Lessek's Key

THE CANYON

Steven executed a three-point turn that would have had his driving licence revoked, the rear end flshtailing across the road as the tyres shrieked. He pulled out of the skid and pointed the snout of the powder-blue Thunderbird back towards Idaho Springs. Once safely in the northbound lane, he hit the accelerator and grinned as the mighty V-8 engine roared in response. The car almost took flight, leaving the city dump in a cloud of exhaust as he raced recklessly towards town.

The big car careened over the icy road, but Steven held on, even when a great brown ram emerged from the woods on his right, cream-coloured nostrils flaring. The bighorn was heavy-bodied and rippling with muscle, three hundred pounds or more, Steven thought, and moving at nearly thirty miles an hour. It burst from the trees and thoughts of Nerak vanished for a moment as Steven took in the raw beauty of the animal – until it swerved at the last possible moment and pointed its huge curled horns straight at Howard’s car.

It took a second or two to filter through, but as soon as he realised the ram was coming for him Steven hit the brakes, nearly sliding into the gully. He managed to get the car’s rear wheels to grip, despite the slushy mud on the hard shoulder, but by swerving all he achieved was to provide the beast with a naked broadside.

‘Shit,’ Steven shouted an instant before impact, but there was no time to do anything – not even fasten his seatbelt; there were none. He braced himself for the impact: at least it wasn’t his side facing the furious beast. When it hit, it was terrifying; far worse than he’d expected. The passenger-side door crumpled in and the windows shattered. Steven’s head bounced off his side window, cracking the glass, and his head; blood started to mat his hair.

He brushed away shards of glass, hoping he would still be able to drive into Idaho Springs. ‘Or anywhere,’ he groaned, feeling for the edges of the gash on his head. ‘Oh God-’

The force of the ram’s attack had shifted the car on the slippery surface and now Steven was facing south towards the dump once again. The engine sputtered into silence. Outside he heard a braying cough, the bighorn sheep, dying. He winced and watched in horror as the once-graceful creature struggled to rise from the ground, one leg dragging uselessly, another twitching. It appeared to have broken one shoulder in the attack, and dark blood flowed from the lower curl of one horn which had been ripped away. It reminded Steven of the grettan that had attacked and nearly killed him in the Blackstone Mountains. Even before the ram turned towards him, Steven knew he would see amber eyes.

‘Hello, Steven,’ Nerak’s voice rang in his head. ‘I’m coming for you.’ The voice was matter-of-fact, and Steven felt his bowels contract with fear. No magical field emerged to protect him, no supernatural current beneath his skin warded him. The broken ram made a futile, final attempt to crash through Howard’s Thunderbird, but this time the possessed bighorn glanced off the side of the car and tumbled to the road in a heap.

Steven fumbled for the ignition, watching the backs of his wrists, waiting for the telltale sign of Nerak’s attack. Would the wound just open in a circle, or would it begin as an irritation? He panicked for a second: where was Lessek’s key? No, it was safe – at least for the moment… maybe he should throw it out the window and try to lose it in the snow? No, just drive away: north, south, wherever.

He tried the engine, cursing furiously when it sputtered and died, then bellowing his approval when, on the third attempt, the engine caught and sprang to life. He heard the ram die, braying miserably before it fell silent.

‘Thank Christ,’ Steven said, willing his heart to slow down now. He caught a whiff of foul rotten eggs and rancid beef emanating from his clothes and recoiled, nearly retching into his lap. He grabbed for the door, but it was stuck. Air, he thought, must get some air in here. Then head down the hill. Nerak is in the city, but I’ve got a few minutes.

Confident the dark prince wasn’t on hand to take his soul, he pushed again at the door before realising he had locked it earlier. ‘Can’t even get myself out of the damned car,’ he chided with a thin smile and flipped the locks up with a bruised thumb. ‘Just a couple minutes to get-’

The ram gave a cry and leaped onto the hood of Howard’s car. Rearing back on its haunches, the huge beast towered over the windshield, blocking the sun for a moment before crashing its hooves down through the glass and into the front seat.

Only blind, heaven-sent luck saved Steven’s life as one of the ram’s hooves split the cracked leather between his knees and the other missed the outside edge of his thigh by less than two inches. As the windshield shattered, the ram’s head slammed down; it would have crushed Steven’s chest, had the great curls not caught on the roof. Only the creature’s lifeless face, blood dripping from each nostril, stared down at him. Mucus and saliva dripped from the ram’s lips onto Steven’s thighs and, weirdly, he thought he detected a faint hint of tobacco.

Repulsed and terrified, Steven squirmed back into the seat, but the ram’s forelimbs held him trapped and all he could do was sit there and stare up into the haunted visage. Less than a foot away, its glowing yellow eyes peered back at him in hatred.

‘Give me back my key!’ the animal roared, its great chest pressing against the pillars of the windshield.

Steven said nothing but, thanking God he’d got the engine going, pulled the car into gear – any gear, he didn’t care – and stomped down on the accelerator. He could think of no other way to shake off the three-hundred-pound hood ornament before the dead creature managed to reach him.

The demon ram’s lifeless lips opened in a maniacal grin and it snapped at Steven’s face, missing his cheek by inches. ‘My key, Taylor. I want it now.’

The sound of Nerak’s voice booming out was horribly unnerving, especially as there was no breath, only flat teeth, snapping and clicking together like the jaws of a wolverine trap. Steven tried to ignore it as the car bucked, spun its wheels and finally gripped the road with a screech, tearing backwards down the valley towards Idaho Springs.

Nerak, though still some miles away, was using all the power at his disposal to end any opposition right here and reclaim the talismans for ever. Steven braked hard and turned the wheel towards Alps Mountain, barely managing to duck a vicious snap as the force of the turn shoved the ram’s snout even further inside the car. The old car spun, and Steven realised he had only the illusion of control on these snowy roads, but still he rammed his foot on the accelerator, turned back towards Devil’s Nose and shouted, ‘Get off my goddamned car, you prick!’

Steven was deafened by the V-8’s engine screaming; the oil light flashed a warning and the speedometer dial showed red. He was dangerously close to sliding headlong into the ponderosa pines that lined the road, but once again he slammed on the brakes. This time he pushed the gear shift into park, letting forward momentum drag the ram’s dead body from the hood. There was a loud crumpling thud as the beast hit the road, but without waiting to see if the animal would spring up again, he wrenched the gear shift back into drive and stood on the gas, praying out loud that the Thunderbird wouldn’t give up yet.

The powerful engine roared and the car bounced clumsily over the devil ram’s carcase.

Several hundred feet beyond the body, Steven checked the rearview mirror. The ram, broken and bloodied, hadn’t moved. He swallowed hard, fighting the revulsion he felt at the sight of the beast lying there, mutilated by a monster. He glanced into the back seat, saw the far portal and the stone and breathed a heavy sigh. ‘Round one,’ he croaked, ‘that was round-’

The car bounced hard over something in the road and Steven rammed his head into the roof, bouncing again when the rear wheels cleared the obstacle. In the mirror he saw a ponderosa pine, perhaps eighty feet long, had fallen across the northbound lane of Chicago Creek Road. ‘Sonofabitch, that hurt,’ he said, slowing down. He felt the gash on his head, bleeding badly now.

‘I don’t remember that-’ Steven’s voice trailed away as he watched, further ahead, as another pine pulled up from its roots and fell across the road.

He swerved around the second tree and avoided a third, slowing again another hundred yards along as a boulder, as large as a cement truck, crashed through the forest, bounded across the road and into the pines on the opposite side. As he drove down the twisting curves, rocks and trees came at him from all angles, some blocking his passage, others attempting to crush the car, heading for the outskirts of town and the Interstate 70 ramp.

Steven grinned as he dodged Nerak’s attacks: this he had mastered; it was predictable. He twisted and turned the Thunderbird, alternating between accelerator and brakes as he wound his way to freedom. The bighorn had been terrifying, but this wasn’t so bad.

‘Keep them coming, Nerak,’ he shouted. A cold wind blew through the broken windshield to numb his face. ‘I’ve got your number now, you motherhumper.’ He was less than a mile from home when, second nature, he checked the rear view mirror.

Terror gripped him and Steven froze, though the car continued at a steady fifty miles an hour. With his eyes fixed in the mirror, he inadvertently drove over the thick brambly limbs of a fallen pine and bashed his head against the roof a second time. He snapped his attention back to the road and braked hard, skidding to a sideways stop. He needed to see for real.

There, in the great draw between Devil’s Nose and Alps Mountain: an avalanche of flame was cascading downhill towards Steven Taylor and the resilient old T-Bird. Nerak hadn’t wanted to crush him with the pines and the boulders; he had slowed Steven’s escape long enough to bring all the fires of Hell roaring through the valley. The two million pines that had melted together to show him the three tears in God’s canvas were all in flames.

Steven watched, truly horror-stricken, as thousands of acres of forest were engulfed, then, screaming obscenities at the inferno rolling down on him, put the car in gear – just as a Ponderosa crashed down on the back of the Thunderbird, flattening both rear tyres.

So that was that. Steven reached into the back and grabbed the tapestry and stone, ramming the far portal into Howard’s backpack and the key into his pocket, then saluted the fallen Thunderbird and set off at a run down Chicago Creek Road. Behind him, the fire raged on. His only hope was to run as fast and as far as he could.

Coming into the outskirts now, he ran past the high school, recalling the rules his running coach had pounded into them twelve years earlier. Drop your forearms and bring them up until they are parallel with the ground. Done. Not fast enough. He could feel the heat tickling at the hairs on the back of his neck. Exploding trees were hurling bits of flaming bark and fiery brambles past him. Keep your head up and your hips forward. Done. Still not fast enough. Steven heard the Thunderbird explode with a devastating crash. Get up on the balls of your feet. Tough to do in Garec’s boots, but he tried.

Then he saw the bridge, a short span over Clear Creek that separated the city in the north from the high school in the south, the same span every high school student in Idaho Springs crossed every morning and every afternoon from September to June. How many times had he crossed that bridge in his lifetime? Ten thousand? Fifty thousand? And yet, at the moment, he couldn’t remember what the stream looked like beneath the concrete structure. How far down was it to the water? Far. Maybe twenty-five feet? How deep was the water down there? Not deep enough. You’ll break your legs. Don’t do it.

The first flames passed on either side of the road, taking trees six and seven at a time, moving faster than any forest fire he had ever seen. Clear Creek was his only option. Don’t think about it. Just get there. He had less than a hundred yards to go, but his back and legs felt as though they were already on fire and he thought he could smell melting synthetic fibres. Was he already burning? No, not yet. The aroma wasn’t that strong, like the faint scent of tobacco in the demon ram’s saliva.

To his left, a pine tree exploded, and a moment later Steven felt boiling sap and burning needles slam into him, knocking him to the pavement. He fell hard, tearing the skin from both palms, rolled over and bounded to his feet once again. A droplet of boiling sap stuck to the side of his face and he felt it boring into his skin. In pounding agony now, he ripped at the sap droplet with bloody fingertips until he had rubbed it off his face.

‘Don’t think about it,’ he shouted between coarse, shallow breaths. ‘When you are running, run.’ And he did, covering the last fifty yards and throwing himself bodily over the guardrail at the edge of the narrow bridge. As he leaped, he tried to twist in the air so his feet were down, and in the long fall he prayed he would find a pool free from jagged rocks.

Steven struck the water with a bone-jarring splash as the roiling flames passed overhead.

Gilmour gazed across the Falkan fjord; the glassy surface reflected a canvas of black, white and grey. There was no whisper of wind this far inland and the water looked as though it had frozen over in the half aven since the three companions had pulled their boat beneath the trees. The Northern Twinmoon had broken days ago and now two glowing white orbs illuminated the former Larion Senator.

He stretched the old fisherman’s legs towards the campfire, soothing the weary tissues with a thought. If he were like Nerak, he would be enjoying a more youthful body, but Gilmour had only ever taken those in the last few moments of life or the first few moments of death, and although young people died as well, in recent times he had been guided to elderly men. The first had been the logger Gilmour, who stripped and rode naked pine trunks downriver. He’d been called upon to free an especially disagreeable trunk that had become lodged between two submerged rocks. The river had been running low that season, lower than any of them could recall, and none of the woodsmen working the drive had seen the hidden trap before, but the jam it caused stretched upriver for nearly half an aven’s ride. Hundreds of thousands of logs were crushed against the stubborn singleton, enough potential energy to level a small town. Gilmour had been quick about his duties, but as he moved lightly across the jam he caught the toe of his boot on a tiny pine knot, scarcely bigger than a thumbnail, and fell just as the mass of trees broke free.

Finding the old man’s body tumbling along, Fantus had taken him, then clawed his way out from under the logs and, for the benefit of his new colleagues, cursed like a madman at the entire logging industry. As surprised as they were to see him alive, they never doubted it was their longtime friend: they never had any idea Gilmour had died on the river bottom.

He had enjoyed being Gilmour the logger, and had stayed on, riding trees with all the skill and balance of a court dancer. The forest had been a good place to hide from Nerak and his hunters; Gilmour suspected that was why Lessek had led him to the river that morning.

He had been in the logger’s body for nearly eight hundred Twin-moons and Gilmour – Fantus – had nearly forgotten what he had originally looked like before becoming the wiry old man. He shook his head and shrugged at the frozen sea. ‘What does it matter, anyway?’

Now he was getting used to the body of the fisherman, Caddoc Weston. He had been inhabiting it for days now, but had not taken to the new name; he preferred Gilmour. It suited him, even more than Fantus, his own Larion label – what sort of name was that? His mother had certainly never given him that name… for a moment, Gilmour tried to recall his mother. He grimaced with the effort, but a faint swishing sound and a glimpse of a yellow dress was all he could bring back from those days. Two thousand Twinmoons – most of the current Era. He had lived it all, and for his troubles the swishing sound of fabric and a fleeting image of a woman’s yellow skirt were all he had left of his mother.

Caddoc Weston had fallen face-first into a slimy haul of jemma fish while drifting in a skiff, several days south of Orindale, though he died from some sort of respiratory ailment – ironic given his workplace. Gilmour assumed the dampness of the Ravenian Sea had finally caught up with the old fellow. When he arrived, led once again by Lessek, Gilmour, like Versen and Brexan before him, had wondered how such a frail man had found the strength to haul jemma nets alone.

Gilmour had tossed most of the fish overboard, hoisted the skiff’s tiny sail and caught the breezes north into Orindale. Luck and a bit of nefarious espionage had reunited him with his Ronan partisan friends.

As he tried to make his new body more comfortable, he wondered how long he would be in it – and if it would be his last; after all, he and Nerak were moving at a breakneck pace towards their final confrontation. He tossed a log onto the campfire, watched as flames began slowly to devour it and decided that if this was to be the last body he would inhabit in his lifetime, he would make some improvements. With a gesture, he toughened the muscles in the old man’s legs, strengthening the ligaments and tendons. He coated the vertebrae in the scrawny man’s back with a fresh calcium shell and he breathed thick, healthy blood into the worn disks between them. He straightened the fisherman’s posture, healing a tear in the labrum of his right shoulder and curing the arthritis that swelled his joints and made tying his pack painful. Finally, Gilmour sharpened his sight. Now, when he looked across the fjord, he could make out the nearly invisible rise and fall of the sea as it breathed slowly, asleep beneath the twin moons’ nightly vigil.

He adjusted his position against the boat’s unyielding transom, wedging his pack between the small of his back and the sandy ground. Their stolen vessel was tucked under a stand of oak and maple, camouflaged in case the partisans needed to reclaim it. He didn’t imagine their travels would bring them back this way, but knowing there was one exit route left open gave him some comfort. Gilmour enjoyed the feeling of renewed strength in his muscles and stretched out to catch the fire’s warmth on his feet.

Garec and Mark slept. The young foreigner had returned to his position in the bow, despite the fact that the vessel, now beached, was listing precariously to port. Garec had rolled into his blankets and jammed his own pack up against an exposed maple root near the fire. Gilmour had not slept since Nerak had followed Steven through the far portal and into the foreign world, three days past – it didn’t trouble the old sorcerer; he didn’t need that much sleep, but he would have liked to doze here tonight, where there was a feel of autumn further inland.

He shivered involuntarily. Winter would be upon them soon, even here in the flatlands; he didn’t look forward to crossing the Falkan plain with freezing rain and snow at their backs.

He drew thoughtfully on his pipe, dragging the acrid cloud into his lungs; he was waiting for the tobacco to numb his senses and blur his vision. Caddoc Weston had not used tobacco much, but like it or not, he was a smoker now. One little vice wouldn’t kill him, after all. Gilmour clucked; the poor fellow was already dead. It was well worth the headache he knew he would have in the morning. ‘And no magical cures,’ the old sorcerer scolded himself with a cough. ‘You’ll pay for this one just like any hundred-Twinmooner with his father’s pouch.’ Puffing again, Gilmour felt the smoke’s warm caress tickling the back of his throat and he coughed violently. ‘Rutting mothers,’ he grunted, ‘that was a bad one.’

He reached for a wineskin. They didn’t have much left, three or four skins of the Falkan red, that was all. Gilmour promised himself a few sips from this one would be his last for the evening. His throat hurt and his mouth tasted like a sheep-herder’s ash pouch; a few swallows were all he would need. Then he would try to sleep.

As he rooted around behind the transom, his hand brushed across the wool blanket wrapped around the book of Lessek’s writings. He recoiled with a start, then peered around until he found a full wineskin. Why had he left the book there? He hadn’t thought of it, that’s why: the library had been in ruins. Scrolls had been torn to pieces, or burned to ash; others had still been in flames when he woke. His vision had been clouded, and the smoke from Pikan’s explosion had burned his throat.

The pipe smoke drifting lazily into the sky now tasted like that night, acrid yet sweet, the flavour of burned corpses and plague. Gilmour told himself it was just a mistake, though he had known the book was there, and he had the spell to release it. He could have taken the book – forget the Windscrolls – but he could have taken the book, studied its secrets and crushed Nerak’s bones with it. But he had not. He had dropped his broadsword in terror and run screaming and crying until he had struck the frozen ground outside Sandcliff’s ballroom window. And then he had kept running.

For the next nine hundred and eighty Twinmoons Gilmour had run away. For a time he had harvested tobacco in Falkan. He had been a teacher, a logger, a chef and now he was a freedom fighter – but none of that would have been necessary had he thought to take the book with him when he fled.

He reached over the stern rail for the woollen cloak: he just wanted a peek at the book the founder of the Larion Senate had used to fashion the spell table and tap into magics of worlds beyond the Fold. It was near the start of the Second Age; Lessek had been a young man when he had hewn the granite disk from the mountains of northern Gorsk and carried it to Sandcliff Palace. And Nerak had used this same book to learn everything he needed to know about how to defeat Gilmour, to open the Fold and to allow his evil master to ascend into Eldarn.

Gilmour sighed: he had to learn this book too; it would take hundreds of Twinmoons… He had two, perhaps three, and it wasn’t enough. The old Larion Senator felt a weight pressing against his chest. He drank deep from the wineskin, until he felt he had the strength to stand.

The woollen cloak started to fall away with little coaxing, but as Gilmour gave it a final tug, a corner of the material caught and toppled the book end-over-end onto the deck. ‘Demonpiss!’ Gilmour muttered angrily, ‘Just when I get up the lordsforsaken nerve-’ He bit off the end of his rant and checked furtively to be certain Garec and Mark were still sleeping. The leather covers of the spell book were opened wide, the heavy pages splayed. He had no choice now; he had to pick it up.

Gilmour reached into the boat, grasped the spell book gently by the front cover and returned it to its place on the bench – and nothing happened, there was no magical reaction at all. Tentatively he flipped open the front cover, to read what Lessek had written on the opening folio, but though he strained, he could make nothing out, even after he snapped his fingers to provide a little light. The page was blank.

‘Lessek, you are going kill me,’ the old man muttered and reached out to turn the page. He brought his sorcerous light in closer. ‘The ash dream,’ he read aloud. That was it. He took a moment to admire Lessek’s fine script. The characters were delicately scratched with a sharp quill; smooth and even. Gilmour sighed again; he realised at once that not one page would stand out; there would be no single spell with which to rule worlds beyond the Fold. Each page would be part of a whole, but useless by itself. There would be no scribbles in the margins leading to sudden magical discoveries. This book was one man’s masterwork, and only when read cover to cover, and understood as a whole, would it show how to unleash the force used to create the spell table thousands of Twinmoons ago.

So that’s what he had to do, read Lessek’s book, beginning right here at the birthplace of Falkan’s greatest fjord, a fractured bit of Eldarn itself. Nerak’s weakness lies elsewhere, he thought, it lies in the Windscrolls. That night Gilmour had gone to retrieve the third Windscroll for Pikan; in his haste, he had overlooked Lessek’s desk – and this book.

Gilmour remembered his dream as he slept on top of Seer’s Peak: Nerak and Pikan, with Kantu lagging behind with an injured ankle… they had discovered something, discussed something; he didn’t know what. Had they tried something creative with the Larion magic? It didn’t matter; what mattered tonight was that Nerak had a weakness. He might have had a thousand weaknesses nine hundred Twinmoons ago, but tonight, he had at least one and Gilmour knew where to find it.

He would study the book until he understood Lessek’s magic, and he would protect himself and his friends from Nerak until he had the third Windscroll in his possession. He was one of the last Larion Senators – only Kantu remained, somewhere in Praga – and protecting Eldarn was their responsibility. Nerak’s weakness lies elsewhere: yes, but his strength lies here in this book.

Gilmour thought again of Seer’s Peak. Garec and Steven had dreamed too. Garec had seen wraiths moving through Rona’s forbidden forest, mobilising for an attack, and had been able to use Steven’s magic to ward off the spirit army. That had turned out to be a true foreseeing: Lessek had shown them real images of their journey, things they would need to address if they were to survive. What had Lessek meant them to learn from the dead, arid land that had once been lush Ronan forests? He wondered if saving Rona was going to fall to Garec – if Rona was even particularly at risk. ‘It was King Remond’s home,’ Gilmour murmured, ‘Markon Grayslip’s home too – he called himself a prince to avoid upsetting his family, but Markon was Eldarn’s rightful king.’

And what of Steven Taylor? He had dreamed of a maths problem, of calculus machines and telephone speaking devices – and had he not, he would never have been able to crack the code and open Prince Malagon’s lock-box, his Malakasian safe-deposit box.

So Gilmour’s mission was clear: find the third Windscroll and use it to banish Nerak for ever. It was probably buried under a thousand Twinmoons of debris, but it would be there – and if Nerak had read and understood it, his weakness would no longer exist. ‘Stop procrastinating,’ Gilmour said out loud. ‘Read the rutting book and you will be as strong as Nerak. Stop running and face him.’

The old man took a last swallow from the wineskin, corked it and dropped it to the sand. ‘The ash dream,’ he whispered. ‘Let’s see what’s on the next page.’

Gilmour took the blow on his chest. Sharp and bright, striking brutally hard, like lightning through a rip in the Fold, it pushed him backwards and he felt ribs snap. He struck his head on the ground, and just before he passed out he saw Lessek’s spell book slam shut, seemingly of its own will.