Lessek's Key

by Rob Scott; Jay Gordon

  In all his life, Churn had never seen anyone who could climb a tree like that girl – through the haze of his injuries he had wondered if she was some kind of magician, perhaps half-woman, half-cat, she climbed the old cottonwood with such graceful ease. She found a solid branch near the top and looped the rope over and back down to her companions, who were impatiently barking orders up at her. They were all obviously relishing stringing-up their trophy, the killer of three of their brethren, and looking forward to leaving him there to die, slowly and in great pain.

  As soon as his feet left the ground, Churn had started gasping for breath; his head was bleeding and his body was in screaming agony, but he was more frightened of suffocation. His head and shoulders crashed through the lower branches, sometimes stopping with a jolt, but each time he thought they’d give up and tie him off there, the half-cat-girl with the grim, pretty face would swing over to dislodge him so he could continue his journey into the upper branches. When she finally secured him, fifty paces above his family farm, she hadn’t noticed the thin branch jutting out of the trunk, but Churn counted it among the greatest strokes of good luck in his lifetime.

  Though he faded in and out of consciousness, he remained lucid enough to keep his toes pressed firmly against the twig, taking enough of his weight that he could breathe a little. While he waited for it to snap, he thanked the snow for waking him.

  He looked around, but there was no trace of the Malakasians below. He could see his sister and parents lying motionless in the grass below, and tried hoarsely to shout down to them. Perhaps they didn’t know he was here …

  There’s that tugging again, from my left. Someone’s pulling on my arm.

  They were dead. There was no way they could have survived the beating they had taken. Churn didn’t bother wondering why the squad had chosen this farm on this day (was it yesterday? How long have I been up here?) – trying to understand why the Malakasian Army acted with such brutality was like trying to understand their enigmatic leader.

  The Pragan farmer who had grown as strong as a bull heaving bales up into the loft of his father’s barn dangled like a macabre ornament from the snowy branches of the cottonwood tree. He could see his sister’s cloak was soaked through where her neck had bled so badly. There was so much blood – it had stained the ground around her dark brown. Blood is supposed to be red. This isn’t right.

  His father’s arm had been severed at the elbow. His old sword, little more than a rusty dagger, was still gripped in the missing hand. Churn would remember his father’s wailing scream for the rest of his life: he screamed until one of the Malakasians had hit him hard across the temple with a cudgel. There had been a snapping sound, and his father’s voice had been cut off in mid-cry.

  His mother was dead too. She’d huddled on the ground, trying to revive Churn’s father. She hadn’t posed a threat; she hadn’t fought back, and they might have overlooked her, if she hadn’t run for the house when she saw the flames. There had been so much other brutality to distract them; they hadn’t realised the soldiers’ fire had kindled into a raging blaze, engulfing their house. Doren had been in there, Churn’s younger brother, the baby of the family.

  Churn’s mother had ignored the inferno and burst through the front door, screaming to the gods of the Northern Forest – and then she had fallen silent. She hadn’t come out, and Churn couldn’t bear to think what his mother had seen before she had been swallowed by the flames.

  Now his abused voice was a rasp at the back of his throat, but still Churn screamed as the smell of burning ash assaulted his nostrils. Flailing about in mental and physical agony, he finally managed to break the rope, and started crashing back down through the branches until the plank crossbeam caught in the juncture of two thick branches. Churn felt both shoulders come free from their sockets, the cartilage torn through, and he struck the ground with a thud that knocked the wind from his lungs – an unwelcome irony after he had struggled so hard to get any air in there at all. And then he screamed again, a dry wheeze that eventually faded to silence.

  Kantu chanted the spell. It wasn’t difficult to recall: he had used it thousands of times in the past five hundred Twinmoons. Just a few words, and the far portal would close and follow him – them – across the Fold. But not all of us. He closed his eyes and called it again just to be sure, steeling himself against the shrieking behind him. He couldn’t stand to hear it for another moment. The Larion leader couldn’t remember when he had started to cry; he was there now, crying, in the middle of the room. They had played with the baby here, reading her stories and watching her every move, as if nothing she might do or say in the entire span of her life was too insignificant to be missed by people who loved her that much. It was the room with the fireplace, but nothing burned in there now; it was too warm for a fire. Kantu wondered why there were still ashes in the fire grate. Why had they not cleaned those out last spring? Why keep a fireplace full of ashes all summer?

  In front of him, the yellow and green flecks of Larion sorcery danced in the air above the portal. It was time. His stomach clenched into a knot at the thought of it, but it was time. Nerak would kill them – Reia too – if he knew Pikan had been pregnant, and they couldn’t take that risk. But he would be back for her. That morning he had taken her out into the meadow beside the house, sat in the dewy grass, and wept. She had grabbed a lock of his hair in her tiny fist and cooed at him in her own esoteric language. It was there that Kantu’s heart had finally broken, among the British wildflowers Pikan loved so much. How could so many colours grow in one place together?

  He had promised Reia he would be back, soon, even if he had to kill Nerak himself.

  Now, with Pikan wailing, Kantu called the spell a third time – unnecessary, but he needed something to do while Pikan said goodbye – and that would take time they didn’t have. He was packed and ready, his notes rolled into scrolls. The portal was open and behind him – he couldn’t look back – Pikan was crying, ‘I can’t leave her here! She’s too small. She needs me. Please, please don’t make me do this.’

  There was nothing he could do to ease her pain. Kantu tossed their bag and his scrolls into the air above the portal. Both disappeared instantly. ‘Come,’ he said, firmly, trying not to sob himself, ‘it’s time.’ He turned, still not looking at the baby; he knew if he looked at her, he would take her back, whatever the consequences. ‘We’ll be back for her.’ He took Pikan by the shoulders, wrapped his arms around her and chanted the spell, avoiding her kicks.

  He carried her to the far portal and she wept, ‘I can’t leave her! Don’t make me leave her! Reia! I love you, Reia! I’ll be back for you. Mama will be back!’ Pikan was raving, reaching for the baby, who cried and screamed in the arms of the silent surrogate mother who would raise her until the Larion couple’s return.

  With a final glance at the cold, ash-filled fireplace, Kantu, carrying Pikan, stepped through the Fold and back into Eldarn.

  Hoyt pulled at his horse’s reins and the animal dutifully followed along. They had spent most of the day moving north through the forest of ghosts. Although he had been thankfully free of memories or visions from his own past, overhearing his friends as they relived anguish and pain had pushed him nearly to the screaming point himself. During a short midday-aven pause, Hoyt had tied a length of cloth over his ears in an effort to filter out Hannah’s pleas, Churn’s screams and Alen’s curious chanting, but it hadn’t helped.

  Two avens later, as the sun faded in the west, Hoyt decided to skip the evening meal and continue walking their party north, even if it took all night to get clear of the enchanted woods. He had seen other people during the day: disheartened figures, some wandering around, talking to themselves or ghosts of themselves, their parents, lovers, whomever. Others were sitting, jabbering at nothing while some lay silent, emaciated, dehydrated and dying in the wilderness. There were corpses, rotting and foetid; a wayward step had cost him his breakfast as his foot plunged through the chest cavity of a woman wh
o had died beside a brambly stand of evergreen brush. She had been so covered with leaves that he hadn’t seen her there.

  Several times Hoyt had tried to corral one of the other wanderers, but there had been no hope: none responded to his touch. They were all too far into madness to recognise or even care that someone might be attempting to lead them to safety. After a few aborted efforts, he had given up entirely.

  It had been slow going, with each of his friends determined at one time or another to kneel or even lie down as they wrestled their demons. They had drunk greedily as Hoyt offered them water, and Churn had eaten a few bits of dried meat, though neither Alen nor Hannah would take any food. They had soiled their leggings at least once during the day.

  Now they trudged behind him like walking dead, their wrists looped securely through the reins, responding when he tugged on their arms or clucked their horses along. None of them appeared to have emerged from their daze, even momentarily, all day. He stepped over a rotting log and as he turned to make certain each of his travelling companions could manage, Hoyt considered how many days they would be able to survive in the forest – only another day or two, he thought. Much longer than that, he would have to find some way to get them to eat. Keeping them hydrated was challenge enough, but feeding them while they screamed, begged or chanted verged on impossible.

  The noise really was the worst part: Hoyt didn’t mind that they had shat themselves or that they didn’t eat; he could bear walking all day with no one to chat to, but the incessant repetition of whatever the forest of ghosts had found in their past was really driving him mad. Not even Alen’s spell had done much good, though he was sure he has been saying it correctly. During the middlenight aven, he finally broke and shouted at them, ‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut up, for the love of all the gods of the Northern Forest!’

  The only response came from Hoyt’s horse: startled at the sudden outburst, it nickered and pawed at the ground with one hoof.

  ‘What? Oh, you think it’s funny?’ he asked the tired mount. ‘Of course, you do. You don’t mind six avens of mindless babble, and Churn – for rutting sake, Churn, who I have never heard speak – has not stopped screaming since morning.’ Hoyt took a huge gulp from one of the wineskins and nibbled at a bit of stale bread. ‘You’d think he would have lost his voice for good after screaming all day.’

  Now even his horse ignored him. Hoyt spat a few curses at the Pragan night and pushed on through the trees. The Eldarni moons gave a little light, but Hoyt began to grow tired, and worried that one of them – or worse, one of the horses – might miss a step and turn an ankle or take a tumble. He shivered as an eerie moan drifted from somewhere off to his left: the sound of a lost soul wandering in the darkness.

  ‘All right. One more hill, and then we’ll rest for a while,’ he said, giving a parting glance towards the voice, and tugged his horse’s reins. ‘Let’s go.’

  When they crested the next rise, the light from the twin moons and a hundred thousand Eldarni stars illuminated a massive clearing, dotted here and there with boulders and a few scrubby pines growing low to the ground. To the east, the rise and fall of the foothills hardened into a craggy cliff face jutting up in the first of what he guessed was row upon row of eastern peaks. To the west, he could see mountains rising in the distance.

  Before them, the ground fell away; less than a hundred paces north, the world ended in a chasm that fractured the very foundations of the earth. Hoyt had no idea how deep it was, or how steeply it sloped, but he would take no chances. First he would lash his friends to a sturdy tree, then build a small fire and to take what rest he could before facing the next stage of their journey.

  He dropped his reins and patted his horse on the neck. ‘Good job today.’

  ‘Hoyt?’ someone called.

  ‘Rutting whores!’ he screeched, nearly tumbling down the slope.

  ‘Hoyt?’ The voice came again and for the first time since he stepped into the clearing, the Pragan realised his friends had fallen silent.

  He scrambled to his feet and called, ‘Yes. Who is that?’

  ‘It’s me, Alen – I’m pretty tired. Can we take a break here?’ He was already spreading his cloak on the ground, apparently oblivious to the fact that he had walked all day without sitting, that he had eaten nothing since the pre-dawn aven and had relieved himself as he walked.

  ‘Uh, yes, that’s what I was checking,’ Hoyt said. ‘This is a good spot. You sleep. I’ll make a fire.’

  ‘Good. Thanks.’ The old man was asleep beside Churn and Hannah almost before he’d stopped talking.

  THE SALT MARSH

  Brexan’s foot came down in thick black mud that stank of salt and decay and she cursed as she pulled her boot out. It was cold this morning, made worse by the wind off the water. She was glad she had changed from her skirt, for the weather felt as though it had finally shifted from autumn into winter. The salt marsh stretched east and north, swallowing the Falkan coastline in a plain of wetlands. Rushes, most of them naked stalks this late in the season, dominated the coarse cordgrass and bog sedges which carpeted the ground in thick tufts of green, resiliently holding the vestiges of their summer colour despite the encroaching winter.

  To her left, muddy flats sloped for several hundred paces to the lapping waters of the Ravenian Sea. The uniform expanse of low-tide mud was a monochromatic painting of the ocean floor and Brexan wondered if all the vast seas of the world were as boring beneath the surface. Far to the north she could just make out a stream meandering its way across the flats and into the sea.

  As she scraped a clinging lump of mud from her boots, hundreds of tiny seeds exploded from the reeds and caught on her clothes and in her hair; Brexan imagined she looked frightful, splattered knee-deep in mud and decorated head and shoulders in marsh spores. She pressed on regardless, shouldering her way through the rushes using the patches of cordgrass as stepping stones to navigate a relatively dry path through the estuary.

  It had been eight days since Sallax and Jacrys, locked in grim battle, had fallen into invisibility at the end of the alley behind the alehouse. She had spent every day since searching for Sallax, while checking in what she hoped were unpredictable intervals over her shoulder for the spy. Her daily explorations had been carefully planned; moving in concentric circles out from the alehouse, Brexan had searched, backtracked and searched again.

  She had first seen Sallax in the woods south of the city, but when she found no sign of him there, she decided to search the salt marsh north of the city. The Ronan freedom fighter could find numerous places in which to hide in this beautiful – if inhospitable – territory. Brexan had seen no one out here all morning; it didn’t look like the Orindale inhabitants made a habit of visiting the estuary during the winter.

  ‘Or during the summer, for that matter,’ she said. ‘The rutting bugs and snakes would be thick on the ground – I suppose this is the best time to be slopping around in this muck.’ She kicked at the discarded bones of a dead seabird, once a hearty meal for a marsh fox or perhaps a wildcat.

  As a child, Brexan had been enthralled and terrified in equal part by the horror stories her father told her on cold winter evenings. There was nowhere in the Eastlands where the weather was quite as bitter as it was in Malakasia, and to pass the time, especially those interminable dark spells that blanketed most of her homeland in mid-winter, her father would make up stories of lunatic madmen on killing rampages, and demonic, one-eyed beasts hunting the Northern Forest for wayward children. From the adjacent room, her mother would invariably bark unheeded warnings to her father: ‘She’s not old enough for such tales,’ and ‘you can be the one to sit up with her all night, you great buffoon.’ But Brexan hadn’t cared; sleepless nights were never her concern. She would squeal with delight every time an unsuspecting villager wandered too far into the forest or when one of their wagons broke down, losing a wheel or ripping a leather bridle when they were too far into uncharted lands ever to make it home alive. And at the moment
when the one-eyed ogre reached a muscular paw out from behind a stand of evergreens or a pack of rabid rodents gnawed through the leather slats holding the barn door closed to overwhelm the hero in a flurry of tiny teeth and poisoned claws, Brexan would dive beneath the blanket her father had been using to keep the chill off his legs and shiver and cry, frightened to within a hair’s breadth of collapse – but still begging for just one more.

  Later, when she had grown and enlisted in the Malakasian Army, Brexan had periodically run up against one of her father’s old stories. Sleeping alone in a foreign inn, walking back from guard duty in the overnight avens or visiting the facilities after twilight, she would sometimes catch a chill scent or detect an imagined whisper caressing the nape of her neck. She would turn quickly on her heel, shouting, ‘Who’s there?’ to the empty space. No one was ever behind her, no rabid rodents hunting her down; no ogres reaching out hungrily. Brexan couldn’t escape those stories; scores of Twinmoons later, her father could scare her witless, even from the other side of Eldarn.

  He had been with her this morning; on more than one occasion she had checked the cordgrass with a stick, half expecting to find a marsh adder coiled up and waiting for a taste of human blood or a pack of wild dogs crouching in the rushes, eager to hamstring her and rip mouthfuls of flesh from her defenceless body. As she tromped through the mud Brexan had tried to shut out her father’s tales: it was a long walk back to the safety and anonymity of Orindale and she couldn’t conduct a thorough search for Sallax with her father’s ghosts leaping out from behind every clump of grass.

  Periodically she stopped to stare out over the flats: if Sallax were on the marsh somewhere, she might catch a glimpse of him moving through the rushes or across the mud. Brexan figured he was still wearing the black cloak, but he should be easy to spot – even with the curious stooped position he’d adopted as part of his disguise as a beggar, he was still tall enough to stand out.