Lessek's Key

THE SPELL CHAMBER

‘Gilmour,’ Steven shook the old man’s shoulder, ‘Gilmour, you need to get up. We may not have much time here and we must find that Windscroll. If you want to go back down to the village and hide somewhere, that’s fine, but let’s get that scroll.’

‘I let him back in, Steven,’ Gilmour said.

‘Nerak? What do you mean?’

‘I tried to read the spell book. He reached across the Fold and knocked the shit out of me. I had not a clue how to free myself. The second time, he did the same, then came through as a rush of wind and power. I let him back in, and now I’ve lit a rutting signal fire.’

‘I don’t care if Nerak’s back, Gilmour – in fact, I prefer having him here, where we have the resources to destroy him, rather than over there where he might kill my parents or my friends. He already killed Myrna Kessler. I watched him burn down the entire south face of the canyon above Idaho Springs. For all I know, he left Denver in ruins before he came back looking for us. So to tell the truth, I’m glad he’s here. As for him knowing where we are, why do you suppose he met us in Traver’s Notch? He knows we have the key. He’s been trying to get it since the day we arrived in Estrad. He damned near shat himself when he discovered it was on my desk that entire Twinmoon, and he raced me across the United States to get to it. So he’s always known we were coming here; opening the gate only confirmed that we had arrived.’

Gilmour lifted his head from his hands and looked around the great room. It would have been dwarfed by the main dining hall at Riverend Palace, but it had been the scene of so many debates and drunken discussions. A wry grin crossed Gilmour’s face despite his mood. Even with the sun directly overhead, little light broke through the arched windows lining each wall. Above, a narrow balcony ran around the entire hall; tapestries decorated with the crests of each territory and the various branches of the Larion Senate hung from the walkway, their tail ends limp above the main floor.

Gilmour rolled his shoulders back. ‘Let’s get some light in here,’ he said.

‘Garec,’ Steven ordered, ‘grab that torch over there; I’ll use the staff.’

‘Don’t bother, Garec,’ Gilmour interrupted, reaching a hand towards the ceiling. As he chanted a brief spell, turning on his heel to point at the torches and fireplaces, they all burst into flame and the mood in the hall changed at once. Steven could see that this had been a welcome meeting place, not the cold, inhospitable hall it had first appeared.

Mark hugged Gilmour comfortingly. ‘Don’t worry about it. This way we know where the bastard is.’

‘I don’t know if that makes me feel any better, Mark, but thanks anyway.’

‘I like the trick with the torches, too. Steven did it down in the cavern below Meyers’ Vale and scared the wits out of Gita and her Falkan roughnecks. Do you know any others? Like maybe how to open the kitchen?’

‘I can open the kitchen, Mark, but I’m afraid there weren’t any spells working to preserve the food. All we’ll find in those cupboards is dust.’

‘How about the wine cellar – or at least some water?’

‘Ah,’ Gilmour perked up again. ‘I can get the water going.’ He chanted again, and cast a half-moon arc over his head.

For a moment nothing happened; then Mark heard a low groaning noise, like tired metal shifting. ‘What’s that? A dragon in the basement?’

‘An aqueduct,’ Gilmour said.

‘I just wanted a drink, and maybe a nice shower – you didn’t need to open the hose quite so far!’

Just as all the torches had come to light at once, so all the fountains in Sandcliff Palace began simultaneously to spout, pour, dump or seep water, depending on their particular design. In this chamber alone there were four fountains and soon the lively crackle of the fires was punctuated with the tinkle of clear mountain water as basins beneath sculpted fountains began to fill.

‘It should be clean,’ Gilmour said. ‘Drink all you like. We can fill the skins before leaving. As for a wine cellar, Mark, I don’t know if we have time, but we had nearly four hundred casks – most of it has probably turned by now, but there were a few vintages that should have aged quite well. There’s nothing like a thousand Twinmoons to bring out the flavour in a Falkan grape.’

‘Great,’ Mark said, ‘well, if old Demon Prince Ugly doesn’t join us right away, maybe we can run down there and grab a few flagons for the road.’

‘I wouldn’t count on it.’ He gestured for the others. ‘Let’s go. It’s not far to the north tower.’ Gilmour led the way up a spiral staircase tucked into a back corner to the balcony. Gilmour paused to look back across the open expanse above the dining room.

‘What is it?’ Steven asked.

‘There will be some bodies between here and the tower – probably quite a few. I’m sure they’ll be nothing but bones now, but…’ He swallowed hard. ‘The carnage that night was unprecedented. I don’t know what Nerak might have done with the bodies after I left. So be warned.’

‘Why do you suppose he did something with their remains?’ Steven asked.

‘Because this is where I stood, with that old broadsword still dangling from my hand, and I faced Nerak, in Pikan’s body, right over there. From here I could see Callena and Janel, the two young senators Nerak killed first, across the balcony over there.’ He pointed towards the other side of the room. ‘Nerak threw their bodies down into the main hall, right in front of that fireplace, but they’re gone now. I’m not sure why, or to where. I had planned to cover their remains with one of the tapestries, but that’s when I saw her – him – here. And the sword is missing too.’

‘The broadsword you carried?’ Garec asked.

Gilmour stared towards the far end, his voice a murmur. ‘I dropped it right here before sprinting all the way across the balcony and jumping through that window to the stone walkway outside.’ He nodded towards the still-shattered panes of a broad circular window.

‘It’ll be all right,’ Steven said. ‘We’ve seen a lot on this journey; we’re too close to let a few piles of bones frighten us into turning back.’

Gilmour turned and smiled. ‘I know. Maybe I’m the one who needs convincing.’

They made their way up two more levels towards a chamber at the end of a corridor lined with wooden doors. Some of the doors had been left slightly ajar, others were wide open. The only closed room was a corner chamber at the end. As he had on the Prince Marek, Steven stood by while Gilmour placed a palm flat against the wooden doorframe.

‘Anything?’ he asked.

The old man shook his head. He pulled at the latch and the door swung open without a creak.

Steven’s view was blocked momentarily, but when he heard Gilmour gasp, he pushed past, afraid that Nerak might be waiting for them. He needed only a glance to understand: this had been Gilmour’s room. Much of the chamber was undisturbed: books, brittle and disintegrating over the Twinmoons, rested on a small table near the window. A paraffin taper lay in a shallow dish. A crammed bookshelf stood against the wall, next to a narrow closet still full of clothes.

Gilmour’s bed was pushed against the wall, little more than a wood and leather-strap cot. The straw mattress that had once provided some measure of comfort had rotted away and a threadbare blanket was all that remained of Gilmour’s bedding, but far more disturbing was the skeleton, clothed in the rotting remains of a pair of under-breeches, lying on the bed. The stark grey-white bones were held together by bits of putrefied ligament. The skeleton’s arms were draped over its chest and its fingers gripped the pommel of a rusty old broadsword, a crude weapon.

Steven knew at once that this was Pikan Tettarak, Nerak’s assistant and the one Senator powerful enough to mount any kind of counterassault against Nerak. She had failed; Gilmour had been busy in the scroll library when the fallen Larion sorcerer attacked, but had he been at Pikan’s side, he would not have survived the devastation either. Watching the old Larion leader gaze down at the remains of the brave woman, Steven understood that his friend was wishing he had been beside her, hands with hers deep inside the spell table, when the end had come.

Rodler, surprising them all, acted first. Stepping into the closet, he removed an old cloak, tattered and moth-eaten but whole enough to cover the body. ‘Whoever he is, he shouldn’t be laying there with nothing covering him,’ he said firmly. ‘I understand we don’t have time to give him his rites, but leaving him like that is unholy.’

‘She,’ Gilmour managed, ‘her name was Pikan.’

‘She then.’ Rodler draped the cloak over the skeleton. ‘Do you want the sword?’

There was a long silence in which no one moved. Finally, the wear-worn sorcerer, looking old, and thoroughly defeated, in the torchlight, said, ‘No. Leave it.’ He pushed his way past Garec and Mark and back into the corridor.

As he followed the others, Rodler was surprised to find Mark waiting for him. ‘That was a nice thing you did back there,’ Mark said, offering his hand.

‘Thank you, Mark.’ Rodler looked down, uncertain what to do. ‘What is this?’

‘This is one way we say I’m sorry where I come from.’

Rodler extended his own hand, and the two men settled their differences without another word.

They climbed staircases and crossed hallways, Gilmour mouthing incantations at every new junction to get through the restricted access, until they reached a short spiral of five or six stairs that ended at a heavy wooden door. Whispering a command, he pressed it open.

Steven felt a cold rush of wintry air swirl across the darkened landing: the door led to an exposed causeway of sorts, only a few paces wide, that ran from the top floor of the keep to the middle of the north tower.

‘It’s not far now, my friends,’ Gilmour said as he stepped out into the late-day sun. ‘The spell chamber is up there.’ He pointed towards the upper room. ‘That was where Nerak did the greatest damage.’

‘Let’s just get up there and grab that scroll,’ Mark said. ‘We’ll haul the table out and hide it in one of those university buildings, or maybe at the bottom of the gorge, down in the village.’

They crossed the bridge and stepped inside the tower, taking a moment to allow their vision to readjust to torchlight, then pressed on towards the scroll library, quickly and silently.

No one appeared to have noticed the storm blowing in from the west.

On the uppermost landing, Gilmour knelt beside a body he identified as Harren Bonn. He had ordered him to guard the spell chamber door, knowing it was a death sentence; Harren had realised it also. While Pikan’s remains had been recognisable as human, Harren was a jumble of cracked and shattered bits of bone in an untidy pile on the floor. Gilmour didn’t care to let himself imagine what the dark prince had done to the novice Senator.

Joining him on the landing, Rodler asked, ‘Is this someone else you knew?’ He had casually accepted Gilmour as – somehow – a Larion Senator, one who had survived the past five generations and was returning to Sandcliff Palace for the first time.

Two thousand Twinmoons of accumulated wisdom and experience couldn’t compete with feelings of guilt, sadness and regret. ‘This should have been me as well.’

‘Like the woman in your room?’

‘Yes, like her.’ Gilmour drew a sleeve across his face. They had all come too far for him to collapse, blubbering, beside what was left of a farmer’s son he had sent to his death. He couldn’t allow his guilt to debilitate him now, not this close to the end. If he died in the spell chamber, battling Nerak for control of the Fold, then so be it. Harren, Pikan and scores of his friends and colleagues had died doing their duty to Eldarn; he would do the same.

Gilmour rested one hand gently on the largest identifiable piece of Harren’s skull. ‘We’re done, my boy. It’s been a long time, but we’re done.’ He stood, ushered Rodler gently out of the way, and kicked what was left of the spell chamber door, which fell from its final hinge with a dusty, resounding crash.

As he stepped across the threshold, Gilmour felt a renewed sense of purpose, and confident determination – despite his recent failings – that he would see this through to its end. He stood for a moment in the spell chamber, taking in the small room, before his knees gave way and he collapsed unconscious to the floor.

The Larion spell table was gone.

‘Holy shit!’ Steven cried, ‘Gilmour!’ He knelt by the old man’s side.

‘What happened?’ Garec asked, joining them on the floor.

‘Look,’ Steven said, gesturing into the empty room.

‘I don’t understand,’ Garec said.

‘This is it. This is the spell chamber, and there’s no spell table.’ Steven slapped Gilmour gently, trying to startle him awake, but he remained unconscious.

‘Oh rutters, no, this is one of your hideous jokes. Isn’t it-?’ Garec stood in the centre of the small room and turned a full circle, somehow expecting to see the stone table tucked away in a corner, or maybe artfully camouflaged with some clever cloaking spell. ‘Gods, please tell me we did not come all this way for nothing.’

‘I’m afraid we did,’ Steven said, glancing up at Mark, who simply shook his head.

The laughter began as a hollow rhythmic vibration, barely audible above their voices. It was joined by a clattering sound, like marbles dropped down a stairwell.

‘Hahahaha!’ The amused chuckle was insidious, terrible. ‘What a creative spell that was, Steven. I am impressed. I assume it was you; I would have known if Fantus had been cloaking your little party all this time.’ It was Nerak, though Steven couldn’t see him. His voice felt as though it was coming from everywhere at once. Then the clatter came again, louder this time, and Steven turned towards the door.

The hundreds of shattered bits of Harren’s broken body, enshrouded in a tattered robe, began to pull themselves back together. Scraping and clattering against the cold stone of the north tower stairwell, the long-dead Larion Senator rose awkwardly to his feet, his ribs misplaced, one shoulder dislocated, and his skull askew above his spine.

Shuffling into the spell chamber, the pieced-together skeleton focused its vacant gaze on Steven. ‘Did you really think I would just have left it here? You are fools for following him. Look at him, Steven. He’s finished, beaten, and he knows it. Give me the key now, and I’ll let you go home. Give me the key now, and I’ll let Hannah go home as well.’

Steven stood, the hickory staff alive in his hands. ‘How did you enjoy Traver’s Notch, Nerak?’ he said quietly. Not expecting that one, were you? Did it hurt?’

The dark prince ignored him. ‘Right now, she and her friends are moving north towards Welstar Palace, my palace. Can you believe that? She hopes to find you and go home. Would you like that? Give me the key, and you can go.’ Harren extended a bony hand.

Steven’s stomach turned at the thought of giving in. Not today, Nerak,’ he said as he nudged Gilmour with the toe of his boot. ‘Gilmour, wake up. Wake up now.’ When the old man still didn’t stir, Steven tapped him in the ribs with the hickory staff, sending a bolt of lighting juddering through his body and shocking him back to consciousness.

‘Rutting whores!’ the old man shouted. ‘What was that?’

‘Get up, Gilmour,’ Steven hissed, ‘on your feet, now!’

Harren’s empty eye sockets glowed amber for a moment, then faded to black. ‘Hello Fantus, so good to see you again,’ Nerak said through his skeletal mouthpiece. ‘I am so very glad you came all this way for nothing. Was it a hard journey?’ Harren’s jawbone hung open as the dark prince laughed. ‘It’s been gone for a long, long time, Fantus, and you’ll never find it. Eldarn itself wards the spell table for me, Eldarn and Eldarn’s most ruthless gatekeepers. Forget the spell table, Fantus. It’s mine. It has always been mine.’

Gilmour’s gaze fell to the floor; he couldn’t summon the courage to look at Harren’s ruined body, now Nerak’s prisoner.

Nerak was enjoying the moment immensely. He turned on Mark Jenkins. ‘And you, my prince, you have everything figured out yet? If you believe you do, you’re wrong. Keep at it, though, because our day is coming.’

Grimacing, Mark stepped towards the skeleton, his battle-axe drawn and raised to strike. ‘Stop calling me that.’

‘My prince? Oh, that? Enjoy it while you can. I have a special place for you in the Fold. It’s dark in there, Mark. I hope you’re not afraid of the dark.’

With a cry, Mark attacked the skeleton, hacking away one arm. Nerak grabbed him by the throat with Harren’s remaining hand; its grip was impossibly strong, and Mark tugged hard at one bony finger until it snapped.

His friends were still frozen in shock, but finally Rodler moved, swinging his fist like a cudgel to break through the bones of Harren’ forearm. As they snapped, Nerak’s vice-like grip was released and the remaining fingers fell away. They disintegrated to dust when Mark, in disgust, cast them against the chamber wall.

Armless, Harren turned back to Steven. ‘Give me the key, and you can go home, you and Hannah. I regret that I can’t let Mark Jenkins go with you, for he and I have other plans, don’t we, Mark?’

Mark rubbed feeling back into his throat and growled, ‘Any day, sister. I’m right here.’ He threw the axe and it crashed through Harren’s ribcage and clattered on the floor behind him. Nerak was unfazed.

‘The key, Steven. It is up to you.’ With that, what was left of Harren’s skeleton collapsed in a dusty pile.

‘Cover your wrists!’ Mark yelled. ‘Jesus Christ, cover your wrists!’ He folded his hands under his armpits, not really believing that would keep the dark prince from taking him.

‘Don’t worry,’ Steven said, ‘he can’t attack us.’

‘How do you know?’ Garec asked, staring at the backs of his wrists, waiting for the skin to discolour.

‘Because he’s not really here,’ Steven said. ‘Did you see the eyes glow yellow? He’s not here. He may not even be in Gorsk, never mind the palace. That was a phone call.’

‘A what?’ Rodler asked, his hands shaking and sweat streaming from his face.

‘We’re safe.’ Steven wrapped an arm around Gilmour’s shoulders, trying to comfort the weary old man.

‘Safe? I can’t say I feel safe.’ He looked at Mark, who nodded silent thanks. Rodler punched him softly in the upper arm, and both men smiled, grateful to be alive.

The first drops to strike the floor went unnoticed, then Garec said, ‘What is that? Rain?’

Mark shook his head. ‘Nah. It’s too cold for rain.’

‘Maybe it’s snow, melting on the roof. Those torches are throwing off a little heat now.’

Rodler reached out and caught a droplet with a celebratory cry. ‘Hah, got one!’

Mark wheeled on him. ‘Wipe it off! Wipe it off now!’

‘What? What is it?’

‘It’s acid,’ he said, ‘it’s eating through the roof. We have to get out of here, now.’

Rodler yelped as the acid bubbled its way through the skin on his palm. Rubbing his hand against his cloak, he looked to the others for some explanation, his eyes wide with terror.

‘The Windscroll,’ Steven said, ‘Gilmour, where is the third Windscroll? We have to get it, fast.’

‘I- I don’t… I’m not sure I know which-’

‘Gilmour!’ Steven swatted the old man again with the hickory staff and another bolt of fire lanced through his body.

‘Gods rut!’ Gilmour bellowed, ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that!’

‘Then pay attention. We need the third Windscroll, now, before this rain kills us all. Go!’

Finally fully conscious again, Gilmour hustled across the spell chamber and disappeared down a short flight of stairs into an adjacent room: Lessek’s scroll library. He watched as more droplets smoked their way through the ancient wood and slate of the tower ceiling.

‘It’s those clouds,’ Mark said redundantly.

‘The clouds from Orindale,’ Garec agreed. ‘Gita and her men described them: acid in a living cloud. What kind of twisted animal comes up with something like that?’

A low hissing sound filled the chamber as wood and stone disintegrated above them: the entire structure was gradually being eaten away. Soon they would not need to dodge periodic drips; before long the deadly fluid would rain down on them in torrents.

A shingle gave way and a thin stream of deadly acid began running into the spell chamber, a harbinger of what was coming. ‘Hurry up, Gilmour,’ Steven shouted, ‘things are getting bad out here.’

‘I think I have it – ah!’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, I’m fine. A drop fell on the back of my neck – it burns, but I’m all right for now.’ Gilmour appeared in the doorway, his feet skidding on the stone as he tried to avoid charging headlong through the acid stream pouring through the ceiling. He had several scrolls tucked under one arm. ‘Let’s go.’

As they started down the spiral staircase, the ceiling of the Larion spell chamber gave way with a crash and what was left of poor Harren’s bones dissolved in the flooded room. The trickle of almost living liquid grew moment-by-moment into a steady stream, running down the stairs behind the fleeing party.

Rodler, disconcerted at the size of the burning wound caused by just one droplet of the noxious fluid, shouted, ‘We have to hurry, boys. It’s coming down behind us!’

Steven looked back as well. ‘Holy shit, look at that! Everybody, keep to your feet – we can’t fall. If we fall, we’re dead. Don’t think about anything but quick feet and keeping your balance. Run, now, move it!’ As they pounded down the worn staircase, the river of acid gained ground on them with every step.

‘Keep your feet! Keep your feet! Move it! Move it! Move it!’ Steven chanted in rhythm to encourage them.

Rodler hesitated long enough to check back again, and cursed himself for doing so: the acid was right on his heels, just five steps back, then four. It was coming too fast, and he was last in line. How in the name of the gods of the Northern Forest did he end up last in line?

‘You have to run, boys. Jump down the gods-rutting stairs if you have to – we’re losing this race,’ he screamed.

They picked up the pace, trying to avoid slipping, loudly cursing the Larion Senators for building such a tall tower with such smoothly polished stone steps. One tumble, one mistake, and they would all be bathed in deadly acid.

Three steps back, then two. Rodler, realising the poisonous stream was hugging the insides of the steps, was running on the outside of the spiral staircase. That makes it faster, he thought. He could hear the hissing, like ten thousand angry snakes, coming up behind him, eating away at the very foundations of the tower. When he looked down again, the acid was keeping pace with him, running on the inside of the same steps he traversed on the outside. It was too late; he would be the first to step in it. He wondered how much protection his boots would actually provide and was horribly afraid of the answer: not much.

Finally he heard Garec burst through the doorway, and a moment later he too was outside and the acid river was flowing past them, down the remaining stairs to the tower’s basement. Gasping, he collapsed on the stone walkway. ‘That was too close, my friends. I was just on my way to work when I ran into you. Never saw you – that was a rutting good spell you cast, Steven. I never saw you… and I wish with all my heart I had never stumbled into you…’

Beside him, sprawled out on the stone bridge, Mark began to laugh. ‘That certainly wasn’t your day, was it?’

The others joined in. Garec said in an effeminate voice, ‘So dearheart, how was work today?’ Even Gilmour roared at this, his thin frame doubled over. They had lost. He had given up; the stress was too much for him to bear. He laughed inanely until he couldn’t catch his breath, then lay down beside Mark, the cold of the nearly frozen stone chilling the acid burn on the back of his neck.

‘Wait,’ Steven said, ‘wait!’

‘Catch your breath first, Steven,’ Mark said. ‘We’re still trying to get over the last one.’

‘No, wait. It’s no joke. Look up there.’ He pointed towards the top of the north tower where grey-black clouds were dissolving much of the tower’s uppermost level in their unholy acid bath. Even the outer layers of stone had grown discoloured and it was only a matter of time before the peak collapsed.

What alarmed Steven was not that the Larion spell chamber and scroll library had been destroyed, but that one of the clouds had broken away from its partner and was dropping down on them. He rolled to his feet and screamed, ‘Move!’

He raced to the doorway and tugged on the latch. Nothing happened – he couldn’t budge it. It must be locked from the inside. The cloud fell towards them, an acrid bath of death descending from heaven like an Old Testament nightmare. He grasped the latch and tugged, hoping to break the ancient clasp with muscles and the sheer strength of his will, but it was as solid as a mountain.

He peered over the side of the causeway and wondered if they would survive the jump, if perhaps there would be water, a deep river or maybe a lake far below. But his hopes were dashed: all he could see were rocks, trees and forbidding cold ground. It was too far to jump; it would kill them. He reached for the staff; he had five seconds to think of something to save them – but nothing came to mind. He was too terrified. He held the staff over his head, praying it might act of its own volition, generating some miracle to keep them safe.

Then Gilmour was beside him, throwing his hands up to the door and chanting. It opened. Garec and Rodler dived past him and down the few stairs to the corridor below, then Mark grabbed his roommate by the collar and heaved him through the archway to tumble down the unforgiving steps. Steven was glad there were only five or six of them as the two friends landed painfully on the hallway floor. Gilmour dived for the protection of the corridor and shouted; his spell caused the door to slam shut and the hollow thud resonated out into the palace.

In the instant before the door closed, Steven saw the acid cloud strike the causeway with a vengeance, raining noxious fluid and for ever cutting off access to the north tower. The stone bridge dissolved like a paraffin taper.

Rodler looked around at the collected members of their company. ‘I need to find a fountain. My hand is burning,’ he said, matter-offactly.

‘I do as well.’ Gilmour regained his feet with a groan. ‘I took a thick drop on the back of my neck. I think I’ll feel it boring in there for the next Twinmoon. Come on, Rodler, there’s one down the hall. The aqueduct is a long way from those clouds, so the water should still be clean.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Mark said. ‘I need something to drink.’

‘I’m afraid it’s just water, Mark.’

‘Yes, but with Nerak out and about somewhere and those clouds slowly eating this place as a snack, I figure we’ve plenty of time to raid your wine cellar.’ He started down the hall. ‘Don’t forget your scrolls.’

Gilmour gathered up the parchment rolls and turned to follow Rodler and Mark down the corridor to a small fountain, a delicate trickle splashing into a carved stone basin.

Rodler reached the fountain first, but he gestured for Mark to go ahead of him and drink his fill.

‘Don’t be silly. You just saved my life, and for your efforts you were burned – you’ve got the honours. ’ Mark gave a bow, and ushered the young man forward to wash his injured hand.

‘All right,’ Rodler said as the water washed over his wound, ‘thanks Mark. I appreciate it.’

‘My pleasure-’

The almor struck with such ferocity that Mark was knocked off his feet and into the opposite wall. The demon took Rodler Varn of Capehill and he was dead in an instant, as dead as Bridget Kenyon there in the deep end of the Air Force Academy pool -

Mark heard Gilmour shout from somewhere behind him, and felt the Larion sorcerer’s magic blast by him like a mortar round to slam into the creature and rip the fountain out of the wall. Flailing in the almor’s grip, one of Rodler’s hands came forward; Mark seized it and began to pull – but instead of tugging the smuggler free, Mark felt his own life siphoning away. Rodler’s fingers collapsed and shrank to bony twigs, as unnervingly brittle as Harren’s when clasped about his neck.

Repulsed, Mark finally gave up, released Rodler and watched as the milky creature retreated back into the palace wall. It all happened in an instant; there had been nothing anyone could do. Falling to his knees in a puddle beside the ruined fountain, Mark Jenkins began to cry.

Steven stared in shocked disbelief for several moments before he rose to his feet, peeled off his jacket and ran down the hall towards his friend. By the time he reached Mark, he was in a rage, his eyes dancing with anger and the hickory staff glowing red.

‘No!’ he roared, raising the staff. ‘No! No! No! You did not just do that! You did not just kill him!’ Steven struck the wall above the broken fountain and the foundations of Sandcliff Palace seemed to quiver.

An explosion knocked the others off their feet and tumbled Mark from his knees into a foetal position, looking so vulnerable that Steven reared back and struck the wall once again. When the smoke and dust finally cleared, a hole big enough to accommodate the small party comfortably had been opened in the blocks between the corridor and an apparently abandoned chamber beyond. Running down through the masonry was a makeshift tube – broken now beyond repair – that Steven guessed was connected somehow to the palace’s central aqueduct. The fountains weren’t magic; it was a simple system of pressure and abundant supply that kept the water flowing at Sandcliff. Jabbing the hickory staff into the cracked ends of the ceramic pipe, he released a devastating blast of destructive energy that tore through the palace.

Hoping he had done enough to frighten the almor away, or at least stun it, Steven kneeled down beside Mark. ‘Are you all right?’

Mark choked. ‘I hate it here, Steven; I really do. Clouds of living acid, water demons – how are we supposed to fight?’

Steven had no answer. He stared at the shattered fountain lying on the stone floor beside the leathery sack that had been Rodler Varn of Capehill.

‘That was supposed to be me,’ Mark went on through his tears. ‘He wanted me to drink first. That was supposed to be me. I insisted he go first. Can you fucking stand that?’

Steven was already on his feet. Stepping over the body, he reached out with two fingers and wiped them gently around the spout that had carried water through the tiny sculpture and into the marble bowl. Rubbing his fingers together, he said, ‘Sonofabitch. Look at that.’

Gilmour was by his side, still shaking, and thrilled and frightened at the crushing blast he had called up to tear the fountain from the wall; he suspected it was his magic that caused the almor to scurry back into the dark recesses of the Sandcliff cistern. ‘What is it, Steven?’ he asked.

‘You said there was an aqueduct. Where?’ He was so intense now, and Gilmour could feel the power of the hickory staff surrounding him, charging the stale air of the old hallway.

‘It comes in through the east wall, below the main hall, turns a wheel downstairs and dumps into various lines that feed the fountains throughout the keep.’ He stepped away a little, nervous that the staff might touch him and inadvertently stop his heart, or blow a hole in his chest – he was still smarting from the firebolts Steven had used to shock him back to consciousness.

‘Garec, take Mark downstairs. Get to the lowest level you can reach without getting wet, or being near any water supply – I mean it. I don’t want you in sight of any water at all.’

Garec helped Mark to his feet and as they made their way down the corridor, Steven called after them, ‘Keep your heads down, and wait for us to come get you.’

‘Right,’ Garec said, ‘I understand. It’s going to be bad.’

Gilmour asked, ‘What are you going to do?’

‘The clouds are eating this place stone by stone, and they won’t stop until they have consumed us, right down to socks and boots. There is a demon in the water supply. I’m not going to have any of it, Gilmour. I think I know how to deal with both of them at once, but I need to know if we can get to a place on the aqueduct – without those clouds detecting us – where I might climb up and access the water supply.’

‘Water won’t do anything to those clouds, Steven,’ Gilmour warned.

‘Don’t worry about that: can we get there without those clouds noticing?’

Gilmour’s face was layered in wrinkles as he concentrated. Finally he said, ‘Yes, I think we can.’ Then almost boyishly, he added, ‘Gods rut it, but Steven, I can get you there. Let’s go.’ He led the way towards the centre of the keep.

Steven ran through the forest and up the sharp incline beside Sandcliff Palace. He kept his head low, hoping the clouds gnawing the north wing of the Larion keep down to its bones would ignore Gilmour and him as they moved towards the top of the aqueduct. The woods were thick enough to mask their movements, but they did little to diffuse the hissing as the acid melted the ancient stone.

Arriving at the aqueduct, Steven and Gilmour huddled amongst the trees that grew along the base of the stone waterway. The Larion aqueduct was enormous, a marvel of engineering and architecture, the gigantic mortared stone archways supporting a veritable river; they climbed the hillside to the top of the mountain. Steven had no doubt that Larion Senators had spent time in Italy during the Renaissance.

He whistled quietly as he looked up the bone-grey wall to where a stream of water ran into the cisterns beneath Sandcliff’s east wing. ‘Sheez, Gilmour,’ Steven shook his head. ‘You didn’t mention it was quite this big.’

‘What can I say? We had a lot of fountains. We had hundreds of students studying at the university,’ Gilmour replied. ‘Now will you tell me what you plan to do?’

‘Well, I will tell you that I don’t plan to get killed,’ Steven said, ‘just in case you were wondering.’

‘It had crossed my mind…’

Peeking beneath one of the stone arches, Steven could see that the clouds continued to work their insidious magic, dissolving what was left of the tower to rubble. Soon they would break through the walls of the main building, and from there it was just a short step to Mark and Garec’s hiding place.

Tucking the hickory staff into his belt, Steven climbed the aqueduct and carefully ran along the narrow edge – keeping his feet dry for as long as possible was critical; he didn’t want to alert the almor until the last possible moment.

He moved quickly back down the slope to where the aqueduct spilled through a tiny breach in the palace wall and into the great cistern. Once he found a suitable spot he stepped into the ankle-deep stream of rushing water and bent low to examine the joints between two of the sections of funnel-shaped ceramic tubing the water ran in. He found an old carpentry nail holding them together and scraped a fingernail across the metallic head, then rubbed his fingertip against the fleshy part of his thumb. ‘Good enough,’ he said to himself, then turned towards the acid clouds and began to shout.

‘Hey! Hey you, over there, you- whatever you are, cloud things! I’m over here! Come on over and get me!’ Steven shouted, trying to taunt the clouds into attacking him; he had never realised how difficult it was to insult a cloud. Still screaming into the sky, he felt the hickory staff warm into a rage once again. This had to work. He just needed one more thing to fall into place.

Steven stood in the water, taking a gamble that the magic had driven the almor far enough out of the palace that the creature wouldn’t come up behind him from somewhere in the cistern. It had been a powerful blast – and he knew the staff had enough strength to kill an almor; he had done it before. It had most likely been driven up into the mountains, where it would wait for another opportunity to ambush them, but Steven wasn’t willing to sit around and be hunted by a demon every time he took a drink of water. He stomped his feet in the aqueduct stream, egging the almor on, while he continued to berate the far-off acid clouds.

Then the twin clouds broke away from the north tower and, independent of the prevailing winds, moved over to where Steven waited, the staff a red glow of vengeance in his fists. ‘Come on, come on you bastards,’ Steven said, uncertain if the clouds could hear him. They had detected him there, and that was enough. Now he needed the almor. He looked for Gilmour below in the trees, but the old man was nowhere to be found, probably hiding in the shadows.

He stomped his feet again, splashing as much as possible without tumbling over the side and plummeting to a broken neck on the frozen ground below. ‘Come on, where are you?’ he shouted. ‘Come and get me, you bastard, I’m right here – I’m standing in the water, for Christ’s sake. What more do you need, a goddamned invitation?’

Looking back to the clouds, he realised it was too late: they would be on him before he had a chance to draw the almor in for the kill. ‘Motherless dry-humping bastards,’ he cursed; this was bad luck: the almor could hit him at any time, probably while he was busy battling the clouds.

‘Shit and double red shit,’ he said, ‘burned to death with acid while being sucked dry by a waterlogged demon. This was a great idea, Steven. No, really, one of your absolute best!’

He waited, furious; the acid clouds were coming, with or without the almor, and he was about to fight. He took a deep breath, murmured insults at the acid monsters, and braced for their assault – until Gilmour’s shouting and splashing distracted him from his immediate doom. The old man was dancing and jumping about barefoot in the water near the top of the aqueduct and even from this distance, he could hear the song Gilmour was singing, an off-key, off-colour ode to a sexually active young man with a wooden leg, surely one of the most hilarious pieces of folk poetry he had ever heard. But now was most definitely not the time; he was quite sure that Gilmour had gone stark raving mad.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Steven shouted, looking back and forth between the dancing sorcerer and the clouds. ‘You’re going to get yourself killed. Take cover. Get out of here now!’

But Gilmour danced and sang; jumping about, he was a dripping mess of wet wool and matted hair – until the Larion Senator turned suddenly and gestured over his shoulder.

The almor was coming.

‘Get down, Gilmour, jump for it,’ Steven cried, but the last few words were lost. The clouds were just overhead.

Gilmour screamed again and Steven risked watching as the old man took a few tottering steps towards him, then dived headlong into the smooth ceramic channel. Steven was surprised by Gilmour’s over-the-edge antics, until he realised that Gilmour’s cry had been one of excitement, not fear or panic, as he came onwards, head-first and bellowing the third verse defiantly. Out of nowhere, Steven recalled a water-park near Denver where periodically a drunk forty-year-old would leap headfirst down the tallest slide and end up airlifted to the nearest hospital. He wondered what might happen when a three-hundred-year-old man tried his hand at such a game.

As he came closer, Gilmour’s song changed from the rhythmic thump of a drinking tune; now he was shouting, ‘Behind me, Steven, look behind me!’

Finally he realised what the crazy sorcerer had been doing as an ivory blur pursued him down the aqueduct, rapidly closing the distance between them. Timing would be everything if this were to work. Steven stepped out of the stream and stood astride the chute on tiptoes, hoping he’d left enough space for Gilmour to pass between his legs. His eyes moved from the almor to the acid clouds: the demon was coming fast, almost too fast now, down the chute, nothing more than a hillock of fast-moving current. Above, the clouds were massing, one spinning tumult of acid death.

Steven found himself remembering a science class on weather: were these stratocumulus, cumulonimbus, stratonymphopolyphonic – whatever? They were weaving themselves together to rain their deadly fluid down on this young fool – and, in a stroke of great luck, poison the water in the palace at the same time.

The almor was close now and Steven watched as one shapeless arm broke the surface and stretched towards Gilmour’s feet. In another few seconds it would have him. ‘Hurry, Gilmour, come on,’ Steven urged under his breath, and called forth the magic of the hickory staff, right at his fingertips The acid cloud dropped, a terrifying storm of pestilence and burning death. It was little more than twenty feet above his head when Steven glimpsed the old man passing beneath him and with a primitive cry, he slammed the hickory staff down into the water between Gilmour and the almor. His magic responded instantaneously, blowing the stream up and out into the acid storm above, carrying the almor aloft as well. Its cry was deafening, reverberating waves of punishing sound.

Steven intensified the magic, calling forth all the water from the aqueduct, throwing great waves of icy snowmelt overhead.

He caught every drop of water and cast it skywards, and when the half-moon channel was empty, the hickory staff pulled forth reserves of water from the mountains, deep caverns of inky-black water, summoned into the skies above Sandcliff Palace. Wave after wave drenched the acid cloud, and when the deadly nimbus realised what was happening, it tried to flee.

Steven screamed, nothing intelligible, just a release of pent-up anger, frustration and fear. He understood Gilmour’s lunatic behaviour now as he continued to pour thousands and thousands of gallons of water into the cloud. His senses sharpened by the magic, he caught sight of the almor, acid-scarred and full of hatred, below him, sliding towards a rapidly diminishing puddle.

‘Not so fast,’ Steven cried from his place atop the makeshift river, ‘back you go to the hell that spawned you!’ He used the magic to toss the opaque demon back into the acid cloud. Again the almor screamed, but Steven kept his feet and continued his barrage.

All of a sudden it was over. The cloud, saturated, fell across the hillside in a rainy death, killing some of the trees and shrubs, but mostly absorbed by the cold dirt above the palace. The north tower looked as though it had melted away. Steven hoped the Windscroll would give them the answers they needed, because anything left in those tower rooms, Harren’s remains included, had dissolved to nothingness.

Steven searched the hillside, through the wispy clouds of foul-smelling mist, for the almor. He was certain it had survived – an acid bath wasn’t enough to kill it, but it would have annoyed the demon, and hopefully made clear that Steven and the hickory staff were a formidable enemy. It was just a matter of time before the two of them battled again.

His rage sated and his need to avenge Rodler met, Steven felt the magic recede. Maybe Mark had been right: there were no hickory trees in the foothills where he had found the staff; that was anomalous enough, but it responded to Steven’s needs so perhaps there was something to Mark’s claims that he was a sorcerer, compelled to remain in Idaho Springs all those years by Lessek’s key. Steven inspected the familiar length of hickory for any damage and wished he had the answers.

If Mark really was a king and he really was a sorcerer, they were doing a right hideous job of saving the world.

‘Steven?’ Gilmour’s voice came from the forest below. Are you all right, Steven?’

‘Am I all right?’ Steven shouted back. ‘I’m not the one who did a full-on Charlie Hustle all the way down this aqueduct. Where’s your head, Gilmour? That thing could have caught you and sucked you dry before I had any chance of warding it off. How did you know it wouldn’t catch you?’

Gilmour’s face was bloody and one arm hung at his side, unmistakably broken, but he sounded fine, even enthusiastic. ‘I was right rutting surprised at how fast it came after me. I do love it when we take the fight to them, though, don’t you?’ Gilmour was enjoying himself, as if he had momentarily forgotten that the spell table was missing.

‘Oh, yeah, sure,’ Steven said. ‘It’s invariably the highlight of my day. I find few things as invigorating as going toe-to-toe with homicidal clouds and ancient demons. It’s like a double shot of espresso. How do I get down there?’

‘I came the easy way.’ He pointed towards the palace wall, ‘Bounced right off and fell into that bush over there. It was quick, but I don’t recommend it. I’m going to have to do some work on this old fisherman’s body, I’m afraid. I suggest you hike back up the chute and jump down.’

‘I think I’ll take option two,’ Steven said. Water began flowing down the chute from the hidden caverns and subterranean aquifers, chilling his feet even through his boots.

Ignoring his injuries, Gilmour kept pace. ‘How did you know the water would drive off those clouds?’ he asked.

‘It wasn’t just water. That fountain was caked with limestone, deposited over the Twinmoons by that trickle. The water flowing into the palace is heavy with lime – you can scrape it off the nails holding these joints together.’

‘Limestone?’

‘Calcium carbonate, Gilmour, simple high school chemistry: in solution, limestone raises the ph of water.’ The old man still looked bemused. Steven clarified, ‘It makes water less acidic: the solution can be used to neutralise acids. I didn’t know what the concentration was, or whether it was enough to stave off those clouds, so I used a lot.’

‘I’ll say!’ Gilmour grabbed a low-hanging tree branch with his good arm and pulled himself up the slope next to where Steven could jump down from the elevated waterway. ‘I wasn’t sure there would be any water left in the mountain after that little display.’

Steven landed beside him and started mopping the blood from Gilmour’s face. ‘You’re a damned mess.’

‘Oh, I’ll fix it,’ he said. ‘It seems I’ve rediscovered a few vagrant skills here at the old homestead.’

‘I’m glad to hear that,’ Steven said. ‘We’re going to need them to find that table.’

Gilmour’s enthusiasm faded.

‘Sorry,’ Steven said, ‘I didn’t mean to remind you.’

‘Oh, it’s all right.’ Gilmour forced a smile. ‘But I do love it when we take the fight to them!’

From somewhere on the hillside, the almor screamed, a raging cry of anger and frustration. Its hunger wouldn’t wane until it had taken them all. Steven winced as the inhuman shriek resonated along his spine, chilling him through his already wet clothes.

‘Let’s get inside,’ Gilmour said. ‘We’ll have to be careful drawing water while we’re here, and even more careful when we leave.’

Steven fell in beside the old man and they carefully picked their way down to the palace gate.

Rob Scott Jay Gordon

Lessek's Key