by Rob Scott
From somewhere deep within the Fold, something howled, the cry of a furious god, of evil rousing itself to claim them all. Steven stood his ground.
‘Good gods, then, you’ve got them!’ Mrs Winter cried and hurried to drag Garec’s body further up the beach. She was able to elbow her way through the throng to reach him; none of the warriors appeared to notice her at all.
Hannah and Jennifer Sorenson waited near the concrete steps to the Central Mall, neither of them screaming any longer. Like the invading army, they stood transfixed by Steven Taylor.
F of X minus G of X; all of it multiplied by the derivative as the depth approaches infinity. Set limits, from zero to three hundred feet and from zero to half a mile, maybe more now, but no matter. Steven imagined the sand and the water awakening to help him. Depthless sand and black water, as deep as the Fold itself – as depth approaches infinity.
He shouted, nothing that made sense, just a primal scream, when he realised it was working. The sand was rolling back, setting limits – from zero to three hundred feet – while the water bubbled up in an irregular line, the outline of a ragged hole, just a tear – from zero to half a mile. The sand corrugations met the water and the circle was complete. All Steven had to do was to fill it – F of X minus G of X, times the derivative. Now, fill the hole.
‘As depth approaches infinity.’ Steven looked at Mrs Winter and smiled. His muscles were locked; his hair blew about his face, but his eyes were bright with understanding. He could see it all, scrawled across Professor Linnen’s blackboard at the University of Denver. He had to understand the Fold: the absence of perception and the absence of reality, a place where only evil can exist, where even light, love or energy cannot escape. He understood magic’s subtleties: it’s most powerful when we appreciate the fundamental tenets of what we are trying to change, to save, even to destroy. He knew himself: a magician whose strength comes from compassion, but Steven had also gained knowledge about his foe: it’s an enemy from inside the Fold, like the tan-bak, an entity powerful enough to be the Fold’s overlord. It deserves no mercy, no compassion.
‘Bury these fuckers alive,’ he said again, and raised his arms. The sand and water complied, rolling furiously down the beach, churning the seas to a boil.
The soldiers on the beach were taken by the ankles and dragged towards the breakers. Those unfortunate enough to be in the water, even knee-deep, were swallowed by the waves. As depth approaches infinity!’ Steven shouted, stepping forward and slugging one of the invaders hard across the jaw. The soldier fell backwards and was absorbed by the beach, gone in a moment.
A handful of the warriors recognised what was happening; they tried to fight back, wrenching at their ankles, attempting to swim as the ocean yawned to engulf them whole. The cries they emitted when they realised they were falling into oblivion were horrific, like the screams of terrified children. It unnerved Steven to hear them. Enraged, he focused his anger on the creature of sea foam and spray and smoke, now dancing wildly on the water, flailing and pushing its hapless soldiers back into the fray.
‘It’s you,’ Steven said, pointing at evil’s emissary, ‘you’re the one. You killed my friends. You killed my roommate, my best friend. You may not die, but I’m going to take you apart.’ He punctuated his promise with flicks of his wrist ‘-piece-’
The spray and sea foam creature wailed as part of it was torn away, scattered by the ocean breeze.
‘-by-’
Another cry as more of the figure broke apart.
‘-piece-’
Steven breathed deep, summoning reserves of energy he could never have imagined, power unlike anything he had wielded, even in his battle with Nerak. ‘Now-’ He reached for the creature again, taking a few strides down the strand to get closer. The translucent figure was in a panic; its army was being swallowed by the very ground it had hoped to conquer, and it itself was being slashed and broken into harmless spores by the raging magician coming at it through the shallows. It swirled and spun and searched for an escape, but the only place to hide was inside the Fold, which was rapidly sealing itself. It couldn’t retreat across the water; the maniacal sorcerer would surely follow it, and to flee onto land would be inviting destruction. Instead, it hurried back and forth along the line of dead and dying warriors. Some shrieked and reached for it, their fingers passing harmlessly through its smoky limbs.
‘Now,’ Steven said again, ‘it is time for you to go.’ He gestured towards the figure and it burst apart, the sea foam and spray dissipating, falling harmlessly like rain, while wisps of smoke blew inland across the dunes.
The beach swallowed the last of the soldiers. Some still reached skywards through the sand, hoping for a lifeline, while others simply sank away, still chuckling at whatever had been so funny countless Twinmoons earlier. Those swallowed by the sea did more than drown; they were lost inside the Fold, carried into the void by the chilly waters of the North Atlantic. And as the ragged hole closed for ever, Steven caught a final glimpse of Welstar Palace, where mayhem raged as thousands of soldiers disappeared headlong into the muddy banks of the Welstar River. With them sank the smoothly polished granite spell table, still half-encased in its wooden packing crate.
Jones Beach was empty. Only the waves and the breeze muffled the sounds of a little girl, doggedly paddling through the surf and dragging something along with her.
Garec Haile, the Bringer of Death, sat up, helped by Hannah and Jennifer Sorenson. He was confounded; he had cheated death by the slimmest of margins, but how, he had no idea. He couldn’t begin to guess why the soldiers tearing him apart had stopped so suddenly.
When he saw Milla, he forgot how much his head ached or how his arm felt as if it had been broken in a dozen places. He ran down the beach, splashed through the shallow waves and dived into the deeper water. It was cripplingly cold, but Garec welcomed the numbness.
Mrs Winter wandered down the strand and knelt where Gilmour’s body had fallen; she was visibly upset as she touched the ground gingerly with one hand. Nothing was left but a crimson stain that would fade with the next tide; the broken limbs and torn flesh had all been swallowed up with the Malakasian divisions.
Steven was dumbstruck at what he had done. Now he wanted to comfort Mrs Winter. He wanted to help Garec, to be with Hannah and Jennifer as they carried Milla to warmth and safety, but he stood rooted in place, his boots half-buried in the sand. He recalled an autumn day, a decade earlier, when he had awakened with a paralysing hangover after a fraternity party and some barman’s atrocity called Hapsburg Piss, an unappetising concoction made from hazelnut liqueur and plum schnapps. He had thought about skipping class and staying in bed until the coffee was hot and the opiates had quieted the ruthless, thudding pain in his head. But he hadn’t; instead, Steven had rolled out of bed, dragged his listless self into the maths building and sat through one of Professor Linnen’s lectures on functions and the area under the curve. Now, ten years later, he thought back to the countless undergraduates, and all the times they had complained that they would never need calculus in the real world, and Steven Taylor laughed to himself.
Hannah broke his reverie with a shriek; she stood frozen, her hands clasped together as Garec, staggering from the surf, waved wildly at him further down the beach, while Jennifer sat numbly in the foamy splash of the breakers. They each, in turn, shouted something he couldn’t hear. Then Garec cupped his hands over his mouth and bellowed, ‘It’s Mark!’
Steven stood in stunned silence, staring mutely as Garec helped a muscular black man to his feet. It didn’t look like Mark, but when he grinned and waved, Steven knew his roommate was back.
The sounds and smells of the ocean, the feel of the sand and the chill on the breeze, all of it came back to Steven in a rush. It was fundamentally human, and real, an affirmation of everything he had been trying to do since the first time he picked up the hickory staff, that long-ago night in Rona. His stomach roiled painfully; his knees gave way and Steven started to cry.
PEACHES AND TEA
‘I didn’t see Alen go down,’ Garec said, huddling close to the kerosene heater. They were gathered around a Formica table in the sunny dining room of the Windward Restaurant in the Central Mall. A soda machine, unplugged, stood in one corner beside a red and yellow popcorn wagon and a portable ice cream cart with two flat tyres. Bright pictures of sundry deep-fried food adorned the wall behind the service counter in a fifteen-foot cholesterol frieze.
The kitchen was closed for the season and thankfully, no one, not even a security guard, had turned up for work that morning. From the pantry, Mrs Winter had pillaged some big cans of peaches, some warm cola and a few bottles of water. Those with a stomach for food ate from paper plates with the plastic spoons Steven had found behind the register. Jennifer brewed a pot of tea on a gas stove in the kitchen.
‘He must have given in to the cold,’ Garec said. ‘He looked to be swimming strongly when he went out after-’ He stopped himself. Milla was upset enough that Alen hadn’t come ashore; there was nothing to be gained by belabouring it now.
‘It wasn’t the cold,’ Steven said, ‘it was the Fold. He didn’t see it – couldn’t see it.’
‘He swam right in,’ Milla sniffed. ‘I didn’t want anyone to follow me. That’s why I ran off when you all were talking.’
‘How did you know where Mark would be, Pepperweed?’ Hannah asked. ‘We still don’t know what happened out there.’
‘He was dreaming about it,’ Milla said. ‘Gilmour and Alen asked if I could get into Mark’s dreams and I told them-’
‘Only if he went to sleep,’ Steven finished for her.
‘That’s right.’ Mark Jenkins, trapped in the body of Redrick Shen, the burly seaman from Rona’s South Coast, had torn down a rack of heavy curtains and had wrapped one around himself as he sat shivering beside Garec. ‘I- it hadn’t slept since we left the glen. I never imagined I could go to sleep, until it told me to.’
‘And you dreamed of the beach?’ Steven was reeling from the loss of both Gilmour and Alen. He hadn’t known Alen – Kantu – well, but that made little difference: two of Eldarn’s greatest heroes had perished that morning.
‘I did,’ Mark said, ‘the same dream of the same day, here at the beach when I was a kid. My parents used to erect a yellow umbrella, about a hundred feet from where you dragged me ashore. I saw Milla in the water. She was drowning, so I went in after her.’
‘And I went in after you,’ Milla said. ‘The other man, the one that was keeping you, he didn’t know I was coming.’
‘How is that, Pepperweed?’
‘Because I went into the water in Mark’s dream.’
‘But I watched you do it,’ Garec said, trying to understand the little girl’s paradox. ‘We all did. Hannah followed you into the waves.’
‘Yes, but the one holding Mark wasn’t here.’
‘Where was he- where was it, Pepperweed?’ Hannah, still confused, cocked an eyebrow at Mark.
‘It was between here and there, in the Fold, working with all the magic in that table,’ she said, pushing a piece of peach halfway around her plate, trying to scoop it up.
Mark handed his cup to Hannah and asked for a refill; he was glad to see her safe. To Milla, he said, ‘So when I was going in to save you, you were actually coming in to save me?’
‘I needed you to get into the water,’ Milla said, as if that explained everything.
‘Because that’s where you knew the creature would open the Fold?’ Hannah asked.
‘And because I am an excellent swimmer, silly. Didn’t you see me doing the scramble?’ She giggled and ate the wayward peach, Alen temporarily forgotten.
‘It was the ash dream,’ Steven said. ‘Who would have guessed that of all of us, she would be the only one who could manage it?’
‘Prince Nerak taught me,’ she said proudly.
Steven looked at the plate of peaches Jennifer was offering him and set them aside. It would be a while before he was ready to eat. ‘You were our true hero today, Pepperweed,’ he said softly.
‘I wouldn’t go as far as to say that,’ Mrs Winter whispered, peering at him over the top of her glasses. She wore them low on her nose, like a schoolmarm in an old daguerreotype. He had watched her attack the invaders. Steven didn’t believe she needed glasses at all.
‘Did you see what happened to Gilmour?’ Garec asked.
Steven wrestled back another bout of tears and nodded. ‘He just sat there. I don’t know why.’
‘Overwhelmed maybe?’ Hannah suggested. ‘Did he give up? Maybe sacrificed himself to slow them down?’
‘Perhaps,’ Steven said, uncomforted.
‘I wouldn’t go as far as to say that either,’ Mrs Winter said. ‘He was probably trying to break into their dreams, to slow them, or stop them entirely. He might even have been successful, or partially successful, anyway.’
‘How can you say that?’ Hannah asked. ‘What are you even doing here? Who are you, anyway?’ She too was still in shock.
Steven interrupted to say, ‘Her name is Alfrieda Winter. She owns the shop next to the bank in Idaho Springs, and I will bet you a year of your life to a bacon sandwich that her middle initial is “L”.’
‘You’ve never been stupid, Steven,’ Alfrieda Winter replied, ‘and I’ve known you a long time, haven’t I?’
‘Holy shit, it’s Lessek!’ Mark stood, spilling his tea over the curtain he was wrapped in. ‘It’s you; you’re Lessek, aren’t you?’
‘I am, Mark, and I’ve been watching you and Steven for most of your lives.’
‘Why? How?’ Hannah couldn’t cope with this; she looked from face to face, trying to understand.
‘I was forced to leave Eldarn a long time ago,’ Mrs Winter – Lessek – began. ‘I did a terrible thing, inadvertently, but a terrible thing nevertheless. I’ve been here ever since.’
‘That virus,’ Steven guessed.
‘The worst Twinmoon of my life,’ the old woman replied. ‘Thousands died in Eldarn. My team and I planned to come back, to find a cure, a herb, something to stop the devastation, but I was sick myself, and I wasn’t able to keep them from conspiring against me. I escaped to Rome, and then to the Holy Land, where I had friends and colleagues, but without my writings and the spell table, I was unable to control the Fold. Harbach, a power-hungry businessman, and Gaorg, my own brother, ran me out one night, ushering a whole new Era of politics and corruption into the fledgling Larion Senate. I spent thousands of Twinmoons here, decades and decades, watching, listening and hoping to find a way home, when, one day about a hundred and thirty-five years ago-’
‘Your own keystone came to you,’ Mark said.
‘It was as if a bomb detonated half a world away and I felt the aftershock. I was living in a corner of Africa at the time, a place from where I discovered I could communicate with the most powerful of the magicians from the Larion Senate.’
‘At Seer’s Peak,’ Steven said.
‘That’s right.’
‘But Larion Senators had been coming here for generations,’ Hannah said, her brow furrowed. ‘Why didn’t you go back with one of them?’
‘That was several Eras later, over an Age had passed, and I was settled here by that time, Hannah,’ Mrs Winter replied softly, obviously leaving something unsaid. ‘I made a point to help Larion sorcerers when I could, guiding them, leading them to powerful sources of energy, information, research and knowledge. I was an outstanding resource for the Larion Brotherhood, but-’
‘You never revealed yourself to them?’ Jennifer asked.
‘No.’ She sipped her tea. ‘I was more useful here, even to Nerak – especially to Nerak, I should say. He was an astonishing talent from very early on.’
‘And then your keystone arrived,’ Steven said.
‘And things began to unravel in Eldarn. I would have tried to go home then, but Larion journeys across the Fold came to an abrupt halt. Apart from Seer’s Peak, there was little opportunity
for communication-’
‘Except for images,’ Steven said.
‘And dreams,’ Mark added. ‘My dreams, the dream of this very beach. How did you do it? My head hurts just thinking about it.’ Mark tallied points on his fingers. ‘I dream of Jones Beach and my dad. You plant the dream in my head, convincing me that I’m Eldarn’s heir. I am taken by the evil minion ruling Eldarn and we end up here, invading my home on this very beach. It doesn’t add up.’
Actually,’ she peered over her glasses, ‘it adds up perfectly. Lessek’s key had been drawing members of your family to Colorado for generations.’
‘Those pictures,’ Steven said, ‘the ones in the hallway at your parents’ house…’
‘That trip,’ Mark agreed, ‘and my dad’s favourite photos.’
The Larion founder laughed. ‘You’re catching on, boys. You remembered Jones Beach, a day in your childhood when you and your father enjoyed each other’s company. I used the ash dream to comfort you that night, but no, I never imagined that you would one day invade Earth from this beach.’
‘It was in my head,’ Mark said, swirling tea in his cup. ‘The evil that took me just found it in there.’
‘It and all your analyses and conclusions about yourself as Eldarn’s heir,’ Steven said.
‘My goal was only to comfort you, Mark, to comfort you and to send you a message about your father; that was all. With you in Eldarn so unexpectedly, I had to act quickly, or else risk having you travel through Rona unaware of who you truly were. You chose the memory: the day, the beach, the time, all of it, probably because you happened to arrive on the beach outside Estrad when you fell across the Fold.’
‘After we’d been drinking beer at Owen’s Pub,’ Mark added. ‘My dad used to drink all day when we were at the beach.’
Hannah chuckled. ‘An important parallel.’
Mark went to the windows. The sun was high overhead now, but a cold wind continued to sweep the beach, kicking up the sand along the boardwalk. ‘So I have a vision of my dad, because you used the ash dream, but I picked the beach memory, serendipitously, most likely because I was on a beach outside Estrad. So far so good?’