by Rob Scott
Finally she gave up and reached out. ‘Haden, help Rala,’ she pleaded in a high-pitched grunt.
‘Na,’ he replied, shoving her violently away, disgusted at her childish fear: she should be proud to die for their prince.
When she came at him again, Haden could see she had lost control. He placed the flat of one palm firmly against her chest, holding her at arm’s length as she thrashed and pleaded with him to save her life. Realising he could not afford to waste his energy battling Rala, the scarred Seron gripped her by the shoulders and forced her head beneath the waves. It wouldn’t take long, then he would continue swimming towards Rona. With Rala gone, he would be free to deal with the prisoners as he saw fit. Within an aven he would have the stone key, or know where it was, and the partisans would both be dead.
Rala surprised him: she was stronger than he had expected. She gripped his wrists and began pulling him down. His head submerged twice before he realised he had made a mistake. In the throes of fighting for her life, Rala discovered a store of adrenalin yet untapped, and she kicked and tugged like a wild woman until Haden released her. He decided to swim away; she was in no condition to keep up with him. He grinned as he watched her surface several paces off. He understood he might not make it to shore, but before he died, it would bring him great pleasure listening to Rala’s terrified, wailing cries for help, knowing none would come.
In a final act of desperation, she plunged forward, screaming, ‘Help Rala!’
Haden grimaced and spat a surprised curse as the woman managed to grab hold of his tunic. Screaming and scratching, Rala pulled wildly at his arms, his hair, and even his face as she struggled to find a solid purchase. Spinning onto his back, the scarred one raised his fists to pummel her beneath the waves, but before he had an opportunity to throw his first punch, Rala stopped struggling.
Her eyes wide in shock, the Seron woman choked out a final plea, then released her grip. Bobbing away like a tide-borne piece of driftwood, Rala’s body began to shrivel, to waste away until she was little more than an empty sack of sodden skin housing a jumbled array of pale yellow bones.
‘Almor,’ the remaining Seron grunted approvingly and turned to continue his journey. He had not gone far before he felt the almor’s touch, a faint prickling of primitive energy, as the demon creature came from below to envelop him in a warm and protective blanket that buoyed its passenger high in the water and heated his cold flesh. The milky-white fluid of the almor’s insubstantial form clouded the water around him, and he felt his hands and feet pass through the gelatinous substance as he made his way steadily towards the shore.
Together they would find the Ronans, discover the hiding place of Prince Malagon’s lost stone, and savour the pain and suffering of their victims through the next Twinmoon.
The rain finally stopped, and before the mud dried in the streets, heavy waves of disagreeable humidity radiated up from the sodden ground. Mornings were the worst, the sun somehow hotter than at midday: Hannah hated going about Middle Fork in the morning. Regardless of how carefully she stepped or how thoroughly she cleaned her boots each evening, by the mid-morning aven, her feet were covered with mud and she was drenched in sweat.
Cursing herself for leaving her sunglasses – she could see them now, lying where she had tossed them so carelessly, on the front seat of her car – she felt as if she had developed a permanent squint. Of course, sunglasses would destroy her efforts to blend in with the Pragan people; any passing Malakasian patrol would take her into custody in a matter of minutes – but it might have been worth it. ‘At least they might take me someplace dark,’ she muttered, then added with a sigh, ‘No. I suppose that would be worse.’
This morning, she was hustling back to Alen’s home near the outskirts. Over one shoulder she carried a thick hemp bag stuffed full of vegetables, fruit, fresh bread, a couple of wine flagons and the ungainly carcase of something called a gansel.
Hannah had – stupidly! – taught Churn how to play rock, paper, scissors, and now he insisted on challenging her every day, especially when it came time to help out around the house. Bring in firewood? Rock breaks scissors. Buy food for breakfast? Paper covers rock. Shovel out the ash box? Scissors cut paper. The man was a virtuoso, a rock-paper-scissors savant, and to make matters worse, Churn bellowed an inhuman laugh every time he won: it sounded like a drunken opera star practising the vowel continuum in a stairwell.
Avoiding a group of begging street children she crossed through the mud, turned down an alley, and cut back behind several large businesses before re-entering the main boulevard only a block or two from Alen’s house. She promised herself she would return later with the leftovers for the hungry children, but for now, she wanted to get back to Alen Jasper. He had told her a lot about Eldarn, its people and history, but there was still a great deal to learn, especially if she were going to track down Steven and discover a way to step back into Idaho Springs.
There was something the old man was holding back, though. They had been staying with him since Churn had carried him out of the Middle Fork Tavern. Hannah shuddered as she recalled Alen’s wailing plea to let him die. Hoyt had tried to make light of the situation, telling him, ‘If I looked and smelled like you, old man, I would want to die, too.’
But they had realised it was more serious when Alen had replied desperately, ‘No, you don’t understand: he won’t let me die.’
‘Who won’t?’ Hoyt asked, worried now. ‘You have to help me understand, Alen. Tell me what’s happened.’
‘Of course you don’t understand. You don’t have any family,’ Alen growled, suddenly angry. ‘But he won’t let me go. He won’t let me die, the mad stinking rutter. I lost my Jer. It finally happened. My baby.’
‘Your son?’ Hoyt asked, ‘what happened?’
‘My grandson. My last grandson. He died. That’s the end of me, the end of my family. There may be children of cousins somewhere, but they don’t count. My babies are all gone.’
‘What happened? Was there a plague or something? How did they die?’
‘Old age … but they were my babies.’
Hannah tugged at Hoyt’s sleeve. ‘What’s he talking about? He’s drunk as a very drunk skunk; we’ll not get anything sensible out of him until he’s sobered up. Let’s just put him to bed – or better, burn his clothes and then put him to bed.’
Hoyt agreed, but when he tried to tell Alen what they were doing, the old man surprised him by lashing out, crying, ‘Don’t call me that! My name is Kantu. Call me Kantu!’ He gripped Hoyt by the ankle.
‘All right … Kantu.’ Hoyt kneeled beside him and smiled in an effort to calm him down. ‘Let’s back up. Why do you want to die?’
‘My Jer died.’
‘When?’
‘What Twinmoon is it?’
The old man had obviously been out of it for a while. Hoyt swore quietly. ‘It’s just past mid-autumn.’
‘Last summer; so, twelve Twinmoons ago … give or take.’ Alen waved his hand back and forth to imply an estimation, and Hannah was momentarily comforted by something so simple and familiar. ‘That’s when I started drinking.’
Hoyt tried not to sound surprised. ‘So you’ve been drinking for twelve Twinmoons?’
Again the gesture. ‘Give or take.’
‘A year and a half,’ Hannah whispered to no one and shook her head in awe.
‘Every day?’
‘I think so.’ He released Hoyt’s ankle. ‘It’s good to see you, boy, one last time.’
‘You said someone won’t let you die.’ Hoyt took the bony hand in his own.
‘The stinking rutting horsecock,’ Alen agreed.
‘Who?’ he tried again, ‘who won’t let you die? And why?’
‘Lessek.’
‘Who’s Lessek?’ Hannah ventured softly, not wanting to interrupt the conversation, even though her hope was waning with each unintelligible remark.
Hoyt looked at Churn, who shrugged and shook his head. Without looking at
her, Hoyt answered, ‘A magician, a scholar, a sorcerer, a legend. Our history talks of Lessek, but that was many, many Twinmoons ago – many generations ago. I think he was supposed to be the founder of a famous research university in Gorsk, the Larion Senate.’
Alen nodded. ‘He did.’
‘But the Larion Senate hasn’t been around for more than a thousand Twinmoons,’ he continued.
‘Give or take,’ Alen added, and this time Churn waved his own hand back and forth, mimicking the gesture.
Alen had had enough of the conversation. Still holding Hoyt’s hand, he fell backwards onto the floor, muttering, ‘It is good to see you again, though, my boy, even in these sad circumstances. And someday, when you have your own children, you’ll understand. I wasn’t supposed to live this long. None of us were. So you go now, Hoyt. Take your friends and leave me here.’ His head rolled limply to one side.
Dropping the old man’s hand, Hoyt moved to stand next to Hannah.
‘That’s him?’ She failed to control the tremor in her voice. ‘That’s the one man who can get me back home? Him? We walked for – for I can’t remember how long, to get here to meet this – this disgusting, drunken sot, because he is the best Eldarn has to offer? This wino, this stinking pile of horseshit? He’s my only hope?’ With each word her voice rose until she was shouting.
Hoyt pursed his lips and gave a half-shrug. ‘He wasn’t always—’
‘Wasn’t always what?’ Hannah felt the tears come, tears of fury, and decided not to fight them. It was a fine time to cry, stuck here in a world that shouldn’t even exist, weeks and miles away from the grove where she’d entered this dreadful place. It was a perfect time to cry. ‘Wasn’t always what, Hoyt? A foul-smelling, babbling idiot with fungus growing on his clothes?’ She kicked at one of Alen’s outstretched feet. ‘Ah, shit, Hoyt … shit.’ With that, the tears came on in earnest and she sank to the floor, sobbing unrelentingly.
‘What? What did you say?’ Alen sat up suddenly; he appeared determined to bring the room and its occupants into focus, if only for a moment.
Somewhat surprised, Hannah forcibly swallowed a sob and looked down on him. ‘I said you were a drunk, a dirty, smelly, grumpy old drunk.’
‘No, no, after that.’
Irritated, Hannah went on, ‘I don’t know what the f—’ She stopped, bemused. ‘You speak English. That was English, just now.’
‘And you said “shit”. I heard you.’
She looked at Hoyt and Churn. ‘What is this? How does he speak English? Where did he learn English?’
Hoyt took Hannah’s arm. ‘Hannah, I don’t understand what you’re saying.’
Ignoring him, she kneeled beside Alen. ‘Where did you learn English?’
Obviously still quite drunk, Alen joked, ‘In a place where nice young girls don’t say “shit”.’
Grinding her teeth together, Hannah reached out and grabbed his cloak. Pulling him up, she spat, ‘Don’t fuck with me, old man. I have had just about enough of this godforsaken place. Now, where did you learn my language?’
Something moist trickled between Hannah’s fingers and left a trail of dull orange across her knuckles.
‘In England,’ Alen slurred matter-of-factly. ‘And you, I suppose you learned somewhere in America, right?’
‘South Denver,’ Hannah whispered, and let him go. ‘South Denver, Colorado, where I was born. In the United States of America. My world.’
She turned to Hoyt. ‘All right. You have my attention.’
‘I’m sorry, Hannah, but we don’t speak this tongue.’ Hoyt and Churn had not understood a word.
She switched back to Pragan. ‘Sorry.’
‘What is it?’
‘I’m sorry for what I said. It looks like you were right.’ She rubbed her hands together nervously. ‘This was the right place to start.’ Despite his pitiful appearance and his rancid smell, Alen had changed. He had moved slightly, shifting his entire being in a way Hannah couldn’t even begin to describe, but whatever he had done, he was suddenly a different person, a more confident person, merely draped in the carnage of eighteen months of drunkenness.
Alen tugged at the hem of Churn’s leggings and, suddenly polite, requested, ‘Churn, old man. Please take me outside to the trough. Dunk my head beneath the water repeatedly for half an aven, or until I throw up and start crying for my mother. Will you do that?’
A grin split Churn’s face. Hannah guessed he would set about his task with enthusiasm.
‘I need to wake up a bit. We have a great deal to discuss, young lady. I will be back momentarily. Please make yourselves comfortable.’
THE CAVERN
For the next twelve days the travellers aboard the Capina Fair lived and ate well. Although they never spoke of the wraith attack, Mark and Brynne grew strong once again, and any sign they had ever been invaded by the spirits soon faded. Similarly, Garec and Steven quickly recovered from their ordeal at the hand of the homicidal river creature. The staff had saved them both from drowning, and there appeared to be no other lasting physical effects of the attack. Garec swore he would never venture near water again: he would find Renna, return to Estrad and remain comfortably dry among the rolling hills of the forbidden forest for the rest of his days.
Brynne reminded him he was still spending the better part of every day and most nights aboard a raft in the middle of a river, which was decidedly wet.
‘Okay then, after this trip, I’m never going back in the water.’
‘So, you’ll never bathe?’ she teased.
‘Not often, no, and never in water deeper than my ankles,’ Garec shot back.
‘Imagine the stench.’
‘That’s fine,’ he joked, ‘I suppose I won’t have many friends, but then again, I won’t have strangely dressed foreigners dropping through the Fold, or thousand-Twinmoon-old sorcerers dragging me off on wild adventures in which invisible psychic creatures try to drown me before adding my body to their makeshift underwater sculptures, either.’
Steven chuckled and corrected him. ‘I think you mean psychotic,’ he said with a grin. The English words sounded strange, but sometimes there was no local equivalent. In spite of his smile Steven didn’t feel much like laughing. As they poled the Capina Fair downstream, he found himself periodically struck by bouts of insecurity and depression. The others noticed the gloominess that took hold of him whenever he considered the now-familiar length of hickory. Its failure to free them from the river’s grasp was the first time the magic had fallen short of Steven’s needs: the Seron, the grettan, the wraiths – even the almor – they’d fallen easily beneath its apparently endless reserves of power.
Now Steven was worried: he could no longer rely on the hickory staff. The magic might fail again, and next time the dwindling company might not be so lucky. He felt responsible for the others’ survival, and the magic’s failure on the riverbed sent his confidence reeling: what would happen when they came up against the enormous military and magical force awaiting them on the shore of the Ravenian Sea?
Grimacing, he tried to thrust the problem from his mind, telling himself he had never understood how the staff’s magic worked anyway, so he had no right to question or complain if it began to fade now. It had saved their lives several times, so he should just be grateful.
It wasn’t working. He wanted to have the staff’s power with him, to wrap himself in the sense of security it brought him. Defeating the wraith army had given him a sense of invincibility, a self-confidence he had never before experienced; at that moment he had been sure no force in Eldarn could stand against him. He supposed he was lucky that he and Garec had survived their first encounter with a power strong enough to render the staff useless.
Try as he might to push it away, there was something else troubling Steven. He had wielded a power greater than anything he could ever have imagined, and he liked it. He wanted it with him always – and he was certain it wanted him, that it had chosen him that evening in the foothills of
the Blackstone Mountains. He was sure it had responded to his needs because it understood that compassion was right: terror and hatred had ruled Eldarn for generations, and the land was teetering on the brink of collapse. Compassion and caring, brotherhood and a sense of unity and understanding could save this beautiful, strange land; Steven was sure of it.
He could feel a memory of the magic, tingling through his arms and legs, as if the staff had read his mind and was responding to his reflections, encouraging him to believe that he was its rightful wielder, and that all would be well if he remained true. The desire to test it grew within him for a moment, but Steven forced the need back within the confines of his mind. It settled there, among his darkest desires, in a place he was certain everyone had but no one discussed: a cordoned-off section of himself where all his ugliest thoughts were trapped: the desire to feel the thrill of robbing a liquor store at gunpoint, to be a voyeur, to have desperate intercourse with a complete stranger, or to crash through mind-numbing rush-hour traffic and watch as rude commuters burned in a fiery conflagration – all lay sublimated in this do-not-enter region of his consciousness. They would be joined now by the desire to wield the world’s most powerful force, to consume it and become indestructible, confident and powerful – and, most of all, free from fear.
Steven fought his almost overwhelming need to embrace the magic, to let it take him and make him into the instrument of Nerak’s destruction. That might be his eventual end, but until he knew that for certain, he would keep it at arm’s length. He didn’t understand the magic, and after his failure on the river bottom he knew he couldn’t always control it, but it was there, lurking patiently until it was needed.
He felt the power run along his forearms and out into his fingertips, prickly and stinging; it flickered briefly and then faded. All at once he was less-than-himself again.
The journey downstream from Meyers’ Vale through the rolling hills of southern Falkan had been marked by good weather, unlimited fresh fish, wild fruits and nuts, and even a large game bird Garec had brought down, a gansel; it tasted not unlike turkey to the Coloradoans, but Garec’s uncontrollable bellowing laughter when they named it in English was enough to convince them to abandon any further comparisons.