Rob Scott - Lessek_s Key

Then he stopped. ‘They’re making for Sandcliff,’ he said out loud. ‘They have the key and they’re heading for Sandcliff Palace.’ He started laughing. ‘What a perfect tomb for you, Fantus.’ He cast a fast-moving spell out and over the ridge to the east. He would find them; it wouldn’t take long. ‘Enjoy your journey, Fantus,’ he shouted. ‘Be sure I’ll be back to perform your rites.’

‘You have to do it,’ Gilmour shouted as they forced their way through the forest along the base of the ridge.

Steven shook his head. No, I can’t. I don’t know how.’

‘But you do. You have to trust that you do.’

‘You know the spell. All right, you were a bit flustered back there and I don’t know what’s wrong, but you need to get your wits back, Gilmour. You didn’t feel him, but we’ll worry about that another time. Right now, you have to figure out a way to keep him from finding us.’ Steven was adamant.

‘That’s my point,’ Gilmour said. ‘Any spell I use right now, he’s going to find me. We’re too close. He’ll sniff me out in no time.’

‘I don’t know how,’ Steven stammered, looking to Garec and Mark for help. ‘Yes, you do,’ Garec said. ‘Think of the night you saved me. If you hadn’t been there, I would be dead.’ He still wore his bow over one shoulder, but except for Mark’s lessons, he hadn’t nocked an arrow since leaving Orindale.

‘I can’t just call it up,’ Steven argued. ‘It wells up when it wants to – I’m lucky to be able to manipulate it at all.’

‘That’s not true,’ Mark stopped. The others turned to wait. ‘Steven, that’s not true and I think you know it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Remember when you used the staff in the foothills? You broke it against that Seron’s back and it was obvious that it was more than broken, because it didn’t just break like a stick breaks, it damned near shattered in your hands. You decided that it shattered because you had used it in anger to wound that Seron maliciously and that there was something about the staff that refused to be used like that. Isn’t that right?’

Steven nodded. ‘It always feels most right when I use it in a – well, in a compassionate way. I know that sounds stupid, because I’m fighting, but when I use it to help our cause and I show mercy, it’s stronger – it’s at its most powerful when I am controlling a situation so that no one gets hurt or killed.’

‘But that’s when the staff responds to your needs, to our needs, and I believe it does, Steven, I agree with you. Sometimes the magic does come of its own volition, but I don’t think you realise what you are capable of doing. I’ve seen you call up the magic – Hell, Steven, I’ve seen you do it without the staff. That day when Lessek’s key kept knocking you down at the dump? I’d bet dollars to doughnuts you were calling the magic up there, too, all the way back at home.’

There was an explosion behind them that echoed along the ridge. Steven turned to continue riding, but the others stood fast. ‘That was him,’ Steven said. ‘He’s back.’

Mark ignored him. ‘Steven, tell me why the staff didn’t shatter that day in the hills when you got so angry with Garec, you two almost killed each other?’

Steven recalled the morning with embarrassment – it hadn’t been his finest hour in Eldarn. By the end of that day, his leg was bitten through and he was bleeding to death in the snow. If Lahp hadn’t been shadowing him, he would have died alone that night. ‘I don’t know why. You’re right, I did it in a rage and the staff should have broken against that tree.’ He shrugged. ‘Can we discuss this someplace else?’

‘No,’ Mark said, ‘Something else happened that morning and it happened again our first night in the cavern.’

Steven was sweating despite the chill.

‘I could see home, Steven. It took a while to figure out what it was, but when you slashed through that big pine, I could see the corner of Miner and Tenth. There was neon. At first, I couldn’t believe you had missed it. It was a clear view across the Fold. And then in the cavern, the little campfire went out the moment you fell asleep. It was as if the thing needed you to be awake to keep it burning. Garec and I woke you up and asked you to start another fire, a real fire, with one of the logs from the Capina Fair.’ Mark smirked recalling their awkward raft. And you did it.’

‘So?’ Steven was nervous, as he continued to glance back along the ridge he was only half-listening to his roommate. ‘So what’s your point? I’ve made fifty fires. They’re not that hard to do. The staff is always ready to get one going – they’re something this company needs.’

‘You’re not paying attention!’ Mark almost shouted.

‘Steven, that night you started a fire without the staff,’ Garec said. ‘You sat up, glanced at the fire-pit, called up a nice little blaze and went right back to sleep. The staff wasn’t anywhere near you.’

‘And that night, I saw home again,’ Mark said, ‘the 10-minute lube joint on the corner, that awful orange sign we can see from the driveway.’

Steven knew the sign – he had seen it as he ran towards Miner Street after realising Lessek’s key had been hauled away to the city dump. He looked at his friends. ‘So what? What do you want me to do? I’m telling you I can’t just turn it on like a faucet.’

‘And we’re telling you that you turn it on like a faucet all the time,’ Mark said. ‘I’m not trying to manipulate you. I’m telling you the truth. Why didn’t the staff shatter against that tree in the Blackstones?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Yes, you do, Steven and so do I. It wasn’t the staff’s magic that knocked the tree down.’ Mark stared at him, unblinking. ‘It was yours.’

‘Oh, good Christ, Mark,’ Steven was flustered. ‘Do you not get it? Nerak is coming here to kill us, right now. I don’t have any magic. I’m a bank teller, for shit’s sake, and a pretty poor bank teller at that. I don’t know where this magic is coming from. Maybe I have done from time to time without the staff, but I’m quite sure it’s the staff’s magic. Maybe it’s around me like a cloud. Maybe it works if the staff is nearby. Maybe-’

He was interrupted by another explosion, as devastating as the first, from somewhere on the ridge above them.

‘How did you know?’ Mark pressed, ‘just now, how did you know it was Nerak?’

‘I smelled tobacco juice on his breath.’

‘But there was more, wasn’t there? And it didn’t come from the staff.’

‘I… I don’t know. Maybe, yes.’

‘Yes,’ Mark said, ‘yes, because Gilmour didn’t feel him there and the staff didn’t feel him there. He was well hidden, Steven, but you felt him, didn’t you?’

Steven nodded, almost imperceptibly. It was true. He had felt Nerak, smelled him, even disguised as that broken little man. His hands had stiffened and he had balled up his fists in an effort to stretch them. He had thought he was tired, or cold, but he had felt something. The tobacco juice had simply confirmed his suspicions.

‘And you tagged the dog-piss out of him,’ Garec interjected. ‘Was that the staff, or was that you?’

Steven looked at Garec and then at Gilmour. The old man had said nothing. ‘It was both, I think,’ Steven answered. ‘I lashed out, and I know the staff’s magic was there, it just blew up in my hands, but there was some of the other in there as well.’

‘So you do it,’ Mark insisted. ‘You cloak us now, because anything Gilmour does to hide us will be like lighting a signal flare.’

‘Okay. I’ll try.’

‘No. Don’t try, Steven, just do it. When you came back through the Fold, you were certain you could take it over. We needed maths, magic and compassion. How in all Hell you’re going to do it, I have no idea, but you were confident. That’s what we need you to do right now, recapture whatever it was that had you believing so strongly.’