Rob Scott - Lessek_s Key

‘There you have it, seven,’ Hoyt said, ‘fixed their rutting hides with your bare hands. This horse should be a red cinch. Now, chop chop, let’s ride.’

No. I’ll walk.’

‘What is it?’ Hannah asked. ‘Is he afraid of horses?’

Hoyt turned to her with a frustrated grimace and said, No. Not anything that complicated. Our intimidating hulk of walking granite here is afraid of high places. High places! Can you believe it? He’ll take on the entire Malakasian Army by himself while suffering a head cold and holding a frothy tankard in one hairy paw, but he won’t look out the upstairs window of his own house.’

‘Vertigo,’ Hannah said. ‘I understand it can be crippling.’

‘I don’t know what that word means, ver-’

‘Vertigo.’

Vertigo.’ Hoyt nodded. ‘Well, if it means high places turn him into a whining, wet-nosed infant, then you’re dead on with your diagnosis.’

‘It’s a serious condition, Hoyt and you, as a healer, should know that.’ Hannah glanced at Churn, who nodded his agreement.

‘Oh, stop it, Hannah,’ Hoyt argued, ‘it’s a long way from his vital organs, knocking around in that cavernous tank he calls a brain. And if it’s so crippling, how is he able to run and jump from rooftop to rooftop when we’re dodging arrows and other Malakasian toys?’

‘We’re only up there at night,’ Churn signed. ‘I don’t see down.’

‘You are a god-rutting cat up there,’ Hoyt said crossly.

When running for my life – I don’t think about it. This is different. I’ll be up there looking down at everything all day – it’s just too high, Hoyt. I can’t do it.’ Churn’s hand moved with fluid grace in the longest monologue Hannah had yet heard from the silent giant.

‘So if we’re riding for our lives, you won’t mind being in the saddle?’ Hoyt pressed. ‘But out for a pleasant morning canter, a nice jaunt through the forest and up over the hills into Malakasia, you won’t go, because the horse is too tall? Gods rest us; I need to find a shorter horse.’

‘It’s not the horse. It is that my feet won’t be on the ground – and I will have time to think about it.’

Hoyt shook his head. ‘So, I need to find an exceedingly short horse, one short enough for your feet to drag? That won’t slow us down a bit, Churn. Nah, we’ll be at Welstar Palace in no time… thirty-five Twinmoons from now! We could crawl there faster.’

‘I’m not getting on the rutting horse!’

‘All right! All right. No need to yell!’

Hannah grinned at the interchange. ‘Maybe we can-’

Hoyt interrupted, mumbling to himself, ‘Whole idea is bad… Malakasia… get ourselves killed… take a lot longer dragging… Alen is going to be furious-’

Hannah touched the wiry Pragan on the shoulder. ‘I have an idea.’ They were standing outside a small mercantile shop at a crossroads northwest of Middle Fork, a place too small to have a name, but where the purchase of four horses and saddlery would not arouse suspicion or start any unwanted rumours. It had taken a day, and a good deal of careful questioning and monetary encouragement before the locals cooperated, but the two thieves had finally located a horse farm willing to deal. Now Alen was inside the mercantile, gathering supplies they would need for their journey into Malakasia.

For three days they had walked north and west, leaving Alen Jasper’s home in the pre-dawn aven and before most of Middle Fork was awake. Alen had shouted until the others roused themselves, insisting they pack just what they could carry and leave immediately: Nerak was gone and Welstar Palace was undefended.

Hannah was certain the former Larion Senator had originally planned to take her to Welstar Palace so that he might commit an elaborate suicide at the hands of his former nemesis; now she had no idea what was happening, if sending her home to Colorado was even an option. And she had not yet summoned up the courage to ask. Hoyt said the trip north would take them well into the next Twinmoon, so Hannah figured that with at least sixty days at her disposal, she had time to persuade him.

She had been so worried about the old man’s health: Alen drank far too much – she was worried sick that one day she would find him lying dead beside a pile of empty bottles. Though she doubted Alen’s ability to get her home, she’d never doubted his willingness to make the effort. We shall both get what we want, Hannah Sorenson: she recalled the eerie voice through the locked door of her bedchamber. His English was flawless. He had obviously been across the Fold or through the Fold or whatever it was she had done to get to Eldarn from Colorado.

And he had changed, sobered up in a moment – with a little help from Churn and a trough of cold water – after he met her. It had obviously been a significant moment in the old man’s life, meeting her, and even though his mystical resources had obviously not been taken off the shelf in years, discovering that someone other than Nerak controlled the Colorado end of the Larion far portals had made a marked impression. So Hannah had believed that Alen – or Kantu, as he insisted on being called when he was drunk – was committed to finding and using the Malakasian version of the ugly carpet that had dropped her in Southport.

Now Hannah was no longer sure what he was planning. Everything had gone by her in a blur that morning, from hearing him yelling to grabbing her few clothes and hurriedly stuffing bread, cheese and wineskins into a bag.

Even Alen’s home remained an enigma. The many hallways, rooms and fireplaces seemed to exist only inside, while outside, a single chimney jutted from the roof of the small structure visible from the street. Hannah had been perplexed by the way the house, whether blocked by the rising or setting sun, obscured by surrounding buildings or draped in fog, was nearly impossible to see clearly. She had it fixed in her head – though not without some difficulty, for even in her imagination the shape was fluid – that the place was tiny, unexceptional… but inside, it was massive, with twisting hallways, rooms off rooms off rooms, and staircases leading upwards and down at random intervals. Fires burned merrily in fireplaces all over the place.

As they left quietly, unobtrusively, Hannah turned briefly – but the house was different, no longer the unassuming little building Hannah usually saw. Now Alen’s house looked like something out of a gothic horror novel, a meandering mansion several storeys high, with exposed beams and mortar walls set with latticed windows and heavy oak doors. On the roof, the single chimney had been joined by a bevy of smokestacks. Hannah almost expected clouds of dark smoke to start billowing skywards.

‘How is that possible?’ she whispered, hefting her bag onto her shoulder. ‘What the hell is happening?’

‘I had to remain hidden,’ Alen said, hearing her. ‘Fantus, my friend and colleague, took on strange professions and hobbies to obscure himself from Nerak’s view. He avoided magic so Nerak could not pinpoint his location. Me? I hid right here, right where I was when I heard… well, when I heard that the world had ended.’

‘Nerak looked for you all this time?’

‘No. Nerak knew my magic posed little threat. He was more interested in Fantus.’

‘So why the camouflaged home?’

‘There are others in Welstar Palace, Hannah.’

‘Other what?’

‘Magicians. Sorcerers. The sort of talented young people Pikan and Nerak sought throughout Eldarn to recruit for the Larion Senate. In the old days they would have been brought to Sandcliff to study.’ Alen turned away from the house and set off down the road.

Hannah scurried to catch up with him. ‘But with Sandcliff overrun-’ she began.