Rob Scott - Lessek_s Key

He tried not to look down at the little girl by his side: she was a hunter, in service to the dark prince, and he had come to kill them all, sick or not. Sweating, he dropped Milla’s hand.

‘Is it too hot?’ she asked, turning down the fires with a glance.

He was impressed; this wild-haired little girl would have made a powerful Larion Senator. ‘No, Pepperweed, I’m fine. Tell me, how long have you been here?’

‘Four Twinmoons, I think. Rabeth tells me when another Twinmoon comes, but I keep count myself too.’

‘Four,’ Alen said, almost to himself, ‘that’s not very long.’

‘It is a long time!’ she said, shaking her head.

‘Where are the others?’

‘Through there,’ she said, and pointed to a door at the other end of the common room. ‘That’s Rabeth’s room. He’s got the most rooms. They’re in there together.’

Alen squatted down on the edge of what looked like a Persian carpet. ‘Milly, I need you to wait for me out here,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ll be right back.’

‘You’re mad at them, huh?’

‘No, no, I’m just going in to see if I can help them, because they’re sick.’ He didn’t think she would believe him.

No,’ she said matter-of-factly, ‘you’re mad at them; I can tell.’

‘Really?’

‘Uh huh. I can tell things sometimes. Rabeth can’t, but I can.’

‘Will you wait here, Pepperweed?’

‘Uh huh.’

‘Good girl.’ He walked across the room and used the same spell that had let him into the underground residence to unlatch door.

The smell of disease washed over him in a rank embrace and the beer he had swallowed a little while earlier churned about in his stomach. It took a moment of fierce concentration to keep from vomiting across the threshold. Then Alen stepped inside and brightened the mystical torches.

He could see a large sitting room with two doors on the back wall. Though the room was cluttered with furniture – over-stuffed sofas, soft armchairs, and beds that looked out of place, as if they had been dragged in from other rooms – it was luxurious. Book shelves lined three walls, and a fire burned in the fireplace on the fourth. On the mantelpiece were crystal sculptures and a ship’s clock. More Persian rugs covered the floor. Alen guessed the people lying about the room were what remained of six slave-magicians. He tried to keep his temper as he looked around: they had lived in complete luxury, enjoying the treasures generations of Larion Senators had brought back through the far portals, while they served the dark prince, visiting uncounted atrocities on Eldarn’s people. They had probably worked their evil magic from these very rooms, standing barefoot on a priceless carpet from ancient Persia, drinking wine from Falkan and eating cheese from Switzerland.

The Larion Senators had brought these things through, hoping the Eldarni people would learn from them, but Nerak had stolen them and used them to create a wonderful environment for his slaves.

Warm mixing with cold; dank mixing with fresh. Sex and love mixing with passion and murder.

They were slaves, though: for all the displayed wealth, they were trapped here, and now they were dying. In another time, they would have come to Sandcliff, learned to travel across the Fold in service to Eldarn, but Nerak’s lust for power had forced them into a different world. They may have lived in a world filled with riches and beauty, but they had lived there as slaves – and killers.

Now he wondered what had happened; did their power fade when Nerak disappeared? As he looked closer, he saw four of them were unconscious. One woman was awake, but she sat facing a corner, rocking back and forth and running a finger up and down a crack in the wall. She had worn her fingertip away – literally. Alen could see the bone, and blood ran down the crack.

One man was sitting up in bed, watching Alen cross the room; as he neared the sallow, cadaverous man, Alen nodded and said, ‘Rabeth, I gather?’

‘Sergeant,’ Rabeth’s voice was a hoarse whisper. Alen thought he saw dust billowing like tobacco smoke from the dying man’s lips. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Nothing,’ Alen said, coming closer.

Rabeth wheezed and squinted, as if to improve his vision, and then grunted with what might have been laughter. ‘You?’

‘Yes.’

Another grunt, definitely laughter this time. ‘Where were you?’

‘Middle Fork.’

‘Ah,’ Rabeth rasped, ‘ah, I knew it. I knew it. Tallis there owes me a silver piece.’ He pointed to an emaciated shell of a man, barely breathing, scarcely more than a moment or two away from death. ‘I don’t think he’ll be paying, though.’

‘Why did you do it?’

‘We had no choice. He brought us here, gave us everything. He said it was better than the Larion Senate ever would have been, and in the beginning it was.’

Alen waited patiently as the old man struggled for each breath. ‘How long have you been here?’ he asked. It was strange, but his anger had dissipated.

Rabeth shrugged, like an animated skeleton with an itch. ‘Six hundred, seven hundred Twinmoons, I don’t know. We made the Seron for him, and processed the bark and the leaves for the others. We summoned the demons when he wanted to strike out at you or Fantus.’

‘You did all that?’

Rabeth nodded. ‘That, and so much more. My whole life I looked for you.’

‘And then I came to you.’

‘You did. Ironic.’

‘And Hannah Sorenson? The wolfhound?’

Rabeth shook his head. Alen didn’t have any reason to think the man would lie to him now.

‘Why did you stay here so long?’

‘We can’t leave.’ He held up his wrist. ‘These bracelets; I tried for two hundred Twinmoons, and I can’t get the spell.’

Alen saw each of the slave-magicians wore a similar bracelet: three bands of silver woven together. ‘Suicide?’ he asked.

Again, Rabeth held up the bracelet. ‘I tried, six times. Just made him angry.’

Alen was speechless at the tragedy he had discovered. This was worse than anything he had ever imagined. He took Rabeth’s wrist in his hand, whispered a few words and felt the silver bracelet break apart, falling to the mattress in tiny shimmering pieces. Crossing to the fmgerless woman, he repeated the incantation, but even when her bracelet fell to the ground, she continued rocking back and forth.

‘He lied to you,’ Alen said. ‘I was never the greatest sorcerer, but I learned that spell a few Twinmoons after I arrived at Sandcliff. You should have been Larion Senators, all of you. We lived a simple life, but it was a paradise compared with this.’ He started back towards the common room.

‘Wait,’ Rabeth called.

What?’

‘Kill us, please. Grant us mercy.’

Alen pressed his lips together to keep them from quivering. He went back to Rabeth’s side, reached out with both hands and touched the dying man on his forehead. He wove a spell, then slipped quickly through the room, touching and incanting the same few words for each of the slave-magicians.

When he finished, he addressed all of them. ‘I have given you what strength I can. I assume that you are in here together because Nerak abandoned you, and a lifetime of constant spell-weaving has taken its toll. I imagine Nerak used his own power to keep you all strong, but that power came from a dark and evil place. When Lessek’s key returned to Eldarn, Nerak withdrew from you to bring the sum of his own magic together inside himself. After all these Twinmoons, you are addicted to his support, his power; without it, you haven’t the strength in yourselves. But I’ll wager you all you feel cleaner, even in your misery, without his cold, despicable magic inside you.