‘No time for that now!’ Steven was agitated. ‘He’ll be back. I don’t know where he is, but he’ll be back. Can you cloak us?’
‘I—’
‘Gilmour!’ Steven barked. ‘Can you do it? Can you cloak us?’ The old man’s form stood out stark against the trees. ‘Well? Can you cloak us?’ he asked again.
‘Are you sure?’ Gilmour took a few tentative steps forward.
Without replying, Steven knelt beside the body and dug through the threadbare clothes until he found what he was looking for.
‘Yes,’ he said firmly, ‘I’m sure.’
Gilmour’s features hardened and a glimmer of angry confidence flashed in his eyes. ‘Then we must run, as quickly as possible. Come, right now, back the way we came. It’s the shortest path out of the valley.’
‘Can you cloak us?’
‘I don’t – I’m not certain … I’ll try, but we must run anyway. A cloaking spell won’t protect us for long.’
Mark regained his composure and yelled, ‘Steven what the hell is going on? You just hacked that guy in two. Jesus Christ, you killed him in cold blood. What’s this about?’
Steven tossed his roommate the thing he had removed from the dead man’s clothes: a crumpled red, white and blue pouch of Confederate Son chewing tobacco. ‘I knew I smelled something. I smelled it that day when he came after me in the mountains. Believe it or not, I could smell it on that old ram’s breath as it was pressing its face through the windshield of Howard’s T-Bird. This bastard had been chewing it sometime today.’
‘But how can that be?’ Mark didn’t know whether to look to Gilmour or to Steven for his answer. ‘I thought he had to—’
‘I don’t know,’ Steven said abruptly, ‘but Nerak’s back and he’s here, right here somewhere.’ He kicked the dead body aside, retrieved his saddlebag and began running back towards the street. ‘Come on. There’s no telling what he’ll do when he gets over the hit he just took.’
*
Nerak roared and the middlenight darkness that had swallowed him shuddered. Huge monolithic towers, ornate with carvings and stained-glass, rose up before him and collapsed beneath their own weight, the thunderous echo of destruction in their wake. Cities grew, withered and died before his scream faded and the light came, brightened, blinded him momentarily and then passed away. Smoke from gigantic forest fires rose in billowy clouds, lending colour to the night and choking off the cries of souls trapped for ever in his cavernous prison. Part of him was back inside the Fold. How had that happened? He could feel the earth, the frosty grass and the chill of the little river that passed through Traver’s Notch, but he couldn’t see them.
He screamed again, and his rage rattled the nothingness. Great stone keeps, palaces of granite and mortar, welled grandly up from the abyss, only to shatter in a hailstorm of grey and black stones. Reaching out with his mind, he found himself, dazed and wandering in the foothills outside Traver’s Notch. With careful concentration, Nerak elbowed his way back through the Fold and into northern Falkan.
He would kill Steven Taylor; nothing in the past thousand Twinmoons would come close to the pleasure he would enjoy torturing that boy for all time, an immortal prisoner for ever in pain, in an endless, empty cave.
It had been that rutting stick again. What had Fantus done to that thing? It had to be the most complicated and intricate spell the old milksop had ever done. He would get that stick. And that saddlebag had contained the key. It was inside a jacket, a colourful jacket of some foreign material, hidden inside the bag so as not to draw attention to the foreigners. But it was there. He would take the brown leather saddlebag and the wooden staff.
Steven Taylor had swiped at him in the Blackstone Mountains as well, but that had been when he had come as a grettan. Nerak had underestimated its strength that night and he had underestimated it again in Traver’s Notch. He had Jacrys to blame for that; the spy had never mentioned the power of that stick. He himself had not been able to detect it, even with his most sensitive and delicate webs. No matter. Jacrys’ day of reckoning was coming as well.
Reunited with his Eldarni form, Nerak tried to move back towards Traver’s Notch. He would wipe out the entire valley, eradicate every last person, in one swift and decisive blow. He would teach them to harbour his enemy, whether they knew what they were doing or not.
But something was amiss and he couldn’t make the connection complete. It wasn’t physical, whatever kept him from rejoining the frayed ends of his spirit, but something intangible, a gap in who he was and who he had been moments before Steven slashed at him.
Whatever had happened, Nerak was forced to take time to mend the rift Steven had torn in his being. That boy was dangerous; he would be Nerak’s next target, no matter that it was earlier than he had planned. He had figured to use Hannah Sorenson – she was easier to reach – but the hickory staff changed things. It would be Steven Taylor, and he would provide the final pieces to a puzzle he had been trying to complete for over a thousand Twinmoons. And it would be soon.
Struggling – and failing – to reconcile the twin halves of himself in the forested hillside above Traver’s Notch, Nerak’s anger overwhelmed him. ‘Steven Taylor!’ he screamed and entered a broad walnut tree, exploding it outwards into thousands of jagged splinters. The blast was deafening, and knocked a frightened forester to the ground. As he swirled about between the trees, Nerak felt better. He chose another, an old maple that still boasted a few bright red leaves, and blew it apart from within, shattering the relative silence and knocking the forester down for a second time. The devastation felt good, but Nerak wanted to be back in Traver’s Notch, watching Steven Taylor’s face as he first killed the bowman and then took the ignorant South Coaster. ‘My prince,’ he whispered contemptuously as he flitted through the trees.
When Nerak came across the terrified woodsman, he took him effortlessly, as he had done to so many others, so many times over the Twinmoons. They were all there to serve him: children, horses, women, it didn’t make any difference. The last one’s leg had dragged, broken worthless cripple that he was, but he had worked the cart, enjoying a mouthful of good South Carolina tobacco while he waited for Fantus to lead his pathetic little company across the bridge. That one hadn’t screamed either; too shocked or too rutting sorry for himself – many of his victims forgot to scream. Too surprised that it could possibly be happening to them – proud trash, that’s what they were. The woodsman had been no exception: he had stiffened for a moment as the life drained from his body, his hopes and dreams and memories pooling in a puddle at his feet. Nerak picked up the man’s axe, wiped his bloody wrist on his leggings and started back towards town.
Nerak looked down on Traver’s Notch and contemplated the valley. He couldn’t detect Fantus or the others anywhere below. He considered wiping the Traver’s Notch slate clean, as he had in Port Denis - it wouldn’t take much: a simple gesture and a few key words to call up the web of mystical power he had woven over the Twinmoons and Traver’s Notch would be gone.
But the dark prince hesitated. ‘If you do, they’ll know you’re back,’ he rationalised. He needed Fantus to believe him gone, perhaps for ever, but certainly struggling to recover from Steven Taylor’s attack – but this time he had surprise on his side, and he wouldn’t hesitate. He knew where the key was hidden. Steven Taylor and Fantus – Fantus! – were his biggest problems, so he would take one of them first, quickly and without warning. His desire to see if Steven Taylor screamed in the moment before death was overwhelming. He strode down into the town, intent on finding the party and discovering the answer for himself.
Then he stopped. ‘They’re making for Sandcliff,’ he said out loud. ‘They have the key and they’re heading for Sandcliff Palace.’ He started laughing. ‘What a perfect tomb for you, Fantus.’ He cast a fast-moving spell out and over the ridge to the east. He would find them; it wouldn’t take long. ‘Enjoy your journey, Fantus,’ he shouted. ‘Be sure I’ll be back to perform your rit
es.’
‘You have to do it,’ Gilmour shouted as they forced their way through the forest along the base of the ridge.
Steven shook his head. No, I can’t. I don’t know how.’
‘But you do. You have to trust that you do.’
‘You know the spell. All right, you were a bit flustered back there and I don’t know what’s wrong, but you need to get your wits back, Gilmour. You didn’t feel him, but we’ll worry about that another time. Right now, you have to figure out a way to keep him from finding us.’ Steven was adamant.
‘That’s my point,’ Gilmour said. ‘Any spell I use right now, he’s going to find me. We’re too close. He’ll sniff me out in no time.’
‘I don’t know how,’ Steven stammered, looking to Garec and Mark for help. ‘Yes, you do,’ Garec said. ‘Think of the night you saved me. If you hadn’t been there, I would be dead.’ He still wore his bow over one shoulder, but except for Mark’s lessons, he hadn’t nocked an arrow since leaving Orindale.
‘I can’t just call it up,’ Steven argued. ‘It wells up when it wants to – I’m lucky to be able to manipulate it at all.’
‘That’s not true,’ Mark stopped. The others turned to wait. ‘Steven, that’s not true and I think you know it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Remember when you used the staff in the foothills? You broke it against that Seron’s back and it was obvious that it was more than broken, because it didn’t just break like a stick breaks, it damned near shattered in your hands. You decided that it shattered because you had used it in anger to wound that Seron maliciously and that there was something about the staff that refused to be used like that. Isn’t that right?’
Steven nodded. ‘It always feels most right when I use it in a – well, in a compassionate way. I know that sounds stupid, because I’m fighting, but when I use it to help our cause and I show mercy, it’s stronger – it’s at its most powerful when I am controlling a situation so that no one gets hurt or killed.’
‘But that’s when the staff responds to your needs, to our needs, and I believe it does, Steven, I agree with you. Sometimes the magic does come of its own volition, but I don’t think you realise what you are capable of doing. I’ve seen you call up the magic – Hell, Steven, I’ve seen you do it without the staff. That day when Lessek’s key kept knocking you down at the dump? I’d bet dollars to doughnuts you were calling the magic up there, too, all the way back at home.’
There was an explosion behind them that echoed along the ridge. Steven turned to continue riding, but the others stood fast. ‘That was him,’ Steven said. ‘He’s back.’
Mark ignored him. ‘Steven, tell me why the staff didn’t shatter that day in the hills when you got so angry with Garec, you two almost killed each other?’
Steven recalled the morning with embarrassment – it hadn’t been his finest hour in Eldarn. By the end of that day, his leg was bitten through and he was bleeding to death in the snow. If Lahp hadn’t been shadowing him, he would have died alone that night. ‘I don’t know why. You’re right, I did it in a rage and the staff should have broken against that tree.’ He shrugged. ‘Can we discuss this someplace else?’
‘No,’ Mark said, ‘Something else happened that morning and it happened again our first night in the cavern.’
Steven was sweating despite the chill.
‘I could see home, Steven. It took a while to figure out what it was, but when you slashed through that big pine, I could see the corner of Miner and Tenth. There was neon. At first, I couldn’t believe you had missed it. It was a clear view across the Fold. And then in the cavern, the little campfire went out the moment you fell asleep. It was as if the thing needed you to be awake to keep it burning. Garec and I woke you up and asked you to start another fire, a real fire, with one of the logs from the Capina Fair.’ Mark smirked recalling their awkward raft. And you did it.’
‘So?’ Steven was nervous, as he continued to glance back along the ridge he was only half-listening to his roommate. ‘So what’s your point? I’ve made fifty fires. They’re not that hard to do. The staff is always ready to get one going – they’re something this company needs.’
‘You’re not paying attention!’ Mark almost shouted.
‘Steven, that night you started a fire without the staff,’ Garec said. ‘You sat up, glanced at the fire-pit, called up a nice little blaze and went right back to sleep. The staff wasn’t anywhere near you.’
‘And that night, I saw home again,’ Mark said, ‘the 10-minute lube joint on the corner, that awful orange sign we can see from the driveway.’
Steven knew the sign – he had seen it as he ran towards Miner Street after realising Lessek’s key had been hauled away to the city dump. He looked at his friends. ‘So what? What do you want me to do? I’m telling you I can’t just turn it on like a faucet.’
‘And we’re telling you that you turn it on like a faucet all the time,’ Mark said. ‘I’m not trying to manipulate you. I’m telling you the truth. Why didn’t the staff shatter against that tree in the Blackstones?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Yes, you do, Steven and so do I. It wasn’t the staff’s magic that knocked the tree down.’ Mark stared at him, unblinking. ‘It was yours.’
‘Oh, good Christ, Mark,’ Steven was flustered. ‘Do you not get it? Nerak is coming here to kill us, right now. I don’t have any magic. I’m a bank teller, for shit’s sake, and a pretty poor bank teller at that. I don’t know where this magic is coming from. Maybe I have done from time to time without the staff, but I’m quite sure it’s the staff’s magic. Maybe it’s around me like a cloud. Maybe it works if the staff is nearby. Maybe—’
He was interrupted by another explosion, as devastating as the first, from somewhere on the ridge above them.
‘How did you know?’ Mark pressed, ‘just now, how did you know it was Nerak?’
‘I smelled tobacco juice on his breath.’
‘But there was more, wasn’t there? And it didn’t come from the staff.’
‘I … I don’t know. Maybe, yes.’
‘Yes,’ Mark said, ‘yes, because Gilmour didn’t feel him there and the staff didn’t feel him there. He was well hidden, Steven, but you felt him, didn’t you?’
Steven nodded, almost imperceptibly. It was true. He had felt Nerak, smelled him, even disguised as that broken little man. His hands had stiffened and he had balled up his fists in an effort to stretch them. He had thought he was tired, or cold, but he had felt something. The tobacco juice had simply confirmed his suspicions.
‘And you tagged the dog-piss out of him,’ Garec interjected. ‘Was that the staff, or was that you?’
Steven looked at Garec and then at Gilmour. The old man had said nothing. ‘It was both, I think,’ Steven answered. ‘I lashed out, and I know the staff’s magic was there, it just blew up in my hands, but there was some of the other in there as well.’
‘So you do it,’ Mark insisted. ‘You cloak us now, because anything Gilmour does to hide us will be like lighting a signal flare.’
‘Okay. I’ll try.’
‘No. Don’t try, Steven, just do it. When you came back through the Fold, you were certain you could take it over. We needed maths, magic and compassion. How in all Hell you’re going to do it, I have no idea, but you were confident. That’s what we need you to do right now, recapture whatever it was that had you believing so strongly.’
‘You said, “We can paint the damned thing yellow if we want to!”,’ Garec quoted.
‘That’s right,’ Mark slapped a hand hard against Garec’s back. ‘That’s what he said. Well, Steven, get painting.’
Steven took a deep breath. It was hard to concentrate, knowing Nerak was so close by; he didn’t know how to keep his mind focused. Turning to Gilmour, he asked, ‘Is there a spell I should try?’
Mark interrupted, ‘No. You don’t need one. In all the time we’ve been here, you haven’t uttered one spell. I want yo
u to do just like you did in the cavern with that wall of fire or those flying rocks. You needed them. You imagined them and ka-blam!, they were there. I saw what was left of the grettan that attacked you. It looked like someone rammed a Tomahawk missile up its ass. And you did that after you lost consciousness – and while the ugly bastard was having your leg for a snack. Steven, you just gave Nerak the first beating he has taken in five generations. He had no idea what hit him.’
Steven nodded seriously, listening carefully now to what Mark was saying.
‘I’m almost sure of it now,’ Mark went on, ‘he has no clue what’s inside that stick of yours, and even less notion that you have found some hidden power inside yourself, or inside this world or between you and the staff or— well, shit, who knows? But as long as he can’t feel you, he has to fly blind. That gives you the upper hand.’
Steven looked again to Gilmour, ‘What do you think?’
‘I think for the time being, I can be of little help.’ His neck and his ribs had ached since the moment Steven slashed through Nerak’s disguise and he had a terrible suspicion that it was he who had allowed Nerak back into Eldarn, when he had opened the book of Lessek’s spells. In trying to learn what he needed to defeat his old nemesis, he had opened the gate for Nerak to come back: that rush of warm, humid air, that had been Nerak. Gilmour had failed again.
‘That doesn’t instil me with a lot of confidence,’ Steven replied.
‘Mark is right, though,’ the old man said, ‘remember the way you saved Garec that night on the beach.’
Steven tried to corral his thoughts and recall the energy he felt battling the wraith army, the power at his fingertips when he called up the wall of fire, the way his knowledge of physiology had transferred itself to the staff when he healed Garec’s injuries. He let all the images wash over him, bringing whatever insight they might have. He remembered the dump, the thin air that took his breath away when he climbed the fence, and then the thick air, dense with potential and power, that he had reached out and felt swallowing his hand. It had pressed back against him as he watched three tears open in the Fold. He concentrated: Nerak was close by and searching for them right now.
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