Rob Scott - Lessek_s Key

He searched Myrna’s memories; all her thoughts, interactions, ideas and fears were neatly organised and it took only a moment for Nerak to find what he needed. ‘Just to get through this traffic,’ he said, Myrna’s lips splitting to reveal teeth coated in brown fluid, bits of tobacco leaf stuck between her molars. He wiped the sticky open sore on the back of her wrist against one thigh, leaving a trail of blood and rotting flesh on her skirt. His eyes fluttered as he whispered a spell.

With Mantegna’s new siren wailing and red lights flashing, Nerak drove with abandon, dodging parked cars and ignoring pedestrians scattering before him as he careened between cars and over sidewalks. Soon he spotted the row of antiques shops that ran along South Broadway Avenue. Meyers Antiques: Steven might be inside right now – perhaps that was where he planned to open the portal and take Lessek’s key back to Fantus and the rest of the Ronan partisans.

‘Not today, Steven,’ Nerak growled, and pushed the accelerator to the floor. ‘I might keep you alive just long enough for you to watch me eat your heart. That will make for a fitting end to an otherwise thrilling day.’

Perhaps he would crash through the front windows of the store: draw a crowd to witness Steven’s pain. He was in a fine mood, for though he had temporarily lost Lessek’s key, he was confident he would soon have it back – nearly a thousand Twinmoons later, he would reclaim what was rightly his. Lessek’s key? Lessek had not suffered and struggled to earn that key – he may have chipped it from the granite slab that had eventually become the Larion spell table, but Nerak was the one who had earned its knowledge, its power. If it had not been for Pikan and that milksop, Kantu- He paused. He could barely control his rage: how close had he been that night?

Nerak felt a strange but familiar sensation; a tickle in his throat, along the left side of his face, but intent on Meyers Antiques, now only two blocks away, he ignored it – until, suddenly, its significance sank in.

‘The portal!’ he shouted, the power of his voice throwing a young man riding a bicycle into the wrought-iron gate of an upscale cafe. The portal was open, right now – and it wasn’t inside Meyers Antiques. Steven Taylor was nearby; Nerak could smell him, could taste his foul foreign blood, but he wasn’t inside the antiques store; Myrna had been wrong.

He searched her memories again: Hannah Sorenson. Meyers Antiques. South Broadway Avenue, Denver, Colorado. Interstate 70 east to 1-25 south to Broadway.

‘Where is he?’ Nerak cried, shattering the car’s windshield.

Hannah’s home. Her parents. Her apartment.

Nerak cursed his own poor judgment, then shook his head. ‘No matter. The portal will guide me now.’ He honed in on the Larion magic, as loud now and resonant in this curious world as a thunderclap, gripped the wheel and turned left across the busy lanes of South Broadway Avenue.

He didn’t make it. A large yellow moving van clipped the tail end of the Mustang, sending it into a spin. Nerak struggled for control, eventually giving up on the steering wheel and taking over with his mind, but it was too late and he slammed headlong through the wide plate-glass windows of a rare books store. The ensuing explosion as the gas tank erupted beneath him cast the Eldarni dictator out of Myrna Kessler’s burning body.

Gilmour rolled over with a groan. The sun had not yet climbed high enough to bring any light to the fjord, but above he could see the earliest hues of dawn heralding another day. ‘What time is it?’ he asked in a hoarse whisper. Garec, sleeping soundly beside the remains of their campfire, didn’t stir.

Pain flared in his chest and, wincing, Gilmour pulled his legs up tightly against his stomach. There were broken ribs, at least three, and maybe a bit of internal bleeding. With his fingertips, he felt the swelling beneath his armpits and grimaced. Was there any greater pain in life than broken ribs? And not just one, but three, great rutting lords. The damp mud of the shoreline provided a comfortable, if chilly bed, and Gilmour felt his head settle back into the concave dent where it had spent much of the previous night.

‘What time is it?’ he asked again, but Garec didn’t move.

Lessek’s spell book had lashed out at him; he hadn’t been ready. Gilmour stared up at the sky. If Nerak had mastered the spells in that book, Gilmour would be destroyed. It was that simple. He had made a huge mistake by being too terrified to go back to the scroll library. ‘The ash dream,’ he whispered. The first folio was as far as he had got.

He forced himself to relax: one job at a time. He used magic to heal his fractured ribs, then sat up, groaning – this time in frustration – and shouted, ‘Garec, what time is it?’

‘What-?’ Rudely awakened, Garec yawned widely, then sat up with a start, his eyes wide in sudden realisation. ‘Did you sleep? Demonpiss, Gilmour, I hadn’t expected you to sleep. Are we too late? Did we miss it?’

‘Don’t worry. I think there’s still time.’

Garec studied Steven’s watch with a furrowed brow. ‘We have – ten moments before five clocks.’

‘Minutes.’

‘Yes, right, whatever. Ten. Tecan.’ He walked stiffly to the boat and began rummaging in one of the canvas sacks.

‘Yes, I’ll have some tecan,’ Gilmour said. ‘Make a big pot this morning. I’ll deal with the fire.’ With a wave of his hand he moved several logs from a nearby stack into the fire-pit Garec had dug the previous night and set it alight with a gesture. The flames warmed and woodsmoke curled up and around his face in a gentle caress. For once, he really didn’t know what to do – and he realised how much he missed Steven. ‘How many minutes now?’ he asked Garec.

‘Four mimits, momets, whatever you called them.’ Garec approached from across the campsite, a silent Mark Jenkins in tow. ‘Ah, great fire, Gilmour. I wish you would teach me that one.’

He had no idea how much that stung. Gilmour turned towards the fjord, ostensibly to peer across the water, to keep the others from reading the insecurity in his face. ‘Perhaps I will one day, Garec, but for now, I think I’ll get the far portal ready,’ he said.

Garec filled the tecan pot with water from a wineskin. ‘I’ll let you know when to open it.’ He turned his attention to Mark. ‘How are you this morning?’

‘Can we do it today?’ Mark didn’t look up from the fire.

Garec shrugged despondently. ‘I suppose today is as good a day as any.’

‘Good.’ Mark reached both palms towards the flames. ‘What kind of wood do I need to find?’

‘Several types will work just fine. I use rosewood. The grain is tight, very strong. But mahogany and walnut are excellent as well.’ Garec stirred the tecan with a twig. ‘The trick is not so much in selecting the right wood but rather in shaping the bow. You need a relatively thin length of wood from a thick green branch.’

‘You shave away the outer layers?’ Mark made eye contact with him for the first time in days.

‘Lots of them. The best bows take a great deal of time to shape, because the most resilient, flexible wood is the core. The thicker and greener the branch, the more pliable and strong its core will be.’ He gestured towards the twin hills in the east. ‘When we get up in those woods later today, I’ll show you what I mean.’

‘I think I understand.’ Mark reached over and took the twig from Garec. He stirred the tecan as Garec had done, then looked at Gilmour. ‘You ought to check the time.’

Garec grinned. It warmed his heart to see Mark taking back control: the foreigner was a self-proclaimed expert on frenchroastcoffee and regularly criticised the others’ tecan-making attempts. Although Garec had no idea what frenchroastcoffee was, he assumed being an expert had given Mark some deep insight into how to prepare the perfect pot of tecan. Either way, he was excited to see Mark moving back into one of his old roles. Taking over the morning tecan duties was a small step, but in the right direction.