The Hickory Staff

by Rob Scott

  A primitive survival instinct was all that was keeping Versen going, but he was exhausted, and fading fast. In a final burst of energy he violently twisted Haden’s broken leg, causing the Seron to throw his head back and bellow in agony.

  The Seron, momentarily paralysed, had just realised that irreparable damage had been done to his knee by the irksome Ronan when the equally aggravating woman came at him from above, landing hard on his chest and driving her blade deep into his left lung. The meadow began to tilt back on itself, leaning as if to discard the three combatants into the Ravenian Sea. Haden knew he was about to lose consciousness, and in a final act of vicious rage, he raised one arm above his head and brought his elbow down against the woman’s already damaged cheek. The blow tapped nearly all his strength, but it was worth it as he felt the woman go limp and slide off his chest onto the ground.

  Versen nearly released the Seron’s mangled leg to applaud as Brexan drove the knife into Haden’s chest. He grinned despite a crack in his jaw, a broken nose and a swollen, maybe even ruptured eye socket: they were going to win. They were bloody and battered, and they might not survive the journey to Welstar Palace, but at least there would be one less Seron to terrorise Eldarn.

  We’ll thin the rutting herd by one, Versen thought, but that image wavered as he fought to maintain consciousness. ‘Finish him,’ he tried to shout, but only a wet gurgle escaped his throat.

  As the Seron smashed his elbow into Brexan’s poor damaged face, Versen’s rage erupted anew. ‘I’ll finish you myself, you dog-rutting half-human piece of ganselshit,’ he screamed, reaching towards the knife, but with one arm wrapped around the Malakasian’s injured leg and the other stretched out, Versen realised he had made a fatal error.

  You’re exposed! The warning blared in his mind, but it was already too late. The Seron was too strong and too malicious: not even fatal injuries would get in the way of this victory. Versen’s eyes bulged as he saw the Seron’s boot coming towards him. As it struck, consciousness faded. He and Brexan were at the mercy of the scarred warrior.

  Brexan awakened to the sun high in the sky; she watched as a pair of greyish-white birds winged lazily towards the ocean. Thick grass had provided a soft bed and she was sheltered enough to enjoy the sun’s warmth without being chilled by the autumn breeze. She had no idea how long she’d been unconscious; for a moment she contemplated going back to sleep – then she remembered Versen and the Seron.

  She sat up too quickly and nearly passed out from the pain in her face and ribs. With her vision tunnelling, she was forced to slow her breathing and to close her eyes while she fought the nausea and marshalled her strength. Rolling to all fours, she crawled the few paces to where Versen lay beside the body of the Seron. There was no doubt the Ronan was dead. His face was bloody, and brutally beaten, and his throat had been torn out by the Seron’s bare hands.

  Tears welled up at the thought of how much pain he must have suffered. Brexan ran one hand through his shaggy brown hair and her fingers came away dripping with his blood. It had pooled around his battered body before being absorbed into the Falkan ground.

  She turned away from her lover and vomited repeatedly until the pain in her ribs and face caused her to pass out once again.

  Later that aven, Brexan sat by Versen’s body. She was too weak, too damaged and too tired to find enough wood for a pyre so she turned him onto his back and folded his arms across his chest. Using her tunic as a cloth, she cleaned the blood from his face and closed his eyes. It was at that moment she finally lost hope. She no longer cared what was to come.

  She curled up on the ground beside Versen’s cruelly desecrated body and sobbed uncontrollably. As she wrapped herself in her grief and despair she nearly missed the guttural moan that came from the Seron lying behind her. Convinced he was dead, she hadn’t given Haden a second glance when she woke earlier. Now her sobs waned immediately. She pulled herself to her knees, ignoring the arcing pain in her ribs, crawled over to the Seron and slowly withdrew the knife from his chest. A trickle of blood ran from the wound. He was still alive.

  Brexan’s eyes narrowed. ‘I cannot tell you how pleased I am to see you again,’ she said in a flat monotone, then shouted, ‘Wake up! I’m talking to you!’ She punctuated her commands with kicks – she hoped each one would break a few more ribs.

  ‘Come on now, my friend – I want to know that you are aware of what’s happening to you.’ She grinned devilishly when she saw his eyes slit open slightly, then gulped as she realised this evil, murdering, inhuman beast had eyes the same colour as Versen’s. She flinched as she recalled Versen’s light-green eyes gazing at her face while they made love hungrily in the sand.

  The cold wave washed over her again and this time Brexan allowed the unbridled homicidal hunger to take her.

  ‘Can you see me? I want you to remember me. I want you to know who is doing this to you.’ She leaned in close.

  A threatening murmur emanated weakly from the Seron: he was lucid, perhaps not ready to ponder life‘s ironies – pale green eyes, for example – but certainly aware of his condition. ‘You are in hideous shape, my friend,’ she observed. ‘You may not live through the day—’ she began rolling up her tunic sleeves, ‘—but then again, you just might.’ She wiped the knife blade clean on her leggings, pushed her hair behind her ears and began cutting.

  BOOK V

  Orindale

  THE HOUSE OF ALEN JASPER

  Alen Jasper’s house was deceptively small from the outside. As Hannah walked from room to room she thought that the strange mystic had somehow forced a much larger dwelling under the nondescript shingle roof. There was a veritable maze of narrow halls, twisting stairs and curiously placed chambers, several of which had stone fireplaces, although she could only see one chimney outside. The four companions spent most of their time in these rooms as the nights were cool no matter how hot Middle Fork got during the day. It reminded Hannah of early autumn in Colorado, when beautifully warm days were followed by cold nights heralding the coming winter.

  Then there were Alen’s books, printed in secret or preserved since Prince Marek first took the Eldarni throne more than nine hundred Twinmoons earlier. The illegal collection, thousands of volumes, was the size of a small town library, but the books were arranged in no order Hannah could discern. Gardening books were stacked near physiology treatises; stories of great Eldarni athletes were thrown in a wooden crate with studies on nutrition; legends of man-eating fish and sea creatures were lost among a treasury of books on Eldarn’s stained-glass windows. But no matter the peculiar filing system, Alen, the suicidal drunkard, appeared to be able to find any volume he wanted, regardless of whether he was searching for an obscure reference to cheese or a mathematical algorithm governing motion in Twinmoon tides, within a few minutes.

  He had not spoken again of suicide, but Hannah knew he was still drinking heavily in secret. She often heard him in the hallway maze at night, and in the morning she would find the empty bottles or flagons. One night she heard him stumble past her chamber door, then pause and retrace his steps. As he stood outside her room, Hannah fought the desire to throw open the door and ask what he wanted. He didn’t knock, or try to force his way in, but after a long while, he whispered, ‘We shall both get what we want, Hannah Sorenson.’

  She heard him later that night as he rounded a corner somewhere near the front of the house and cried out, ‘Jer.’ The muffled cry was filled with such pain it almost broke her heart. It reminded her of Branag and his lonely vigil at the leather shop: Children are as close as we are allowed to come to feeling as though we have, for just a moment, been singled out by the gods. That was what Branag had told her. Hannah realised suddenly this struggle was real, this strange land, with all its peculiarities, was made up of ordinary people who were wrapped up in their desperate fight for freedom from an all-powerful dictator with legions of soldiers to deploy at his whim. They did commonplace things, like caring for their families, and adoring their childr
en above everything.

  Commonplace normal things, she thought. Things I would expect from— Hannah paused before admitting — from people back home, from people like me. The walls of her bedchamber seemed to close in on her. Nothing was different. ‘Children are as close as we are allowed to come to feeling as though we have, for just a moment, been singled out by the gods,’ she whispered to herself. It was love, compassion, and a genuine desire for all the things Hannah had once believed unique to the narrow world from which she came that fuelled this revolution.

  Before drifting off, she heard Alen again. ‘We shall both get what we want, Hannah Sorenson.’

  THE PICKET LINE

  Mark watched the sun come up. Its glow shone through the branches with a comforting predictability. He stoked their campfire, drew a large packet of tecan leaves from his sack and began brewing a pot as the grey colours of pre-dawn magically gave way to the myriad hues of autumn. Red maple, yellow oak and fiery aspen mixed with the stolid evergreens to create a morning palate so picturesque he could almost taste it. Far behind him winter raged about the Blackstones: he could just make out the craggy white, grey and black peaks jutting above the horizon like the spiked backbone of an ancient dragon. Mark inhaled the essence of a Falkan autumn, chill despite the sun.

  He hummed quietly to himself, pleased he could hear again. Two days after the battle on the underground lake Steven remained unconscious – he had taken a tremendous blow to the head, and then nearly drowned beneath the weight of the dead bone-collector – but Mark thought he might wake soon. After hauling Steven into the longboat, Mark had cleared his friend’s lungs and restarted his heart with a flurry of blows. Steven’s nose had bled for a while, and he’d coughed up a few mouthfuls of blood, but by the end of the first night, his condition had improved markedly. Fearing concussion, they had taken turns waking him periodically to answer simple questions, and he had given groggy but accurate answers each time.

  Mark wondered if the staff’s magic had been helping Steven’s recovery: it seemed to him that the magic had somehow permeated Steven’s body and now refused to allow him to die. There was no other way Steven could have survived the bone-collector’s attack. Mark worried for a moment about how he would manage the transition to life in back in Colorado then, catching himself, he stifled a laugh. ‘Too far ahead, dummy. First things first.’

  He poured himself a mug and winced as he took a seat beside a maple tree. Gita had applied querlis to his injured stomach before Hall had neatly stitched the loose flaps of skin back together – he was a cobbler, and skilled with a needle and thread. Mark ran the flat of his palm across the scar: very neat. Breathing the fresh sea air, he let his thoughts wander back to his dream. With everything that had happened, he’d had no time to think about Nerak’s possible weakness.

  He let his mind drift back in time.

  The rosewood box lay on Steven’s desk in the corner of their living room. The tapestry was stretched out on the floor in front of the fireplace – they’d pushed the coffee table back against the couch to make room for it. Mark would never forget the shimmer that played in the air, or the tiny flecks of coloured light that danced about like a wellspring of magic and energy emanating from the far portal.

  Afraid that the tapestry was radioactive, they’d planned to hurry back to Owen’s Pub and call the police – or perhaps a geologist, or a radiation expert. But they never made it: as Steven rushed down the hallway to grab Mark’s coat from the kitchen, Mark stood up and tripped on the hearth. As he stumbled, he planted one foot firmly on the tapestry – and an instant later it had come down in a shallow stream running into the ocean south of Rona’s forbidden forest.

  Beside the fire, Brynne stirred, roused by the aroma of tecan. She lifted her head and sniffed, and looked around for Mark; he gave her a quick, reassuring wave and was pleased when she smiled and rolled back over. She was obviously still as tired as she looked: she was asleep again almost immediately.

  The beach in Estrad had been hot and humid: Mark had pulled off his sweater and boots. He had spent much of that night mapping the unfamiliar constellations in the sand, poking holes to mirror the heavens. None of the patterns were even remotely familiar, even after racking his brain to recall any obscure Scandinavian, African, or South American star shapes. And there were two moons. Nothing could explain that away. Mark remembered leaving his star map to wade through the cool ocean water as it pushed and pulled at his legs.

  With every group of stars he drew on Rona’s sedimentary canvas, his hopes for a sensible explanation had waned. By the time he fell asleep, he had accepted that either he was dead, or something impossible had happened.

  But had he dreamed that night? He turned the question over and over in his mind, but had to give up. He had no idea. But something about that night continued to play about in his memory. He’d been half drunk. He remembered looking around for cigarette butts, cans or wrappers and finding nothing, and he remembered sitting down heavily in the sand and digging parallel ruts in the ground with his heels, something he always did when he sat in sand. He had done it that night.

  That was it. Not a dream, but a memory. What had he been thinking about while he sat there digging his heels into the sand? What had he remembered – and why was it important? It was important: it was the only time in those early days in Eldarn when he was not frightened, when he had not cared that he had gone from Idaho Springs, Colorado, to Estrad Beach in Who-the-Hell-Knew-Where? For those few moments, he was back on Jones Beach with his family and things were fine. He was safe.

  A flood of memories washed over him: he was staring out at the twin moons hovering overhead, recalling his father, the large yellow beach umbrella and the summer days on Jones Beach. His father would sit in a folding lawn chair drinking beer. Mark had been drunk when he arrived in Eldarn, drunk on beer he and Steven had consumed over a pizza – so why was that important? And why had he felt completely at home on that beach, not ten minutes after the most profound and unusual experience of his entire life? He had fallen through a crack in the universe, had found himself in another world – maybe even another time – and an errant memory had brought him peace.

  It meant something, but he was missing the point. His father sitting on Jones Beach, drinking beer and eating ham sandwiches: that was the dream and the recollection. Mark sat on a beach in Estrad digging ruts in the sand with his heels. He had dug ruts in the sand as a child. The beach? The beer? His father.

  ‘Sonofabitch,’ Mark cried and leaped to his feet, spilling his tecan over his sweater. ‘Lessek!’ He was not missing an important lesson, he was missing a message: Lessek was trying to tell him something. Mark sat down and ordered himself to start again at the beginning.

  It took two days for the small company to reach the outskirts of Orindale. They had been forced to take cover a number of times to avoid occupation forces patrolling the roads; thankfully, the horses could be heard thundering towards them from a great distance. Garec finally suggested they leave the road and use a parallel path through the forest, slower, but with less risk of being spotted. That night they huddled in a thick clump of trees. The Twinmoon was nearly complete and in the northern sky the two glowing bodies appeared to merge into one. The winds began to blow off the ocean with a fury: the tides would be high.

  North lay the Malakasian army lines, their fortifications and trenches circling the city. Gita had not exaggerated: there were tens of thousands of soldiers. The light from their fires lit the horizon, like a great swathe of stars fallen to the ground. The random flickering gave the city the illusion of motion. The ocean breeze blew the smells of the army – smoke, grilled meat and open latrines – into the thicket where the friends were hiding. From this distance it was impossible to determine which platoons were Seron and which were traditional soldiers, but it made no real difference: one look was enough to tell them their tiny band of ragged freedom fighters would need an Abrams tank to break through those lines. Steven rubbed his temples. He
was still getting headaches after his confrontation with the bone-collector, but this one was noticeably weaker: he hoped that was a good sign.

  He remembered virtually nothing after the moment the Cthulhoid cavern dweller attacked him. He had a hazy recollection of Gita’s hideout, a large granite cave located somewhere near the surface, but he had no memory of either the fight or the journey through the upper caves to the Falkan forest beyond.

  He was back in his tweed jacket. It had been washed, and covered a trimly cut tunic he assumed had come from the partisans. He felt clean and presentable for the first time in months. Garec’s quivers were filled and even Mark’s red sweater had scrubbed up nicely. Their packs were stuffed with dried fruit, smoked meat, bread and cheese and each skin was filled to bursting with a sweet Falkan wine that reminded Steven of a vintage Tokaji. Mark had a pouch of tecan leaves. Steven smiled: were it not for the thousands of enemy warriors encamped several hundred paces away, they might have been on an autumn camping trip.

  They had approached the shore carefully: Garec and Mark had been wary of mounted patrols, while Steven could not help scanning the skies for the clouds of deadly mist Hall had described so vividly. Just before sundown they had spotted several of the deadly clouds massed over the Malakasian fortifications, quiet sentries hovering threateningly overhead like an Old Testament nightmare. Steven shuddered at the thought of battling the nebulous enemy.