Lessek's Key

THE FALKAN PLAIN

‘That’s it,’ Garec said. ‘Whittle it down, but don’t cut it too deeply, or you’ll leave weak spots – trust me, the last thing you want is to have an old bow shatter at full draw just because you chipped away too much at one area.’

‘How do I know if it’s too thin?’ Mark stopped shaving the freshly cut branch and waited for clarification.

‘You’ve got plenty of wood left right now,’ Garec said. ‘Keep going and when you’ve cleared some of the outer layers, use mine as a model. Gods know I don’t want it any more.’

‘But yours is wrapped. What is that? Leather? Hide?’

Hide strips,’ Garec nodded. ‘I tan them from deerskin and use them to strengthen the bow. It’s a tedious process, but if you dip them in salt water then wrap them across each other, they dry up and tighten into a tough but still pliable layer.’

‘I want to do that too,’ Mark said.

‘Well,’ Garec said, amused, ‘first you’ve got to kill a deer.’

‘That’s fine. I’ll shoot the next one I see.’ Mark had never been a hunter. Apart from his attempt at fishing with Versen’s bow and a few wild shots at flocks of ducks unfortunate enough to be flying over Port Jefferson one autumn many years earlier – none of the ducks were ever in any real danger – he had never fired a weapon of any kind.

‘You’ll have to find one,’ Garec said. ‘Then you’ll have to hit it with an arrow – and forgive me for bringing it up, because I wasn’t there, but didn’t you struggle some with a bow the last time you tried this?’

Mark looked over at his Ronan friend; Garec could see the bruises where the Seron had punched him in the face. ‘That was fishing, Garec. This is killing.’

Garec flashed back to the way Mark had used his superior swimming ability as a lethal weapon. He had no doubt Mark would use his new bow as often as he could. ‘Trust me,’ he said, ‘you don’t want to get so adept at killing that it begins to feel like fishing.’

‘I think I know the difference.’ Mark didn’t look up from his work.

‘For now, yes, but after a while, the lines begin to blur. It gets easier – too easy.’

Mark stopped whittling and looked at Garec. ‘I don’t need you to worry about my soul. If God exists – and I still believe He does – but He certainly hasn’t been around this neighbourhood in a while. He and I can settle our accounts another day.’

Garec hesitated a moment, then, unnerved, asked, ‘So your God doesn’t permit killing?’

‘Oh, He permits plenty of it, but He- He disapproves.’

‘How does he feel about fishing then?’ Garec forced a smile.

Mark laughed for the first time in days. ‘I understand He was quite a fisherman himself, Garec! You just teach me to shoot this thing and I’ll take care of the rest.’ He held the branch aloft. ‘How’s this?’

Once, while exploring at Riverend Palace, Garec had come across a room that looked as if it had been an art room, maybe a classroom, filled with half-finished sculptures, figures struggling to emerge from otherwise nondescript sections of red oak or marble. The fire that destroyed the palace more than a thousand Twinmoons earlier had missed the chamber. Garec had been unsettled by his discovery – as though he had come upon something he shouldn’t be seeing: two adulterers locked in a tryst, perhaps. The sculptures all evolved into something terrifying; not a flower emerging from a walnut log or a woman’s face slipping free from marble bonds, but malformed, half-finished things – souls trapped between who they had been and who they might become. There were birds flying gracefully with one wing, trapped in the wood by the other, and an enormous red oak log in the centre of the room, taller than him, that halfway up changed into a man. Garec figured it was Prince Markon, but all his efforts to superimpose a kingly face and noble demeanour on the carving failed; the man had a desperate look in his eyes, and looked as if he was struggling to escape.

In all his time at Riverend Palace, Garec had never returned to the room. There was something wrong with those sculptures, a thousand Twinmoons old and still trapped. As he watched Mark whittle away at the length of green wood, Garec felt the same sense of unease; he was watching a killer being born with a few strokes of a hunting knife along a branch. He looked down at the foreigner’s boots, nearly buried in a pile of shavings: would his feet disappear entirely before Mark was finished sculpting his bow?

‘What’s that?’ Mark said.

‘What?’ Garec stammered, ‘nothing- well, it’s just that I wish you would reconsider this decision.’

‘Sorry.’

‘It doesn’t make anything better. You realise that.’ This last was a statement.

‘I have to learn my own lessons, Garec – I always have. I don’t want you to feel badly for me. We’re friends, and I appreciate you helping, but this is something I have to do.’

Garec couldn’t stand it any longer; he needed Mark to move, to see the shavings piled around Mark’s ankles were not going to solidify and drink him bodily back into some wooden womb.

He blurted out the first thing that came to mind: ‘Why don’t you set that aside for now and we’ll go and find a deer?’

‘You’re going to help me kill a deer?’ Mark raised an eyebrow, his knife stilled in his lap.

‘Sure.’ Garec started to sweat, but he knew what had to be done. ‘Someone has to teach you, or gods rest us, we’ll all end up with arrows in our backsides.’

Mark stood up, his boots breaking free of the pile of wood off-cuts; Garec inwardly sighed in relief and gathered up his quivers.

Steven, sitting nearby mending a tear in his leggings, called after them, ‘I like mine medium-well, with onions, tomatoes, mayo and pickles.’

‘Pickles?’ Mark called back. ‘Yuk! Would you like fries with that, too?’

‘And a beer!’ Steven laughed and tossed a log on their fire as Mark and Garec disappeared into the trees. He looked around for Gilmour, who was making his way towards the camp; he’d been scouting ahead, trying to work out how far they’d travelled since leaving the fjord. Steven had a sense it was a good long way. Gilmour insisted that they ride at night. They had left the fjord the night Mark killed the Seron warriors – Steven thought of it as murder, but every time he tried to broach the topic, Mark shot him a withering glance that said, you have no idea how I have suffered or how I still suffer, so back off. And Steven had. While Mark slept, comforted by Gilmour’s spell, the others packed hastily, needing to be away before any other Seron arrived. Then they’d awakened Mark and climbed out of the fjord, an easier journey than Steven had expected, even in the darkness.

They needed horses, and luck or fate had provided: a farmer who had a small homestead nestled in the hills had directed the travellers to a much larger farm less than a day’s march away, where Garec bartered with a singularly disagreeable woman for four sturdy horses and saddlery. They paid too much, but with all of Central Falkan to cross, they were not in much of a position to complain.

At Gilmour’s insistence, they were back in the saddle after nightfall. The old man galloped in front of the others, his cloak billowing out behind, and as he passed, Steven felt the hickory staff’s magic, first as a faint prickle, then there in full force, wrapping him in a protective layer, as if it sensed something about to happen. But nothing attacked them, and Gilmour didn’t lead them headlong over a cliff or into a lurking rank of homicidal wraiths. Steven, ready to shout out a warning at any moment, waited, wondering why the magic had suddenly sparked into life Then he noticed the plain… There was nothing special about the ground beneath his horse’s hoofs, nor did they seem to be moving unnaturally fast, but out beyond his field of view, the earth and sky had melted into one to form a blurry black backdrop: the world was moving past them faster than Steven had at first realised. He was glad Gilmour had ordered the night ride across Falkan, for it was very disconcerting, but at least the trip to the border between Falkan and Gorsk wouldn’t take long.

He was disappointed they wouldn’t see more of the vast and fertile Falkan Plain, for this huge area of rich arable soil provided fruit and vegetables for most of the Eastlands, as well as fine grazing for a wide variety of livestock. Farms abounded, and every town, no matter how small, had its daily market filled with local farmers selling or trading the autumn harvest. Winter was on its way and everyone was busy storing food for the leaner times ahead.

Steven didn’t fool himself into thinking he had discovered a Utopian corner of Eldarn: it was plain the farmers here were not exactly revelling in lives of excess, any more than the dockers and townsfolk in Orindale. There was food as far as he could see, and the people of central Falkan ought to have looked much healthier, but most were thin, many to the point of gauntness, and clothes, though usually neat, were patched and mended. He didn’t have to ask Garec to confirm that much of what had been harvested was earmarked for Malagon’s occupation forces. This picturesque village, set amongst fertile fields and grassy meadows and heavy with the mouth-watering aromas of grilled meat, tecan and rich cheeses, was filled with sorrow and want.

These people needed someone to organise them: they needed to be educated about what could be possible if they only cut the head off the serpent – in this case, Nerak. Steven couldn’t believe they hadn’t already risen up together in defiance – everything here in Eldarn cried out for just that: revolution.

He started thinking about Garec’s vision – Garec was certain he had witnessed a last-moment attempt to carry on the Ronan line, a grim coupling of a servant girl and a madman. Was that what they were supposed to do? Find that offspring and ensure he or she ascended to power and restored peace and prosperity to Eldarn? The breadth of what needed to be done overwhelmed him and he threw up his hands in frustration.

‘First things first, Steven,’ he told himself firmly, ‘save the world now. Fix it later.’ He tried not to be disheartened by what he was seeing: rich, dark soil tilled by starving people who no longer cared, for their crops were going to the enemy.

As Gilmour approached through the trees, Steven wondered how the old man was planning to bring prosperity to Eldarn – always assuming they survived the coming battle with Nerak, of course.

‘You look deep in thought.’ Gilmour sat down.

‘There is so much to do.’

The old man chuckled. ‘Just realising that now, are you?’

‘You know what I mean,’ Steven said.

‘I do. I’ve been telling myself that for thousands of Twinmoons. I guess I know as well as anyone what has to happen for these lands to prosper.’

‘But we have to save them first.’ Steven fought an almost overwhelming feeling of despondency. He decided to change the subject. ‘I’m worried about Mark.’

‘Mark will be fine.’

‘He’s going to get himself killed.’

‘Mark needs time – perhaps more time than we can give him – but there’s nothing else that will ease his suffering right now. When you have lived as long and seen as much as I have, Steven, there are a few things you know, and one of them is that time can heal a wagonload of pain and suffering.’

Steven nodded. There was a long comfortable silence between them. Eventually, he gestured towards Gilmour’s hands, lean and strong now, no longer the gnarled, arthritic hands of the old fisherman. ‘You’ve made some improvements, I see.’

Gilmour turned his hands over and flexed his fingers. ‘You noticed. I tightened a few cords, improved some muscle tone and-’ he pointed two fingers at his eyes, ‘-sharpened my eyesight a notch or two.’

‘It’s amazing. I still can’t get used to the fact that you can work such wonders.’

‘You’ve done some wondrous things yourself, Steven,’ Gilmour countered. ‘You staved off an almor. No one has done that in thousands of Twinmoons. You fought a wraith army, saved Garec – twice – and saved the rest of us from the Seron that night in the foothills, and from what I understand you did quite a decent job of blowing up that bone-collector there in the cavern.’

‘But nothing like you can do,’ Steven said softly. ‘The way you pounded away at Nerak: I was terrified. I couldn’t have called up the staff’s power that night; I just couldn’t keep my thoughts straight. And now – how much ground are we covering? Are we really travelling four or five times faster than normal?’

Gilmour nodded. ‘It’s an old trick – a fairly simple one, actually. Nerak taught it to me when we were hurrying to get from Gorsk to a harvest festival outside Capehill in the south.’ He broke off and sighed. ‘We were still friends at the time – we were going for the wine, the music, the food and the women. Nerak created the spell for that trip. The last time he used this spell that I know of was when he went to Port Denis.’

Steven sat up straight. ‘You mentioned Port Denis to him that night on the Prince Marek.’

‘That’s right. He rode there, ten or twelve days of hard riding, in a matter of avens.’ Now Gilmour sounded despondent. ‘His power is tremendous, and terrifying.’

‘What happened when he got there?’ Steven was still, almost frozen in place. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer to his question.

‘Nerak wiped Port Denis clean of every living thing with a wave of one hand.’

‘Sonofabitch,’ Steven muttered, falling back into English. ‘Where did he learn all this? How did he get to be so powerful – and so singularly destructive?’

‘It probably helped that no one ever challenged him, especially early on. I certainly didn’t, not after my embarrassing debacle that night at Sandcliff Palace. It was never in me. Kantu was always much more adept at magic and sorcery than I, but he was wrestling demons of his own at the time and when he was finally ready to take on Nerak, the Nerak we had known all our lives, that man was already gone and the demon servant of the great evil lying dormant in the Fold had taken over.’

‘How much did he get from that book? He was certain that was what we were after – have you read it? Will it teach you what you need to be ready for him?’

Gilmour swallowed hard and tucked his shaking hands beneath his thighs, hoping to still them.

Steven, misinterpreting Gilmour’s silence, retrieved the spell book from the pack beside them and said, ‘I’ve been paging through it a bit myself.’

Gilmour started. ‘You have? When?’

‘Sorry – I didn’t think you’d mind.’ A little abashed, Steven closed the book and tried to hand it over. ‘You know, that night on the Prince Marek, it was different. When I touched the book, it was like I had fallen into a pit and couldn’t get out – maybe didn’t want to get out; there was light and colour, and things made sense, even things I had never imagined, things I never knew existed. Everything seemed logical, like there was an order to what was and what could or couldn’t be.

‘But since then, something’s happened – maybe because the book isn’t on the ship anymore – but I can touch it now, open it, read the text, whatever. But I didn’t realise you wanted me to stay away from it, so I’ll leave it to you. I’m really sorry.’

Gilmour ignored the spell book Steven was still holding out towards him. ‘No, no, that’s fine – of course you can read it if you wish.’ He gestured for Steven to take it back, then said casually, ‘Can you understand the text?’

‘Nope, almost none of it – although I can make out a few words here and there. What language is this, anyway?’ He turned a few pages idly.

‘It is a very old, very dead form of Malakasian.’ Gilmour was sweating now.

‘So Nerak was from Malakasia?’

The old man struggled to hear over his pounding heart; it was getting harder to stay focused on their conversation.

No, I guess Lessek had to be from Malakasia.’ Steven answered his own question as he mouthed a word or two, and then snapped the book shut. ‘Well, this is all yours, Gilmour – I’m afraid it won’t do any good in my hands.’ He held it out once again and this time, hesitantly, Gilmour took it.

In the moment before Steven closed the book, Gilmour had read the same words, the ash dream. He tried to hide the fact that he was in a state: he was panting as if a great weight had landed on his chest, and his ribs burned where they had cracked that night along the fjord.

For the first time since Gilmour had joined him, Steven noticed something was wrong. ‘Are you okay? What do you think? Can you do it?’

‘To answer your earlier question, yes, I have opened it. And can I use it? Honestly? No.’ Gilmour retreated to the comforting idea that had kept him going. ‘We have the key, and I know there is something in the third Windscroll that I am supposed to find, and that’s a place to begin. We have to get to Sandcliff as quickly as possible, preferably before Nerak finds a way back from Colorado, because I shall need as much time as possible to find the scroll, open the spell table and work out how the two must work together if we’re to banish him and seal the Fold for ever. I know something about your trip back home has made you confident we’ll be able to do this, but I must admit, my own confidence has been waning somewhat since that night on the harbour.’ He massaged his ribs again.

‘But why? Because of the book? Maybe the book doesn’t enter into the equation,’ Steven cajoled him. ‘Look, the key opened the Fold, Gilmour. I saw it. The whole world stopped and melted into a canvas with three rips in it. I saw right through one of them to where the far portal was buried beneath two tons of rotting meat and disposable diapers. That key is formidable. If it can give us the Fold’s mystical dimensions – and it must have worked once, because Lessek was able to open the portal gates and keep them opened at will – then we can shut them, I know we can. You can do it, Gilmour, because we will have the same power Lessek had when he created the far portal in the first place.’

Gilmour sighed. ‘I wish I had your confidence, my friend.’

‘You do have my confidence,’ Steven said, ‘because closing the damned Fold for ever is only the first thing we need to do for Eldarn – and I know it can be done. I’ve seen it.’

‘And then?’

‘Then, we revolt.’

‘All right.’ Gilmour, looking tired, nodded more emphatically. ‘All right. The third Windscroll. Gods grant it’s still there.’

‘It will be.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because if Nerak knew his weaknesses were documented in that scroll, he would have destroyed it by now, or he would have-’

‘Put it in your bank.’

‘Put it in my bank, right.’

‘The third Windscroll.’ Gilmour held out his hand.

Steven clasped it and felt the sinewy strength of the old fisherman’s grip. ‘The third Windscroll. When can we get there?’

‘It will only be a few more days.’

‘Let’s get on with it, as soon as Mark and Garec get back.’

Nerak slammed on the brakes, throwing the pick-up into a tailspin and causing several cars behind him to take to the shoulder in an effort to avoid a multi-car pile-up.

‘Hey asshole!’ someone shouted, ‘play with it later in the bathroom, huh? Give us a break!’

The dark prince, cloaked now in Jennifer Sorenson’s postman, a forty-six-year-old listed as missing with the Denver Police, glared at the passing motorist and noted the car, a white Ford driven by a woman with a comical hairstyle and three silver rings in her left earlobe. ‘I will deal with you later,’ he said, then, ignoring the horns and shouted abuse of the townsfolk and tourists making their way into Silverthorn, he rested his head against the rear window of the cab and closed his eyes.

It was the book; Fantus had opened the book again. How could the snivelling sap be that stupid? ‘Did you not believe me, Fantus?’ he muttered.

Almost as quickly as it had come, the sensation was gone; the book was closed, but Nerak wasn’t concerned. ‘I’ll be waiting next time,’ he promised, putting the car back into drive and pressing the accelerator. Though the tyres spun on the snow-packed highway, he picked up speed down the slope into Silverthorn. He had a sense of where he would find Jennifer and his far portal, but if Fantus and that irritating foreigner continued to experiment with Lessek’s spell book, he wouldn’t need her at all.

‘Read all you like, Fantus,’ Nerak said. ‘It will be more than your ribs I break next time, my old friend.’ As he pushed a wad of Confederate Son into his mouth, he came alongside the white Ford. He slowed to match the woman’s speed, and waved until she turned to look at him, then offered her a broad, tobacco-stained grin. She tried to let him overtake, but Nerak kept pace with her, slowing as she slowed and speeding up as necessary, looking at her constantly through the window.

When she tried to turn onto the exit ramp for Silverthorn, Nerak took over, laughing as she struggled to turn the frozen steering wheel. He pressed his foot to the floor, revving the pick-up’s engine, and this time the white Ford kept pace with him.

He drove faster and faster, until the pick-up’s engine was screeching in protest, topping a hundred miles per hour, the dark prince gestured at the dashboard and the speedometer began climbing again: one hundred and five, one hundred and fifteen, one hundred and eighteen miles per hour – and still the woman in the white Ford kept pace. She was screaming now, and beating at her window, pleading with – God? – someone, anyway, in amusingly inaudible cries, for her shouts were drowned by the din of the two engines. He shattered both windows, his and hers, with a glance, all the better to hear her beg for her life.

‘I’ll think of you later as I play with it in the bathroom!’ he shouted. ‘And I thank you for the advice – I hadn’t realised playing with it in the middle of the road was so inappropriate. I really do owe you my thanks.’ He laughed, spraying tobacco-juice everywhere. Some dripped into the sore on the back of the postal worker’s hand.

The woman screamed for him to stop, to slow down and to let her go.

Nerak turned his attention to the highway ahead. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘here’s just the thing.’ A logging truck, fully loaded with stripped pine trunks, was in the path of the speeding Ford as it inched up a short incline. Nerak turned to watch the woman again as her earrings caught the sunlight. At the last moment, her hands bloody and torn from ripping away the broken glass from the window, she tried to climb out of her car, but half out, she seemed to change her mind. Her blouse was ripped and she was bleeding from dozens of cuts. With the car bearing down on the trailer at over a hundred and twenty miles per hour, she made a final attempt to escape It was too late.

Nerak thought her the most beautifully wretched woman he had seen in several hundred Twinmoons.

‘You ought to be more polite, my dear,’ the dark prince shouted as he allowed his pick-up to break away and watched the Ford disappear beneath the back of the logging truck with a resounding crash of tearing metal and shattering glass.

The woman with the silly hairstyle and the silver earrings, trapped halfway out of the window, had been cut neatly in half. Now the upper part of her torso bounced along the highway until it came to rest in a snowbank. What was left of her car was dragged behind the truck for a while, then slid off the road into a snowy ditch as logs tumbled and rolled from the overturned trailer. Traffic screeched to a stop, and a few Samaritans hustled up the shoulder on foot.

Amusing himself with the irritating woman’s murder had made Nerak miss the exits for Silverthorn and Breckenridge. He slowed down and, ignoring the cars in both directions blasting their horns as they stomped on their brakes to avoid hitting him, made a U-turn into the eastbound lane.

‘Silverthorn,’ he said firmly. ‘She’s in Silverthorn.’

It was dark when Garec and Mark returned from the meadow, lugging a deer’s hind quarter and several bloody chunks of flesh, more than enough meat to sustain the four men for several nights. As sorry as Garec was to leave the bulk of the deer’s body abandoned in the meadow, they would reach Traver’s Notch before they would need to replenish their stores again. He doubted the deer’s carcase would last the night; there was no shortage of local predators to make use of it.

Steven rose when he saw the others come into the firelight. ‘All right, Garec! I’m glad to see you’re back to normal – good for you!’

‘Much as I appreciate the sentiment, Steven,’ Garec said, ‘tonight’s credit goes to Mark.’

No!’ Steven looked as his friend in astonishment. ‘You did this?’

Mark nodded.

‘You? Mister-Greenpeace-Loving-Earth-First-Soya-Milk-Bleeding-Libe ral-Anti-NRA-Gun-Control-Advocate-High-School-Teacher? You shot Bambi with a bow?’

‘Bambi’s mother, actually,’ Mark smiled. ‘Bambi was a buck.’

‘A buck? You mean a little boy deer? You’re from New York, Mark – since when do New Yorkers shoot Bambi’s mother with a bow?’

‘One shot,’ Garec said, ‘through the lung. It wasn’t pretty and we had to track her for a stretch through those trees and then out into the plain, but she finally fell. It’s sad that she suffered a bit.’

‘Through the lung,’ Mark repeated. ‘I missed the heart. It was grim. I’ll have to be more careful next time.’

‘How about next time, we go into some town and buy a few grettan burgers?’ Steven said. ‘Really. On me. I’ve got several hundred thousand left in silver. I’ll spring for pickles, onions, the works.’

Mark turned to Garec. ‘Will the hide make it to the next town without rotting?’

Steven hadn’t seen the length of rolled deerskin draped over Mark’s shoulder. ‘The hide? And what are we going to do with that, Uncas? Are you making a pair of trews? Planning to sing with the Doors this summer?’

‘It’s for my bow,’ Mark said, waiting for Garec’s answer.

‘It should be fine,’ Garec said. ‘We’ve scraped it fairly clean and we’ll salt and soak it tomorrow – even if it’s not dry by the time we have to ride again, it will keep until we can stretch and tan it properly.’

‘Great,’ Steven said, ‘well, keep me in mind for a nice football. Christmas is coming and I’ve got lovely woollen sweaters planned for you two. Of course, I’ll just need to borrow your bow the next time we come across a herd of sheep, Garec.’

‘Use the staff,’ Garec joked. ‘It’ll be easier – and far less messy.’

‘This will slow us down a bit tonight,’ Gilmour said, interrupting the banter, but it’s all right. Let’s get it cooked and eaten, and let’s get the rest wrapped up and ready to ride.’ He moved off to continue packing.

‘What’s with him?’ Mark asked.

Steven lowered his voice. ‘He’s not sure he’s up to the task ahead. You’ve seen how fast we’re travelling every night. He’s moving towards a conflict that may kill us all – him too.’

‘It’s worse than that,’ Garec whispered as well. ‘If he can’t use the key, or the scroll, it won’t be much of a conflict at all.’

‘You’re right, Garec,’ Mark said. ‘We may get crushed before we have a chance to get in the game.’

‘I wish he was more confident,’ Steven said. ‘I mean, what choice does he have now? Hell, we’re going to be there in a couple of days.’

‘One hundred and thirty-five years of preparation and hiding? I’d be nervous, too,’ Mark said.

‘Yes, but this is something more. He is questioning things he put in motion, that got us started along this path from the beginning. Remember when we came down from Seer’s Peak? He was excited about the Windscrolls because Lessek told him Nerak’s weakness lies elsewhere. He was relieved that we hadn’t made the mistake of charging into Welstar Palace and getting ourselves killed.’

‘Right,’ Garec said, ‘hearing from Lessek was lucky. So we turned to Sandcliff and the scroll library. What’s your point?’

‘I got the sense from him tonight that even this plan to get the key and the scroll might not be the right one.’

‘But we’ve known that all along,’ Mark said. ‘Everyone knew we were essentially flying blind.’

‘But it was Gilmour’s confidence that got us here. He didn’t want us doing anything until he read that scroll and had some time to experiment with the spell table.’

‘And now he’s questioning that?’

‘Right – but I don’t know why. Something happened to him while I was gone. Nerak must have said something, or done something – you should have seen him tonight; I couldn’t even get him to touch that spell book, never mind read it. Did he look at it at all while I was gone?’

Garec looked thoughtful. ‘Come to think of it, I’ve never even seen him open it.’

‘Me neither,’ Mark added. ‘So what do we do?’

‘I don’t know,’ Steven said. ‘Ride hard, get to Sandcliff as quickly as we can, and do whatever we need to get him as much time with that table as possible before Old Shithead gets back. More than that, I’m at a loss.’

‘What about the staff?’ Garec asked. ‘You seem to have some idea how to make it work for you these days.’

‘Somewhat,’ Steven answered, ‘but most of the time, it feels like the magic comes and goes of its own will. I’ve called it up myself, but not as frequently as it has shown up unannounced.’

‘Or not bothered to show up at all,’ Mark said, recalling the staff’s failure battling the river demon in Meyers’ Vale.

‘That’s true, too, but I did something the day I was at the dump and I know if I could get back to that level of- I don’t even know what, but that frame of mind I was in, maybe: if I can get back to that, I bet I could do it. I could close the Fold myself.’ He tried to grip the air above their campfire – that was the clearest recollection he had, that he had been able to feel the very air around him. The Fold was everywhere, and that day Steven had been able to touch it.

Mark clapped his roommate on the shoulder, jolting him back to the present. ‘You know I love you, buddy, but let’s hope it doesn’t all come down to your all-encompassing maths-and-compassion strategy.’

‘It’s right there, Mark. I can taste it… but I can’t quite get it in focus. It’s like your struggle to make sense of Lessek and your dad. We are on the verge of having this entire dilemma worked out, but until we do…’ his voice trailed off.

‘We’re in some grand rutting trouble.’ Garec finished the thought.

Steven nodded.

‘Well, you heard Gilmour. We can continue pondering our collective quandaries while we skin and cook this meat. He’s made it quite clear he wants to get moving, so let’s get busy.’