by Rob Scott
She needed rest, food and then more rest, and unless Jacrys stopped soon for the night, she would be forced to abandon her surveillance and attempt to find the traitorous murderer the following day. ‘Why don’t you go back to your inn?’ she muttered. ‘Aren’t you hungry? Don’t you want to take a break for food? It’s well past the dinner aven now. Don’t you want to sit for a while? Maybe a day or two?’
Two small boys with dirty faces, soiled tunics and irretrievably black fingernails passed her, carrying an old chainball between them, but they stopped long enough to take a wide-eyed look at the odd woman talking aloud to no one.
‘There’s nobody there, lady,’ one of the youngsters said in a small but amused voice.
Brexan whirled on them. ‘Yes, you wretched little rutters. I am a full-gone lunatic with a cracking nasty headache and a tendency to talk out loud to phantoms right before I kidnap, kill, cook and eat annoying little boys!’
The two children screamed and ran, their chainball forgotten, as fast as they could to get away from the homicidal woman with the drawn face and the deathly-pale skin.
Brexan winced at their cries, whispering, ‘Yes. That’s grand. Alert the entire city.’
Hustling along the side street, she was careful not to make any additional noise but assumed, for the fourth or fifth time that day, that she had already created such a clamour that Jacrys would be waiting for her at the next corner, knife drawn and ready to pierce her ribs – but when she reached the main thoroughfare, the well-dressed man was working his way along the river towards a tavern near the waterfront, apparently oblivious to the racket. Jacrys paused at the tavern door and looked left then right, as though the person or people for whom he had been searching all day would somehow appear, then gave up and entered the inn with a dismissive shrug.
‘Thank the gods,’ Brexan said. ‘Have five courses, six if you want them. I’ll pay. Just give me a few moments to catch my breath and get some water.’ There was an alehouse conveniently across the way; with any luck she could get a table near the window so she could keep a close watch on the main boulevard while choking down a hasty dinner and drinking an ocean of cold water.
She crossed the street, pausing to allow a mule-drawn wagon to pass, then fell in behind the cart before stepping onto the plank walkway lining the muddy road that wound its way to the northern wharf. She stopped long enough to stomp the mud from her boots and checked angles of sight from the various windows in the alehouse; she didn’t want to lose Jacrys if he were only visiting the tavern to ask more questions. Worried he might slip past her in the darkness, Brexan decided to look around for a better place to sit, one without an obstructed view of the waterfront.
She rounded the corner and disappeared into the darkness of the alley, but she had not taken five steps before she sensed another presence: someone backed against the wall to her left. Something was wrong. She took one or two awkward, lunging steps back towards the main street before feeling a hand clamp down on her shoulder and then around her throat. Brexan strained against the grip until she lost her balance and then the stranger heaved her off her feet and slammed her into the alehouse wall.
The force of the blow knocked the air from her lungs and Brexan, too weak to fight back now, gasped for air and looked longingly towards the relative safety of the waterfront boulevard. The grip on her throat made regaining her breath all the more difficult. Light streaming through the alehouse windows was only a few paces away, but it might as well have been a Moon’s ride, for the alley darkness had swallowed them.
‘Tell me who you are and do not lie. I have some respect for spies, even hideously inadequate spies like you, but I have no patience for liars. So be quick about it and don’t lie, because I will know.’ The man’s voice was difficult to hear over the rushing blood and raspy inhalations echoing in Brexan’s head, but she knew who it was. Well, you knew you had been too rutting noisy, you stupid fool, she thought, disgusted with herself.
Her vision tunnelled as consciousness closed in, then she regained control. Her vision was blurry, but she could see the cut of his cloak, the broad shoulders, the frilly edge sewn onto his hood and the white lace collar. He was a good dresser. ‘I’m-’ Brexan coughed and spat in an effort to draw breath, but the spy didn’t seem to care that her spittle dribbled across her chin and dripped onto his wrist.
‘You’re…?’ he prompted, loosening his grip just enough for Brexan to wheeze audibly.
‘My name-’ She took quick breaths; they were coming somewhat easier now. She forced herself to make eye contact with the Malakasian killer, knowing if she looked him in the face, he would be prone to believe what she said. ‘My name is Brexan. I was sent here by General Oaklen to-’
‘To what?’ Jacrys asked, his dirk drawn now and pressed against her ribs. Brexan could feel its tip against the bruise where the scarred Seron had elbowed her.
To what? To what? To what, you idiot, a Malakasian general sent you here to do what?
‘To get the stone key, the talisman… he told me you were looking for it as well and…’ She hesitated, forcing her gaze back up to his face.
‘You’re lying, Brexan, or whoever you are.’ He pressed the dirk a little harder between two of her ribs. ‘How could you have known who I am?’
Brexan took the risk of her life and prayed it would create enough credible confusion that the spy would spare her. ‘I met you once in Estrad.’
Jacrys paused at that, loosened his grip and even withdrew the dirk’s point. ‘Go on.’
Heartened by this measure of good luck, Brexan said, ‘I met you and after Bronfio was killed – I don’t know if you had heard, but he died in the assault on Riverend Palace, just a few days after you had visited him in our camp-’
Now it was Jacrys’ turn to lie. ‘I hadn’t heard. Pity. He was a promising officer.’
Brexan tasted a sour tang in her throat. ‘Anyway, when he died, I was one of the only ones who knew what you looked like and Oaklen, sorry, General Oaklen sent me to get the stone. He said Prince Malagon wants that stone as soon as possible and that you had failed to-’ She paused in her story for effect, looked down at her boots again and waited.
Jacrys was angry, but he did not return the dirk to her ribs. ‘Failed to do what? Failed to do what? Tell me!’
‘You know – failed to get it back.’
‘That is none of your concern. How did you know where to find me? I came across the Blackstones. It nearly killed me. Did you manage that, Brexan?’
Jacrys was off balance and she decided to confuse things further, hoping to weave such a tangled web of nonsense that the spy would let her go, if only for an instant. She would make a quick dash for the street and disappear into the crowds along the wharf. ‘Oaklen sent me to Strandson. There was a merchant. He never told me his name. But he had one of them, Versil, Versec- something like that. He, the merchant, had Seron with him. They had caught this fellow, Versil and they were bringing him here. It was a schooner, a fast ship. The merchant, the fat man with the mole on his face right here,’ Brexan indicated the side of her nose with one finger, ‘he told me where to start looking for you.’ She held her breath, hoping to the gods of the Northern Forest that the Malakasian spy had worked with the Falkan merchant. This was it; this was the moment – there’d been just enough accurate information to be believable, but if Jacrys had never met the fat traitor, Brexan was about to die.
Jacrys relaxed his stranglehold on the young woman and muttered, ‘Carpello, I am going to kill you.’
Carpello! That’s his name. Thank you, Jacrys. And no, I am going to kill him.
The spy looked back at her. ‘Well, my darling. I must say you aren’t much for espionage, are you? And although I believe you are telling me the truth, I cannot have you meddling in my affairs, Oaklen or no Oaklen.’ He raised the dirk to her throat. ‘Goodbye, Brexan.’
‘No! Wait!’ she pleaded. ‘I know where they are, where they’re hiding.’ Brexan assumed he’d been lookin
g for the Ronan partisans; it was them he had followed north from Estrad. Gabriel O’Reilly had told them about the wraith army descending on the Ronans in the Blackstone forest, but the ghost had known nothing more. She took another risk. ‘The Ronans,’ she said finally. ‘I know where they are.’
She was about to name them, hoping it would add more credibility to her claim, when she caught herself – if any of them had been killed and Jacrys knew it, she would be caught.
‘No you don’t. It was a good try, though,’ Jacrys said.
‘But I do,’ she answered. Keep him talking. Keep him talking.
‘Then why did you follow me all day?’
‘Because I don’t believe they have the stone.’ What are you saying, Brexan? Think of something else, anything else. What if he knows the stone is back in Colorado?
‘Really? And why is that?’ He was getting bored, she could tell.
‘Because if they had it, Gilmour would have taken it to Sandcliff Palace, right?’
Jacrys, in control now, prepared his bait. ‘Why don’t you tell me where they are?’
‘Take your knife away from my throat and perhaps I will,’ she said firmly. Despite the cold, Brexan could feel sweat breaking out on her forehead. ‘I saw them just the other day, two days ago – no, three days ago.’
‘Really? Gilmour and the others?’ The master spy set the hook. ‘You saw Gilmour and the Ronan partisans, here in Orindale?’
‘Yes,’ Brexan sighed, ‘Gilmour and the others. They are south of the imperial palace, hiding in an old wine shop. It looks closed, as if the merchant is only there for the warm season.’
Jacrys moved in close. Brexan could feel his breath on her face, the warm, damp feel of Estrad. Had it all begun in Estrad? Had she really come this far, only to be killed by the man who had started her on this journey?
Pressing his cheek against hers, the spy renewed his grip around her throat. ‘Gilmour is dead, my dear. I killed him last Twinmoon. Goodbye.’
With Jacrys’ cheek caressing hers, Brexan remembered Versen, lashed to the bulkhead in the schooner’s hold, and how he had manipulated his bonds so that he could lie flat on his back. When she did the same, their cheeks had touched in the darkness. Brexan thought it was the most intimate thing she had ever done with another person. Waiting to feel the sharp pain of the blade pierce her ribs, she tried with all her might to remember every detail of Versen’s stubbly cheek coming to a gentle rest against hers. Goodbye, Versen, she thought and waited to feel her life drain away.
Then there was someone else with them. Mercurial-quick, the cloaked intruder dropped down on them from above. He must have been on the roof, Brexan thought in the instant before Jacrys, as startled as she, was pulled away from her and tugged roughly down the alley. Brexan didn’t wait to see what happened; she took to her heels and ran into the street, about to escape into the anonymous throngs moving along the wharf, when she stopped. ‘Sallax!’
She almost knocked over an elderly couple walking hand-in-hand along the pier and she reversed direction, shouting, ‘Sallax!’ as she ran back towards the alleyway.
THE FAR PORTAL
‘I can’t open it until five o’clock.’ Steven suppressed his irritation. Jennifer Sorenson was upset, and even he had to admit his story didn’t sound especially convincing.
‘Five o’clock, because that’s when your roommate will lay out his charred, egg-stained rug, and you’ll land right in his lap?’ Her scepticism was salt rubbed in his wounds – wounds that Hannah’s mother was responsible for; he felt as though he had been in a car accident. His ribs and abdomen throbbed furiously from her kicks and his head was about to break open. He felt certain the roadmap of cuts and bruises across his head would never heal.
They sat together in front of the television, watching the coverage of the unprecedented winter firestorm that had already claimed eight square miles along Chicago Creek Road. Between interviews with townspeople and firefighters, the square-jawed anchorman spoke to a helicopter pilot who was monitoring the damage from above. The arrhythmic jouncing of the picture as the helicopter navigated the tricky thermals along Clear Creek Canyon made Steven feel even more nauseous.
It was 4.10 p.m. and it had taken two hours to recount his tale. He left out the part about being able to work magic with the hickory staff. If there was a slim chance that Jennifer Sorenson didn’t already believe he was insane; that, he was quite sure, would have her calling the local psychiatric hospital. She had stopped him several times, throwing up her hands and shouting, ‘That’s enough, Steven, I’m calling the police.’ So far he had persuaded her to let him continue, begging her to wait until five o’clock, when he could prove he was telling the truth.
In the past fifteen minutes the conversation had taken a turn for the worse and Steven knew Hannah’s mother wouldn’t make it through the hour.
‘All right, I’ll do it, but we can only leave it open for a second,’ he agreed reluctantly.
‘Why? Why not leave it open until Hannah comes back, or until Mark finds her?’ Jennifer’s tone was half disbelief and half sarcasm.
Steven, for all his sympathy for the woman, began to get angry. ‘You’re not helping,’ he said. ‘I have been in Hell. I have had my life threatened every day for two months, and I am telling you that, regardless of whether you believe me, you need to have a little faith for forty-five more minutes.’
‘No. Do it now.’ Jennifer’s eyes were hard.
‘Fine, but if Nerak finds us because I open this now, I – we – may have to escape through it, and that means we might be dropped on top of a glacier, or at the bottom of a river, or anywhere. There is nothing I can do about that. Do you understand?’
‘Oh, sure. The demon creature trying to release all the hounds of Hell onto the funny little world you discovered will be right here in the next ten minutes, because you took two seconds to show me a carpet? You are mad, Steven Taylor, mad and dangerous, and I want to know what you have done with my daughter.’
Without another word, Steven took a book from the coffee table, something big with black and white photos on the cover, and handed it to her. He rolled out the Larion far portal, holding one corner, and turned back to Jennifer. ‘When I tell you, throw that book onto the portal. Do not touch it, don’t reach out over it, whatever you do, do not, for your own sake, step on it.’ He looked her straight in the face to be certain she was taking him seriously, but all he could see was her open scepticism.
He shrugged. ‘I don’t have time for your doubts, Ms Sorenson, but if this is what you need to believe me, then fine.’
With that, Steven released the edge of the far portal. The moment the last corner of the tapestry struck the floor the energy level in the room rose, that same shimmer he and Mark had felt in Idaho Springs. Now Steven recognised the feeling: it was the same magic as the hickory staff. He felt it pulsing in the air, breathing him in and out, as if he were just a passerby interacting with an ancient force for a fraction of a second on its interminable journey though the ages.
He looked at Jennifer: she was standing in mute stupefaction: he had been telling the truth. ‘Throw it!’ he shouted, ‘throw it, Ms Sorenson. Throw the book now.’
She threw the book awkwardly, but before it struck the tapestry, it disappeared. Steven used a small metal shovel he had taken from the array of fireplace tools beside Jennifer’s hearth to create a shallow range of hilly wrinkles in the tapestry. In a moment, the shimmer in the air had faded away.
He crouched down and folded the portal in half, then moved to stand beside Jennifer, who was looking far older than her sixty years – decades older than the raving mother who had beaten seven shades of shit out of him earlier that afternoon. She stood looking down at her hands, thin and delicate, Hannah’s hands, as if the book with its tasteful photographs, etudes of light and shadow, would somehow reappear in them. She was a practical woman, and believed her eyes.
For a few moments longer she struggled with the notion
that greater things than anything she had ever imagined were at work right in her own living room, then she started to sob. ‘She’s alive? Hannah? Please- I’m sorry, Steven, but please tell me if she-’
Steven took the older woman in his arms and held her tightly as she shook with emotion. ‘She is alive, Ms Sorenson, I promise you. She is in Praga, in Eldarn, and I have been trying with all my strength to get to her, but I’ve been trying to tell you all afternoon, I need your help.’
‘Anything.’ She took Steven’s hands. ‘My God, but look at you – what the hell is this place?’
‘I’ve been through some difficult times, but I’m fine, and I will find her.’ He felt about ready to collapse. Everything hurt, and he was exhausted – his nap on the bus that morning, as the sun rose above the prairie behind him, had been only a thimbleful of the rest he needed.
Thirty-eight minutes and he would be gone.
‘This demon – what was his name?’ Jennifer Sorenson’s tears had slowed and her voice was steadier. She was back in control.
‘He’s not a demon, he’s far worse. He is Eldarn’s greatest sorcerer, the most gifted magician in thousands of Twinmoons – years, whatever – and he has been taken by an evil force. He’s a matchstick compared with what’s coming if we don’t stop him.’ He searched for an explanation that made sense. ‘Nerak is the most powerful and destructive force any world has ever seen, and he’s on his way to this spot right now.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we opened the portal.’
‘Oh shit, Steven.’
The profanity was unexpected; he smiled. ‘It’s all right. Nerak doesn’t want you, he wants me – he may not even show up at all, because he can go back on his own when the portal is opened. I doubt we gave him enough time just now, but I need you to close this portal as quickly as possible after I’ve gone through.’