by Rob Scott
Today, as he made for the drowning girl, Mark anticipated his body’s responses, his muscle memory reminding him why he so loved these waters… But nothing happened. Instead of the sleek, economic gestures he expected, Mark found himself kicking and thrashing clumsily: Redrick Shen had obviously not been a swimmer. Christ, I just hope I don’t drown, he thought. This guy’s times in the 200 metres would be shit. I’ll be fish food inside an hour.
On the surface, he sucked in a massive breath and found the little girl, twenty yards out and in serious trouble, flailing and slapping at the water. A wave broke over her head and Mark watched her go down mid-scream. Damn it, that’s not good, he thought, she got a mouthful on that one. The current was dragging her along, so he picked a point to her left, where he guessed she would be after the next wave. She must be scared shitless – she’ll never get in the water again. Frigging parents’ fault, wherever the hell they are.
The wave passed and the girl sank. When she didn’t resurface, Mark dived after her. Hang on, kiddo. I’ll be there in five seconds.
Below, the ocean was peaceful. The child’s yellow bathing suit was easy to spot in the summer sun. She was drifting listlessly towards Jamaica Bay, no longer struggling, her arms and legs moving with the current, her hair a mass of stringy curls. Mark reached for her, snagging her wrist, and hauled her towards the surface, all the time praying that he could keep both of them afloat long enough to start her breathing again.
Less than five feet from safety, he felt something grip him about the chest, as if he had been taken from below. He thought he’d been grasped by a tentacled creature bent on crushing him beneath a rock, tenderising him for dinner. Iron bands squeezed until his ribs felt ready to snap. He tried to break free, but his hands simply slid uselessly across Redrick’s muscular chest and abdomen.
He was being pulled towards the bottom.
What in Christ’s name -? Mark, in his own body, would have fought the panic; panic meant exhaustion and death, and all good swimmers understood that there was no panic quite as terrifying as drowning. But trapped inside Redrick Shen, Mark realised he was lost. The Ronan sailor couldn’t hold his breath and he couldn’t kick free, and still the bands around his chest constricted as he sank towards the sandy bottom. When panic struck, Mark was helpless against it; he grasped at anything, the little girl included, as he fought for the surface. Finally his hands closed around something, her ankle, and he tugged, willing to climb her like a lifeline if it meant escape from the deadly ocean.
To Mark’s horror, the girl looked down at him; eyes wide and curls bedraggled. She was smiling.
Gilmour wanted to help Jennifer as she dragged Hannah up the beach. The water had numbed his feet through his boots; he couldn’t imagine how cold Hannah was. He assumed that Milla and Kantu had both drowned – he hadn’t seen Milla sink, but he had watched in horror as his old colleague, still swimming after the little girl, simply disappeared. One moment he was there and, with the next wave, Kantu was gone. Now Hannah lay on the beach sobbing, her mother’s and Steven’s coats draped over her shivering body. To Garec, Gilmour shouted, ‘See to her; I’ll watch for that South Coaster to come back. I can’t figure where he’s gone.’
Garec pulled off his own cloak and added it to the layers covering Hannah.
Gilmour, staring at the sea and hoping for Alen and Milla to reappear, saw the elderly beachcomber come up beside Steven. The two were talking, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He took a couple of tentative steps towards them, still watching the ocean as it hammered ceaselessly at the beach… then the soldiers arrived.
They came through the shallows and foam, moving with the steady rhythm of a fugue. There were too many to attack with fire or explosions, and Gilmour knew he would be alone if he sneaked inside their collective nightmare. He sat in the sand, felt the cold caress of the ocean and closed his eyes. If only he had read Lessek’s spell book earlier; if only he had made the connection between the ash dream and Lessek’s other seminal works. If only he had returned to Sandcliff Palace, retrieved the spell book and kept it from Nerak all those Twinmoons ago. If only, if only, if only…
Gilmour narrowed his thoughts to a point and felt in the wintry air for the legions of warriors closing down on him. He could smell their breath, and the stink of their injuries and infections. Here we go, he thought, and slipped inside their memories. It wasn’t as difficult as he had expected, but once inside, Gilmour knew he would not succeed in time.
Steven retreated up the beach. Mrs Winter tagged along. To his right, Garec and Jennifer were half-carrying, half-dragging Hannah away from the macabre warriors emerging from the water.
He screamed as Gilmour was swallowed up, his body trampled and torn to pieces by the few soldiers who paused long enough to pay the old magician any heed. The sea foam about their ankles bubbled crimson, staining the sand.
‘No! Jesus Christ, no!’ Steven fell to his knees. He cast a wild blast into the forward ranks, devastating the creatures nearest Gilmour’s remains. Their shattered bodies flew up and out, like organic shrapnel, into the ranks behind. The amphibious landing slowed for a second or two, then resumed as before.
‘What is magic, Steven?’ Mrs Winter prompted. ‘Remember what Fantus taught you.’
‘Do you not see them?’ Steven cried. ‘Can you not see that I’m busy?’ He blasted another spell into the soldiers closing on Garec and Hannah, which bought them a few seconds to escape.
‘This is not the answer.’ Mrs Winter was calm, as complacent as ever, an old woman who swept the step in front of her shop every morning. ‘Think about the clock. Why did Fantus have you restart that clock? And I’m sorry, but I can’t give you the answer; I simply cannot. You must decipher this yourself.’
‘What?’
‘The clock.’
The clock. It was a test. Restart time in Eldarn. Why? Why restart time? Because time and the ability to keep time are essential for any culture to evolve. Appointments need to be kept, timelines established, calendars drafted and adopted. They continued their retreat up the beach. Could Gilmour have done it? No. He didn’t have the magic. What is magic? Magic is power and knowledge. He didn’t have the knowledge to start the clock. Magic is useless without knowledge – that’s the fundamental premise of the Larion Brotherhood.
‘He didn’t have the knowledge,’ Steven said aloud.
‘Correct, what knowledge? We can paint the damned thing yellow. Well, Steven, it’s time: get painting.’ Mrs Winter zipped her parka up tight, as if the chill along the beach might kill her long before the legions of homicidal warriors got to her.
‘It was magic, compassion and maths,’ Steven said. ‘Maths – all right, I get it – but what maths? This isn’t a maths problem…’
‘Oh yes it is,’ she said.
‘But I don’t see-’ Steven stopped his backwards withdrawal. What’s here? What am I missing? There are soldiers, thousands and thousands of soldiers. They’re in ranks, but they aren’t straight. It’s a mess. No straight lines. They came though a hole. What hole? The Fold. How deep is it? Do I fill it? The tears, those rips, that’s where the hole came from. They’re irregular, nothing predictable or even. An irregular hole, constantly changing shape. It’s a half-mile long and three hundred feet across. And how deep? How deep is the Fold? How far is it to Eldarn? It approaches infinity. A half-mile by three hundred feet – but fluctuating – by a number approaching infinity. Fuck this. Fuck this!
Garec and Jennifer were shouting something. Hannah, still wrapped in three coats, was running towards him. Milla and Alen were gone. Gilmour was dead, torn to pieces. And Mrs Winter, the old woman he had nearly trampled as he hurried home for Lessek’s key, was here on Jones Beach, prompting him as calmly and reassuringly as a tutor.
A half-mile by three hundred feet, by a number approaching infinity. But it’s all in motion; it’s a frigging amoeba, impossible to measure, impossible to capture. It isn’t a circle; it’s a hole, a messy h
ole. But what? What do I do with it? I can’t kill all these people, these – these whatever they are. It was maths, magic and compassion. I can’t kill… Nerak deserved compassion. It was the hickory staff. Nerak needed a chance; he’d been taken against his will. Compassion was the answer. This is the Fold. This is evil. This is different. Maths, magic and knowledge. Not compassion.
‘Not compassion,’ he said to Mrs Winter.
‘Not this time, no.’
‘I was wrong,’ Steven said, ‘it isn’t about compassion. That was for Nerak; the staff’s magic, that’s how I defeated Nerak.’
‘But this is about knowledge.’ Mrs Winter took his hand. ‘What have you learned? What knowledge have you gained?’
‘Magic is about knowledge.’
‘And of compassion?’
‘It is more powerful; I am most powerful when I-’
‘But not now,’ she interrupted.
‘We bury these fuckers alive. It’s evil; they get nothing from me, from us.’
‘Maths, magic and knowledge, Steven.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Get painting.’
Mark Jenkins’ invasion forces were five ranks deep and nearly half a mile across. Steven estimated their numbers at more than fifty thousand – positively overwhelming, far too many to battle head-on. The jagged tear in the Fold, the origin, the destination and the Larion spell table, had expanded like bacteria mutating in a petri dish. The breakwater south of Jones Beach State Park had all but disappeared, opening into a foul-smelling void that bridged the gap between Steven Taylor and the military encampment outside Welstar Palace. It’s why he ordered them all back to Malakasia, Steven thought. He needed as many as he could bring to bear against us. This is the occupation force, cruelly deformed, that held Eldarn hostage for generations. A half-mile by three hundred feet, by a number approaching infinity and growing.
‘Let me up,’ Hannah cried, pushing Garec and her mother back.
‘Can you run?’ Jennifer asked frantically. ‘Honey, we need to run!’
‘What’s that?’ Hannah pointed into the breakwater, behind the last row of soldiers wading to shore.
Garec squinted, then stood up suddenly. ‘Whoring rutters, it’s Milla!’
‘What’s she doing?’ Jennifer asked. ‘Is that someone with her? Alen?’
‘We have to go!’ Hannah shrugged out of the layers. ‘We have to reach her.’
‘Through them?’ Jennifer wrestled her towards the boardwalk. ‘We have to save ourselves – there’re twenty thousand of those things between us and them.’
Hannah wasn’t listening. ‘Steven,’ she muttered, trying to break free, ‘not yet, Steven! Don’t do it yet! Milla’s out there!’ Twisting away, she ran to Steven and the old woman with him.
Garec cursed. ‘I’ll go after them.’
‘Are you out of your mind?’ Jennifer shook. Creatures from her worst nightmares – no, even more horrific than that; she could never have dreamed such monstrosities – had emerged from the North Atlantic and were trudging up the beach.
‘Maybe I can go around them,’ Garec murmured to himself.
‘They stretch for half a mile on either side, you raging idiot – you’ll get yourself killed.’
Garec grimaced, lowered his shoulders and, unarmed, charged the forward ranks. He managed to bully his way through the first line of dazed killers. The second, however, did not part for him; Garec screamed when they dragged him to the sand.
‘Steven,’ Hannah cried, ‘you have to wait. Milla’s out there. She’s alive.’
‘What?’ Steven hoped he’d misunderstood. ‘What are you talking about? They’re fifty feet away – we can’t wait.’
‘Look.’ She pointed into the breakwater. Someone else was there; Steven guessed it was Alen, but the Larion sorcerer wasn’t swimming well: he’d been injured somehow.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘she’s outside the ranks, outside the Fold. I don’t think she’ll be hurt.’
Mrs Winter nodded. ‘That’s right. Well done.’
Steven went on, ‘We’ll get her in just a moment.’
‘What if she can’t wait a moment?’ Hannah pleaded.
‘Then, like us, she’ll be dead.’ He closed his eyes. Someone nearby was screaming, an unnerving shriek for help. It was a man’s voice, but Steven didn’t bother to look up. He couldn’t afford the distraction now. Milla was paddling towards shore, so he had to finish this quickly or the little girl might swim directly into the Fold. The being of spray and sea foam that Steven had seen orchestrating the invasion was still there, suspended above the very place where the black man, the one oblivious to the cold, had disappeared.
A half-mile by three hundred feet, by a number approaching infinity. Those are the dimensions, but the frigging thing isn’t regular. It’s all over the place and moving, for fuck’s sake. Magic is knowledge and there is no compassion, not today. Today is maths and magic. Christ, it’s cold out here. Knowledge and magic equal power, powers of magic, powers of math, powers of dimensions. Holy shit. Holy shit, that’s it. Give it limits, what, zero and infinity. No, not infinity. Zero and half a mile, zero and three hundred feet. Yes, length and width, as a function. F of X between zero and half a mile, zero and three hundred feet. F of X minus G of X; all of it times the derivative as depth approaches infinity and fuck you very much.
The numbers lined up in his head, his own ranks of disciplined soldiers. The magic responded like a wellspring, surging from the depths of his consciousness, not a wild blast or a frantic spell to save his life, but a concerted, organised attack, perfectly formed for the threat at hand.
He remembered everything:
Gilmour on horseback in the Ronan meadow: The Fold is the space between everything that is known and unknown. It is the absence of perception and therefore the absence of reality. Nothing exists there except evil, because the original architects of our universe could not avoid creating it.
With Gilmour on Seer’s Peak: I was angry with myself, because anyone incapable of mercy is the most evil enemy we can face. That night, I became that person.
With Gilmour, Garec and Mark beside the Falkan fjord: We need to know what Lessek knew. He found it, called it a pinprick in the universe… he knew how to get to it, how to arrive at that place where he could reach out and grab it – like the air at the city dump. It was no different than it had ever been, but I held it in my hands, pressed against it and moved it around.
With Gilmour before battling Nerak: That’s exactly right… sometimes what’s real does change; other times, well, it’s just an illusion. That’s what separates us from carnival magicians.
And finally, with Gilmour after their escape from the rogue tidal wave on the Medera River: Where do you think new spells come from? Why do you think we spent all that time in your world, collected all those books? Why would we have sponsored research and medical teams from Sandcliff Palace for all those Twinmoons? Those spells weren’t constructed because their incantations were similar; the incantations were derived because their etiologies, their origins and impacts, overlapped: they had common effects because they were based on overlapping fields of knowledge or research.
‘I can do it,’ Steven said without opening his eyes. ‘I can see it all, just like Gilmour said; it’s a view from above. I can, Mrs W. We’re going to be-’
Gnarled hands, impossibly strong, took him by the upper arm, the wrist, the neck, his coat lapels. There were fingers on his thighs, between his legs and around his ankles. Someone grasped at his face; another took a handful of his hair and all at once, all together, they pulled, digging in with cracked yellow fingernails, ripping through his clothes and tearing his skin Steven opened his eyes and screamed, his spell forgotten.
Mrs Winter was under attack. She had waited, giving Steven as much time as possible to work out his spell, but it had taken too long. She didn’t wish to intervene, wasn’t even sure if she would be permitted to, but circumstances gave her no choice. When the first of the rotting
warriors grabbed for her, the old woman raised one hand, palm out and released a blast that incinerated a dozen of them and ignited even the wet clothing of another score as they slogged up the beach. One by one, she touched the creatures attacking Steven; it didn’t take much, a push here, a gentle tug there until they released him, backed away a pace or two and collapsed, dead.
There were more coming, however, far too many for her to deflect with old parlour tricks or heavy-handed blasts. She had given Steven a moment to gather his thoughts, but the young magician was still on the verge of panic; his eyes were wide and his skin as pale as new parchment.
‘Do it now,’ she said, taking his face in her hands and forcing him to look into her eyes. ‘There is no more time, my friend.’
Behind her, Hannah had fled up the beach and was screaming. Her mother rushed to drag her to safety, but still the young woman wouldn’t be budged.
Below, the warriors that had been beating Garec to death stopped suddenly, leaving the Ronan archer lying senseless in the sand. Mrs Winter didn’t know why they had let him go, but she could do nothing for him – she had to remain with Steven.
Then the sand at her feet was moving, tumbling over itself in waves, like thin corrugations in the beach, curling and rolling towards the water. Mrs Winter looked with surprise along the narrow ribbon that was Jones Beach, along the rows of Malakasian warriors, and everywhere she saw the same thing: narrow stretches of sand, rolling in perfect waves towards the water.
‘What’s this then?’ she said and turned back to Steven. He was standing straight, some colour back in his face, ignoring the blood dripping from half a dozen deep cuts. He stared over the invading army, his eyes locked on a nearly translucent figure of a man formed of sea foam and smoke and floating above the water, just outside the grim cleft still spewing forth monsters. A veritable hum of resonant energy came from Steven, and the soldiers, oblivious to their surroundings thus far, stopped in their sandy tracks. All along the forward ranks, the grim-faced killers pulled up and waited, all of them watching Steven.