Rob Scott - Lessek_s Key

‘No-’ Alen started, but stopped as Hannah appeared with a solid length of wood in one hand and Churn’s axe in the other.

She smiled at them. ‘My idea: If Churn sits in the saddle and uses this stick to keep in contact with the ground… well, maybe he won’t struggle so much with the height.’ Neither man answered; worry creased Hannah’s forehead. ‘What is it?’ she asked anxiously.

Alen looked at Hoyt, his countenance grim, and finished his sentence. No. There is something else.’

‘What was that?’ Hannah joined them ‘Is something wrong?’

Hoyt smiled at her. No, no. Things are fine and I bet you’re right. If we can get that hulking tree-trunk in the saddle without killing him or his horse, I bet this stick idea will work.’

‘Nerak, you sonofabitch!’ Steven shouted at the empty lot, ‘did you have to flatten my house?’ He was turning in circles, one way and the other, trying to take in the enormity of what had happened to 147 Tenth Street.

To the right, Dave and Cindy Siegfried’s yellow-sided, split-level place sat quietly against the hillside as usual. Their cars were missing from the driveway; Steven assumed they were already at work, unharmed and completely unaware of the Eldarni dictator’s foul presence in the Rocky Mountain foothills.

The morning sun reflected off the recent snow, almost blinding Steven as he paced furiously. His gaze fell on the winter-thin hedgerow that separated 147 Tenth from the corner of Tenth and Virginia and his attention shifted: without the end wall of the front room, here was a completely different view of Idaho Springs. Down there were Abe’s Liquor Store, the 24-hour convenience place, and the ten-minute Oil amp; Lube he ignored until his car was four or five thousand miles late for a change.

He shuddered, an involuntary response to the chilly air against the layer of sweat that had broken out on his face and neck, then realised it was something more. He felt the familiar crackle of magic, the hickory staff’s magic, as it rippled across his shoulders, between his ribs and down his thighs into his very bones.

He felt calmer now. The far portal was gone, and that meant Lessek’s key was gone also, but now was not the time to collapse in despair. Years ago, his cross-country coach, claiming it to be Buddhist philosophy, announced, ‘Men, when you are running, run.’ It took years for Steven to understand what his coach meant, but the coach’s words came back to him now.

‘When you are looking, Taylor, look,’ he chided himself, and drew a deep breath of home.

Almost immediately, he saw it, bent askew, a small sign pegged into the ground near the sidewalk that had been almost covered by snow. Brushing it clean, Steven read aloud, ‘Lot for sale. Call Trevor Hadley at-’ He crouched and considered the sign. ‘Lot for sale,’ he repeated. ‘But that’s not right… Trevor Hadley.’ The phone number was someplace up the canyon in Georgetown, he thought.

Steven shook his head and tossed the sign aside, watching as it disappeared into a snow bank. ‘Not right,’ he mumbled again, and took several steps back towards the centre of the vacant lot.

He looked again at Dave and Cindy’s house, and this time he noticed something he’d missed earlier: the bright yellow siding was darker along the bottom edge. Trudging over, he scratched the discoloured area and peered at his finger.

‘Soot,’ he said, sniffing it. ‘Smoke, creosote, some damned thing. Fire. Goddamnit, our place burned down. And maybe-’ Steven rushed back to the expanse of flat ground that had been his front room. ‘There’s nothing here now, no debris. It was a fire. It burned. Maybe it happened a month ago, two months ago.’ The excitement in his voice grew. ‘Nerak might have got here first, but there’s nothing here. The house burned down!’

He turned in a circle again, getting more excited as he continued, ‘Look, it’s flat – too damned flat. It was never this flat. They brought in a bulldozer, bulldozed the place level.’ He was running now, small laps around the property, taking in the boring emptiness from every angle. ‘Nerak!’ he shouted, not caring that someone might see him raving like a madman, Nerak, you don’t have anything! You might have been here, but you don’t have the key or the portal, you arrogant bastard. Didn’t expect this did you? Well, what are you going to do now, you invisible prick? Freeze your spirit nuts off out here, I’ll bet!’

Reality caught up with Steven so suddenly that he slipped and fell headlong into the snow. The key and the portal were gone. That much was obvious. But where would they be? Where would a load of fire debris be taken in Idaho Springs?

He retrieved his watch-cap and scarf and began sprinting along Tenth Street towards town. If he knew where to look next, he had to assume Nerak would take someone, kill them – Cindy or Dave, maybe – and come to the same conclusion. Didn’t they usually drive to work together? Why were both cars gone this morning?

Steven didn’t spare more than a glance at Abe in the window of his liquor store, or the mechanics working in the open pits at the Oil amp; Lube. Nor did he notice the neon signs blinking their ceaseless messages across the intersection at Tenth and Virginia, COLD BEER westward towards the mountains and OIL CHANGE $26.99 east across the foothills.

Myrna Kessler glanced at the digital display on the clock radio she kept tuned to her favourite Denver station. 9.04 a.m. Eight hours to go and she would be on her way up the canyon and over Loveland Pass to meet friends at a restaurant in Frisco. From there they’d spend the evening in Breckenridge, then she’d find someplace to crash until morning and get a few runs in before the tourists battled through their hangovers or the locals made their way up from the city.

Her car was packed; she had $ 108 in her pocket and about enough wiggle room left on her Visa card for an inexpensive dinner and a couple of drinks during happy hour. Myrna was attractive; she never had any problem finding men to buy her drinks, but setting out deliberately to do that, shaving off thirty IQ points and wrestling herself into a Wonderbra, always left her feeling as though she was on stage in some outdated farce. What was the point? $25 would cover her drinks, and Howard’s if necessary, and she could wear whatever she wanted. Anyway, she could be bumming around in her oldest sweatshirt and she was still noticed: men paid attention to women who had a pulse.

There had been a few customers, but the weekend rush wouldn’t hit until 11.30, when most of the town, Friday paycheques in hand, started their lunch break. Myrna and Howard would work the windows together until 1.00 p.m., when, as quickly as it had started, the queue would be gone. Then Howard would trundle sadly across Miner Street to Owen’s Pub and she would be left to close the bank at five o’clock, locking the doors and shutting off the lights.

Howard had been depressed since Steven and Mark’s disappearance. He had refused to fill the assistant manager’s position, even with a temporary employee, and he followed the investigations assiduously every day. Word around town was that he had climbed as far up the Decatur Peak trail as he could before the snow grew too deep for him to go any further. Myrna didn’t like to think of her boss up there, battling through thigh-deep snow and shouting for Steven and Mark until his voice gave out.

The police had been little help and Howard would never forgive them for it; he didn’t think the local authorities had done a comprehensive investigation into the mysterious disappearance of his friends.

It didn’t help that the roommates’ house at 147 Tenth Street had burned to the ground the day they had gone missing – a highly suspicious accident. No remains had been discovered in the ashes, and the fire marshal believed one of them had left the gas stove burning. Apart from the cars parked out front – Hannah Sorenson’s car was there, too – there was no evidence to show where the trio might have gone. Because of the snow, the police couldn’t even determine when Hannah’s car had arrived, or if Steven or Mark’s cars had been moved since that Friday afternoon. It hadn’t been a good day for climbing, and no one could work out how the trio had reached the trailhead unless someone else had come by to pick them up before dawn Saturday morning.