Rob Scott - Lessek_s Key

‘And the magic came from inside you?’

‘I don’t know,’ Steven said, matter-of-factly. ‘I don’t think so. Why would it? The staff was here, and I didn’t have the key yet.’ He looked across at the hickory staff leaning against the small sailboat. ‘So I suppose the magic was the key. It had hit me hard in the knees, twice, so I wasn’t feeling much of anything except pain – but when I reached out, I felt as though I could grab the air, as if it was there for me to take. That was when I saw the rips. They materialised in front of me, right where the big centre hill at the dump had been, but where the magic came from isn’t actually as important as what began to take shape in my mind.’

‘What’s that?’ Mark swallowed the last of the sandwich.

‘That we can keep evil trapped inside the Fold.’

‘How?’ Gilmour looked bemused.

‘By controlling the Fold itself.’

Garec laughed. ‘Oh, of course. I thought you were going to suggest something difficult.’

‘No, listen. The Fold is not the enemy, the Fold exists; if evil is trapped inside, and evil is our ultimate enemy, then our goal can only be to keep evil inside for ever. Gilmour, you said that the Fold is the absence of perception and therefore the absence of reality. So it’s the place between what is real and what is unreal, the space separating expectations from actualisations. Right?’

‘That’s how I think of it in my mind, yes.’ Gilmour wasn’t sure yet about Steven trying to make his definition of the Fold into a tangible, controllable reality. ‘But that doesn’t make it any easier to grasp.’

‘Yes it does.’ Steven seemed convinced.

‘Again, you have me on cloakpins, Steven. How?’

‘Because if it exists and if we can conceptualise it accurately and if we can reach it via the spell table,’ Steven withdrew Lessek’s key and held it aloft between two fingers, ‘then we can seal it, not by closing the door that the Larion Senate and Nerak and a handful of other travellers have used over the ages, but rather by building a wall around it, a box around it, a-’ Steven laughed, ‘-a safe-deposit box for the whole frigging thing.’

‘Steven, you’re mixing two kinds of thinking,’ Mark protested. ‘You can’t muddle the tangible and the intangible that way. You’re creating a philosophical paradox. It won’t work.’

‘It will work. Everything can make sense if we take time to learn enough about it, about what it values, about what motivates it, about where it came from and why.’ He searched their camp for an example. ‘Look. Over there, that rock. Now, we all agree it’s a rock, right?’

The others nodded, curious.

‘We all agree it’s a rock, but let’s assume Garec is a masonry worker, and I am a geologist, and Mark is a miner, and Gilmour, you are a sculptor.’

‘Wait – I see what you mean,’ Garec interrupted, excitedly.

‘We all might see it a bit differently, but no matter how hard we try, it will always be a rock. Whether it’s a snapshot of Eldarni history, a valuable ore, a cornerstone for a public library, or even a beautiful three-dimensional realisation of a bird in flight, it’s still just a rock. There is no way, even using all our will, that we can make that rock a fish, or a grizzly bear – or a roast beef sandwich.’

Gilmour, looking interested, said, ‘So if I’m understanding your thinking: if we can understand the Fold, however intangible it may be, then we can – what?’

‘Anything we want. We can paint the damned thing yellow if you want to,’ Steven said. ‘Don’t you see? There is no paradox. We can do whatever we want to the Fold, if we are careful and thorough in developing our understanding of exactly what it is and how it works.’

Garec felt the rug come out from under them. ‘How do we do that?’

‘We need to know what Lessek knew. He found it, called it a pinprick in the universe. That’s fine. Whatever. But he found it, and he knew how to get to it, how to arrive at that place where he could reach out and grab it – like the air at the city dump. It was no different than it had ever been, but I held it in my hands, pressed against it and moved it around.’ He looked in turn at each of them. ‘That’s what we have to do.’

Gilmour slipped a hand back inside his tunic. Although his ribs no longer hurt, he could feel where he had mended them. Only hurts when I breathe! The three friends followed his gaze to where the leather-bound book of Lessek’s spells lay waiting for him to come and try again.

‘Once we know what Lessek knew, what will we use?’ Garec broke the silence, making Gilmour jump visibly. ‘The staff? That book?’

Steven replied, ‘That remains to be determined, Garec, but at this point, I am fairly confident we will use compassion-’

Mark looked down, his head shaking.

‘-magic-’

‘And?’

‘-and maths.’ Steven gave him an amiable slap across the back. ‘Mathematics, Garec.’

Garec went off in search of more wood, and Gilmour stood alone, ankle-deep in the fjord, enjoying a pipe and wrestling with his thoughts. They had made the decision to remain there another night, for they had talked until late in the day. Steven had put up a halfhearted fight when Mark told him where they were – he had assumed his friends were already in Praga, not well on their way to Sandcliff Palace. He had argued – for a few moments – then given in gracefully; much as he hated it, he knew that getting to Sandcliff as quickly as possible was more important than finding Hannah. He had known it when he told Jennifer Sorenson to wait two months before bothering to open the far portal again; it would most likely be even longer before he was reunited with Hannah.

Steven and Mark sat together near the fire, alone together for the first time that day.

‘I’m sorry,’ Steven said, leaning against a fallen log and staring into the flames of the campfire.

‘For Brynne? Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault. She was over the stern rail and halfway to safety before she decided to climb back up.’ Mark took a long swallow from one of the beer cans. ‘She made her own decisions.’

‘It’s more than that.’ Steven said. ‘I’m sorry for the whole thing, for this whole mess. I never apologised to you. I ruined your life. Everyone thinks we’re lying dead up there on Decatur Peak. I’m sure they’ve filled your job – hell, I might even have been responsible for the damned school burning down yesterday.’

‘The students will hold a parade in your honour. You’ll be the graduation speaker next spring.’ Mark had been reading the newspaper articles Steven stole from Howard’s refrigerator. Many had been ruined when Steven dived into Clear Creek, but enough had survived to give Mark a sense of the extent of the rescue and recovery efforts on the mountain trail west of town.

‘I’m serious.’ Steven tried to make eye contact; Mark avoided looking at him.

‘It doesn’t matter, Steven. I mean, I appreciate you saying it, but we are here. This is who we are and what we have to do with ourselves now. This is much bigger than being a high school teacher or a banker. These people need you and that staff. They need you here thinking the way you were thinking today, figuring things out, deciphering the magic to get the job done.’ He finished the beer and tossed the can over his shoulder into the sailboat. ‘You have nothing to be sorry for.’

‘What about you?’

‘I’m figuring out my role.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means until something better comes along, I am going to kill. I am going to learn to fight, to shoot and to defend myself, and I am going to kill them, one at a time until-’

‘Until Brynne comes back?’ Steven challenged.