Lessek's Key

by Rob Scott; Jay Gordon

  Gilmour swallowed hard and tucked his shaking hands beneath his thighs, hoping to still them.

  Steven, misinterpreting Gilmour’s silence, retrieved the spell book from the pack beside them and said, ‘I’ve been paging through it a bit myself.’

  Gilmour started. ‘You have? When?’

  ‘Sorry – I didn’t think you’d mind.’ A little abashed, Steven closed the book and tried to hand it over. ‘You know, that night on the Prince Marek, it was different. When I touched the book, it was like I had fallen into a pit and couldn’t get out – maybe didn’t want to get out; there was light and colour, and things made sense, even things I had never imagined, things I never knew existed. Everything seemed logical, like there was an order to what was and what could or couldn’t be.

  ‘But since then, something’s happened – maybe because the book isn’t on the ship anymore – but I can touch it now, open it, read the text, whatever. But I didn’t realise you wanted me to stay away from it, so I’ll leave it to you. I’m really sorry.’

  Gilmour ignored the spell book Steven was still holding out towards him. ‘No, no, that’s fine – of course you can read it if you wish.’ He gestured for Steven to take it back, then said casually, ‘Can you understand the text?’

  ‘Nope, almost none of it – although I can make out a few words here and there. What language is this, anyway?’ He turned a few pages idly.

  ‘It is a very old, very dead form of Malakasian.’ Gilmour was sweating now.

  ‘So Nerak was from Malakasia?’

  The old man struggled to hear over his pounding heart; it was getting harder to stay focused on their conversation.

  No, I guess Lessek had to be from Malakasia.’ Steven answered his own question as he mouthed a word or two, and then snapped the book shut. ‘Well, this is all yours, Gilmour – I’m afraid it won’t do any good in my hands.’ He held it out once again and this time, hesitantly, Gilmour took it.

  In the moment before Steven closed the book, Gilmour had read the same words, the ash dream. He tried to hide the fact that he was in a state: he was panting as if a great weight had landed on his chest, and his ribs burned where they had cracked that night along the fjord.

  For the first time since Gilmour had joined him, Steven noticed something was wrong. ‘Are you okay? What do you think? Can you do it?’

  ‘To answer your earlier question, yes, I have opened it. And can I use it? Honestly? No.’ Gilmour retreated to the comforting idea that had kept him going. ‘We have the key, and I know there is something in the third Windscroll that I am supposed to find, and that’s a place to begin. We have to get to Sandcliff as quickly as possible, preferably before Nerak finds a way back from Colorado, because I shall need as much time as possible to find the scroll, open the spell table and work out how the two must work together if we’re to banish him and seal the Fold for ever. I know something about your trip back home has made you confident we’ll be able to do this, but I must admit, my own confidence has been waning somewhat since that night on the harbour.’ He massaged his ribs again.

  ‘But why? Because of the book? Maybe the book doesn’t enter into the equation,’ Steven cajoled him. ‘Look, the key opened the Fold, Gilmour. I saw it. The whole world stopped and melted into a canvas with three rips in it. I saw right through one of them to where the far portal was buried beneath two tons of rotting meat and disposable diapers. That key is formidable. If it can give us the Fold’s mystical dimensions – and it must have worked once, because Lessek was able to open the portal gates and keep them opened at will – then we can shut them, I know we can. You can do it, Gilmour, because we will have the same power Lessek had when he created the far portal in the first place.’

  Gilmour sighed. ‘I wish I had your confidence, my friend.’

  ‘You do have my confidence,’ Steven said, ‘because closing the damned Fold for ever is only the first thing we need to do for Eldarn – and I know it can be done. I’ve seen it.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then, we revolt.’

  ‘All right.’ Gilmour, looking tired, nodded more emphatically. ‘All right. The third Windscroll. Gods grant it’s still there.’

  ‘It will be.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because if Nerak knew his weaknesses were documented in that scroll, he would have destroyed it by now, or he would have—’

  ‘Put it in your bank.’

  ‘Put it in my bank, right.’

  ‘The third Windscroll.’ Gilmour held out his hand.

  Steven clasped it and felt the sinewy strength of the old fisherman’s grip. ‘The third Windscroll. When can we get there?’

  ‘It will only be a few more days.’

  ‘Let’s get on with it, as soon as Mark and Garec get back.’

  Nerak slammed on the brakes, throwing the pick-up into a tailspin and causing several cars behind him to take to the shoulder in an effort to avoid a multi-car pile-up.

  ‘Hey asshole!’ someone shouted, ‘play with it later in the bathroom, huh? Give us a break!’

  The dark prince, cloaked now in Jennifer Sorenson’s postman, a forty-six-year-old listed as missing with the Denver Police, glared at the passing motorist and noted the car, a white Ford driven by a woman with a comical hairstyle and three silver rings in her left earlobe. ‘I will deal with you later,’ he said, then, ignoring the horns and shouted abuse of the townsfolk and tourists making their way into Silverthorn, he rested his head against the rear window of the cab and closed his eyes.

  It was the book; Fantus had opened the book again. How could the snivelling sap be that stupid? ‘Did you not believe me, Fantus?’ he muttered.

  Almost as quickly as it had come, the sensation was gone; the book was closed, but Nerak wasn’t concerned. ‘I’ll be waiting next time,’ he promised, putting the car back into drive and pressing the accelerator. Though the tyres spun on the snow-packed highway, he picked up speed down the slope into Silverthorn. He had a sense of where he would find Jennifer and his far portal, but if Fantus and that irritating foreigner continued to experiment with Lessek’s spell book, he wouldn’t need her at all.

  ‘Read all you like, Fantus,’ Nerak said. ‘It will be more than your ribs I break next time, my old friend.’ As he pushed a wad of Confederate Son into his mouth, he came alongside the white Ford. He slowed to match the woman’s speed, and waved until she turned to look at him, then offered her a broad, tobacco-stained grin. She tried to let him overtake, but Nerak kept pace with her, slowing as she slowed and speeding up as necessary, looking at her constantly through the window.

  When she tried to turn onto the exit ramp for Silverthorn, Nerak took over, laughing as she struggled to turn the frozen steering wheel. He pressed his foot to the floor, revving the pick-up’s engine, and this time the white Ford kept pace with him.

  He drove faster and faster, until the pick-up’s engine was screeching in protest, topping a hundred miles per hour, the dark prince gestured at the dashboard and the speedometer began climbing again: one hundred and five, one hundred and fifteen, one hundred and eighteen miles per hour – and still the woman in the white Ford kept pace. She was screaming now, and beating at her window, pleading with – God? – someone, anyway, in amusingly inaudible cries, for her shouts were drowned by the din of the two engines. He shattered both windows, his and hers, with a glance, all the better to hear her beg for her life.

  ‘I’ll think of you later as I play with it in the bathroom!’ he shouted. ‘And I thank you for the advice – I hadn’t realised playing with it in the middle of the road was so inappropriate. I really do owe you my thanks.’ He laughed, spraying tobacco-juice everywhere. Some dripped into the sore on the back of the postal worker’s hand.

  The woman screamed for him to stop, to slow down and to let her go.

  Nerak turned his attention to the highway ahead. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘here’s just the thing.’ A logging truck, fully loaded with stripped pine trunks,
was in the path of the speeding Ford as it inched up a short incline. Nerak turned to watch the woman again as her earrings caught the sunlight. At the last moment, her hands bloody and torn from ripping away the broken glass from the window, she tried to climb out of her car, but half out, she seemed to change her mind. Her blouse was ripped and she was bleeding from dozens of cuts. With the car bearing down on the trailer at over a hundred and twenty miles per hour, she made a final attempt to escape—

  It was too late.

  Nerak thought her the most beautifully wretched woman he had seen in several hundred Twinmoons.

  ‘You ought to be more polite, my dear,’ the dark prince shouted as he allowed his pick-up to break away and watched the Ford disappear beneath the back of the logging truck with a resounding crash of tearing metal and shattering glass.

  The woman with the silly hairstyle and the silver earrings, trapped halfway out of the window, had been cut neatly in half. Now the upper part of her torso bounced along the highway until it came to rest in a snowbank. What was left of her car was dragged behind the truck for a while, then slid off the road into a snowy ditch as logs tumbled and rolled from the overturned trailer. Traffic screeched to a stop, and a few Samaritans hustled up the shoulder on foot.

  Amusing himself with the irritating woman’s murder had made Nerak miss the exits for Silverthorn and Breckenridge. He slowed down and, ignoring the cars in both directions blasting their horns as they stomped on their brakes to avoid hitting him, made a U-turn into the eastbound lane.

  ‘Silverthorn,’ he said firmly. ‘She’s in Silverthorn.’

  It was dark when Garec and Mark returned from the meadow, lugging a deer’s hind quarter and several bloody chunks of flesh, more than enough meat to sustain the four men for several nights. As sorry as Garec was to leave the bulk of the deer’s body abandoned in the meadow, they would reach Traver’s Notch before they would need to replenish their stores again. He doubted the deer’s carcase would last the night; there was no shortage of local predators to make use of it.

  Steven rose when he saw the others come into the firelight. ‘All right, Garec! I’m glad to see you’re back to normal – good for you!’

  ‘Much as I appreciate the sentiment, Steven,’ Garec said, ‘tonight’s credit goes to Mark.’

  No!’ Steven looked as his friend in astonishment. ‘You did this?’

  Mark nodded.

  ‘You?Mister-Greenpeace-Loving-Earth-First-Soya-Milk-Bleeding-Liberal-Anti-NRA-Gun-Control-Advocate-High-School-Teacher? You shot Bambi with a bow?’

  ‘Bambi’s mother, actually,’ Mark smiled. ‘Bambi was a buck.’

  ‘A buck? You mean a little boy deer? You’re from New York, Mark – since when do New Yorkers shoot Bambi’s mother with a bow?’

  ‘One shot,’ Garec said, ‘through the lung. It wasn’t pretty and we had to track her for a stretch through those trees and then out into the plain, but she finally fell. It’s sad that she suffered a bit.’

  ‘Through the lung,’ Mark repeated. ‘I missed the heart. It was grim. I’ll have to be more careful next time.’

  ‘How about next time, we go into some town and buy a few grettan burgers?’ Steven said. ‘Really. On me. I’ve got several hundred thousand left in silver. I’ll spring for pickles, onions, the works.’

  Mark turned to Garec. ‘Will the hide make it to the next town without rotting?’

  Steven hadn’t seen the length of rolled deerskin draped over Mark’s shoulder. ‘The hide? And what are we going to do with that, Uncas? Are you making a pair of trews? Planning to sing with the Doors this summer?’

  ‘It’s for my bow,’ Mark said, waiting for Garec’s answer.

  ‘It should be fine,’ Garec said. ‘We’ve scraped it fairly clean and we’ll salt and soak it tomorrow – even if it’s not dry by the time we have to ride again, it will keep until we can stretch and tan it properly.’

  ‘Great,’ Steven said, ‘well, keep me in mind for a nice football. Christmas is coming and I’ve got lovely woollen sweaters planned for you two. Of course, I’ll just need to borrow your bow the next time we come across a herd of sheep, Garec.’

  ‘Use the staff,’ Garec joked. ‘It’ll be easier – and far less messy.’

  ‘This will slow us down a bit tonight,’ Gilmour said, interrupting the banter, but it’s all right. Let’s get it cooked and eaten, and let’s get the rest wrapped up and ready to ride.’ He moved off to continue packing.

  ‘What’s with him?’ Mark asked.

  Steven lowered his voice. ‘He’s not sure he’s up to the task ahead. You’ve seen how fast we’re travelling every night. He’s moving towards a conflict that may kill us all – him too.’

  ‘It’s worse than that,’ Garec whispered as well. ‘If he can’t use the key, or the scroll, it won’t be much of a conflict at all.’

  ‘You’re right, Garec,’ Mark said. ‘We may get crushed before we have a chance to get in the game.’

  ‘I wish he was more confident,’ Steven said. ‘I mean, what choice does he have now? Hell, we’re going to be there in a couple of days.’

  ‘One hundred and thirty-five years of preparation and hiding? I’d be nervous, too,’ Mark said.

  ‘Yes, but this is something more. He is questioning things he put in motion, that got us started along this path from the beginning. Remember when we came down from Seer’s Peak? He was excited about the Windscrolls because Lessek told him Nerak’s weakness lies elsewhere. He was relieved that we hadn’t made the mistake of charging into Welstar Palace and getting ourselves killed.’

  ‘Right,’ Garec said, ‘hearing from Lessek was lucky. So we turned to Sandcliff and the scroll library. What’s your point?’

  ‘I got the sense from him tonight that even this plan to get the key and the scroll might not be the right one.’

  ‘But we’ve known that all along,’ Mark said. ‘Everyone knew we were essentially flying blind.’

  ‘But it was Gilmour’s confidence that got us here. He didn’t want us doing anything until he read that scroll and had some time to experiment with the spell table.’

  ‘And now he’s questioning that?’

  ‘Right – but I don’t know why. Something happened to him while I was gone. Nerak must have said something, or done something – you should have seen him tonight; I couldn’t even get him to touch that spell book, never mind read it. Did he look at it at all while I was gone?’

  Garec looked thoughtful. ‘Come to think of it, I’ve never even seen him open it.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Mark added. ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Steven said. ‘Ride hard, get to Sandcliff as quickly as we can, and do whatever we need to get him as much time with that table as possible before Old Shithead gets back. More than that, I’m at a loss.’

  ‘What about the staff?’ Garec asked. ‘You seem to have some idea how to make it work for you these days.’

  ‘Somewhat,’ Steven answered, ‘but most of the time, it feels like the magic comes and goes of its own will. I’ve called it up myself, but not as frequently as it has shown up unannounced.’

  ‘Or not bothered to show up at all,’ Mark said, recalling the staff’s failure battling the river demon in Meyers’ Vale.

  ‘That’s true, too, but I did something the day I was at the dump and I know if I could get back to that level of— I don’t even know what, but that frame of mind I was in, maybe: if I can get back to that, I bet I could do it. I could close the Fold myself.’ He tried to grip the air above their campfire – that was the clearest recollection he had, that he had been able to feel the very air around him. The Fold was everywhere, and that day Steven had been able to touch it.

  Mark clapped his roommate on the shoulder, jolting him back to the present. ‘You know I love you, buddy, but let’s hope it doesn’t all come down to your all-encompassing maths-and-compassion strategy.’

  ‘It’s right there, Mark. I can taste it… but I can’t
quite get it in focus. It’s like your struggle to make sense of Lessek and your dad. We are on the verge of having this entire dilemma worked out, but until we do …’ his voice trailed off.

  ‘We’re in some grand rutting trouble.’ Garec finished the thought.

  Steven nodded.

  ‘Well, you heard Gilmour. We can continue pondering our collective quandaries while we skin and cook this meat. He’s made it quite clear he wants to get moving, so let’s get busy.’

  ORINDALE’S SOUTHERN WHARF

  ‘Great rutting whores,’ Jacrys exclaimed, ‘what’s happened to you?’

  Carpello Jax pulled the door closed and took a seat beside the spy. He did look different – thinner – and his beard had filled in nicely. The sore on the side of his nose was disgusting: raw and festering, obviously infected because he’d constantly picked at it. Now Carpello dabbed at it periodically with a handkerchief. He stretched his feet towards the fireplace. ‘I am making some rudimentary changes to my appearance. It has come to my attention that this may be an appropriate time for me to fade into the background for a while.’

  ‘You?’ Jacrys laughed, ‘when everyone knows who you are? Half the city works for you. Your captains cross the Ravenian Sea to Pellia on a timetable more predictable than the Twinmoon. Your cargo is hauled upriver on gigantic barges for everyone in Malakasia to see. You’re supplying an army, Carpello … forgive me, but I don’t believe shedding some excess blubber and carving a hole in the side of your face are going to make much of a difference. And good gods, why did you cut off half your nose, anyway?’

  ‘It’s no matter,’ Carpello replied, waving the question away. ‘It is something that needed to be attended to, and I have attended to it.’ Versen’s warning echoed in his memory: you’ll be dead and she will make it last for Twinmoons. ‘So tell me. Why are we meeting here and not at my home? And if you don’t mind me saying, you are hardly one to talk about personal appearance: you look hideous yourself. When is the last time you slept in a real bed, Jacrys? And your clothes – you were always such a smart dresser!’