘An aven, maybe less,’ Kellin said. ‘They’re coming south along the west bank.’
The Larion spell table was balanced on one side, leaning against the slat rails of the little cart. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide it, not within an aven.
A battalion.
Garec’s hands were clammy; he wiped them on his leggings and looked up at Kellin. She was pale, obviously nervous. He shot her a half-hearted smile; she grimaced back at him. ‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered. ‘There’s good news too.’
‘What’s that?’
‘We can’t fight a battalion,’ he said.
Kellin frowned. ‘How is that good news?’
‘All we can do is run.’
Steven rinsed his mouth with snow and spat it out. ‘We can’t leave the table here,’ he said.
Garec brightened. ‘Let’s drop it back in the river. You two hauled it out with no trouble at all. We can come back for it after we slip past Mark and the soldiers.’
‘He’ll know right where it is,’ Gilmour said. ‘He has Lessek’s key; when Mark gets closer, he’ll sense the table, no matter where we put it. It will knock his legs out from under him.’
‘Like hitting a speed bump,’ Steven agreed.
‘Then let him have it,’ Garec said.
Brand said, ‘Kellin, check him for a pulse, please.’
‘No, I’m serious. Let him have it. He’s got at least a company of soldiers working for him. Let him haul it back to Wellham Ridge.’
Steven stared, then smiled. ‘And then we steal it.’
‘Exactly.’
‘It’s too risky,’ Gilmour said. ‘He has the key; he might clear a space right here and begin using the table against us.’
‘Then we destroy it,’ Steven said.
‘We won’t be able to seal the Fold without it.’
‘We might,’ Steven argued, wishing he had more time to experiment with his own magic. He had been able to cast spells that took form when his magic worked in tandem with knowledge he had of his environment, or the quandary at hand. A college physiology class had saved Garec’s life in Orindale, a rudimentary knowledge of chemistry destroyed the acid clouds above Sandcliff Palace and a childhood memory of a loosely woven blanket had hidden them from Nerak outside Traver’s Notch. ‘We might just be able to do it, Gilmour.’
‘The maths and compassion thing?’ Garec asked.
‘Yes,’ Steven said. ‘I know it
can work.’
‘And if it can’t?’
‘At least he won’t be able to release his evil master,’ Steven argued. ‘Eldarn will be saved. And afterwards we can find some way to destroy the evil controlling Mark.’
‘Without killing him,’ Kellin said.
Brand shrugged slightly; Mark’s survival was immaterial to him. Garec was glad Steven had been looking the other way.
Gilmour closed his eyes. The air was damp and cold, like a wet cloak. He thought of the lump of folded cloth lashed to the back of his saddle. Lessek’s spell book was hidden there, protected. The ash dream. Nerak had used the book to reach across the Fold. Could Mark use it to usher an unthinkable evil into Eldarn? It was too great a risk. ‘No, we can’t destroy it yet,’ he said.
‘Why?’ Steven said. He cleared his throat, trying to control the tone of his voice. It would do no one’s confidence any good to hear him whining in fear. ‘He can’t open the Fold without it, Gilmour.’
‘I think he can.’ The Larion sorcerer pointed at his horse.
‘What? The book?’
‘Can you open the Fold, Steven?’ Garec asked. ‘Isn’t that where you tossed Nerak?’
‘It is,’ Steven said, ‘but I need more time, I need more practice. I need some frigging paper, a decent pen and a couple of days to think it through. If Eldarn’s fate boils down to a fistfight here in the woods, ankle-deep in the snow, we’re going to lose. I’m not going to kill my friend; it’s my fault he’s here at all.’
‘But that’s not what—’ Garec began.
Steven interrupted, ‘We can win, Garec, I know we can. But I’ve no idea at all what that book’s about. If there’s something the rest of us need to know, Gilmour, the clock’s ticking. As for Nerak, if he could have used that book to open the Fold, I’m betting he would have done it Twinmoons ago. He wouldn’t have hidden the table; he wouldn’t have hidden Lessek’s key, and he wouldn’t have committed himself so diligently to running us all over Eldarn. I know it’s a gamble, but we have to assume the book is secondary to Mark’s goals. We can’t have come this far just to change gears now. The book may be powerful; it may be cruel or beautiful or as pernicious as a bad case of crabs, but we have to focus on the table, because we know that can ruin us.’
‘We can’t destroy it.’ Gilmour was adamant. ‘We would be cutting off our own hands.’
Like a cheap vaudeville magician, Steven thought.
‘So what do we do?’ Brand asked. ‘We can’t roll this cart fast enough to escape, and if we can’t destroy the table, we have to stand and fight.’
‘Against a whole battalion?’ Kellin looked as if she might tumble from the saddle after all.
‘What option do we have?’ Brand asked. ‘Gilmour needs the table. Steven claims we don’t. What should we do? We’re not sorcerers. If Mark gets it, he’ll use it, and we’ll all be dead; Eldarn will be lost. If he waits to use it in Wellham Ridge or even Orindale, we might be able to steal it back from him – especially after the soldiers return to their normal duties. But there are no guarantees he’ll wait.’ Brand looked at Gilmour. ‘Is that right? Have I missed anything?’
‘That’s it, and we’re wasting time standing here, my friends.’
‘So we fight,’ Brand said. A battalion of soldiers can’t stand against these two. Even if you don’t want to kill them, Steven, you can—’
‘Drop trees on them, catch the forest on fire, bring the river down on them, flood the whole rutting place,’ Garec suggested.
‘Vivid imagination, Garec,’ Steven said wryly.
‘I’d make a great magician.’
‘And we’ll run south with the table,’ Brand said, ‘while you delay the soldiers here.’
‘West,’ Kellin corrected, ‘no one would expect that.’
‘How far west can we go?’ Garec asked. ‘We’re backed up against the foothills right now.’
‘Exactly,’ Kellin said. ‘It might be slower and harder, but with all the horses working, we’ll be hidden in the hills before they get here.’
‘Unless they have scouts spread out to the west,’ Garec said.
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ Kellin said. ‘If even one of them sees us, we’re lost. We’d never manage to escape uphill.’
‘Then we cross the river.’ Garec gestured east through the trees.
‘No,’ Steven said.
‘No, what?’
Steven ignored them. Turning to the wagon, he allowed the magic to seep from his body, covering him like a bank of fog over a lakeside village. He reached between the wagon slats and pressed his palms against the spell table.
Gilmour whispered, ‘What are you doing?’
The rear slats slid aside and the table began rolling backwards, its carved pedestal feet turning a sluggish orbit around a tiny slot into which Steven imagined Mark would fit Lessek’s key. The inky granite shone dully in the muted winter light, solid now, impenetrable, but with the forbidding potential to transform into a swirling cauldron of magic and sorcery.
‘Garec and Kellin are right, Steven,’ Gilmour said. ‘We should stand and fight while they get as far from here as possible.’
Steven ignored his friend and focused on his spell, guiding the massive stone artefact out of the cart. He ran his palms over the smoothly polished stone, then reached his fingers into the mal-shaped slot reserved for Lessek’s keystone. With a grimace, he released the magic he had dammed up behind his will and watched as the spell table broke into three ragged shards.
‘Good rutting whores!’ Gilmour shouted. ‘I thought I told you—!’ The old man fell to his knees. ‘After all this time, Steven, have you lost your mind?’
‘Outstanding!’ Steven crowed.
‘What in the name of the great gods of the Northern Forest has come over you?’ Gilmour choked. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
The others stood frozen, gripped by the realisation that something powerful and dangerous was unfolding before them. No one spoke.
‘If it fools you, Gilmour, there’s a chance it’ll fool Mark.’
Taken aback, the Larion sorcerer wiped his eyes and whispered, ‘If it fools me? If what fools me?’
‘Come, see for yourself.’ Steven gestured and Gilmour warily approached the broken pieces, hope returning a breath at a time.
Reaching out to grasp one of the jagged shards, he asked, ‘What did you do?’
‘I cut off my own hand,’ Steven replied simply, ‘for the second time since we came looking for this thing.’
Garec gasped, almost unaware he’d been holding his breath from the moment the spell table had shattered. ‘It’s an illusion? A visual trick?’
Steven nodded. ‘Mark won’t be expecting it. He knows me too well. He knows how I’ve been struggling with this power, and how Gilmour has been working with me on magic’s ability to truly change what’s real, to truly change the nature of something at its most fundamental level. So—’ he smirked again, ‘—I’ve thrown him a curveball. We’ll see if it works.’
‘A curveball?’ Kellin asked herself, then went on quickly, ‘But won’t the key still draw him to this place?’
‘Yes,’ Gilmour answered.
‘So we have to hope he doesn’t touch it,’ Brand said. ‘If he’s in the saddle, he might see that it’s broken and just keep going.’
‘Chasing us, most likely,’ Garec said.
‘Grand,’ Kellin echoed.
‘Can you mask the power emanating from it, Steven?’ Garec waved his hands about, trying to explain what he meant. ‘Can you camouflage the magic coming off the thing as if it really is sitting here useless?’
Steven said, ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Then this is a rutting gamble.’
‘I don’t know what else to do,’ Steven admitted. At least this looks like we took the last option available to us: we broke the table to save Eldarn.’
A palpable silence fell over them. No one was comfortable leaving the artefact for Mark, bu
t Steven’s ruse was the only thing they could think of. If it worked, and if they survived long enough, they still had a chance to spirit the table away through the far portal.
Brand was first to speak. ‘So we hide in the hills, wait for Mark to either just pass along the river or to discover the table. We hope he leaves it here, assuming it’s broken and useless, and then we return to haul it north to the nearest farm with a barn.’
‘That about sums it up, yes,’ Steven said, ‘unless anyone has a better idea.’
Garec screwed up his face, racking his mind for anything more promising. Crossing the river was too dangerous, and would take too long. Standing to fight was suicidal. The two sorcerers could ride north to face Mark, but scouts would be bound to discover them while they lugged the table into the foothills. And even if Steven and Gilmour managed to turn the bulk of Mark’s battalion, it needed only one squad of armed Malakasians to easily overtake the partisans as they fled. Garec was deadly with a bow, and he would probably kill most of any squad coming for them, but it just took one soldier to escape alive and the force that followed them would be enormous.
‘What if we open the portal now?’ he asked finally.
Steven frowned. ‘That could be our wisest choice, Garec. With the table, book and far portal gone, there would be no way for Mark to follow us.’
‘But—’
‘But there are massive oceans, vast ice floes and sprawling deserts in my world. When I crossed the Fold from Orindale, I found myself twenty paces deep in the sea, five hundred paces offshore – and I considered myself lucky.’
‘The table might sink,’ Kellin said, ‘but you two could haul it back out, couldn’t you?’
‘The oceans in my world reach depths of over twenty thousand paces, Kellin,’ Steven explained, ‘and there’s enormous water pressure – down there it would crush us to jelly.’
Garec laughed, a nervous chuckle. ‘It was just a thought,’ he said. ‘Let’s go with this instead.’
Brand agreed. ‘If Mark sees through the charade and begins using the table here in the forest, we’ll draw our weapons and charge. It’ll be our only hope, but we’ll have to try and kill him. If he waits, if he hauls the table back to Wellham Ridge or even into Orindale, we’ll be able to steal it back.’
The Larion Senators Page 10
