Rob Scott - Lessek_s Key

But Gilmour danced and sang; jumping about, he was a dripping mess of wet wool and matted hair – until the Larion Senator turned suddenly and gestured over his shoulder.

The almor was coming.

‘Get down, Gilmour, jump for it,’ Steven cried, but the last few words were lost. The clouds were just overhead.

Gilmour screamed again and Steven risked watching as the old man took a few tottering steps towards him, then dived headlong into the smooth ceramic channel. Steven was surprised by Gilmour’s over-the-edge antics, until he realised that Gilmour’s cry had been one of excitement, not fear or panic, as he came onwards, head-first and bellowing the third verse defiantly. Out of nowhere, Steven recalled a water-park near Denver where periodically a drunk forty-year-old would leap headfirst down the tallest slide and end up airlifted to the nearest hospital. He wondered what might happen when a three-hundred-year-old man tried his hand at such a game.

As he came closer, Gilmour’s song changed from the rhythmic thump of a drinking tune; now he was shouting, ‘Behind me, Steven, look behind me!’

Finally he realised what the crazy sorcerer had been doing as an ivory blur pursued him down the aqueduct, rapidly closing the distance between them. Timing would be everything if this were to work. Steven stepped out of the stream and stood astride the chute on tiptoes, hoping he’d left enough space for Gilmour to pass between his legs. His eyes moved from the almor to the acid clouds: the demon was coming fast, almost too fast now, down the chute, nothing more than a hillock of fast-moving current. Above, the clouds were massing, one spinning tumult of acid death.

Steven found himself remembering a science class on weather: were these stratocumulus, cumulonimbus, stratonymphopolyphonic – whatever? They were weaving themselves together to rain their deadly fluid down on this young fool – and, in a stroke of great luck, poison the water in the palace at the same time.

The almor was close now and Steven watched as one shapeless arm broke the surface and stretched towards Gilmour’s feet. In another few seconds it would have him. ‘Hurry, Gilmour, come on,’ Steven urged under his breath, and called forth the magic of the hickory staff, right at his fingertips The acid cloud dropped, a terrifying storm of pestilence and burning death. It was little more than twenty feet above his head when Steven glimpsed the old man passing beneath him and with a primitive cry, he slammed the hickory staff down into the water between Gilmour and the almor. His magic responded instantaneously, blowing the stream up and out into the acid storm above, carrying the almor aloft as well. Its cry was deafening, reverberating waves of punishing sound.

Steven intensified the magic, calling forth all the water from the aqueduct, throwing great waves of icy snowmelt overhead.

He caught every drop of water and cast it skywards, and when the half-moon channel was empty, the hickory staff pulled forth reserves of water from the mountains, deep caverns of inky-black water, summoned into the skies above Sandcliff Palace. Wave after wave drenched the acid cloud, and when the deadly nimbus realised what was happening, it tried to flee.

Steven screamed, nothing intelligible, just a release of pent-up anger, frustration and fear. He understood Gilmour’s lunatic behaviour now as he continued to pour thousands and thousands of gallons of water into the cloud. His senses sharpened by the magic, he caught sight of the almor, acid-scarred and full of hatred, below him, sliding towards a rapidly diminishing puddle.

‘Not so fast,’ Steven cried from his place atop the makeshift river, ‘back you go to the hell that spawned you!’ He used the magic to toss the opaque demon back into the acid cloud. Again the almor screamed, but Steven kept his feet and continued his barrage.

All of a sudden it was over. The cloud, saturated, fell across the hillside in a rainy death, killing some of the trees and shrubs, but mostly absorbed by the cold dirt above the palace. The north tower looked as though it had melted away. Steven hoped the Windscroll would give them the answers they needed, because anything left in those tower rooms, Harren’s remains included, had dissolved to nothingness.

Steven searched the hillside, through the wispy clouds of foul-smelling mist, for the almor. He was certain it had survived – an acid bath wasn’t enough to kill it, but it would have annoyed the demon, and hopefully made clear that Steven and the hickory staff were a formidable enemy. It was just a matter of time before the two of them battled again.

His rage sated and his need to avenge Rodler met, Steven felt the magic recede. Maybe Mark had been right: there were no hickory trees in the foothills where he had found the staff; that was anomalous enough, but it responded to Steven’s needs so perhaps there was something to Mark’s claims that he was a sorcerer, compelled to remain in Idaho Springs all those years by Lessek’s key. Steven inspected the familiar length of hickory for any damage and wished he had the answers.

If Mark really was a king and he really was a sorcerer, they were doing a right hideous job of saving the world.

‘Steven?’ Gilmour’s voice came from the forest below. Are you all right, Steven?’

‘Am I all right?’ Steven shouted back. ‘I’m not the one who did a full-on Charlie Hustle all the way down this aqueduct. Where’s your head, Gilmour? That thing could have caught you and sucked you dry before I had any chance of warding it off. How did you know it wouldn’t catch you?’

Gilmour’s face was bloody and one arm hung at his side, unmistakably broken, but he sounded fine, even enthusiastic. ‘I was right rutting surprised at how fast it came after me. I do love it when we take the fight to them, though, don’t you?’ Gilmour was enjoying himself, as if he had momentarily forgotten that the spell table was missing.

‘Oh, yeah, sure,’ Steven said. ‘It’s invariably the highlight of my day. I find few things as invigorating as going toe-to-toe with homicidal clouds and ancient demons. It’s like a double shot of espresso. How do I get down there?’

‘I came the easy way.’ He pointed towards the palace wall, ‘Bounced right off and fell into that bush over there. It was quick, but I don’t recommend it. I’m going to have to do some work on this old fisherman’s body, I’m afraid. I suggest you hike back up the chute and jump down.’

‘I think I’ll take option two,’ Steven said. Water began flowing down the chute from the hidden caverns and subterranean aquifers, chilling his feet even through his boots.

Ignoring his injuries, Gilmour kept pace. ‘How did you know the water would drive off those clouds?’ he asked.

‘It wasn’t just water. That fountain was caked with limestone, deposited over the Twinmoons by that trickle. The water flowing into the palace is heavy with lime – you can scrape it off the nails holding these joints together.’

‘Limestone?’

‘Calcium carbonate, Gilmour, simple high school chemistry: in solution, limestone raises the ph of water.’ The old man still looked bemused. Steven clarified, ‘It makes water less acidic: the solution can be used to neutralise acids. I didn’t know what the concentration was, or whether it was enough to stave off those clouds, so I used a lot.’

‘I’ll say!’ Gilmour grabbed a low-hanging tree branch with his good arm and pulled himself up the slope next to where Steven could jump down from the elevated waterway. ‘I wasn’t sure there would be any water left in the mountain after that little display.’

Steven landed beside him and started mopping the blood from Gilmour’s face. ‘You’re a damned mess.’