The Larion Senators

by Rob Scott; Jay Gordon

  ‘Done,’ Steven said. He wasn’t willing to fight Mark to the death, but he needed to get the company moving again. ‘Let’s go.’

  Garec looked around. ‘We’ll leave the wagon here; it looks more convincing that way.’

  ‘Fine,’ Gilmour said, ‘and we’ll ride west, so mount up, quickly now.’

  Kellin asked, ‘How will we know if Mark starts using the table?’

  ‘We’ll know,’ Gilmour said.

  SNAKES

  A line of Malakasian soldiers appeared in the distance, spread thin and picking their way between the trees, over fallen trunks, and around mounds of blown snow. The line looked ragged and undisciplined, like hunters driving deer. Some were only a few hundred paces off; others, those with an especially unforgiving path through the underbrush, were further away, but there was no mistaking them. However weary they appeared, they were Malakasian soldiers, and they represented an insurmountable barrier, blocking the road north and closing quickly.

  Garec was first to spot them. Motioning for the others to dismount and quiet their horses, he whispered, ‘Steven, can you—?’

  ‘Done.’

  ‘It’s a company, sixty, seventy-five men,’ Garec said. ‘The line reaches all the way to the river.’

  ‘Where the rest of them are coming south in a rank,’ Kellin added.

  ‘Stay down,’ Gilmour said. ‘We want them to pass by.’

  ‘Should we move off the back slope of this hill?’ Brand whispered.

  ‘Too late now,’ Gilmour replied. ‘Just stay down; they’ll pass. We’re well hidden.’

  Beneath the protection of Steven’s magical blanket, the forested foothills were a quiet haven. Garec was anxious that he might be called upon to kill again, but in the shimmering embrace of the spell he barely heard the soldiers as they closed to within a few paces. He rested his head on folded forearms. The diagonal pressure of his rosewood bow was comforting. The sun streamed through a momentary break in the clouds, colouring the forest gold and brightening the ridged wrinkles in Garec’s cloak. He watched the shadows as he listened for the telltale sounds of the soldiers moving away.

  ‘ … Denne’s rutting bastards get the easy path—’

  ‘Denne’s dead.’

  ‘Tavon’s gone mad.’

  ‘Shut your mouth about her; I’m warning you.’

  ‘…no one out here—’

  ‘Forced marches—’

  ‘… all too sick, anyway—’

  The voices faded and the sounds of crunching snow and snapping branches were soon lost as well. Garec lifted his head and watched the last of the line pick their uncomfortable way through the drifts and tangled brush. He glanced at Steven and whispered, ‘That should do it.’

  Steven gestured with one hand and Garec felt the old blanket dissipate, leaving the winter chill to move back in almost immediately, reminding them all that despite the sun’s momentary appearance, the day was damp and cold.

  ‘That was too close for me,’ Kellin said, wishing they had been another thousand paces west. ‘What if one of the horses had whinnied?’

  ‘They wouldn’t have.’ Gilmour sounded certain. ‘Steven’s refined that spell.’

  ‘I guess he did,’ Garec said. ‘I almost fell asleep.’

  ‘I did a bit,’ Steven admitted. ‘I was worried about the horses too, so I intensified it some. If you almost dozed off, that means it was working.’

  ‘You didn’t make the sun come out, did you?’ Kellin took a wary step backwards.

  ‘No,’ Steven laughed, ‘that was just good timing.’

  ‘Where to now?’ Brand was already back in the saddle; his horse was pawing nervously at the snow, ready, like its master, to get moving again.

  ‘The first farm we come across,’ Gilmour said. ‘Something else: I’m worried that we came upon these fellows with no warning from Gabriel O’Reilly.’

  ‘Probably not good news,’ Steven agreed.

  ‘We’ll post a sentry near the river,’ Gilmour went on, ‘and wait for Mark to bring the battalion back into Wellham Ridge. When he does, Steven and I will return for the spell table. We’ll have five days to retrieve it so we can join Mrs Sorenson right on schedule.’

  ‘And if Mark doesn’t come back by then?’ Brand asked.

  ‘Then we’ll take the far portal to the table,’ Steven said. ‘At the right time, we’ll open the port there and push the table through to Colorado.’ He scratched at his whiskers and added, ‘or wherever she is these days.’

  ‘That’s assuming Mark leaves the artefact in the forest,’ Kellin reminded them.

  ‘Let’s try not to think about that possibility.’ Garec mounted up.

  ‘Good idea,’ Steven agreed and started north along the ridge.

  ‘Captain Hershaw! Captain Hershaw!’ the soldiers milling around the broken pieces of the Larion spell table called.

  Hershaw, freezing cold and nearly dropping from the saddle with fatigue, rode through the trees. He winced when a sapling slapped him across the cheek. His eyes filled with tears and he cursed, a string of incendiary obscenity that he hoped would reach all the way to Welstar Palace to Prince Malagon’s own ear. ‘What is it?’ he finally managed through clenched teeth.

  ‘Sir!’ A flushed and trembling private with damp, matted hair snapped to attention. The others with him mimicked the gesture. ‘Sir, we found something, sir.’

  Hershaw felt a nauseating wave of fear as he looked down on the shattered remains of the spell table. He sucked up several deep breaths and waited for his stomach to calm. Finally, he said, ‘Good work, boys. Have Sergeant Vanner find Lieutenant— excuse me, Captain Blackford. He’ll be out near the river. Ask him to join me here immediately.’

  ‘Yes sir!’ The private saluted and hurried off.

  ‘The rest of you—’

  ‘Sir!’ they answered in unison.

  ‘—bring Sergeant Bota to me, and get your squad prepared. I want you to make a fire, prepare some tecan and eat what stores you can find.’ Hershaw checked the trail of broken snow leading west into the foothills. ‘They’re riding, but from the looks of those tracks, they aren’t moving very quickly. Be ready to travel in a quarter-aven; Bota will accompany you.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The soldiers moved away, gathering what dry wood they could find.

  Hershaw watched Major Tavon and Captain Blackford approach from the river. The major was grinning unpleasantly. Alone beside the fractured spell table, Hershaw flashed back to Denne, his colleague, his friend, and the massive injuries dealt him by their frail-looking commander.

  Major Tavon drew alongside. Ignoring both men, she growled, a frustrated sigh that rattled disconcertingly at the back of her throat.

  ‘Steven,’ she whispered, ‘I am going to gut you, Steven!’

  Neither Hershaw nor Blackford dared to breathe; both awaited imminent death.

  ‘Blackford!’ Major Tavon’s voice was like a demon’s, an otherworldly rumble that seeped into Captain Hershaw’s bones. He was glad the major had chosen Blackford first, but he didn’t fool himself into believing he was at all safe in the woman’s company.

  ‘Ma’am?’ It was all Blackford could manage to squeak out.

  ‘Make camp near the river, rope up those pieces and drag them over there. I will examine them after the dinner aven.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ Given a reprieve, Blackford scrambled to dismount, rooted in his saddlebags and withdrew a coil of slim but strong rope.

  Major Tavon turned to Hershaw. ‘Captain, you’ve ordered them followed?’

  Hershaw swallowed hard. ‘Yes, ma’am. Sergeant Bota’s squad will be ready to march in a quarter-aven.’

  ‘Excellent. Be certain Bota knows not to engage them. I simply wish to know where they are.’

  ‘Understood, ma’am.’ Captain Hershaw looked forward to escaping back to the relative protection of his company, but as he wrenched his horse’s head around, he saw Blackford, hurrying to affix the looped end of his
rope to one of the granite shards, slip in the snow.

  Blackford reached out with his free hand to break his fall, embarrassed to have tripped so clumsily in front of his fellow officers, Major Tavon especially, but before his outstretched hand came to rest on the ground, he struck something hard and sharp that wrenched his head back and left a bloody gash on his forehead.

  ‘Rutting horsecocks!’ Captain Blackford shouted, pressing a hand to his forehead. ‘What in the Northern Forest was that? I broke my whoring—’

  ‘Silence!’ Major Tavon roared as Blackford moaned, blood pouring freely through the fingers he held pressed to the wound. ‘Captain Hershaw?’ Major Tavon’s tone was suddenly pleasant, the most pleasant it had been since Wellham Ridge. She appeared to be positively amused at Blackford’s unfortunate accident. ‘Captain Hershaw, reach over carefully and touch that section of the table.’

  He didn’t understand the order, but he complied immediately, regardless.

  ‘It’s not there,’ Blackford moaned.

  ‘Shut up!’ Tavon barked again without looking at him. Her eyes were fixed on Captain Hershaw as he reached for the fractured stone – but he couldn’t touch it.

  Instead, his hand came to rest on something cold, flat, polished, almost, but curiously hidden from view. ‘I can’t reach it, ma’am,’ he said, desperately hoping this wouldn’t infuriate the major once again.

  Tavon laughed, an inane, maniacal giggle. ‘Of course you can’t, Captain, of course you can’t!’ She waved a hand over the broken pieces and watched as they righted themselves, pulled themselves together and healed their own wounds. ‘Nice try, Steven,’ she shouted to the forest, ‘that was a nice try!’

  Hershaw assisted Captain Blackford, whose face was covered with blood. He pinched the gash closed, shouting for a battalion healer: the wound would need stitches.

  Beside them, Major Tavon ran her hands lovingly over the polished stone. Mumbling to herself, she withdrew what appeared to be a small rock, a little piece of granite that might have come from the same quarry as the table itself. She reached towards the centre of the table and the only place that had not healed itself, an irregular slot that was not polished as smooth as opaline glass.

  Hershaw strained to hear what Major Tavon was saying, wishing Blackford would shut up; he caught only a snippet: ‘—see where you are, Steven—’ but it meant nothing. Who Steven was, he had not the faintest idea.

  The lights came on and Mark cried out, ‘Christ, thank fucking Christ!’ He was elbow-deep in lukewarm water, still dry, but propped up on his hands in some lunatic drill sergeant’s idea of a push-up. His chest, stomach and legs rested on marshy ground and he tried to pull himself backwards far enough to extricate himself from the water before his arms gave out and he fell face-down. He could see vines, clumps of cordgrass and thick patches of brown bulrushes, shadowed black beneath the tangled canopy. He could hear the distant rustle of animals moving about, things at home in place like this.

  Somewhere in front of him he could see sky the colour of aquamarine. It was noisy there, but clear, not humid and dank like here around the pond. Between him and that flawless sky the ground rose. Up the hill to his left was where the brightest of the light came from – not the sunlight, not the light from the perfect blue sky, but the other light, the light reaching him now. Someone was there, working; Mark couldn’t see who.

  His hands brushed against something solid and familiar, something manmade, with right angles. This was no pond, though it was solid and filled with water – a marble pond in a swamp? He slid back on his stomach until he could feel the edge. It was stone as well, a rectangular bit of thin stone edging a trough with a shallow draft and a short beam. He pushed himself out of the water, his sleeves shedding rotting algae and decaying bulrushes, and saw the first of the creatures struggle by. They were like great tadpoles, brownish-green, but elongated, as if stuck in metamorphosis. Most of them didn’t look comfortable in the water, and many were crippled by bulbous tumours on their narrow heads and slimy necks, yet on they swam, muscular tails slogging back and forth through the muck like giant mutant sperm. One peered at him blindly through a ruined eyeball. A tumour had taken root behind it and Mark could smell the stench of death and decomposition as the tumours grew and rotted at the same time.

  He slid further away from the marble trough, afraid the eyeball might burst like a bubble and splatter him with oozing tadpole slime.

  A moment later, he understood why the tumour-riddled black-eyed tadpole sperm things had been swimming so ardently: they were trying to escape.

  The first of the snakes slithered past, a scaled coil of diamond-patterned mercury. This was more than just a snake, even more than a prehistoric reptile: this monster was aware, a creature of cunning, capable of inflicting pain and suffering purely for pain and suffering’s sake. It paused long enough to look at Mark, its forked tongue flicking in and out, then resumed its leisurely pursuit of the tadpoles, followed by the rest of the snakes. Some swam like the first; others slithered along the marble edge of the stone trough. One, with a body as thick as Mark’s forearm, slid soundlessly over his outstretched legs, which were paralysed with fear. None of them bit him. They were going somewhere, together.

  Then the lights went out again.

  Steven, can you hear me?

  Steven reined in and shook his head as if to clear it. He looked around for Gilmour. ‘I just thought I heard something,’ he said.

  Garec grinned. ‘Hearing things? You know what that’s a sign of?’

  ‘What?’ Steven smirked.

  ‘You can’t keep playing with that thing,’ Garec laughed. ‘The urges will pass; you just need to concentrate on something else.’

  Brand and Kellin chuckled, but Gilmour tensed suddenly.

  ‘What is it?’ Steven asked.

  Steven?

  ‘Who is that?’ He looked behind him, unnerved.

  ‘It’s him,’ Gilmour said suddenly.

  Not out there, Steven … in here.

  Mark?

  Hello! I was impressed with your bit of trickery; the table looked such a mess. You almost fooled me.

  Mark, he pleaded, you’ve got to fight this thing; you’ve got to—

  Shut up! said the phantom voice in his head and Steven felt an icy hand grip his throat. It squeezed with inhuman strength for a moment – and then was gone.

  Steven?

  He rubbed the feeling back into his neck, and cast his thoughts back inside his mind. What do you want?

  Do you know where the phrase ‘Stygian darkness’ comes from?

  Of course, Mark … He used his friend’s name, hoping to reach his roommate across whatever layers of evil and hatred held him captive. It comes from the absolute darkness associated with the rivers Acheron and Styx, the legendary waters flowing through Hades.

  Of course you know, Mark whispered. I knew you would.

  Where are you?

  I’ve been there. Did you know that?

  No one has been there, Mark. Please, meet me; I want to talk to you.

  I’ve been there. It’s— There was a sense of anticipation in Steven’s mind, but it wasn’t his. It’s unpleasant.

  Where are you, Mark? Let’s meet; I need to talk—

  Touching, Mark interrupted him, but you have other plans, Steven.

  I do?

  Yes. You’re going to spend some time in the Stygian darkness.

  Mark, please, I don’t want to fight you. I don’t want to—

  Goodbye, Steven.

  Garec shouted out as Steven fell, landing with a crunching thud on the unbroken snow. His eyes rolled back into his head; his breathing shallowed to raspy gulps and his arms and legs jerked in twitching, catatonic spasms.

  ‘Pissing demons!’ Garec yelled. ‘Gilmour, get down here!’

  ‘He’s having some kind of attack,’ Kellin said, wringing her hands in fear.

  ‘It’s a seizure,’ Brand said.

  ‘It’s Mark,’ Gilmour
spat, ‘the horsecock’s hit him somehow.’

  ‘Somehow?’ Garec knelt beside Steven, but he, like Kellin, had no idea what to do.

  ‘It’s the table,’ Gilmour whispered. ‘Nerak couldn’t have done this unaided.’

  ‘Rutters!’ Kellin swore. ‘So the illusion didn’t work.’

  ‘What can we do for him?’ Garec said. ‘He could die – he’s barely breathing!’

  ‘Make him comfortable,’ Gilmour ordered, trying to unlash a blanket from his saddle. ‘I’ll think of something.’ He searched his memory, sorting through files of common-phrase spells memorised over hundreds of Twinmoons: healing spells, deception spells, distraction spells – anything that might break Steven’s connection with Mark and the spell table. One knot must have got wet; it was frozen solid, and Gilmour, frustrated, drew his knife and slashed at the ropes, crying, ‘I can’t rutting think!’

  That’s too bad.

  Mark! Gilmour hustled his consciousness into a hastily constructed, well-lighted cordoned-off section of his mind and hoped Mark wouldn’t be able to follow.

  See how they run, see how they run! Mark sang like an insane five-year-old. You can’t hide in here, Gilmour.

  What have you done to him, Mark? You know he didn’t want to kill you. You know what kind of man he is …

  Kill me? Mark was incredulous.

  I might not show you as much compassion, however.

  Oh please, old man, don’t make threats. Mark lowered his voice to a whisper and added ominously, I already know what frightens you, Gilmour.

  Gilmour’s second blanket began to move, twitching in time to Steven’s spastic jerks as the book wrapped within the blanket writhed furiously. Clenching his teeth, the old sorcerer focused on the layers of wool folded over the leatherbound tome. Not wanting to touch it yet, he used his knife to slash the remaining bits of rope and nudged the book into the snow.

  It lay still.

  Gilmour tossed the first blanket to Garec and said, ‘Make him comfortable.’ Then he leaned over, took one end of the blanket between two fingers and tugged. The first snake bit him through his boots. It was a long, heavy-bodied creature, a mythic serpent not of this world, with fangs full of a toxin powerful enough to kill a grettan. It encircled Gilmour’s calf, biting him again and again.