Rob Scott - Lessek_s Key

‘No time for that now!’ Steven was agitated. ‘He’ll be back. I don’t know where he is, but he’ll be back. Can you cloak us?’

‘I-’

‘Gilmour!’ Steven barked. ‘Can you do it? Can you cloak us?’ The old man’s form stood out stark against the trees. ‘Well? Can you cloak us?’ he asked again.

‘Are you sure?’ Gilmour took a few tentative steps forward.

Without replying, Steven knelt beside the body and dug through the threadbare clothes until he found what he was looking for.

‘Yes,’ he said firmly, ‘I’m sure.’

Gilmour’s features hardened and a glimmer of angry confidence flashed in his eyes. ‘Then we must run, as quickly as possible. Come, right now, back the way we came. It’s the shortest path out of the valley.’

‘Can you cloak us?’

‘I don’t – I’m not certain… I’ll try, but we must run anyway. A cloaking spell won’t protect us for long.’

Mark regained his composure and yelled, ‘Steven what the hell is going on? You just hacked that guy in two. Jesus Christ, you killed him in cold blood. What’s this about?’

Steven tossed his roommate the thing he had removed from the dead man’s clothes: a crumpled red, white and blue pouch of Confederate Son chewing tobacco. ‘I knew I smelled something. I smelled it that day when he came after me in the mountains. Believe it or not, I could smell it on that old ram’s breath as it was pressing its face through the windshield of Howard’s T-Bird. This bastard had been chewing it sometime today.’

‘But how can that be?’ Mark didn’t know whether to look to Gilmour or to Steven for his answer. ‘I thought he had to-’

‘I don’t know,’ Steven said abruptly, ‘but Nerak’s back and he’s here, right here somewhere.’ He kicked the dead body aside, retrieved his saddlebag and began running back towards the street. ‘Come on. There’s no telling what he’ll do when he gets over the hit he just took.’

*

Nerak roared and the middlenight darkness that had swallowed him shuddered. Huge monolithic towers, ornate with carvings and stained-glass, rose up before him and collapsed beneath their own weight, the thunderous echo of destruction in their wake. Cities grew, withered and died before his scream faded and the light came, brightened, blinded him momentarily and then passed away. Smoke from gigantic forest fires rose in billowy clouds, lending colour to the night and choking off the cries of souls trapped for ever in his cavernous prison. Part of him was back inside the Fold. How had that happened? He could feel the earth, the frosty grass and the chill of the little river that passed through Traver’s Notch, but he couldn’t see them.

He screamed again, and his rage rattled the nothingness. Great stone keeps, palaces of granite and mortar, welled grandly up from the abyss, only to shatter in a hailstorm of grey and black stones. Reaching out with his mind, he found himself, dazed and wandering in the foothills outside Traver’s Notch. With careful concentration, Nerak elbowed his way back through the Fold and into northern Falkan.

He would kill Steven Taylor; nothing in the past thousand Twinmoons would come close to the pleasure he would enjoy torturing that boy for all time, an immortal prisoner for ever in pain, in an endless, empty cave.

It had been that rutting stick again. What had Fantus done to that thing? It had to be the most complicated and intricate spell the old milksop had ever done. He would get that stick. And that saddlebag had contained the key. It was inside a jacket, a colourful jacket of some foreign material, hidden inside the bag so as not to draw attention to the foreigners. But it was there. He would take the brown leather saddlebag and the wooden staff.

Steven Taylor had swiped at him in the Blackstone Mountains as well, but that had been when he had come as a grettan. Nerak had underestimated its strength that night and he had underestimated it again in Traver’s Notch. He had Jacrys to blame for that; the spy had never mentioned the power of that stick. He himself had not been able to detect it, even with his most sensitive and delicate webs. No matter. Jacrys’ day of reckoning was coming as well.

Reunited with his Eldarni form, Nerak tried to move back towards Traver’s Notch. He would wipe out the entire valley, eradicate every last person, in one swift and decisive blow. He would teach them to harbour his enemy, whether they knew what they were doing or not.

But something was amiss and he couldn’t make the connection complete. It wasn’t physical, whatever kept him from rejoining the frayed ends of his spirit, but something intangible, a gap in who he was and who he had been moments before Steven slashed at him.

Whatever had happened, Nerak was forced to take time to mend the rift Steven had torn in his being. That boy was dangerous; he would be Nerak’s next target, no matter that it was earlier than he had planned. He had figured to use Hannah Sorenson – she was easier to reach – but the hickory staff changed things. It would be Steven Taylor, and he would provide the final pieces to a puzzle he had been trying to complete for over a thousand Twinmoons. And it would be soon.

Struggling – and failing – to reconcile the twin halves of himself in the forested hillside above Traver’s Notch, Nerak’s anger overwhelmed him. ‘Steven Taylor!’ he screamed and entered a broad walnut tree, exploding it outwards into thousands of jagged splinters. The blast was deafening, and knocked a frightened forester to the ground. As he swirled about between the trees, Nerak felt better. He chose another, an old maple that still boasted a few bright red leaves, and blew it apart from within, shattering the relative silence and knocking the forester down for a second time. The devastation felt good, but Nerak wanted to be back in Traver’s Notch, watching Steven Taylor’s face as he first killed the bowman and then took the ignorant South Coaster. ‘My prince,’ he whispered contemptuously as he flitted through the trees.

When Nerak came across the terrified woodsman, he took him effortlessly, as he had done to so many others, so many times over the Twinmoons. They were all there to serve him: children, horses, women, it didn’t make any difference. The last one’s leg had dragged, broken worthless cripple that he was, but he had worked the cart, enjoying a mouthful of good South Carolina tobacco while he waited for Fantus to lead his pathetic little company across the bridge. That one hadn’t screamed either; too shocked or too rutting sorry for himself – many of his victims forgot to scream. Too surprised that it could possibly be happening to them – proud trash, that’s what they were. The woodsman had been no exception: he had stiffened for a moment as the life drained from his body, his hopes and dreams and memories pooling in a puddle at his feet. Nerak picked up the man’s axe, wiped his bloody wrist on his leggings and started back towards town.

Nerak looked down on Traver’s Notch and contemplated the valley. He couldn’t detect Fantus or the others anywhere below. He considered wiping the Traver’s Notch slate clean, as he had in Port Denis – it wouldn’t take much: a simple gesture and a few key words to call up the web of mystical power he had woven over the Twinmoons and Traver’s Notch would be gone.

But the dark prince hesitated. ‘If you do, they’ll know you’re back,’ he rationalised. He needed Fantus to believe him gone, perhaps for ever, but certainly struggling to recover from Steven Taylor’s attack – but this time he had surprise on his side, and he wouldn’t hesitate. He knew where the key was hidden. Steven Taylor and Fantus – Fantus! – were his biggest problems, so he would take one of them first, quickly and without warning. His desire to see if Steven Taylor screamed in the moment before death was overwhelming. He strode down into the town, intent on finding the party and discovering the answer for himself.