Rob Scott - Lessek_s Key

‘And we’ll meet you there,’ Gilmour finished.

‘After we go to Orindale,’ Steven interjected.

‘Orindale?’

‘Hannah and Kantu,’ he reminded.

Gilmour nodded, ‘That’s right – unless, of course, they join us along the way.’

They stayed in the cottage that night. Mark woke in the pre-dawn aven and slipped out to pile logs onto the fire. He was not surprised to find Gilmour awake and pouring over Gita’s maps.

‘Looking for an overland route to the West Indies?’ Mark asked.

‘How’d you know?’ Gilmour said.

‘I’ll give you a hint. They’re islands; you need a boat.’

‘How’s your leg?’

‘Getting better.’

‘You need more querlis?’

‘No. That stuff just makes me sleep.’

‘Come and sit down.’

Mark did. ‘What are you looking for?’

‘Nothing particularly; I just don’t sleep all that often.’

‘You’d do well in corporate America.’

‘Not me,’ Gilmour said. ‘I never had a head for business.’

‘I find that hard to believe.’

‘I heard what you said before.’ The Larion sorcerer changed the subject.

‘About what?’

‘About Nerak and his minions.’

‘Oh, that.’ Mark examined a map of Estrad and southern Rona. ‘I’ve been thinking about him, and all the creatures he’s sent to find us. They all fall along the same continuum, from real to unreal, or whole to less-than-whole, so they might have common weaknesses as well.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Gilmour admitted.

‘If Nerak only creates or summons creatures that fit a certain profile, it may tell us something about his weaknesses. He has sent ravenous beasts, wild animals, half-humans and wraiths, and all of them are similar in certain respects: they hunt, use some mystical energy either to search or to exist and they all fall beneath the power of the staff. It makes me think that might be the place to look for weak spots in his armour.’

‘That’s quite an array of nasty creatures, Mark; I’m afraid I don’t understand,’ Gilmour said.

‘Why didn’t he create a plague? Why didn’t he open the earth and swallow Sandcliff Palace with us in it? Why didn’t he have the water in Orindale Harbour swell up and drown us that night? I’m betting it’s because he can’t. There are tremendously powerful things he can do, and all of Eldarn has been living in fear of him for almost a thousand Twinmoons, but let’s think about the things he can’t do.’

Gilmour nodded, beginning to understand. ‘He can’t sense the hickory staff.’

‘Nope, and he can’t open the Fold and allow his evil master to just step outside – if he could have opened the Fold without the spell table, he would have done it by now and all of us would have been obliterated, or enslaved for an eternity.’

‘But he crossed the Fold when I opened the spell book.’

‘Sure, crossed it, but he can’t open the Fold with that book. There is nothing in there to allow his master to emerge into Eldarn.’

‘Fine, I agree – but what’s the point of what Nerak might or might not be able to do with his power?’ Gilmour rolled up the map and placed it to one side.

‘We have seen real evidence of things that can be done that Nerak has not been able to do.’ Mark was speaking quickly in his excitement.

‘Such as-’

‘Such as keeping you and Kantu alive for two thousand Twinmoons, such as sending visions of things we need to understand, such as intercepting Regona and sending her through the portal to raise Eldarn’s heir in my world.’

‘Lessek?’

‘Lessek.’

‘And you truly believe you are somehow related to Regona? I know Nerak called you prince, but I don’t know how he would have known Regona at all.’

‘Doctor Tenner.’ Mark reached for a flagon of wine and uncorked it. He poured two goblets.

Gilmour stood and walked towards the fireplace. Crouching before it, he reached out to warm his hands. ‘Tenner’s letter.’

‘Or Tenner himself. Suppose Nerak took Tenner the night he burned Riverend Palace. He would have known all that Tenner knew at the time.’

‘But all Nerak would have known was that Regona went to Randel to live with Weslox.’

‘Sure, so Nerak goes to Randel – he had all the time in the world – and learns-’

‘That Regona never arrived,’ Gilmour finished.

‘Lessek took her through the far portal, or at least he showed her the way through.’

The Larion Senator rubbed his palms together. ‘She wouldn’t have been able to touch him, but he would have looked real enough.’

Mark sipped the wine. ‘It’s evidence of yet another skill Lessek perfected that Nerak did not. If the evil minion that took Nerak only inherited Nerak’s power, then it doesn’t know the extent of what’s possible; what a great sorcerer can accomplish. Eldarn has been measuring sorcery by Nerak’s benchmark for a thousand Twinmoons when you should have been measuring Nerak against Lessek, the true master.’

‘But how could Nerak have hidden his weaknesses from the evil minion? Nerak knew his own weaknesses; we all do – he wouldn’t have been able to mask them inside his own mind. What came through the Fold hit him like a rogue wave; he had no time to cry out for his own mother, let alone hide any thoughts in his head.’

‘And thus we come to the place where all my best deductions fall apart: I just can’t get past that. But I am confident there are plenty of magical possibilities to defeat Nerak, and I bet you a case of beer the place to start is with Steven’s staff. There’s something he just doesn’t understand, and it will be his weakness; I know it.’

‘“Nerak’s weakness lies elsewhere”,’ Gilmour quoted.

‘Could that be the place?’

‘I don’t know, but you give me hope, and gods know I need plenty of that these days.’ His knees creaked as he stood up from the fire and swallowed the rest of his wine in one gulp.

Two days later, rested and well provisioned, they left Traver’s Notch with Brand’s company.

Hannah woke to the sound of the underground pistons, popping and churning, popping and churning. She didn’t know if that’s what they actually were; she imagined furnaces boiling water to build steam that spun cranks, pushed pistons and blew warm air up through the palace vents, or perhaps heated air that expanded inside great balloons then exhaled through ducts servicing the keep above. All her imagined machines were gangly-limbed monsters that sputtered and farted great belches of humid air up through the palace. Were an attack ever to come on the ancient castle, all Prince Malagon had to do was loose his heating system on the enemy lines.

As she lay there on the floor, she felt the heat begin seeping into her cell until she was sweating freely; later, when the massive creature was chained back in its place, the heat would wane and she would wrap herself in the cloak and await the onset of another frigid night.

She had seen no light – except for guards passing who carried torches – since the soldiers wrestled her, kicking and scratching, into her cell. She had no real idea whether it was day or night; she charted time by the heat, or lack of it; soon after the furnace started up, the door would open just enough for one of the guards to slip a bowl of brown mush inside. She counted that as morning.

At first, she had refused to eat it, her stomach in knots as anger and fear warred for control, until Hannah’s indignant stand – I’m an American, damnit – gave way to terror and she curled up in the corner and cried herself to sleep.

After a few days, the hunger pangs grew too painful to ignore and Hannah forced herself to eat the tasteless gloop; now its arrival represented the highlight of her day. She always thanked the soldier, but so far no one had said a word to her.