The Larion Senators

by Rob Scott; Jay Gordon

  Steven grimaced. ‘Because we’re going to tell them to enter the Fold and remain there for ever.’

  ‘Can you do that?’ Garec asked.

  Again, Steven looked at Gilmour. ‘Can we? She sent us all the same dog, didn’t she?’

  Hoyt whispered, ‘Whoring rutters, it’s Milla.’

  Gilmour looked around for something to drink. With nothing at hand, he licked his lips and nodded. ‘I don’t know. I just … don’t know.’

  ‘What’s the book say?’ Steven pressed.

  Alen interjected, ‘It says that we can do it: you certainly, Fantus; maybe even I can. The challenge is figuring out how to make it work on thousands simultaneously.’

  ‘That’s it, then.’ Garec finally understood. ‘That’s why Nerak had the book with him on the Prince Marek. He was learning how to give directions to all of these soldiers at once.’

  ‘To a large group at least, yes. It’s called the ash dream and, if I’m guessing correctly, Gilmour, it was a teaching tool, wasn’t it? Learn from your own past? Learn emotional and physical self-control, self-image, self-esteem, and all of it stemming from self-knowledge … because all magic is about knowledge, my friend.’ He was speaking only to Gilmour now. And what’s more important knowledge than self-knowledge? What better research arena than one’s own past – and not the boring stuff, hell no. Lessek planned it right: get the highs and the lows. But you were never supposed to go in solo, were you?’

  ‘Very old.’ Gilmour didn’t look at them. ‘It’s very old magic, Steven, Lessek’s personal writings. We can’t pretend to know what he was thinking.’

  ‘But you do,’ Steven said. ‘You have to believe it, Gilmour, because you have to teach me, and we have all of about two days to get it exactly right.’

  ‘Wait a moment,’ Captain Ford interrupted, ‘how do you know where they’re going, Steven? What if you guess wrong?’

  ‘Actually, Captain, that’s the one piece of this whole nightmarish puzzle that I’m confident I have figured correctly.’

  ‘So where are they going to strike first?’ Hannah said, taking his hand.

  ‘Jones Beach, New York.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Jesus, that’s only thirty miles from New York City.’

  ‘Worse,’ Steven added, ‘it’s only ten miles from Kennedy Airport. Imagine if even one of those soldiers managed to get on an international flight. It would be easy with a pouch of ashes. We’d never know where they had gone. London, Moscow, Beijing, São Paulo – anywhere in the world, in just a few hours.’

  ‘And the military would never bomb that area, no matter how many soldiers came ashore,’ Hannah said. ‘It’s too densely populated.’

  ‘And damned near impossible to evacuate,’ Steven said. ‘Jones Beach is perfect, and Mark knows it. Especially in winter, that stretch of land is about the only barren piece of real estate within a hundred miles of Manhattan or Kennedy Airport. It’s like another planet out there, and just across the causeway, ka-blam! Civilisation, access, knowledge, souls, power, all of it a half-hour walk from the end of the Earth.’

  Hoyt looked at Alen and whispered, ‘What’s a mile?’

  ‘About fifteen hundred paces.’

  ‘And an hour?’

  ‘About half an aven.’

  ‘Thanks. I’m caught up.’ He tore another piece of bread from the loaf and tossed it to Garec.

  The Ronan smiled despite his obvious terror and asked, ‘So what do we do now? How do we kill him? Do we have to wait until the table is open, or can we get him from the other side?’

  ‘Great question, Garec,’ Steven said, turning to Captain Ford. ‘We turn and run, as fast as we can, into the North Sea. Can we get through the blockade and into the Northeast Channel?’

  Captain Ford nodded. ‘It isn’t difficult leaving, not nearly as tricky as coming in.’

  ‘Then that’s what you do,’ Steven went on, ‘all of you, you all sail for Orindale. Try to find Gita Kamrec; tell her that we’ve won. Help her establish a people’s government in Falkan – it’s got the strongest economy; it’s the best place to start. We’ll be back when we can to help you.’

  ‘Tell her we’ve won?’ Garec looked askance at him.

  ‘If you’re alive when you reach Orindale and the world hasn’t folded up or gone to pieces, yes, you can assume that we’ve won.’

  ‘But Garec comes with us,’ Gilmour said simply. It wasn’t a question and Steven decided not to argue with him about it – not yet.

  Garec turned around to look his old mentor in the face, then smiled. He didn’t look forward to telling Kellin, though.

  ‘What are you all going to do?’ Captain Ford asked.

  ‘First, we bring this boat about and get the blazes out of here.’

  Captain Ford looked to Gilmour, who nodded grimly. ‘All right, then,’ the captain said as he started towards the companionway. ‘If you’ll excuse me, we’re coming about.’ He disappeared into the corridor and they heard him shouting before he reached the main deck, ‘Pel! Do you want a salary raise?’

  ‘Aye, Captain!’ came the distant reply.

  ‘Then wear this motherwhoring tub about! Into the wind; let’s go! Kellin!’

  ‘Captain!’ Her voice was even further away.

  ‘Get down here and learn something! Bloody hurry!’

  ‘Aye, aye, Captain!’

  Garec laughed and shook his head. Steven motioned Gilmour to Captain Ford’s empty chair and said, ‘Hannah, where’s your mother tonight?’

  ‘Cape Cod.’

  ‘Good.’ Now he did stand up; he wanted to feel the magic rouse itself to help him. ‘You go back at seven. Get the portal from her and drive like holy hell to Jones Beach, or someplace nearby. Alen, Gilmour and I have a bit of work to do with the spell book, but we’ll come through … when should we open it?’

  ‘Cape Cod to Long Island? I don’t know enough about the East Coast to even hazard a guess—’

  ‘I think there’s a ferry from Buzzard’s Bay,’ Steven broke in. ‘Take that; it’ll save time, but you’ll need to open the portal by the following day, let’s say five o’clock, regardless of where you are. That gives you twenty-two hours to get your mother, get the portal and get to Long Island.’

  ‘It should be plenty of time.’

  The Morning Star turned into the wind. To Steven it felt like the nautical equivalent of running into a wall. He sat back down, his knuckles white on the chair.

  Hannah braced herself against the bulkhead. ‘Even if it takes me all day to talk her into it, we can make the Island in a few hours.’

  ‘I don’t know. Your mother can be awfully persuasive,’ Steven recalled getting the hell beaten out of him. She wasn’t someone he would ever underestimate again. ‘Either way, there or not, open the portal at five o’clock, twenty-two hours after you step through. We’ll come through at five past five.’

  ‘Steven, you haven’t answered my question,’ Garec said. ‘How are we going to do this? How do we “take the head off the snake”? Can we attack Mark from the other side before he brings this army of killers through to wipe us all out or, worse, invites a wave of fury and death to mow us down where we stand?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Steven said, truthfully.

  Alen sighed, clearly unconvinced.

  Steven said, ‘We’ve known since my return to South Carolina that Nerak could detect the far portals when they were opened. He followed me through to Charleston Harbour, despite the fact that he should have been tossed anywhere on Earth. Why is that?’ Steven didn’t wait for an answer. ‘He chased me across the country, racing me to Lessek’s key, and all the while Garec, Mark and Gilmour were opening their portal every twelve hours. Why didn’t he come back, take their portal and simply wait around for me to return? I would have been a sitting duck.

  ‘When I returned, I started paging through Lessek’s spell book; Nerak could have used that to return to Eldarn. Eventually, he did. Why did he linger in Colorado? We know
he pursued Jennifer Sorenson, Hannah’s mother. Why? If he didn’t need the portal, why did Nerak follow Jennifer into the mountains? Was it for fun? Did he want the portal, even though he could have returned without it? What was he doing hanging around over there?’ Steven tried to answer his own questions. Nerak knew we had Lessek’s key and that we were about to waste our time running for Sandcliff Palace. With us heading in the wrong direction, there was no need to rush back. We were no threat without the table and he assumed we had no idea where the table was; so he waited—’

  ‘And he learned,’ Gilmour interjected. ‘He took souls, how many we can’t begin to guess, but he probably took new souls every few avens: workers, teachers, doctors, anyone who might help him develop an accurate and comprehensive knowledge of Earth.’ He looked at Alen. ‘He was filling his own head with a thousand Twinmoons of missing information.’

  ‘And deciding how and where to take your world,’ Brexan finished Gilmour’s thoughts.

  ‘Taking Mark Jenkins clinches it,’ Garec said. ‘He’s been going on and on about that rutting beach since he arrived. He claims it was Lessek showing him that he’s some kind of heir: the prince of Eldarn.’

  ‘The prince of all worlds,’ Hoyt said to himself.

  ‘So, Garec, to answer your question, finally,’ Steven chuckled, ‘I don’t know if we can hit Mark before he opens the spell table. If we try, he’ll know, because our only resources across the Fold are the far portals and he’ll know when we’ve opened them. However, if we wait to strike until Mark has opened the table—’

  ‘We run the risk of him first inviting this evil essence into Eldarn.’

  ‘He won’t,’ Steven said. ‘He’ll be preoccupied with the Fold itself. Moving that many people is a big job, even for the world’s most powerful magician. There are only so many ways to do it and if he wants to shift a sizeable force to Jones Beach, Mark will have to rend a significant window for them to cross.’

  ‘They’re not going in single file,’ Hannah said.

  ‘I’d have to pee about every half-aven,’ Hoyt laughed at his own joke.

  ‘While Mark’s opening the door, or widening the door, I should say, that’s when he’ll be vulnerable … well, relatively. And, yes, that’s when we’ll hit him from the other side.’

  ‘So he’ll know we’re there?’ Garec asked. ‘He’ll know we crossed?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Gilmour said, ‘if he detected Hannah’s little field trip yesterday, he might think we’re moving back and forth. If Hannah goes through at seven o’clock and opens the portal for us the following day, Mark may believe one of us is ferrying supplies or weapons.’

  ‘It can’t hurt to hope,’ Brexan said.

  ‘What time is it now?’ Gilmour asked.

  Garec checked Steven’s old watch. ‘Four and forty minutes.’

  Hannah suddenly looked nervous. All right,’ she said, ‘I have two hours. I’m going to try and get some sleep.’

  ‘We all should,’ Alen said, moving towards the door. ‘Tomorrow’s going to be a busy day.’

  ‘You’re a master at understatement, my friend,’ Hoyt said, passing what remained of his bread to Brexan.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said as she followed him into the companionway. ‘Are you going back?’ Brexan whispered.

  ‘Back to Falkan? To Orindale?’ Hoyt said.

  ‘Yes.’

  Alen slowed to listen; he didn’t look back.

  Hoyt pressed against the wall, allowing Steven and Hannah to pass. He watched them disappear together into Marrin Stonnel’s old cabin. Turn and look at me, Hannah. Just once. Look at me once, and I’ll follow you wherever you’re off to. When the door closed, Hoyt sighed and said, ‘Yes, I think I am. You?’

  Alen’s shoulders slumped and he made his way through the darkened companionway to the stairs in the main hold. Good, he thought to himself. That’s good. Alen never heard Brexan’s reply.

  Garec waited for Gilmour on the main deck. The breeze was numbingly cold, but it was welcome after the closeness of the captain’s cabin. The discussion hadn’t taken long, but the Ronan archer was weary, and he could sense that the exhaustion in his bones was not about to let up. He waved to Kellin, gestured that he would be right there and then listened for Gilmour on the stairs.

  When Gilmour arrived, he was smiling. ‘I wondered where I would run into you.’

  ‘You promised to tell me.’ Garec kept his voice down. It was unnecessary on the brig-sloop’s deck, but he felt the need to whisper, regardless. ‘First, it was at Seer’s Peak, when you said you were sure Lessek would want to communicate with me. Then it was in Wellham Ridge, when—’

  ‘When I said that one day I would tell you the truth; yes, I remember.’ He pulled a pipe from his tunic and as he put it to his mouth the tobacco apparently already packed tightly in the bowl started smouldering. ‘I did promise, didn’t I?’

  ‘And since I’ve just agreed to follow you into another world, a world of pizza and barefoot coffee and turkey and bullshit, I think now might be a good time.’

  ‘I want you there with us because I am worried that Mark’s analysis of his lineage might be accurate.’

  ‘Mark?’ Garec hadn’t expected this. ‘You mean all that nonsense about being Rona’s prince, Eldarn’s king?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Gilmour said, ‘and since so few things we’ve experienced or encountered in the past several Twinmoons appear to be coincidental—’

  ‘There haven’t been many; I admit.’

  ‘Then I think you may be the one who can save Mark … or who will save Mark, I suppose, if Mark can be saved.’

  ‘Me? How?’

  ‘Again, this is only an old man’s speculation, but I believe your great-great-grandfather would have wanted you there, to follow in his footsteps as the king’s protector.’

  ‘Hold just a moment, Gilmour.’ Garec held up his hands. ‘Are you saying that you knew my great-great-grandfather?’

  ‘No,’ Gilmour frowned. ‘I knew your great-great-grandmother. Her name was Etrina Lippman, and she came from Capehill.’

  ‘Right, right,’ Garec yawned. ‘My mother mentioned her; they used to call her Ettie or Etta or something.’

  ‘Etrina Lippman of Capehill, Garec. Does that name sound at all familiar to you?’

  ‘Only if you hearken all the way back to my childhood and those early days on the farm with—’ he stopped himself. ‘Wait… Etrina Lippman. I have heard that name. It was—’

  ‘In Tenner Wynne’s letter.’ Gilmour pulled the faded parchment from his tunic. It had been wet so many times now that the ink was a blurry smear.

  ‘Pissing demons.’ Garec exhaled through pursed lips. ‘Not me, too. I don’t want that. I don’t want anything to do with that. That’s all—’

  ‘Don’t worry. You heard Steven: if he has anything to do with it, Eldarn’s new government will be a democracy, probably a republic, once we get the schools organised and the printing presses up and working and the populace better informed and … oh, rutters, but there’s lots to do, assuming, of course, that we’re all still here in two days.’ He turned to lean on the port rail. The river was a black highway in both directions. Barges, shallow drafting schooners, ketches and catboats plied the waters, their watchlights lit and flickering in the middlenight breeze.

  Garec looked out over northern Malakasia. There was a tremor in his voice, in part from the cold, but more from the catastrophic news that he was next in line to rule Falkan. ‘You use those words, demo-thing and repub-whatever. Gilmour, I don’t even know what they mean.’

  ‘Trust me, Garec, I am not interested in you as a potential monarch of Falkan. I think it would be a profound waste of an otherwise productive and compassionate person. However, I am interested in your great-great-grandfather’s legacy. He was the king’s protector and, like it or not, essentially nothing of what we have encountered, done, seen or accomplished in the past three Twinmoons seems to be by chance.’

  ‘Some grand pla
n,’ Garec muttered. ‘It’s a perfect tangle to me. We’ve barely known if we were up or down, ahead or behind. How can you suggest that this is all part of some intricately woven tapestry?’

  ‘We can’t take the risk. We need you there.’ Gilmour watched the waves lap and splash along the waterline. ‘You’ve always thought of yourself as the Bringer of Death. It was wrong of Sallax and Versen to give you that nickname, because you have a real gift, Garec, you are a real virtuoso with a bow. Like it or not, I believe that’s your grandfather’s legacy.’

  ‘And a great deal of practising,’ Garec said. ‘Give me some credit. I put in the avens at the yard.’

  ‘True, but think of your dream, that vision from Lessek on Seer’s Peak.’

  ‘To be honest, I was hoping you wouldn’t bring that up,’ Garec admitted. ‘It was Rona. I watched Prince Tenner’s attempt to continue the Grayslip family line and then I watched as the Forbidden Forest, the hills around Riverend, dried to dust and died.’

  ‘Rona’s protector,’ Gilmour whispered, ‘not the Bringer of Death.’

  ‘I won’t rule,’ Garec insisted. ‘It isn’t in me. I’m no leader; I’m a worker. I’ll do anything, but I won’t rule.’

  ‘You think I see that as a character flaw?’ Gilmour grinned. ‘It may actually be a sign of great wisdom and self-knowledge that you wish to avoid your birthright. But, given our experiences along this merry trail thus far, I need you with us at Jones Beach. You know Steven; he’ll be looking for any opportunity to save Mark. It will be his weakness and there’s nothing we can do about it, except to convince him that you’ll be watching for a chance too.’

  ‘Very well, then.’ Garec looked for Kellin; she was still in the bow, wrapped in a cloak and bouncing on her toes to keep warm. ‘I’d better go and talk to her.’

  ‘Good luck with that.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said as he started forward, then paused. ‘Wait, one other thing – Gilmour, how did you know Ettie?’

  ‘Tenner Wynne never arrived in Capehill. We assume he died the night Riverend burned. That left your great-great-grandmother pregnant and alone, an embarrassing situation for her. She was the daughter of an important import–export merchant from Capehill and rumours about her condition, and how she came to be in that condition, were all over northern Falkan—’