Rob Scott - The Larion Senators

‘So where’s the table now?’ Garec asked as Steven unrolled his blankets.

Steven pointed. ‘Just over there in the shallows. We’ll haul it up here after I’ve had a bit of a sleep.’

‘Why’d you leave it?’ Kellin asked.

‘It’s a big table, it’s heavy and cumbersome,’ Gilmour said. ‘Getting it out was one spell. Out of the water it’ll be an entirely different animal.’

‘It will be heavier,’ Garec said.

‘A great deal heavier,’ Steven agreed.

‘And you don’t have a spell for that?’ Kellin asked. Remembering what Gilmour had said, Steven noticed that she and Garec had been sitting next to each other through the midday meal. They stood beside one another now, looking comfortable together.

‘Sure we do,’ Steven said. ‘It’s just different, and it takes a bit of concentration.’ He rested his head on his pack. ‘We’ll get it done… later.’ He yawned and closed his eyes.

‘Did you destroy that last spell?’ Garec asked.

Steven sat up again. ‘Did the gods send you here to keep me awake, Garec?’

The Ronan laughed and agreed, ‘They might have, yes.’

‘I didn’t destroy it,’ Steven said, lying back and pulling his blankets tight beneath his chin.

‘But Gilmour said-’

‘I didn’t destroy it,’ Steven interrupted, ‘but a weak-willed, terrified bank manager from Idaho Springs did.’

Garec looked quizzical.

Steven smirked. ‘It was about the easiest spell I’ve cast since I got here. No kidding. It just fell off my fingertips and tore the thing to ribbons.’

Garec said, ‘Nothing but hope.’

‘I know that song, my friend.’

‘Sleep well, Steven.’

‘Watch for Mark. I probably shouldn’t be resting at all, but I’m afraid I’ll screw up royally if I do too much while I’m wiped out.’

Gilmour sat on a folded blanket, his back resting against a pine trunk and his feet propped on a flat rock.

‘How are you?’ Garec asked.

Gilmour shrugged. Not bad, I suppose.’

‘Did you…’ Garec awkwardly mimed what he couldn’t find the words to describe.

‘I did all right,’ Gilmour said, nibbling at a piece of venison. ‘I couldn’t get free from the riverbed or untangle the web, but I managed a few decent explosions and I did outwit Nerak’s hopelessness trap, so all in all, I’m pleased.’

‘You have the spell table, and you’re sitting here intact,’ Brand said. ‘By my reckoning, that’s a successful morning.’

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Gilmour said. ‘I think I’ve reached a new phase in my life – one I could never have predicted. I thought I had to be a great magician, on par with Nerak, to win this battle, but I don’t.’ He grimaced comically. ‘At least I think I don’t.’

Garec smiled. Regardless of how his life’s work might be evolving, there were things about Gilmour that would never change, especially his propensity for engaging life from a comfortable sitting position. Now, with Lessek’s spell table successfully excavated and waiting in the shallows, Gilmour was stretched out languidly beside the fire and Garec waited to see one of the old man’s ubiquitous tobacco pipes appear suddenly in his bony fingers. ‘So what’s your charge then?’

‘To teach, to mentor. It was always my role, from my first Twinmoons at Sandcliff when I knew I would never be a great sorcerer. I lost sight of that over the last few hundred Twinmoons. With only me and Kantu left, I thought I had to be as powerful as Nerak to beat him.’

‘But you weren’t?’ Kellin asked.

‘Great gods, no,’ Gilmour replied, ‘even if Steven’s claims about Nerak are true, that he was just a hack, a weakling who lied to himself about how good he was, the old bastard was still too powerful for me. The last few Twinmoons have been the worst. I’ve tried spells that have failed; I’ve been terrified to open that spell book. I’ve come face to face with my own weaknesses, and all these things have distracted me from what I was really supposed to be doing.’

‘Guiding him?’ Garec motioned towards Steven.

‘Exactly,’ Gilmour said, then brightened. ‘And what I’m discovering is a new appreciation for everything I had before.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Brand said.

‘I did a lot of work over the last thousand Twinmoons, and before Sandcliff fell I amassed a great deal of knowledge, and a not-insignificant grasp of Larion magic. But recently, especially since Port Denis was destroyed, I’ve been honing skills I knew I lacked and never took the time to stop and appreciate the overall package of who I had become.’

‘You were focusing on the wrong things,’ Garec said, echoing Steven’s own realisation.

‘But now that I’ve had a chance to clear my head, I feel as though I’ve regained my perspective, and some of my strength is returning. I felt it for a while at Sandcliff, especially that first day when we battled the acid clouds and the almor. It was as if everything I needed to know was hidden behind a gossamer-thin curtain; I was so close to clarity there that I could taste it on my tongue like spring rain, but then Nerak arrived and I got distracted again.’

‘He wasn’t playing fair, either, Gilmour,’ Garec said, ‘using Pikan and that sword, and using poor old Harren’s brittle bones to attack us… it’s no wonder you were a bit off-centre.’

‘So what was different today?’ Kellin asked.

‘Today, I stayed inside myself, I trusted that if I showed Steven how to find the right magic, he would free us and find the table. When that didn’t happen, I tried not to panic’

‘Did it work?’

‘Actually, it did.’ Gilmour finally produced a pipe and began smoking. ‘I trusted what I knew, rather than what magic I wished I had with me. Even after I was drawn beneath the river, I kept my wits, tapped my strength and managed to bring the table back out.’

‘So you were stronger than the hopelessness snare,’ Kellin said.

‘No, I was smarter,’ Gilmour corrected her. ‘In the end, my wits are what saved me.’

‘What was down there?’ Brand asked.

Gilmour puffed at his pipe. The embers glowed red a moment before a wisp of sweet Falkan smoke escaped. ‘It was a chamber of sorts, about chest-deep with water. The ceiling – the riverbed – was a dark blanket, just out of reach. I never realised how noisy a river is until I spent those few moments beneath this one. The whole place echoed with the sound of perpetual motion. It was black as pitch, damp, smelling of mould and decay – and guarded by five or six of those bone-collecting creatures we faced in the glen.’

‘Rutting whores,’ Garec exclaimed, ‘how’d you handle so many?’

Gilmour shook his head. ‘I didn’t. They were all dead, just hulking masses of stinking rotten flesh. It looked like they’d been feeding on each other, until the last one, a big bastard with about ten-thousand of those nasty pincers, died of its wounds – I’m guessing from its final battle. The humidity down there made it even worse, like wandering about in a big city’s sewage.’

‘I wonder why they killed one another?’ Kellin mused.

‘There wouldn’t have been enough food in that chamber – not even in this whole stretch of the river – to keep even one of those beasts alive for very long,’ Gilmour said. ‘Nerak most likely had them guarding the new Larion spell chamber for a few days at a time in turn, replacing each other when it was time to feed. When Nerak decided to retrieve the spell table on his own, he probably called off the rest of the monsters and forced those inside to remain where they were. They were probably killing and eating one another after a couple of days. I’m sure it didn’t take long.’