Rob Scott - Lessek_s Key

Gilmour was by his side, still shaking, and thrilled and frightened at the crushing blast he had called up to tear the fountain from the wall; he suspected it was his magic that caused the almor to scurry back into the dark recesses of the Sandcliff cistern. ‘What is it, Steven?’ he asked.

‘You said there was an aqueduct. Where?’ He was so intense now, and Gilmour could feel the power of the hickory staff surrounding him, charging the stale air of the old hallway.

‘It comes in through the east wall, below the main hall, turns a wheel downstairs and dumps into various lines that feed the fountains throughout the keep.’ He stepped away a little, nervous that the staff might touch him and inadvertently stop his heart, or blow a hole in his chest – he was still smarting from the firebolts Steven had used to shock him back to consciousness.

‘Garec, take Mark downstairs. Get to the lowest level you can reach without getting wet, or being near any water supply – I mean it. I don’t want you in sight of any water at all.’

Garec helped Mark to his feet and as they made their way down the corridor, Steven called after them, ‘Keep your heads down, and wait for us to come get you.’

‘Right,’ Garec said, ‘I understand. It’s going to be bad.’

Gilmour asked, ‘What are you going to do?’

‘The clouds are eating this place stone by stone, and they won’t stop until they have consumed us, right down to socks and boots. There is a demon in the water supply. I’m not going to have any of it, Gilmour. I think I know how to deal with both of them at once, but I need to know if we can get to a place on the aqueduct – without those clouds detecting us – where I might climb up and access the water supply.’

‘Water won’t do anything to those clouds, Steven,’ Gilmour warned.

‘Don’t worry about that: can we get there without those clouds noticing?’

Gilmour’s face was layered in wrinkles as he concentrated. Finally he said, ‘Yes, I think we can.’ Then almost boyishly, he added, ‘Gods rut it, but Steven, I can get you there. Let’s go.’ He led the way towards the centre of the keep.

Steven ran through the forest and up the sharp incline beside Sandcliff Palace. He kept his head low, hoping the clouds gnawing the north wing of the Larion keep down to its bones would ignore Gilmour and him as they moved towards the top of the aqueduct. The woods were thick enough to mask their movements, but they did little to diffuse the hissing as the acid melted the ancient stone.

Arriving at the aqueduct, Steven and Gilmour huddled amongst the trees that grew along the base of the stone waterway. The Larion aqueduct was enormous, a marvel of engineering and architecture, the gigantic mortared stone archways supporting a veritable river; they climbed the hillside to the top of the mountain. Steven had no doubt that Larion Senators had spent time in Italy during the Renaissance.

He whistled quietly as he looked up the bone-grey wall to where a stream of water ran into the cisterns beneath Sandcliff’s east wing. ‘Sheez, Gilmour,’ Steven shook his head. ‘You didn’t mention it was quite this big.’

‘What can I say? We had a lot of fountains. We had hundreds of students studying at the university,’ Gilmour replied. ‘Now will you tell me what you plan to do?’

‘Well, I will tell you that I don’t plan to get killed,’ Steven said, ‘just in case you were wondering.’

‘It had crossed my mind…’

Peeking beneath one of the stone arches, Steven could see that the clouds continued to work their insidious magic, dissolving what was left of the tower to rubble. Soon they would break through the walls of the main building, and from there it was just a short step to Mark and Garec’s hiding place.

Tucking the hickory staff into his belt, Steven climbed the aqueduct and carefully ran along the narrow edge – keeping his feet dry for as long as possible was critical; he didn’t want to alert the almor until the last possible moment.

He moved quickly back down the slope to where the aqueduct spilled through a tiny breach in the palace wall and into the great cistern. Once he found a suitable spot he stepped into the ankle-deep stream of rushing water and bent low to examine the joints between two of the sections of funnel-shaped ceramic tubing the water ran in. He found an old carpentry nail holding them together and scraped a fingernail across the metallic head, then rubbed his fingertip against the fleshy part of his thumb. ‘Good enough,’ he said to himself, then turned towards the acid clouds and began to shout.

‘Hey! Hey you, over there, you- whatever you are, cloud things! I’m over here! Come on over and get me!’ Steven shouted, trying to taunt the clouds into attacking him; he had never realised how difficult it was to insult a cloud. Still screaming into the sky, he felt the hickory staff warm into a rage once again. This had to work. He just needed one more thing to fall into place.

Steven stood in the water, taking a gamble that the magic had driven the almor far enough out of the palace that the creature wouldn’t come up behind him from somewhere in the cistern. It had been a powerful blast – and he knew the staff had enough strength to kill an almor; he had done it before. It had most likely been driven up into the mountains, where it would wait for another opportunity to ambush them, but Steven wasn’t willing to sit around and be hunted by a demon every time he took a drink of water. He stomped his feet in the aqueduct stream, egging the almor on, while he continued to berate the far-off acid clouds.

Then the twin clouds broke away from the north tower and, independent of the prevailing winds, moved over to where Steven waited, the staff a red glow of vengeance in his fists. ‘Come on, come on you bastards,’ Steven said, uncertain if the clouds could hear him. They had detected him there, and that was enough. Now he needed the almor. He looked for Gilmour below in the trees, but the old man was nowhere to be found, probably hiding in the shadows.

He stomped his feet again, splashing as much as possible without tumbling over the side and plummeting to a broken neck on the frozen ground below. ‘Come on, where are you?’ he shouted. ‘Come and get me, you bastard, I’m right here – I’m standing in the water, for Christ’s sake. What more do you need, a goddamned invitation?’

Looking back to the clouds, he realised it was too late: they would be on him before he had a chance to draw the almor in for the kill. ‘Motherless dry-humping bastards,’ he cursed; this was bad luck: the almor could hit him at any time, probably while he was busy battling the clouds.

‘Shit and double red shit,’ he said, ‘burned to death with acid while being sucked dry by a waterlogged demon. This was a great idea, Steven. No, really, one of your absolute best!’

He waited, furious; the acid clouds were coming, with or without the almor, and he was about to fight. He took a deep breath, murmured insults at the acid monsters, and braced for their assault – until Gilmour’s shouting and splashing distracted him from his immediate doom. The old man was dancing and jumping about barefoot in the water near the top of the aqueduct and even from this distance, he could hear the song Gilmour was singing, an off-key, off-colour ode to a sexually active young man with a wooden leg, surely one of the most hilarious pieces of folk poetry he had ever heard. But now was most definitely not the time; he was quite sure that Gilmour had gone stark raving mad.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Steven shouted, looking back and forth between the dancing sorcerer and the clouds. ‘You’re going to get yourself killed. Take cover. Get out of here now!’