Rob Scott - Lessek_s Key

‘When you opened the Fold that night,’ Steven said, ‘the evil creature that claimed you didn’t get the all-powerful sorcerer he believed to you be, but a lying fool, one who had convinced himself he was something he wasn’t. You hid the truth from yourself inside this staff, and you did it using a deception spell from the second Windscroll. Gilmour told us about it after his conversation with Kantu at Sandcliff,’ he added as an aside to Mark, connecting the dots for his friends.

He laughed. ‘Nerak, you fooled yourself into believing you could master the Larion spell table, but the spell table was too much for you.

‘The evil minion took you hostage; too bad that it believed what you had in your head at the time, because it never knew that you had worked a spell to deceive yourself. I’m almost impressed, Nerak: you couldn’t completely erase your memory – your knowledge – of your own weaknesses, so you hid it inside this staff. Pretty clever idea, really.’

Now Bellan nodded. ‘We were on Larion Isle. Kantu left his walking staff in the common room. I was there alone, experimenting with the deception spell. When I finally managed to get it to work-’

‘You hadn’t realised you would need a vessel to contain the knowledge,’ Gilmour finished for him.

‘You changed your own perception of yourself,’ Steven went on. ‘You lied to yourself- hey, we all do it! But you did it with the help of the Windscrolls, and you made it permanent, in your mind, and, over time, in the minds of those around you. When the evil minion took you, it believed what you believed, because in your mind it was true.’

He motioned across the meadow. ‘My friend Mark there lost the woman he loved, you miserable, stinking bastard. She was one of Garec’s best friends. Her name was Brynne. You probably don’t remember her.’ Steven moved and Bellan retreated again. ‘I had a friend in Colorado, Myrna Kessler; she planned to go to college this year. You killed her.’ Now Bellan was standing ankle-deep in river mud. Steven’s voice was soft, almost conversational. ‘Mika, Jerond, Versen, Sallax, Rodler – remember them? No? You killed them all. It might have been the Nerak who believed himself to be the most powerful man in Eldarn, or the Nerak standing here now, the one suddenly aware of his own weaknesses, but let me assure you, I don’t care. I swore to be compassionate, and I was compassionate: I gave you the hickory staff. I gave you the power to save yourself – and you tried to turn it against me. You, the real you, tried to kill me with it.’

The others had to strain to hear Steven whisper, ‘Nerak, that was a mistake.’

Bellan trembled. She had gone a cadaverous shade of grey. ‘No,’ she begged, her lip quivering, ‘please don’t.’

‘I have to,’ Steven said simply. ‘Goodbye, Nerak.’

He raised one hand above his head and drew a pattern in the air. With the other he grabbed a handful of Bellan’s tunic.

‘Fantus!’ Nerak cried, ‘don’t let him do this – we were friends, Fantus.’

Steven picked Bellan up and heaved her through the tear in the blurry, melted-paraffin backdrop. He stood for a moment in the doorway to the Fold as Nerak’s screams echoed back, then faded away.

Now Steven turned to the three rifts Nerak had opened in the Fold that morning and as he gestured at each, it closed and the forested glen around them came slowly back into focus.

The Fold was closed.

Smiling, Steven turned to his friends, who were staring at him in wonder, speechless. Gilmour held the hickory staff reverently in one hand.

‘What?’ Steven asked. ‘Mark figured it out. I just did the dirty work.’

He walked to Gilmour and gave the old sorcerer a great bear-hug. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘Thank me? For what?’ Gilmour replied. ‘Without you, I would now be dead, not once, but ten or twelve times over.’

‘And without you, Gilmour, I would be lost.’ Steven hugged him again, then walked over to Mark.

Wait,’ Gilmour said, ‘here.’ He held out the staff.

‘Oh, that’s just a stick now,’ Steven said dismissively. ‘You can keep it if you like, or toss it in the river.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘None of us do,’ Garec added.

‘I’ll explain it all,’ Steven said, ‘but the short answer is that Mark was right. Nerak never knew what was in the staff because as soon as he put it there, he forgot it.’

‘He lied to himself and used magic to make it real?’ Brand asked.

‘Basically,’ Steven replied. ‘I began to work it out when Mark and Garec told me I had done magic without using the staff. I was able to do things that should have been child’s play for Nerak, but they weren’t. He was a master sorcerer who’d studied the Larion system for hundreds of Twinmoons; I was a guy with a stick I found in the woods – but we were sparring with one another as equals. So I figured either he wasn’t so powerful after all, or maybe I was a lot more powerful than I appeared. I guess in the end it was a little of both.’

‘How did that all become obvious in the past aven?’ Garec asked.

Steven chuckled nervously. ‘It didn’t. Dropping that staff was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I was so scared; I thought I was going to piss my pants – but I had to give it to him. I had to give Nerak the chance to save himself.

‘Compassion,’ Mark said.

‘Right,’ Steven agreed. ‘That’s when the staff is at its most powerful, so I had to take the risk.’

‘And when he tried to use it against you-’ Garec started.

‘Nothing,’ Steven said.

‘Like that night it shattered.’

‘Exactly.’

Garec was confused. ‘I still don’t know how you took down that pine without breaking the staff,’ he said.

‘Because that wasn’t the staff’s magic,’ Mark said. ‘That was the first time we saw across the Fold. It was a different power.’

Steven clapped his hands together to get their attention. ‘Right, we still have work to do,’ he announced.

‘What do you mean?’ Garec asked.

‘We have to get the table.’

Mark said, ‘But I thought you closed the Fold?’

‘I closed the tears, but I closed those in Idaho Springs, too: that’s not sealing it off for ever. That’s rather more difficult – to do that, I’m afraid we’re going to need the spell table, Lessek’s key and our Larion Senator here.’ He wrapped an arm around Gilmour’s shoulders.

‘Are you saying he could come back?’ Kellin asked, a tremble in her voice.

‘No. He’s gone for good.’ Steven’s face darkened a moment. ‘So are Myrna and all the others I banished today.’

‘But not Lahp and Gabriel,’ Garec said.

‘Oh my God, you’re right-’ Steven exclaimed, ‘they’re still up there. Mark, do me a favour, will you, and get Lessek’s key – you remember where I buried it?’

‘Sure,’ Mark said and trotted towards the tree line, stopping abruptly after a few steps. ‘Uh, Steven, can you put out the fire?’ The flames from the spells and the staff’s incendiary strikes had spread along the riverbank.

‘Sure – well, I think so!’ He closed his eyes and reached towards the river, feeling the air around his fingertips thicken until it was almost malleable. He imagined a great wave, arising somewhere upstream and rushing down to break over the boulders into a shower of droplets that drenched the surrounding area and helped drown the fire. There was a great crash, and he opened his eyes to see thick clouds of steam billowing down to the riverbank.

‘Well, that worked okay,’ Mark said, wiping his face dry. ‘Remind me never to ask you to pick up milk for breakfast – the stampede would kill us all!’

Steven laughed. ‘Sorry – not very subtle, was it? I’ll have to work on that. Now I’ve got to set this lot free.’ He crossed to where the wraiths, translucent once again, waited patiently. Lahp and Gabriel were smiling; the Seron and the erstwhile bank manager appreciated Steven’s over-the-top display of magical prowess.