Lessek's Key

by Rob Scott; Jay Gordon

  Thadrake would have been quite happy to face the combined Resistance forces in the Eastlands in a final, conclusive battle – that would be far preferable to the cowardly terror strikes along the Merchants’ Highway and all the throat-slitting that went on in the streets of Orindale after dark. His corps had lost several officers to a terrorist, a merciless cowled man who stalked the back alleys. Thadrake himself had been part of the response team, rounding up any suspected Resistance members – and a good few who had never before been under suspicion – each time an officer had been murdered.

  The Malakasian response had been swift, brutal and public and whilst the people of Orindale were not happy about hangings in the imperial gardens, Captain Thadrake didn’t care. If they wanted the capricious justice to stop, they had to hand over this homicidal rutter themselves. He was quite sure they all knew who he was; they probably toasted his very good health every night in those filthy waterfront taverns.

  ‘What progress have you made in your search?’ The spy’s voice was muffled by bandages.

  ‘Which search, sir?’ Thadrake wanted to hear the spy say out loud that he was more interested in their search for his assailants than for the caped lunatic killing Malakasian soldiers – his men. Given the number of people lost to terrorists in the past Twinmoon, all their attention needed to be on nightly sweeps of the waterfront area; if the Ronan partisans turned up, good, but if not, at least they were making a concerted effort to avenge those Malakasians who had given their lives. The increased patrols did appear to be having an effect, for the murders had stopped – at least for the time being – but the extra raids were taking their toll on the army.

  How he hated working with Seron … Thadrake couldn’t stand the sight or the smell of them, and racing through Orindale during the middlenight aven, pursuing some so-called Resistance leader and a traitor soldier who were obviously well into Rona by now seemed a pointless, self-indulgent directive.

  When Jacrys didn’t answer right away, Thadrake asked again, ‘I’m sorry, but which search do you mean? Sir?’

  ‘The search for my attackers, you whore-spawned rutter!’ It looked as if he was about to choke on his bandages.

  Thadrake fought back a smile. ‘Sorry, sir, but we have not yet found anyone fitting those descriptions.’

  ‘Have you been thorough?’

  ‘I have a map of the city, sir. Each night we have searched random, unpredictable quadrants, but thus far, we have turned up nothing.’

  ‘Then you are an idiot, Captain Thadrake.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the officer said, thinking, I am an idiot for not leaving with Hendrick.

  ‘I understand that the woman might be able to secrete herself somewhere, but Sallax? He is as big as a blazing mountain. He has long black hair, pale skin, and he is a gods-rutting dolt who can barely speak. He doesn’t make eye contact, and he looks as though he has been kicked squarely in the head by a horse, Captain. So I don’t know what you have been doing each night, but you had better find a way to tighten the noose about this city and to find those two for me, or I will have your—’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ Thadrake interrupted, ‘but would you repeat that?’

  Jacrys grunted. ‘What?’

  ‘What you just said, sir.’

  ‘Sallax Farro is a piece of limp-brained grettan shit.’

  ‘Who looks as though he has been kicked in the head by a horse, sir?’

  ‘Exactly, yes. Captain, let me remind you that when I am speaking—’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’

  ‘You did it again, you son of a bleeding whore!’

  ‘I know where he is, sir.’ Thadrake snapped a salute, turned on his heel and started out. Several steps away, he froze, realised his mistake and turned back smartly. ‘Sorry, sir, but am I excused? I expect I can have Sallax here by the midday aven, sir.’

  Jacrys was almost speechless. ‘Yes, by all means, go. Get him now, and bring him here with the girl. But Captain, if she should resist, feel free to kill her.’

  ‘She’s a traitor, sir?’

  ‘Yes’

  ‘She should be hanged, sir.’

  ‘Captain, if she resists, cut her down, but I want Sallax Farro alive. Understand?’

  When Jacrys paused, the captain snapped to attention once again, saluted, and said, ‘I’m sorry for the breach of protocol, sir.’

  ‘Just bring Sallax Farro to me, Captain.’

  ‘Should I clear these plates, sir?’

  ‘Yes, and the bottle, too. That rutting vintage makes my head hurt.’

  Captain Thadrake was already on his way out of the door with the pastries in one hand and the wine in the other.

  *

  As Hannah sat bolt upright pain ripped through her shoulder, and with a shriek she fell into her blankets, dizzy with the agony. A moment later, Hoyt was by her side. ‘I see you’re up. It’s about time,’ he said cheerily.

  ‘You wait until I’m back in one piece, Hoyt. I am kicking the shit out of you,’ Hannah said through shallow breaths.

  ‘Out of me?’ Hoyt feigned incredulity. ‘I put you back together, Hannah, and trust me, it was not an easy task.’

  Mimicking his accent, Hannah repeated, ‘We shouldn’t organise any dances up there, but if we hold fast to that lip, it’s a good two or three paces wide, and it’s actually fairly level.’

  Hoyt laughed. ‘I’m not the one who tied myself to the millstone.’ He motioned to where Churn lay sleeping, a nondescript lump under two heavy blankets.

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘Fine,’ Hoyt said, ‘it would take more than falling off a mountain to hurt him. He was a bit cold when we finally got you back up on the porch, but Alen worked an interesting spell, warmed the two of you right there in the mud, dried your clothes, too. I was impressed.’

  With Hoyt supporting her, Hannah sat up a bit straighter. ‘Where are we?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re back in that grove of pines we crossed through before climbing up onto the cavern ledge. That big meadow is just through there. We’ve kept a fire going with anything we’ve been able to find that won’t smoke up too much. The branches in here are such a rutting tangle, no one would know we were here unless they actually walked into us, but none of the Malakasians have passed anywhere near us. You were right. They must have another path somewhere south of here.’

  ‘So we’re safe enough – but how long has it been?’

  Hoyt hesitated. ‘Two days.’

  Hannah almost choked. ‘Two days?’

  ‘Well, three, this morning.’

  ‘Oh, Hoyt, I’m sorry. If I hadn’t slipped, we could have hauled Churn up, dried him off and been on our way.’ She looked around. ‘Did it snow?’

  ‘Some, a couple days ago, but it’s been quiet since then.’ He reached over to open one of their packs. ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ she said, gratefully accepting two handfuls of crumbly bread, a small block of cheese and some cold sausage. Between mouthfuls, she continued asking questions. ‘Why did I sleep so long? What did I do to myself?’

  ‘Not much,’ Hoyt assured her. ‘You broke your collarbone and split the skin across your forehead. The head wound was messy – head wounds bleed like a rutting sieve – but setting the bone was the nastier of the two. Apart from those, it was nothing, really: assorted bumps and bruises, not a lot to brag about at a chainball tournament.’

  ‘A broken bone shouldn’t have knocked me senseless for so long.’ She shifted in her seat, trying to move her shoulder beneath its heavy wrapping.

  ‘Normally it wouldn’t, but it was a bad break and I had to treat it with querlis.’ Hannah looked at him questioningly, and he went on, ‘that’s a plant we use to treat all manner of injuries. It speeds up the natural healing process at a remarkable rate, but it takes its toll. Most people sleep for some time after a querlis application. You ought to be feeling better soon.’

  ‘Well enough to ride?’

  ‘Gods, yes. You don’t plan
to walk over these hills, do you? You can ride with me. We lost Churn’s horse. The wretch is probably on some Pragan farm right now, eating winter hay and sleeping in a stable full of mares.’

  ‘Churn saved me.’

  Hoyt nodded, ‘Yes he did, but he also hauled you down there to begin with, and for that, I think we ought to tease him for the next two hundred Twinmoons.’

  She was serious. ‘And you put me back together.’

  ‘I did.’ This time, Hoyt didn’t make a joke.

  ‘How did you do it? I don’t remember any of it. You would think setting a bone would have been a horrible thing, especially one that had nearly broken through my skin.’ She ran two fingers over the bulging swath of bandages and torn tunics the Pragan healer had used to immobilise the injury.

  ‘Well,’ Hoyt began tentatively, ‘when you were down there on the rock, Churn found a body, one of the Malakasian engineers.’

  ‘So at least one of them did come this way.’

  ‘He did, and our guess is that he was trying to get away on his own.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he was carrying a pouch filled with ghost tree bark.’ Hoyt reached into a pack and withdrew a small leather sack bulging at the seams with bark from the enchanted forest.

  Hannah nodded. ‘And he wanted some for himself, so he came through there thinking he would work his way north with a bag full of great magic.’

  ‘Or medicine, or drugs, whatever,’ Hoyt said. ‘Either way, he fell and died, right about where Churn found you.’

  ‘So what does this have to do with me?’

  ‘I didn’t have any way of knocking you out, or getting you to sleep long enough to set the bone; so I—’ He paused.

  ‘So you used the bark,’ Hannah finished his thought. ‘You sent me back to my childhood, to my parent’s house, that night I fell asleep on the couch.’

  ‘I don’t know what you were reliving, but it wasn’t as bad as the day we came through the forest. You kept going on and on about never having a dog.’

  Hannah’s brow furrowed. ‘There was a dog, a big black one, or dark brown, maybe. It looked like rather like a wolf. He was there the night my mother decided … well, the night I relived in the forest of ghosts.’

  ‘All right, why is that an issue?’

  ‘I never had a dog, Hoyt.’

  He tossed the pouch back inside the pack. ‘Who knows what this stuff does? Maybe it’s just a hallucinogen that sends you flying over the hills and valleys of your past. You get a whiff of this, whether it’s magic or not, and you go back in time, peek in a few windows, see your parents cooking eggs, beating each other up, whatever, and then you come back. Maybe people get caught by the forest because they can’t get out before they wither away.’

  Hannah shook her head. ‘It’s more than that, Hoyt. I was there. I was actually there in the room, and the dog was part of it, as real as I was.’ She tried to stand, swooned again, and sat back down.

  ‘Keep resting. Those two are still sleeping, and my watch ends with breakfast, so close your eyes for a while. If you’re feeling rested enough later, you can ride with me and we’ll make our way back to find that trail.’

  ‘Three days lost,’ Hannah murmured.

  ‘Not a total loss,’ Hoyt said. ‘If Alen can work out what a sorcerer might be able to do with a handful of bark from the forest of ghosts, we may have stumbled … literally … onto something important. I doubt it was the engineer’s lust for adventure in high places that made him try to cross alone.’

  Hannah lay back, closing her eyes and hoping for a couple hours’ sleep. Three days lost, and she had not been heartened by anything she heard after waking. She was glad that Churn was safe. As for their pocketful of enchanted forest, if it helped Alen figure out a way to send her home, then she would be happy they had found it, but for now, she was wary of it: it was mystical and dangerous, and it had trapped her in her past with her parents and that big dog until Hoyt had dragged her out. Hannah didn’t trust it. She remembered the dead body on the southern edge of the Great Range – Sunday Morning by Michael Adams - some poor soul who had wandered into the forest of ghosts, become enslaved by a memory and sat down beside a stand of white birch to while away the days for ever.

  She accidentally rolled onto her shoulder, and was painfully reminded that she had fallen two hundred feet onto a rock. Eventually, she slept again.

  This time when she awakened, the sun was fully out and brightening the snow at the edge of the meadow. Hoyt was still awake, cooking sausages in the small pan he carried. The food smelled good; despite the fact that she had eaten only a short while earlier, she was famished. On the opposite side of the campfire, Alen was sleeping. She guessed that anyone who had lived as long as Alen would need a great deal of sleep – and the former Larion Senator was world class at it: there were few places Alen did not manage to sleep like a cadaver from dark to dawn. Hannah frequently worried that the older man had died in his sleep, and she often forced Churn or Hoyt to go back to their rooms and make certain Alen was still breathing.

  She would have been surprised to know that, unlike Gilmour, Alen chose to sleep. He revelled in it, enjoying the feeling of being completely fatigued, especially in the moments right before drifting off. Gilmour slept only when he felt the need to rejuvenate his physical self.

  With one arm, Hannah pushed herself into a sitting position, a definite improvement. ‘What’s for breakfast?’ she called.

  ‘You ate already,’ Hoyt tried to sound indignant. ‘What kind of place do you think I’m operating here?’

  ‘A place where I get to eat when I’m hungry, and right now, I’m good and hungry. So keep your comments to yourself, my intrepid thief- but you had better share the bounty from that frying pan.’

  ‘Or else?’

  ‘Or else, I will beat your sorry ass one-handed – and think about it, every time your so-called friends have one too many beers, there it will be all over again: the hilarious account of the time Hoyt got thoroughly whipped by a one-armed woman.’

  ‘Fine, fine, just keep your one-armed whipping to yourself, all right?’ Hoyt tore another lump from the loaf he had shared with her earlier that morning.

  ‘Where’s Churn?’

  ‘Scouting the meadow,’ Hoyt said. ‘If you’re feeling better, I think it’s time to try to find a trail.’

  Hannah nodded vigorously as she had chewed. ‘Yes, by all means, let’s get going. I’ve held us up here too long.’

  As if overhearing them, the Pragan giant returned to camp, ducking brambly needles as he shouldered his way through the grove.

  ‘What news?’ Hoyt signed.

  Churn shrugged, ‘Nothing new, a few tracks.’

  ‘Wagon tracks?’ Hoyt passed his friend a chunk of bread with hot sausages and melted cheese tucked inside.

  ‘No.’ Churn took a bite, fanned at his open mouth with a palm, then put down the bread and finished, ‘Dog tracks. One dog, a big one.’

  SANDCLIFF PALACE

  ‘There it is.’ Gilmour was as excited as a schoolboy starting the harvest holiday. He pointed through the scraggly branches of a roadside oak. ‘Can you see it?’

  ‘Which one?’ Carec asked, shielding his eyes from the morning sunlight. On the opposite hilltop, he could see a group of buildings organised around a blocky stone structure in the centre, and a taller, more majestic building on a rise to the north. Grouped in clusters, the shorter buildings appeared to have been constructed around common areas, but he was too far away to determine any reason for the peculiar layout.

  ‘The one at the top, with three towers, the highest in the north.’ Gilmour had not yet taken his eyes off his former home.

  ‘All that, Gilmour?’ Mark asked. ‘I thought you said it was smaller than Riverend. That place is gigantic.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ the older man corrected, ‘it’s just the one at the top. All those others below are the university buildings. The residences are there in the south, and
the classrooms and laboratories are those short stone buildings. That ugly rectangular beast in the centre is the university library. Gods rut a demon, but that was a fight. I think it ruins the look of the whole place. Modern architecture, gods of the Northern Forest, look what it did to the arena. Now the fields are just little stretches of green tucked in between the residences and that great, grey-boned monster. It’s a shame it never fell in on itself.’

  Rodler Varn raised an eyebrow at the older man. ‘Careful, Gilmour: your age is showing.’

  ‘What?’ Gilmour stammered. ‘Oh yes, well, I’ve done quite a bit of research into the Larion Senate, and as far as I can understand it, the library caused a commotion among those who appreciated more traditional architectural styles.’

  ‘What? Stone on stone over stone?’ the smuggler joked. ‘Or stone over mortar between stone? I can’t tell the difference, myself.’

  ‘I think it must be the same everywhere, when intellectuals get together to do something permanent and creative. I’d just as soon lead a brigade into war,’ Steven said.

  Gilmour said, ‘It’s no matter now, anyway. That was a long time ago. It’s silly for us to spend time worrying over arguments Larion Senators had two thousand Twinmoons ago. But let’s get up there, shall we?’ He started back along the road.

  Rodler interrupted, ‘We shouldn’t go up that way.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The only place this road leads is up to the campus and the old palace. Both are off-limits and patrolled regularly. When we climbed out of that last village on this road, we started taking a risk – there’s no reason to be up here, so the further we travel the more suspicious we look.’