Lessek_s Key e-2

by Rob Scott

  THE FJORD

  Mark Jenkins awakened to the sound of a gull squawking at the passing boat. The high-pitched caws reminded him of summers at Jones Beach. For a moment he thought there was something significant he was supposed to remember, something about the beach, or Long Island, then he let the notion fade. There would be time later to dwell on it.

  He lay back in the narrow bow of the sailing vessel he had stolen for their covert attack on the Prince Marek, his head on Brynne’s folded blanket, ignoring everyone else. Above, the single sail was taut, but apart from the salty tang of organic decay drifting out from the inter-tidal zone – he didn’t need to look up to know that they were near the shore – he couldn’t feel the breeze which pushed the boat along. The sun was bright and warm, too warm for autumn, and as it fell across his face, Mark wished that sleep would take him again. There was perhaps no more perfectly innocent time than the few seconds after waking, when, for three or four breaths, there would be no pain, no stress, no nothing. In that brief space of time Mark sometimes forgot where he was, even who he was.

  And today’s awakening would be the worst, for Brynne was gone.

  Mark gazed into the near-cloudless pale-blue sky, staring at nothing, until he was jolted from his introspection by two stony cliffs coming into view. The gigantic granite gateposts stood nearly two hundred feet high, towering over the sailboat as it passed between them. Mark watched the sail flutter and collapse as the light wind was cut off and the boat slowed nearly to a stop. As the cliffs swallowed him up they cropped the expanse of cloudless sky into a thin ribbon, reminding him of an arroyo near Idaho Springs, a narrow canyon – a killing field for Clint Eastwood, Gary Cooper or John Wayne in the closing minutes of any one of hundreds of westerns he had watched as a boy. He imagined this view, the stony walls, the powder-blue stripe, was one dozens of C-list actors had enjoyed moments after being thrown from the saddle with the hero’s. 45 slugs buried in their chests. But that was home; out here it wasn’t an arroyo, or a box canyon: here, it would be… what? A fjord? Good enough, he supposed, not really caring, a fjord.

  Brynne was dead. Missing, Garec said, but Mark knew better. The explosion as the great ship blew across Orindale Harbour had been devastating. Gilmour hadn’t seen her on the main deck, and Mark knew she was on board – he had let her go. There was nowhere else she could have been except on the quarterdeck, stalking some unsuspecting guard, or throttling the life out of a Malakasian sailor. She would have had no chance as the planks beneath her feet disintegrated into splinters – one of which had become lodged in his own neck. Gilmour had yanked it out later; Mark had it wrapped in a piece of cloth and shoved into his pocket: a grisly souvenir.

  ‘I love you,’ Brynne had whispered in almost comic mimicry of Mark’s clumsy profession only minutes earlier. He had laughed at her accent: she had sounded like a German tourist. But she was perfect, for him, and for his world. They were supposed to be together. Looking down at him from the aft rail, she had looked like any other woman – any other perfect woman, a doctor or teacher, an accountant, even. That was from the shoulders up, away from the bristling array of daggers, dirks and blades she wore across her chest and at her hips, the weapons that marked her as a doomed revolutionary fighting an unbeatable enemy. It would be a long time before Mark recovered.

  He ignored the looming cliffs, wrapped himself in Brynne’s blanket and ran a finger over his cracked lips. He felt his neck, where Gilmour had removed the black splinter. The wound was infected, seeping pus, and as Mark poked the swelling, discoloured fluid spurted out. He found a piece of stained sailcloth and dipped it into the salt water, then dabbed gingerly at the jagged tear. He folded the cloth into a small square, pressed it against the wound and left it there, its coolness comforting.

  His wound attended to, Mark buried his nose in the blanket and inhaled, hoping to catch her aroma, but all he could smell was pungent woodsmoke. He felt tears come again and stared up between the cliffs, Heaven’s granite gate, trying to control himself. Weeping wouldn’t bring her back, and he didn’t want the others to see his weakness. The grey and white gull drifted overhead, cawing a warning. Mark felt as though he had been switched off, paralysed by grief. Would he die here? That question had bothered him for weeks, but now it no longer mattered.

  Listlessness and rage warred inside his head, making him feel nauseous and exhausted. Only by shortening his breath, taking gulps of air, could he keep from vomiting all over himself. Finally, as he regained his equilibrium, he sat up and reached for a skin of water. He focused his eyes on Garec and Gilmour, who were talking quietly in the stern.

  ‘I wonder how far in it goes.’ Though still too pale, Garec had been getting stronger since Steven had pulled the arrow from his lung, but his face looked haunted. His cheeks were sunken, and his eyes darted nervously from left to right.

  ‘We should continue on.’ Gilmour looked distrustful of the granite gates, as if he feared Eldarn’s own Gary Cooper might be up there, taking aim over the open sights of a lever-action rifle. ‘This fjord will shelter us while we find someplace to put ashore.’

  Garec looked around. ‘There’s nowhere to land here; we’ll have to go further in,’ he said. It was the midday aven, three days since Nerak had blown the Prince Marek out of the water. Now they needed a flat bit of ground before Steven’s watch read five o’clock, for it was almost time to open the portal. ‘But we’ve lost our tail-wind.’ He nodded towards the sail, hanging flaccid from the single spar. ‘We won’t get far at this rate.’

  Humming softly, Gilmour traced a weaving pattern through the air; with a turn of his hand, a gentle breeze snaked into the fjord, caught itself up in the limp sailcloth and began pushing the stolen vessel inland. With a satisfied look he asked, ‘What time is it?’

  Garec looked at Steven’s watch in consternation. ‘Um, three andlet’s see, the rune four represents a twenty, doesn’t it, so three and twenty. We have almost two full revolutions of the long stalk before we have to open the portal.’

  ‘Two hours. Less than an aven,’ Gilmour confirmed. ‘That’s not much time.’ With another gesture he increased the wind thrumming through the narrow canyon. ‘We’ll give it an hour. If we haven’t found level ground by then, I’ll swim the portal over and scale the cliff face. I’m sure I can open it up there.’ The Larion Senator, still using the emaciated body of Caddoc Weston, the Orindale fisherman, pointed towards the top of the fjord.

  ‘All right.’ Garec knew better than to doubt Gilmour’s abilities – he might look like a frail old man, but Garec was quite certain he would scamper up the stone cliffs with all the agility of a mountain goat. ‘I hope we find someplace soon. Mark needs a break, some hot food… gods, Gilmour, he needs any food. Have you seen his neck?’

  ‘He’ll be fine. There are things no sorcery or wisdom can change, and he is in the throes of one such thing right now. Time is the only thing we can give him.’

  ‘And what of Steven? What if he fails to come through again today?’

  Gilmour heard the growing agitation in Garec’s voice. ‘Then we will wait until his watch reads 5.00 again and we will open the portal. Each time we do, we will be closer to Sandcliff Palace, of course.’

  ‘What if he’s not coming back?’

  ‘He’ll be back.’

  ‘But you said if the portal in Steven and Mark’s house was closed, he could fall anywhere in their world. Is that right?’ Garec tried to remember what Gilmour had told them about the Larion Senate’s far portal system.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, what if he was dropped someplace… I don’t know… inhospitable?’

  ‘Inhospitable?’

  ‘Right. Someplace frozen solid, or filled with molten rock, or rife with angry marsh adders-you know, inhospitable. You heard them: it’s a place with flying machines and self-propelled car-wagons. Why would it take him this long to get here?’ Garec’s anxiety was almost tangible.

  ‘I’m not sure, Garec, but I do know
that it’s too early to give up hope, or to start doubting him.’

  ‘I am not doubting him, Gilmour, I am worried that something has happened to him.’ He sighed, and brought up the subject he knew the old man had been avoiding. ‘And Nerak went through right after him…’

  ‘It was perhaps five or six breaths later.’ Gilmour had obviously been pondering this question himself. ‘About as long as it would take him to get up off the deck, cast his final spell and then leap the three or four paces to the far portal.’ It had been longer than that – not much longer, just a moment or two, but time enough for the dark prince to make eye-contact with his former colleague. ‘Well done, Fantus,’ Nerak had whispered, a concession of one round lost. We’ll play again later, Nerak’s eyes had said, and in them, Gilmour had seen the end. He was not powerful enough, and failing to kill Nerak that night – Nerak could not be killed – had cost him dearly, for now Nerak knew the extent of Gilmour’s power. He had felt it in the mystical blows the old man had landed.

  ‘I barely slowed him down,’ Gilmour muttered.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘What-? Oh, nothing. What were we talking about?’ The man seemed to age before Garec’s eyes. ‘Oh, yes, Steven. It wasn’t much time, but as long as Steven remembered to close the portal as soon as he passed across the Fold, he’ll be fine. There was ample time to shut the other end down before Nerak disappeared.’

  ‘So, in Steven’s prolonged absence, we must assume that the portal in his home was already closed and that wherever he fell is closer to Idahocolorado than wherever Nerak fell. Because if Nerak reaches Steven and Mark’s home first…’ He hesitated.

  ‘Then all here is lost.’

  ‘What about those?’ Garec motioned towards the hickory staff and the wool-wrapped leather-bound book Gilmour had tossed into the sailboat three nights earlier.

  The old man sighed and took out his pipe, then felt through his pockets for a pouch of tobacco. ‘They represent great power; that’s true, but only Steven can wield the hickory staff.’

  Garec reached tentatively for the length of wood; for a moment he looked like a child caught stealing a pastry through an open bakery window. ‘Why?’ He released the tiller and took up the staff in both hands. ‘Why won’t it work for you or-’ He looked over at Mark. ‘Perhaps for him?’ He didn’t even consider that the staff might respond to his own commands.

  ‘That’s a mystery to me, Garec’ Gilmour abandoned his quest for tobacco and took hold of the tiller. ‘I believe Mark is correct in his assumption that Nerak has no idea what force is hidden within it, and that alone has given the dark prince reason to fear it. However, Nerak is not accustomed to fearing very much and he is… I suppose it’s best to say he is out of practice at fearing anything.’

  ‘So, in Nerak’s mind, the staff is something you have constructed for Steven, and therefore it falls within the expectations he has for the limits of your power?’

  ‘Right. Something he supposes is of little threat to him.’ Gilmour looked over at the stark granite cliff. Well done, Fantus. Nerak’s ironic words chilled his skin; he shook his head in an effort to focus on the conversation.

  ‘And the book?’ Garec made no move to reach for the ancient tome. ‘Can you use it?’

  ‘That we’ll find out soon enough.’ Gilmour pressed his lips together in a tight smile. ‘I may have made a grave mistake there.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘The night I fled Sandcliff Palace, I left everything – all the writings, books, scrolls, everything. I just fled as fast as I could, with my shoulder hanging useless and my ankle flopping back and forth. I was numb, and far too scared to consider that one day I might need Lessek’s library.’ He adjusted their heading to move the little catboat around a tight bend in the fjord. ‘This book tells me that Nerak has done much more than reflect on his studies.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I have always known that Nerak spends most of his time sequestered in Welstar Palace working through spells, memorising incantations, trying to weave together all the threads he needs to operate the spell table – so he can rend a sizeable gate in the Fold

  …’

  Garec finished his friend’s thought, ‘But you never imagined he would use Lessek’s journals to speed up the process.’

  ‘I thought it had all been destroyed.’ Gilmour shook his head despondently. ‘I was there: it was a massive explosion; most everything in the library was reduced to rubble.’

  ‘Yet Lessek himself has sent you back-’

  ‘For the Windscrolls, yes. If Pikan was right that night, we’ll need the third Windscroll.’

  ‘So that one wasn’t destroyed?’

  ‘I don’t know, Garec. I honestly don’t. I thought the entire collection was lost, but when I saw this book on the Prince Marek I realised that Nerak went back and retrieved-’

  ‘At least this one,’ Garec broke in. ‘He went back to get this book.’ He started to point at it with the hickory staff but recoiled at the thought of the two magical artefacts coming in contact with one another.

  Gilmour chuckled wryly. ‘Yes, at least this one, but I have to assume the Windscrolls are still there and that the secret to Nerak’s weakness is in their text.’

  Nerak’s weakness lies elsewhere.’ Garec echoed Lessek’s cryptic statement. ‘It must be in the Windscrolls.’

  ‘It might.’ He spotted a satchel tucked beneath the transom and a real smile crossed his face as he pulled out a leather pouch of tobacco. ‘That’s where we’ll start, anyway.’

  ‘Mark seems to think this has something to do with it.’ Garec returned the hickory staff to its place beside the book.

  ‘We can hope, Garec. And if Steven retrieves Lessek’s key and returns here safely, we will have several very powerful allies.’ Gilmour decided it was time to change the subject. ‘What does the watch say now?’

  Steven’s watch showed both the stalks on the five rune as Garec charted Gilmour’s progress down the precipitous cliff, the curiously small tapestry that was the far portal folded beneath one arm. The sorcerous breeze was stilled to a whisper and Garec had little trouble keeping the boat steady against the fjord’s southern wall. Its bow nestled snugly in a crack between two boulders and the wooden hull thunked gently against the stone in perfect time with the gentle rise and fall of the water. That drum-like beat was the only sound in the fjord and the silence weighed heavily on Garec. He felt uncomfortably warm, despite the sun dropping steadily in the distance.

  Garec could make out Mark Jenkins’ lumpy form, now bundled inside several blankets, but in the shadows he couldn’t see if Mark was asleep. When the foreigner rasped at him from the semi-darkness, Garec jumped, shouting in surprise and nearly tumbling overboard.

  ‘Is he back?’

  ‘Rutting lords! You scared me!’ Garec sat back down clumsily.

  Without moving, Mark asked again, ‘Is he back? Is Steven here?’

  Garec frowned. ‘Sorry. Not yet.’

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘My guess is that we’re at least two days’ ride north of Orindale. I’ve heard of these cliffs, but have never travelled far enough up the coast to see them before. We came into the fjord hoping to find someplace to put ashore and roll out the far portal – we couldn’t see anything particularly promising north along the coast, and we didn’t want to risk Steven’s return through an unopened port, so it made sense to find a beach or a flat rock before the watch said five o’clock.’ Now his eyes had grown used to the dim light, Garec could see Mark peering up the craggy wall in an effort to spot Gilmour.

  ‘But there was nothing?’

  ‘No.’ Garec shook his head. ‘So Gilmour scaled the wall and opened the portal up there.’

  ‘How far have we come into the fjord?’ Mark made no effort to lift his head; Garec could give him an accurate synopsis of their progress.

  ‘Not far… maybe a morning’s ride. Gilmour is helping out with a breeze, but
it’s slow going, lots of twists and turns, too many submerged rocks.’ He peered up at Gilmour himself, then asked, ‘Are you hungry, Mark? There’s still plenty of food from Orindale: wine, beer, smoked gansel, anything.’

  ‘Not now, thanks.’ Mark sounded genuinely appreciative. ‘Maybe later.’

  ‘Right. That’s fine, later. Just let me know.’

  ‘Garec?’

  ‘What?’ He took several steps towards the bow, then, not wanting to intrude, sat on his haunches and stared into the shadows. ‘What can I do?’

  Mark whispered, but Garec heard the question with no difficulty. ‘Did it hurt?’

  Recalling the fiery pain that had slithered and scratched its way across his side, gnawing through his flesh like a subterranean creature armed with spindles of needle teeth, Garec was forced to take a moment before answering. ‘Yes, it did. It was much worse than I would ever have imagined.’

  ‘I want you to teach me to shoot, Garec. I want to get good at it – maybe I’ll not ever be as good as you or Versen, but I want to hit what I choose. Maybe it won’t be in the heart every time, but as long as it hurts, I don’t mind.’ Mark made a shuffling sound, shifting his position and leaning forward in earnest. ‘Will you teach me to shoot?’

  ‘I don’t know if I can,’ the Ronan bowman said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Mark was indignant. ‘You’re the best archer in Eldarn. You might be the best archer anywhere, my world included.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can pick it up again… if I can do it anymore.’

  ‘You can, Garec,’ Mark murmured. ‘I’m not asking you to kill anyone. I just want you to teach me how.’ There was a long pause and Mark added, ‘I will take care of the killing.’