Lessek's Key

THE GLEN

The concussion from Steven’s explosion knocked Gilmour to the snowy ground, the blast still ringing in his ears. Bits of bone-collecting monster fell like armour-plated rain and he rolled quickly to avoid a large piece of the creature as it crashed down beside him.

He felt his own magic respond and hoped it would be enough- the insecurities and crippling failures of the past Twinmoons almost made him wish it would disappear entirely; at least things would be simpler then. He thought of the spell book he had stolen from the Prince Marek; he wished he had never taken it, for all it had done was to show him vast tracts of magic about which he knew nothing. He had been convinced the Windscrolls held some clue, because Pikan had screamed for them that night so long ago, but no: she had just been desperate to save her life. Larion magic had been a cruel bedfellow this past Twinmoon; feeling it come alive inside him did not instil Gilmour with the confidence it might have long ago.

For nine hundred and eighty Twinmoons, Gilmour had learned to weave common-phrase spells, working wonders with Larion magic- but it had never been enough. Every time he had tested a large weave, he had been forced to go underground again. Working a Larion spell was like ringing a bell and screaming, Come and get me, Nerak, I’m right here in Estrad Village. Running had cost him valuable Twinmoons of his life, perhaps too many; were it not for Steven Taylor and the hickory staff, Gilmour wasn’t sure he would be alive today.

But here he was, armed with some notoriously mercurial magic, standing beside the staff-wielding foreigner who had returned Lessek’s key to Eldarn. Gilmour had done his best to help Steven learn as much as possible, although it had never felt like enough. He wondered why Lessek, the old Larion founder, had permitted him to live so long – for hundreds of Twinmoons, he thought it was because it would be up to him eventually to face Nerak and restore freedom and prosperity to Eldarn, but now, sitting in the snow, cold and damp, his ears still ringing from the hickory staff’s explosive attack, he thought perhaps it was because of Steven Taylor: he had to see this young man to this place and time.

Gilmour felt emboldened by the notion that perhaps his role was to teach, not to work spells. ‘Lessek?’ he murmured, wrestling the old fisherman’s body back to its feet. ‘Is that what you did? Is that why I’m here?’

He looked over at Steven and saw the younger man was still struggling with the fact that he had just condemned his friend’s soul to an eternity inside the Fold. Gilmour’s heart broke for him. Say something, you doddering old fool, he told himself.

‘When you are running, run, Steven,’ he whispered again – trite, but it had the desired effect. Steven seemed to stand a bit taller; the staff glowed a bit brighter.

‘When you are fighting, fight!’ he shouted; Steven nodded and whirled on Nerak-as-Bellan and the rest of the bone-collectors.

Gilmour looked up at the pretty young girl sitting there on the boulder and smiled. We’ve got you, you murdering old horsecock. You’re going to lose.

The attack came from his right as one of the eldritch creatures hunkered down on all its jointed legs, sprang with unholy speed into the low-hanging branches and then leaped for Gilmour. With no time to run, Gilmour crouched, whispered a few words and felt the magic slam into the bone-collector, tumbling it to the ground, where it twitched for a moment and then died.

‘Come on, Nerak!’ he roared, ‘I’m standing right here.’

Bellan held out both hands, a gesture that said be patient, and all in due time.

Gilmour loosed a devastating blast at the girl, but one of the monsters leaped high into the air, exposing its obsidian underbelly and taking the brunt of the spell. The magic split it in half and as its armoured exoskeleton collapsed in a crumpled pile, its steaming guts spilled into the snow. Immediately another bone-collector crawled from the river, picking its way over the corpse. Gilmour, distracted by the monster’s apparent disregard for its dead brother, left himself exposed for an instant; time enough for Bellan to fire a spell at him.

The magic struck him in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him and casting him back across the clearing. As he rolled to a stop, the closest of the bone-collectors skidded in his direction, ready to rip him to pieces. It crouched low, preparing to spring on the incapacitated sorcerer.

‘Rutters, that hurt,’ Gilmour croaked, curling up. ‘Must catch my brea-’ He saw his attacker and reached out to summon a spell. He didn’t have the strength to kill it now; all he could hope to do was to knock it off balance for a moment, just long enough to get out of the way. It was about to leap; it rolled its bulbous eyes, the pupils shrinking to pinpricks in the light. He couldn’t help wondering if the creature was amused as it bent at all its joints and opened a dripping, foetid maw to emit a coarse, high-pitched shriek of laughter.

Thunk.

Thunk.

Two arrows struck the beast almost simultaneously; each shaft buried itself in one of the monster’s eyes. The creature wailed, a horrible cry that made Gilmour wince. He caught sight of Garec and Mark, standing side by side on the hill; they both continued to fire into the bone-collector’s body. Some of the arrows glanced off the armour-plating, but others found their mark in soft, bleeding tissue: where the neck joined the body, the pliable stalks supporting its eyes, the fleshy area between its hinged jaw and its plated underbelly.

Even blinded, it leaped for the old man, but in vain; the archers had given Gilmour the time he needed and the bone-collector’s body blocked out the sun before shattering in midair. Blood, pieces of entrails and bits of chitin showered the clearing.

Garec and Mark had saved his life, but in coming to his aid, they had alerted the remaining monsters to their own position; two immediately made for the forest and clambered through the interconnecting branches towards them.

‘Oh no,’ Mark groaned, ‘here they come.’

‘Get out of here, now!’ Gilmour shouted. He didn’t wait to see what they did, but ran to where Steven was facing off against two of the subterranean monsters – and stopped, frozen in his tracks as Pikan Tettarak waved to him from the water’s edge. She was a wraith, but it was her, nonetheless, calling out to him, gesturing, trying to tell him something. Transfixed, Gilmour walked slowly towards her, only vaguely aware of Steven leaping and striking out in an epic battle, the armoured monsters exploding, imploding, or simply dying where they stood. One was hit so hard that it flew up over Pikan’s translucent body and into the side of the boulder where Bellan stood, watching the fight with delight.

Now Steven whirled towards the forest, levelled the hickory staff and ignited the trees in a blazing inferno, trapping those bone-collectors that had been stalking his friends. One managed to get out; Gilmour heard it splash into the river somewhere upstream. It would be back. But right now he needed to concentrate on Pikan.

How had Nerak brought her here? Had she really been his slave all these Twinmoons? It didn’t seem possible; she had been too strong a sorcerer to have been trapped this long.

‘Pikan? Is that you?’

The wraith nodded emphatically.

‘Tell me how to free you!’ Gilmour took another step forward and reached out as she gestured towards the hillside. She was trying to show him something, maybe some way to free her from Nerak? He turned and watched the trees as Harren Bonn stepped into the meadow.

‘Oh northern gods,’ Gilmour gasped, ‘not you, too – please, not you.’ He felt his knees buckle and then give way as guilt overwhelmed him.

‘Gilmour!’ someone shouted.

‘Harren, I’m so sorry, I should have been out there with you. I belonged on those steps with you – I told myself I would be the final defence, inside the spell chamber, but that wasn’t true.’

‘Gilmour!’

‘I locked you in that stairwell because I was too terrified to stand with you, I was afraid to die. Harren, if I could go back-’

‘Gilmour, get up!’

A bolt of lighting passed through his body; Steven had struck him with the hickory staff. Shrieking, he sprang to his feet. ‘Damnation, Steven Taylor! I hate it when you do that!’

‘When you are fighting, fight,’ Steven growled.

The old sorcerer was suddenly awake and turned back to his former students in time to watch them change from the beautiful young people he had loved to hideous, ghostly killers. Their faces blurred, melted away, and their mouths fell agape beneath empty eye sockets. It was too late to ward himself magically as they attacked together, but Steven was there at his side, and one slash with the glowing hickory staff sent both tortured souls to the depthless abyss of the Fold.

Steven reeled right and incinerated another of the monsters, then strode back to face Gilmour. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, clapping Gilmour on the back. ‘We never could have anticipated this.’

‘But I don’t know how to fight them,’ the old man said with a shudder.

‘Can’t you see it?’

‘What?’

‘The Fold is open: there, there, and there.’ He pointed to three places around the clearing. ‘Three tears, just like I saw that morning at the dump. That’s where the wraiths are coming through; the bastard’s sending people we knew, hoping it will weaken us.’

‘I can’t see them,’ Gilmour said, straining to make out these rips in the fabric of the world.

‘Then leave them to me.’ Steven swallowed hard. ‘We have to turn the tide. We’ll never beat him if he keeps us on the defensive, because eventually, one of us will slip.’

But Steven knew Nerak was winning, for the fallen Larion sorcerer was forcing him to fight out of anger and hate, keeping him on his toes, striking out at him again and again. He recognised too many of the wraiths he annihilated, almost weeping as he saw friends and neighbours of Jennifer Sorenson, but having to steel himself as he sent them all into the Fold. There was no compassion here as he ripped through their souls, slicing them open and batting the pieces through the blurry mystical backdrop and into the darkness beyond.

He stood in front of Gilmour, protecting his mentor from the wraiths while the old man blasted away at the bone-collectors until the last of them, one eye blinded and dragging two of its jointed legs, retreated into the river and disappeared with the current.

All the while, Nerak-as-Bellan watched from above, casting a spell down on them from time to time which Steven deflected with ease. The girl watched her ranks of wraiths attack endlessly, enjoying Steven’s display of heroism and bravery and marvelling at his determination to live, to protect his mentor and to win the day. Nerak was impressed with the foreigner’s decision to be compassionate, an emotion he had nearly forgotten in the past thousand Twinmoons, and he felt Steven weakening every time he rended these otherwise peaceful, departed spirits.

That made Nerak chuckle. With a wave, he summoned the final three wraiths; these would weaken Steven enough that he would be able to sweep him up and cast him into the Fold alongside all those he had slain. But first, he needed the key.

Bellan jumped nimbly from the boulder as Steven hacked through the ghost of the little girl Nerak had killed in Rona when he needed a body for his trip across the Fold into Colorado.

‘Well done, Steven,’ Nerak said. ‘I’m sure that little one will enjoy an eternity of cold, dark emptiness, don’t you?’

Steven started towards him. ‘I’m-’

‘No, wait a moment, I have something for you,’ Nerak said, raising Bellan’s hand to stop him.

‘No,’ Steven said as he continued towards the girl. No more tricks, no more games, no more keeping us on our heels. It’s time to send you back to hell.’

Bellan shrugged, raising both palms to the sky. ‘Whatever you say, but here they are anyway.’

Steven stopped as Gabriel O’Reilly, the Seron warrior Lahp and the young mother who had carried her baby onto the plane in Charleston came towards him. In his mind’s eye he saw the mother, barely out of girlhood herself, and he heard the baby screaming in his memory, its cries weaving into Nerak’s amused laughter; a polyphony that threatened to drive him insane. Gabriel and Lahp: these were more than just friends, he owed them his life; without them he would have died in Eldarn.

There was no way he would be able to battle these ghosts.

‘Use the staff, Steven, do,’ Nerak chuckled. ‘It’s quite the most impressive spell Fantus has ever worked. He has my compliments. A silent talisman, really, I am impressed. I look forward to using it myself in the near future – in the very near future.’

Steven felt like he had been punched. ‘What did you say?’

Bellan’s face showed a little surprise at the question. ‘I look forward to using your staff when you and old Fantus are gone,’ Nerak repeated.

‘This staff?’

‘That’s the only one here, my friend.’

‘Mark was right about you,’ Steven said, feeling the staff’s power rise in burgeoning waves. ‘Everything he said was right. I just didn’t put it all together until now.’

‘Mark Jenkins? The Eldarni prince? Worry not, little sorcerer. I have plans for him too.’

‘Shut up,’ Steven spat. ‘Lessek told us about your weakness, and Mark was right all along: this is it, this is the best that you can do. A few ghosts, an almor here and there, and maybe a big spell from time to time when you need to wipe out a city like Port Denis, but all told, that’s all the bullets you have in the gun, Nerak. The evil creature that came through the Fold and took you never knew it, because you never knew it. Or if you did know it, you forced yourself to forget.’

Nerak was amused at Steven’s bravery. ‘I am not sure what you are trying to say, Steven Taylor, but you won’t be saying much more-’

‘I am saying that you are a hack, and you always were a hack. The evil that took you believed what you believed about Eldarn, about the Larion Senate, about the Fold, but especially about a second-rate sorcerer named Nerak.’ Now Steven laughed. ‘You don’t understand power, because as a human, as a sorcerer, you never understood mercy, compassion and love. If you did, you would have been a much more powerful dictator. I am tired of you, Nerak, so now I am speaking to the creature that married you, the creature and the master it serves out there in the Fold somewhere. You picked the wrong magician, creature.’

‘Enough!’ Nerak roared; Steven felt like his head would explode with the noise. ‘That was amusing, Steven Taylor, but you are forgetting one thing: I don’t have to be the most powerful sorcerer the lands have ever known. I only have to be powerful enough to defeat you and that sorry milksop you’ve been following these past Twinmoons. With Lessek’s key in my possession, I will open the Fold and realise all the glory of its power and I will rule all the worlds in eternity.’

‘You still don’t get it,’ Steven said. ‘You can’t beat me.’ He dropped the hickory staff at Bellan’s feet. ‘You can’t beat me, and I won’t fight these wraiths, my friends.’

‘Steven, what are you doing?’ Gilmour whispered.

To the wraiths, Steven said, ‘Gabriel, Lahp, and you, ma’am – I’m sorry I don’t know your name – I won’t fight you. I am so sorry for what has happened to you, especially to you, ma’am, because your death was partly my fault, but I won’t fight you. I won’t send you into the Fold. I won’t do it.’

‘Then you will die, Steven Taylor.’ Nerak gestured to the wraiths, who turned together towards Steven, rage sweeping over their features. They swirled about Bellan’s head, then swooped down on Steven in a wave of homicidal fury.