Alen went on, ‘You were under its spell all day, like we were, but you were able to communicate with us – at least to hear us.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Look,’ Alen said, and stepped aside to reveal a stack of firewood, enough logs to keep a significant blaze going for several days.
Hoyt didn’t understand; he signed to Churn, ‘Pissing demons, did you think we were going to stay here all Twinmoon?’
Churn smirked and signed, ‘You did it.’
‘I did this?’ Hoyt walked over to the pile and took a log from the top. He looked at it uncomprehendingly, then dropped it into the fire, as if to confirm that the stack was real. ‘How did I do this if I was back there all day?’ Hoyt gestured into the past as if it existed somewhere on the other side of their camp.
Churn went on, Alen asked you to get some firewood. You did.’
‘But— This can’t be. Alen, I was there with you. It was a conversation we had for maybe half an aven. We ate, then I left to steal a wheelbarrow. It took an aven, start to finish, if that.’
Alen crossed to his friend. ‘You collected firewood for nearly four avens today, Hoyt. One of us was always with you, but you worked nonstop until we made you sit down and cut away the bark.’
‘But I don’t feel tired,’ he protested. ‘Look at how much wood there is: I’d be flat on my back if I worked that hard! And look at the size of those logs – I could barely lift one of those on my own, never mind pile them up like that!’
‘That’s another interesting detail we need to consider as we analyse this bark and examine the forest of ghosts more closely – I think I’ve an idea of why Nerak wants so much. Imagine what he could make the people of Malakasia do … Hoyt, we hung this around your neck and the bark took you – it was quick and painless, and you were gone. I protected my fingers as I fixed this piece to your throat, Hoyt, and it barely touched your flesh all day, but you didn’t break from your memories for four avens and you worked steadily the whole time. Imagine what might happen if Nerak uses this on his army, or his servants – and what if he gives it to them internally, what might happen then?’
‘But I’m not tired,’ Hoyt repeated, still unwilling to believe the evidence.
‘Still,’ Hannah said, ‘we should take rooms in the next town. We don’t know what might happen once he starts travelling again. He might pass out or fall asleep. We should be someplace warm and safe tonight.’
‘I agree,’ Alen said and began packing up.
‘Alen, are you suggesting that Nerak would be able to make these effects permanent?’
‘I shudder to think that, but yes, he might. Imagine the workforce he would have—’
‘But would Hoyt have been able to make us do things when we went through the forest of ghosts? Gather firewood or build mortar outhouses or sack Sparta?’
‘I had trouble getting you to walk most of the time,’ Hoyt agreed.
Alen looked up from the saddle bags. ‘That is precisely why I believe Nerak wants the bark. He can refine it, or do something to control it, I’d bet my bones on that.’
‘But he already has the occupation army, the taxes and tariffs – what more could he squeeze out of Eldarn that he would need a village full of hysterical, screaming, babbling slaves?’ Hoyt still wasn’t convinced.
Alen frowned. Was it obvious only to him? ‘Nerak wants what Nerak has always wanted, my friends: supreme power, power and control over everything. He wants life and death in his hands. He wants to reign like a god over all he can see and all he can imagine. There is an awesome evil waiting out there for Nerak to open the door and when it arrives, it will bring down death and devastation, and Nerak will finally have what he wants. He will have brought about the end of all things.’ And he wants Pikan. But he cannot have her, not any more.
‘Nerak can use this bark to control the minds of the living, and he can revel in our suffering while he works to bring about the end of us all. So to answer your question: Nerak would want this because no one else in Eldarn would be hideous enough to ensnare who knows how many in the worst nightmare of their lives while they toil away at whatever reprehensible task he has dreamed up, either just for his own enjoyment, or, worse, for the eventual destruction of all we know.’
Alen kicked out their campfire. ‘We will see things between here and Welstar Palace, even inside Welstar Palace, that will stay with us for the rest of our lives, and whatever it is he is using this bark for will be one of those horrors. You can bet on it, my friends.’
Hoyt swallowed hard. ‘Now I’m feeling a bit tired.’
‘You and me both,’ Hannah said.
Alen smiled and tucked the pouch back inside his cloak. ‘Then let’s get ourselves to a nice warm inn. We’ll go wild and get comfortable beds with down pillows and soft wool blankets.’
‘And venison, with gravy – tenderloin,’ Hoyt added in a burst of enthusiasm.
‘Expensive choice, Hoyt, but you’ve had a hard day gathering firewood.’ Alen considered the immense pile of sticks and branches. ‘Venison all round then.’
That night, Hoyt fell asleep earlier than usual, though he really hadn’t suffered from any overwhelming feeling of fatigue. Churn followed his friend a short time later, carrying a flagon of wine as an aid to sleep; Hannah heard the wooden steps groan and creak in protest as the big man passed.
Alen reached for the remaining wine and started to refill Hannah’s goblet when she stopped him, protesting, ‘No thanks, Alen, I’m already getting dizzy. I’ll have some of the water, please.’
‘As you like.’ He complied, pouring from the stoneware pitcher beside Hoyt’s empty trencher. ‘But I don’t recommend the water – it’s a boring vintage, horribly similar to last year’s.’
Hannah chuckled at the reference to her world. ‘How many trips did you make across the Fold?’
‘Too many to count,’ he answered. ‘I learned so many languages on my journeys back and forth that they started to become confused in my head, all those tenses and cases jumbling together. Do you know how many ways there are to make reference to pasta in Italian?’
‘No.’ She grinned at the thought.
‘No one does, but there have to be hundreds, maybe thousands. All that oni, illi, elli, I just want it in a bowl, gods, is that too much to ask?’ He slapped the table with one hand, a little drunk himself, the first time Hannah had seen Alen like this since they had left Praga. He drank, and held the goblet against his chest as he sat back in his chair. ‘Yes, there were many wonderful journeys.’
‘Yet I see so little of our world here. Why is that?’
Alen sat forward, the long-ago lost teacher in him coming into hazy focus for a moment. ‘Oh, there used to be much more, but we have let it all fade, or we’ve forgotten how to do things properly. It’s remarkable how quickly an advanced society on the edge of greatness can disintegrate when people don’t have what they need to survive. The whole world’s focus changes, turns inwards, and progress grinds to a halt. Back then, it was industrial-age technology, that’s what we were after at the time: printing, education, public health, medicine … We had made such progress here, and our own scientists and researchers were finding ways to enrich our efforts with the magic inherent in this land. But those days, the exciting news was the industrial boom. Gods, but I would have given anything to figure out how to bring back a blast furnace.’
‘Why not just build one here?’
‘We would have, if Nerak hadn’t ruined everything. Do you know that there were metal ships in your world at the time? Imagine a navy with metal ships …’
‘I don’t have to imagine it, Alen,’ Hannah said, reaching for the water pitcher again, ‘I’ve seen it all, and you’re right: a fleet of wooden ships would be sunk in less than half an aven. The fight would be over before our modern ships had appeared over the horizon.’
Alen was hanging on her every word. ‘So it remains a wondrous place then?’
‘We have some way
to go still, but all things considered, it is a remarkable place, yes. Mind you, there are drawbacks, and we’ve got our oddities too: we have to print warnings on coffee cups saying the drink’s hot! Can you imagine anything that absurd?’
Alen, a little taken aback, asked, ‘Is your coffee not served hot any more? I remember it being quite delicious that way. Tea also.’
‘Like I said,’ Hannah dismissed it with a wave of her hand, ‘some oddities and a few drawbacks.’
‘Regardless, I would love to see it again. One more trip.’ He stacked his plate neatly on top of Hoyt’s, then added Churn’s.
‘You can,’ Hannah said. ‘You should all come back with me. You’ve said yourself, time and again, that there’s nothing left for you here. Your family is gone. Why stay just to die? Is it because of Lessek? Is it really his intention that you live this long, in solitude, then just march into Welstar Palace and die?’
‘No, I’m sure there’s more, and I’m sure it has something to do with you. But after that’s done, I will rest.’
Hannah changed the subject. ‘Tell me about Nerak.’
‘Why? I was having a nice time.’ Alen glanced towards the door as three soldiers entered the tavern. They looked as if they were off duty for the evening. The former Larion Senator scowled at them. ‘Grand. And now we add these scum to the evening. This place is falling apart around us, Hannah. We should flee into the night, or at least until we find a different tavern.’
‘Right here will be fine, Alen, and as for that crew, just ignore them. All we’re doing is having a late dinner and a few drinks.’ She filled a goblet with water and pushed it across to the old man; having him falling-down drunk wouldn’t do now, not with Malakasians in the room. She would have been happy to ignore one night of revelry, but if he began making disparaging comments now, it could mean the imprisonment and torture of them both. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘have some of this.’
Alen shrugged. He was too tired to argue with her. Gripping both goblets, he asked, ‘Now, what were we talking about?’
Hannah raised a finger as if to say, wait one moment. The soldiers were heading for the bar and she wanted to listen to their conversation as they passed. She couldn’t glean much, just a few snippets. She still wasn’t familiar with the curious lilt of the Malakasian dialect; she’d never be able to fool anyone into believing she was a native.
Was in Orindale Harbour, but I hear it sank, she heard.
Not seen him in a Moon at least.
Rutter may have gone down with the ship.
Already breaking up. Whole brigades moving out of Orindale, rutting Seron, too.
Generals don’t know whether to shit or scratch.
Glad we’re not them, eh?
Right. What’s drinking?
Across the table, Alen waited, folding and refolding a cloth napkin repeatedly as the soldiers passed, determined not to make eye contact with them. Hannah immediately felt better; perhaps he wasn’t as drunk as he’d appeared.
‘Well, that was interesting,’ she said quietly, once they were out of earshot.
‘Not now,’ Alen cautioned, even more quietly. ‘We’ll talk about it later.’
She went back to her previous question. ‘Why don’t you want to talk about Nerak?’
‘Because he is a mean, reprehensible, smelly old fart, and he always has been.’ Alen grinned. Hannah imagined he must have been quite attractive an eternity ago, when he was young.
‘Come on,’ she urged, ‘you two worked together, lived together, built the Larion Senate together … at least tell me about those days, before everything began to unravel.’
Alen shifted in his curious way, adjusting himself and then coming to rest exactly where he had been before. ‘I suppose there were good Twinmoons, but things began to come apart over a very long period of time. There were grim shadows of our future quite early in our time together at Sandcliff; there was a darkness to Nerak from the beginning. Sometimes the pall over him was so thick you felt as though you could peel it off and paste it on a wall if you could get close enough to him.’
‘He was frightening?’
‘No, not at first. In the beginning, he was contagiously enthusiastic, driven unlike any of us. But his lust for power and knowledge coupled with his desire for Pikan drove him mad.’
‘All over a woman?’ Hannah looked askance at him. ‘I find it hard to believe Nerak would allow everything to come apart over the love of one woman.’
‘He didn’t allow everything to come apart. Instead, he pushed too far too quickly. He was well on his way to becoming the greatest sorcerer since Lessek, Lessek’s heir apparent, but he was prone to bouts of anger – well, rage really. He pressed himself too hard, delved too deeply into the spell table. In the end, it consumed him. Would he have done it if Pikan had loved him instead of me? Eventually, yes, I think so – but I also believe he was taken by something hideous because he was in there too frequently and too early in his development as a sorcerer. If Pikan had loved him, he might have made different decisions.’
‘She must have been quite a woman.’
‘She was. Since her death, I’ve lived almost a thousand Twinmoons sequestered in the same house in the same town, never venturing further than it took to buy greenroot, potatoes and pepper weed. I’d say she was quite something.’
Hannah checked the soldiers at the bar were still engrossed in their beers and said, ‘But she didn’t choose him, Alen, she chose you, and that was entirely her choice to make. And no matter how many ways you pick it apart, or how long you hide in the basement blaming yourself, Nerak’s fall from grace was his own doing.’
‘Oh, I don’t disagree with you; it’s just that he had so much to offer. It’s really quite—’
‘Tragic.’
‘Tragic, yes.’
‘Did you never have times when you collaborated and succeeded in reaching the Senate’s common goals?’
‘Absolutely,’ Alen said, ‘many times, especially in the beginning. That may be why we all stayed so long, despite the darkness hidden in Nerak. We were teachers and leaders, but we were magicians, and even though magic was much more common in Eldarn than in Denver, it was not always easy for us to find a niche in Eldarni society. Before the Larion Senate, if you were a magician, you became a healer, an entertainer, sometimes an artist, but never a teacher. It took a long time for people to feel comfortable knowing their children were working with sorcerers.’
‘But your early successes changed some of that?’
‘That’s what made it so special. All over Eldarn people wanted their children to come to Sandcliff to study at the university; we even had waiting lists. Pikan, Nerak and I often travelled together to find those who showed more potential.’
Hannah, caught up in the old man’s tale, poured herself more wine. ‘So students had varying degrees of skill?’
‘Oh yes, we’d get urgent messages from parents convinced their little one was Eldarn’s next Lessek – mostly when some child managed to wilt the flowers on the mantel, or perhaps rolled a few beans around a trencher. We made trips to find the strong ones, the children who blew their grandfather’s barn down with a breath, who lit the dog on fire with a thought, or who lured all the region’s fireflies into the house for reading light.’
Hannah mimicked the mothers she knew: ‘My kid’s gifted. No, my kid’s gifted. Your kid? Stop it. My kid’s gifted.’ She laughed. ‘Is that where you were going when you had the fight?’
The old man’s mood darkened; Hannah was sorry she had asked the question. ‘No. That trip, we were heading for Larion Isle, where we went to work new spells and to document those that were successful. And to protect the rest of Eldarn from those that … well, weren’t successful. No sense holding back now, eh? That trip was the beginning of the end. I know I said that there had been something dark about Nerak, but that was when we should have realised that the Larion Senate was doomed as long as Nerak had access to Lessek’s key.’
‘
I thought the fight was over Pikan,’ Hannah said.
‘It was. The initial confrontation was two lovesick fools fighting over a woman. Can you believe it? And he could have killed me. I know he wanted to, but his love for her stopped him, I’m sure of it. Nerak knew she would have been crushed if he had killed me, so I came out of it with a nasty ankle injury and a sorely bruised sense of my own abilities as a sorcerer. It ruined the trip to Larion Isle. I’d always enjoyed those journeys, because Pikan and Nerak led the magicians and I went just as a researcher – and because it was a great boat trip.’ He finished the wine and started in on the water. ‘This tastes dreadful. Do you want some tecan?’
‘I’d love some, sure. Do we have enough money? I know it’s a bad time to ask now that we’ve eaten the most expensive meal in the place, but how are we holding up?’
‘I haven’t been out in nearly a thousand Twinmoons, Hannah.’ He gestured for the barman. ‘We have plenty.’
‘Good. Then, yes, please. It will help clear my head.’
‘So where was I? Oh, yes, the fight: I hurt my ankle and lied to everyone that I did it getting off the ship. He wasn’t telling anyone the truth, so I let it go as well, but he began to pick at me. First, he insisted on climbing the highest mountains on the island just to run the tests. Pikan always went along, because someone had to keep the records. That would have been my role, but I couldn’t get there. Then there were the walking sticks I cut. I must have cut myself five or six, and most of them were burned when it was his turn to set the campfire. He knew they were my crutches, but he cut them up and tossed them in the flames just to be irritating. Some mornings I would wake to find my sticks on the other side of my room, or out in the common room.’
‘That sounds awfully childish, Alen, especially for someone who took himself so seriously.’
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