Rob Scott - Lessek_s Key

‘I honestly don’t know,’ Mark said, surprised. ‘I was eighteen; I wanted to get away from New York. I thought Colorado sounded rustic, provincial, wild – a long list of things Long Island is not. But maybe it was those photos.’ Mark screwed up his face, trying to come up with a completely honest answer. ‘Maybe looking at them day after day, year after year, influenced me.’

Steven said, ‘So you might you have chosen Colorado State because he wanted you to?’

Mark, never one for arm-chair psychology, shrugged. ‘Sure. I guess. Who knows why eighteen-year-olds decide anything? But I do know that I have felt more at home in Colorado than I ever did in New York.’

Gilmour asked, ‘Did it take long for those feelings to emerge?’

‘About twenty minutes, Gilmour. I think it was twenty minutes.’

Garec dropped an armload of wood at their feet, interrupting the conversation. ‘Twenty minutes? I know that one; it’s the four rune. The four, right? The four means twenty minutes on this absurd machine.’ He held up Steven’s watch. ‘Why you don’t just put a twenty on there, I have yet to understand.’

Mark, close to understanding at last, didn’t speak, but wrapped an arm around Garec’s shoulders and handed him a silver beer can. Garec pondered it briefly, then looked confused.

Tilting his own can for Garec’s inspection, Steven said, ‘Just pull the tab.’

Mark went on, ‘So if my father faced west in moments of quiet – like the beach, when he wasn’t working, when he had time to rest, to think and perhaps even to-’

‘To be drawn,’ Steven said, not certain he had chosen the right word.

‘To be drawn,’ Mark echoed, ‘back to where he had been so-’

‘Back home,’ Gilmour said.

‘But my father never lived in Colorado,’ Mark cried. ‘That trip, and all the memories he had over the years, all the pictures and all the stories – they were just his way of – I don’t know.’

‘They were his way of feeling that blanket,’ Gilmour said. ‘If Lessek has truly communicated these memories to you, now we must figure out why. What significance does Colorado have for your father? And for you, as your true home? And, most difficult to work out, what significance does your relationship with your father have to Nerak and our struggle here in Eldarn?’

Mark’s reply was cut off by a rustling sound in the woods behind them: footsteps, stealthy at first and then closing at a run. Shadows painted the forest black, and it was impossible to see how many assailants there were, but in the instant before turning to flee, Mark saw at least two large figures armed with branches. Steven dived for the hickory staff, grabbing it as he rolled over and sprang to his feet. Garec stood frozen, unwilling to pick up his bow and quivers. His eyes flashed in the firelight as he peered back and forth at Steven and the men coming for them through the woods.

Gilmour shouted ‘Seron!’ and raised his hands, muttering; their small campfire exploded into a towering ball of flame, so hot that Garec fell backwards across the pile of firewood he had collected. He watched as three Seron, armoured in leather vests and chain-mail, charged, barking and grunting, between the trees. In the muted glow of Gilmour’s explosion, the hardwood trunks looked like upright bones. The Seron moved as if through the half-buried ribcage of a decomposing god.

The last thing Mark saw before rushing into the night was Steven standing firm and twirling the hickory staff. His flight was a knee-jerk reaction to buy a few seconds to think how they would turn back what might be an entire platoon, hell, a whole frigging brigade of the soulless monsters. He hadn’t expected the attack; he wasn’t ready. That wouldn’t happen again.

Mark risked a look over his shoulder. Gilmour had used magic to turn their sputtering campfire into a raging inferno and by its light it was clear that there were only a few Seron, possibly scouts for a larger force. He turned and began hustling back into the fray, certain Steven and Gilmour possessed enough power to dispatch the Seron even if they had been taken by surprise attack.

He watched as Gilmour held one Seron still; the old man’s hand was pressed flat against the creature’s chest, and though growling and spitting at the former Larion Senator, it was immobile, clutched in the grip of Gilmour’s hastily woven spell.

Steven engaged the second of their attackers, nearly as large as Lahp, in a hand-to-hand fight that reminded Mark of an old Bruce Lee movie. Steven, trying to preserve life no matter how monstrous his assailant, used a fraction of the staff’s power, just enough to sting the half-human nastily with each touch – first the soldier’s knee, then a shoulder, thigh, collar bone, wrist, a series of neat blows that didn’t appear solid enough to hurt a child… but Mark could see pale greenish-yellow energy crossing from the staff to the Seron’s body with each impact. The Seron barked, an inhuman yelp, each time Steven landed a blow and within moments the big Malakasian had collapsed to his knees, then toppled over.

Two down.

Their third attacker had somehow escaped the net of Gilmour’s immobility spell, diving and rolling at precisely the right moment. Now, still gripping his makeshift cudgel, the Seron scrambled to regain his feet. Mark followed the Seron’s line of sight to where Garec had fallen. With his companions bested, the creature would have only one opportunity to kill Garec. Mark would have to act quickly; this one would be his.

‘Hey, you!’ he shouted – he wasn’t sure if he spoke in Ronan or English; he was too furious to care.

The Seron, so intent on reaching Garec, ignored him at first, but as Mark started shouting obscenities at him he finally turned.

‘Come get me, you ugly motherhumper!’ Mark cried, his feet ankle-deep in the fjord. ‘I’m not armed – look!’ He discarded Howard’s Gore-tex coat and peeled his old red sweater over his head, leaving himself bare-chested, with a thin coat of perspiration despite the cold. ‘C’mon, ugly rutter!’ he shouted again, jumping up and down on the balls of his feet. ‘I’m right here waiting, you frigging bastard!’

The Seron remained low the ground, crouched, his eyes fixed on the raving man only a few paces away.

‘Yeah, yeah, you’re so tough,’ Mark growled. ‘Come get me, you pussy. Stop stalking around like my sister’s cat and get down here.’ Mark flexed his arms, not entirely convinced he had made the right decision, but too far down this path to change his mind now. ‘I’m going to kill you,’ he shouted, an instant before the Seron pounced.

For a fraction of a second, Mark considered standing his ground. His rage was so overwhelming that he was certain he could beat the soulless half-human in a straight fight, but something echoed in his mind, that same voice he had imagined speaking to him in the Blackstones when he had nearly frozen to death, the voice that had awakened him when he had fallen asleep at the wheel on the Long Island Expressway. ‘You can’t win,’ it said, and with just a hair’s width separating them, Mark ducked beneath the Seron’s grasp and dived into the black water.

He ignored the cold and kicked hard towards the bottom, thankful the water was deep right up to the shoreline, then, once he was thirty or forty feet out, he surfaced long enough to catch his breath. The Seron was paddling diligently after him.

‘I’m over here,’ he shouted, splashing a handful of dark water in the Seron’s direction. ‘You almost had me there. I was worried, I tell you.’ He let the Seron get within an arm’s length before slipping beneath the surface again. This time, on his way to the bottom, Mark reversed and gripped the warrior’s ankles. He gave a firm tug, not enough to drown the creature, but sufficient to pull the Seron’s head beneath the surface for a moment; it sent a powerful message. Mark knew he would have to surface and tempt the soldier again, or it might make the decision to turn and flee back towards shore.