The Hickory Staff Page 25

  Fear of the unknown and anxiety about how they would ever return home, welled up in Steven again and he closed his eyes to shut out the surreal theatre playing above his head. Shifting his position beneath the beech tree, he soon fell back into a fitful slumber.

  Steven woke to find Mark tugging at his ankle. Rubbing sleep from his eyes, Steven rose hastily to join him. Their small camp was abuzz with activity; Versen, Garec and Brynne surrounded a newcomer, a man Steven thought he’d seen at Riverend Palace. Gilmour sat near the fire, quietly smoking his pipe. Sallax was nowhere to be found.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he asked Mark.

  ‘Apparently, this is Mika, one of their reb—, er, freedom fighters. Someone named Jerond was supposed to be here as well, but he hasn’t shown up.’ Mark knelt alongside his blanket and began folding it into a tight bedroll. ‘Brynne looks worried. I think they think something rotten has happened to him.’

  ‘Where’s Sallax?’

  ‘Standing watch in the forest somewhere.’ Mark paused and contemplated Mika’s arrival. ‘It’s a bit odd that he didn’t warn us at all when Mika came through the woods.’

  ‘Maybe he fell asleep out there,’ Steven said.

  ‘That doesn’t seem like him.’ Mark was curious now; Steven began to worry that his friend might create more trouble in an already strained relationship with the partisan leader.

  When Sallax did return, he immediately wrapped an arm around Mika’s shoulder in relief. When he was told of Jerond’s delay, he suggested they pack up and begin riding north as soon as possible.

  ‘Great. I have to get back on that reprehensible beast,’ Mark groaned. He stood and began stretching his back. Even fatigued and near collapse, Mark still moved with the economic, angular motion of an athlete.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ Steven asked. ‘He looks like a fine animal to me.’

  ‘I think he has a thought disorder,’ Mark said dryly. ‘And his gait is so uneven, one of his legs must be a good fifteen inches shorter than the others.’ He began collecting their few possessions, rolling them into his bedroll.

  ‘Come, my friends,’ Gilmour ordered, ‘it’s less than an aven till dawn. We need to get under way.’

  Mark caught Brynne staring at him across the fire. She didn’t turn away immediately, and Mark struggled to read her facial expression, but it had grown too dark. All he could be sure of was that she was watching him pack his bedroll while the others made hasty preparations to leave Garec’s farm.

  No one spoke as the company made its way through the darkness. Mark’s still-aching back protested from the moment he mounted Wretch, but in the conspicuous silence he elected not to complain out loud. They moved along a narrow trail snaking through the southern forest. Periodically, Mark believed he could hear the muted roar of the Estrad River in the distance. The two moons were now well apart in the pre-dawn sky and both foreigners marvelled at their beauty. One looked smaller, and somehow closer, while the second was a behemoth completing its own stately dance through the heavens, much further away.

  Steven noticed Garec’s mare was loaded down with blankets, clothing, additional food and a large saddlebag that looked as if it were filled entirely with colourfully fletched arrows. He had made it safely into his parents’ farmhouse, warned them of the potential danger coming from Estrad, and collected an array of items he considered essential; seeing Renna so heavily burdened with supplies, Steven realised they were facing a long journey to Welstar Palace.

  As the sun broke the horizon’s plane, Garec reached into one of the two quivers strapped across his back and withdrew an arrow. He carried a longbow across his lap and appeared ready to fire at any moment. Steven, who now trusted Garec almost as much as he did Gilmour, started to worry: were they being shadowed by Malakasians?

  Then Garec drew and fired. A plump rabbit tumbled out of the undergrowth onto the path in front of them.

  ‘Excellent, Garec, breakfast,’ Gilmour complimented him. ‘I’d love some grouse or perhaps a gansel, a nice chubby male with a soft, tasty breast, if you happen to see one.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do for you,’ Garec said cheerfully as he dismounted to retrieve the fallen animal. ‘Anyone else like to place an order?’

  ‘A short stack with bacon and a pot of regular coffee,’ Mark answered in English, unable to come up with a Ronan word for pancakes.

  ‘I don’t know what that means, Mark,’ Garec called back, ‘but if you see it, point it out and I’ll bring it down.’

  ‘God, I wish you could – but thanks for the thought, Garec. I appreciate it.’ Mark changed the subject. ‘How long will it take us to get to Welstar Palace?’

  Gilmour turned in the saddle. ‘That’s a difficult question. It should take us a Twinmoon or so, but I don’t know how long it will be before we can enter the palace.’

  ‘Sixty days?’ Mark blurted. ‘Well, I suppose the school board might buy my story, especially if I tell them about being attacked by a life-sucking demon in vivid enough detail. They just might let me keep my job, and they might even understand why I missed all of second quarter without calling in or leaving sub plans.’

  ‘I’ll get fired, too,’ Steven commented to no one. ‘And I don’t suppose Hannah will think this is very funny, either. That’s too bad. I miss her.’

  Mark pressed Gilmour for more information. ‘Why will it take so long to get into the palace?’

  At that, even Sallax turned to listen in. ‘Malakasia is patrolled by the largest army in all Eldarn. There are thousands and thousands of soldiers moving throughout the countryside every day. Nerak, in the guise of Prince Malagon, rarely appears to offer any leadership to his people. He rules without advisors and calls his generals and admirals to him only when he has dreamed up another cruelty to enact upon us citizens of the occupied world.

  ‘Few resist him, because he kills without warning or hesitation. When Nerak tires of Malagon’s body, he will allow it to die just before he takes possession of the next member of the Whitward family, Malagon’s daughter, Bellan. It has happened this way for nearly a thousand Twinmoons. To date, no one has been able to get anywhere near Welstar Palace.’

  ‘Why have you never tried before?’ Steven enquired.

  ‘Because, my friend, I have been waiting for someone like you to find the far portal and bring back Lessek’s Key.’ Gilmour used a boot heel to tap the ash from his pipe. ‘With Lessek’s Key there would be no need to travel to Welstar Palace. We could simply go to Sandcliff in Gorsk and try to decipher the spell table Lessek used to harness the power of the far portals all those thousands of Twinmoons ago. It was Lessek who discovered a pinprick in the universe, a tiny opening. It is through this the far portals operate. And it was this pinprick that released the evil which eventually claimed the young Larion Senator named Nerak.’

  Gilmour paused for a moment, sighed deeply and continued, ‘I suppose Nerak had it coming. He coveted power, more power than he could ever control, and one horrible night, his dream finally consumed him – literally.’

  ‘Power over whom?’ Steven was intrigued.

  ‘Over what,’ Gilmour corrected, ‘power over magic, and the knowledge to employ all its forms at will. Nerak’s dogged pursuit of ever-more-powerful forms of magic drove him insane … although the seeds of his insanity must have been there from the beginning, there is no record that anyone had detected such a problem.

  ‘Nerak studied Lessek’s writings, and planned what he believed would be an airtight operation by which he would capture the power Lessek released when he opened the path to your world. But Nerak wasn’t prepared for the enormous force waiting therein. It was far worse than even Lessek had imagined, perhaps the very essence of evil itself. It sent only one of its minions to deal with Nerak, and that one disciple has been much too powerful for anyone in Eldarn to defeat for the past nine hundred and eighty Twinmoons.’

  ‘A disciple of evil’s essence?’ Garec sounded dubious. ‘How can that be? Evil’s not
a thing, is it?’

  ‘Oh, Garec, that is the most difficult question of all.’ The old man organised his thoughts. ‘I suppose one way to explain it is to think of any encounter you’ve had with anything evil, those murderous soldiers at Riverend for example, the ones who killed Namont, rather than taking him prisoner. Something made them act evilly. Often it’s a combination of variables which work together to form exactly the right pattern. We cannot put our finger on evil any more than we can put our finger on truth. There is no universal, static and observable truth. There is only the perception of reality by those contemplating any collection of attributes, values, experiences, traditions and so on. Evil is the same way. It is collection of thoughts, failed dreams, depressing notions, forgotten friends and myriad other characteristics, all of which, when combined together, bring about a radical change in behaviour.

  ‘We never see the evil; we generally experience only a behavioural manifestation of evil’s power.’

  ‘Like a soldier swinging a sword,’ Garec guessed.

  ‘Or a parent beating a child, or a thief murdering an elderly woman. These are all evil acts, but they are not evil itself. No, this is our problem: evil itself does exist, and it has been trapped for much of the existence of this world. It has, from time to time, been able to slip one of its minions into our world, or into Steven and Mark’s world. And its minions are tiny. They are notions of evil, and they bring unbelievable havoc every time they manage to escape. And in all of our recorded history, no one has been able to successfully trap and exorcise one of evil’s minions.

  ‘And it is one of these minions that controls Nerak – and, in turn, Malagon today. Its goal, like every other that has managed to escape, is to open a path for the essence of all things evil to come unencumbered from its prison inside the Fold.’

  ‘What’s the Fold?’ Brynne asked, slyly checking to see if Mark was as enthralled with Gilmour’s story as she was. Versen and Sallax had slowed their horses to a walk so they too would not miss a single word.

  ‘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. It was a negative thought, a simple flash of anger or frustration, as insignificant as an ant on a hillside, but it happened. Evil was born and with every negative thought, every angry gesture – most of which were directed at evil’s essence by the creators themselves – it grew more powerful.

  ‘Steven and Mark came across the Fold when they fell through the far portal into Rona—’ Gilmour broke off for a moment, then clarified, ‘actually, they didn’t come across the Fold per se. Instead, they navigated through a window in the Fold, that pinprick in the fabric of the universe Lessek was able to find and control.

  ‘When Lessek found his pathway, he created an opening, and it was through that Nerak eventually allowed a minion of evil’s essence to come to Eldarn. Arriving here, it immediately diversified into the millions of thoughts and ideas people – we – construe as evil. It varies wildly: for one person, evil may be murdering another, while someone else may consider lying to a friend is evil.

  ‘So you see, this minion can exist anywhere, inside any living thing that knows what it means to be evil. For some reason, this notion of evil chose the Malakasian royal family. I am not certain why.’

  Steven swallowed hard and asked the question everyone feared. ‘What would happen if one of these minions managed to open the Fold for the essence of evil … this vagrant afterthought of the gods or whatever it is … to escape?’

  ‘Nothing would survive,’ Gilmour answered calmly. ‘Perhaps even matter itself would come apart. It would take only an instant and we would all be gone. Everything horrifying we’ve ever imagined would become a reality, and then be torn asunder as quickly and irretrievably as we would.’

  ‘How close has it come to succeeding?’ Versen asked.

  ‘It knows what Nerak knew – and that is that the collective genius of the Larion Senate exists in Lessek’s spell table. Without Lessek’s Key, the spell table cannot be accessed, not even by a Larion as powerful as Nerak.’

  Gilmour paused to refill his pipe with the aromatic Falkan tobacco before continuing, ‘With the key, Nerak might be able to trace Lessek’s original strategy and enlarge the opening in the Fold enough to allow his evil master to escape.’

  ‘I thought Malagon – Nerak – already had the key.’ Mark was confused. ‘Otherwise why would we be going to Welstar Palace to find it?’ He glanced across at Brynne who quickly looked away, embarrassed at having been caught staring at him twice in one morning. Mark turned back to Gilmour. ‘If Nerak had this key for nine hundred and eighty Twinmoons, why hasn’t he gone to Sandcliff Palace and used this spell table thing to release the evil essence on the universe? Can’t he do that himself?’

  ‘It’s much more difficult than that, Mark,’ the older man explained. ‘Lessek was enormously powerful, much more powerful than Nerak could ever be, and Nerak knows this. He might begin working with Lessek’s spell table and find he accidentally seals the gods’ evil creation in the Fold for ever. There’s a comprehensive collection of magic and mystical knowledge encoded in that spell table. The Larion Senate was never able to master more than a fraction of its potential. If Nerak taps its power and releases evil on the world, he risks destroying himself in the process. No, I imagine Nerak would keep Lessek’s Key as well protected and hidden from mankind as possible. He will want it somewhere it will neither be found, nor be out of his possession.

  ‘Nerak has time on his side. He has nothing but time: he can study the magic in the Larion spell table until he has discovered all he needs. When he has learned all that he, Nerak the possessor of souls, rather than he, Nerak the Larion Senator, ever knew, he will take Lessek’s Key back to Sandcliff and endeavour to release his new master on all of us.’

  ‘Oh God, no.’ Steven barely whispered the words, but Gilmour heard him and looked over expectantly.

  ‘Are you okay, my boy?’ he asked. ‘I wouldn’t worry about these things today. It’s been nine hundred and eighty Twin-moons and the rutting horsecock hasn’t been able to figure it out yet. We still have some time.’

  ‘Tell me how Lessek’s spell table works.’ Steven chose his words carefully.

  ‘Well, the table is just that, a table, carved from a granite block quarried deep in the Remondian Mountains of northern Gorsk. Lessek himself is said to have constructed it over several Twinmoons.’ Gilmour stopped and checked the position of the sun in the morning sky.

  ‘The key fits in a particular slot carved into the tabletop,’ he went on. ‘When it’s in place the table transfigures from a stone surface to a bottomless pool of knowledge and mysticism. Much of the knowledge is powerful – fiercely independent – and without proper training and practice, it will leap out or, worse, pull you inside. Nerak never understood the intricacies of the table. He was attempting to work with it when the minion escaped and claimed his soul for all time. He had gone too far. He had planned to use the table to overthrow us, but instead his plan backfired and he was taken first.’

  Steven and Garec spoke simultaneously; their words had such an impact on the rest of the small company that each rider reined in and turned to stare back at them in stunned silence. Together, in a nearly incoherent marriage of two simple phrases, Garec and Steven changed the course of all their lives.

  Garec, in surprise, turned towards Gilmour and cried, ‘You said overthrow “us”,’ while Steven shouted, ‘I have Lessek’s Key.’

  There was a pregnant pause which seemed to last an hour. Then everyone spoke at once.

  ‘What do you mean, you have Lessek’s Key?’ Sallax asked.

  ‘Gilmour, why did you refer to the Larion Senate as “us”?’ Garec repeated. ‘How could you have been there?’

  The air was buzzing with cries of, ‘What did you mean by that?’ ‘How can t
hat be?’ and ‘I don’t understand.’ After several moments of noisy confusion, Gilmour held a hand above his head in an effort to silence the group and restore order to the discussion.

  When they had calmed enough for him to be heard, Gilmour called, ‘Please, everyone, please.’ They quieted further and he continued, ‘I’ll answer a couple of important questions, but then I must insist we push on. We have far to go before making camp tonight. Once we’re settled we can spend as much time as necessary talking this through, but right now we are in great danger.’

  He turned first to Steven, his face alight with anticipation. ‘But before we take one more step, we need to hear from you, my boy.’ Trying to control the emotion in his voice, Gilmour asked, ‘How is it that you suddenly believe you have Lessek’s Key?’

  Steven inhaled slowly and explained, ‘I knew it when you said the evil minion controlling Nerak would put the key in a safe place until it had enough time to master the spell table in Sandcliff Palace.’

  ‘That’s right. Why does that make a difference now?’ Everyone was hanging on Steven’s every word.

  ‘Nerak put it in my bank with the far portal. The key is in a box on my desk in Idaho Springs.’ Even though Steven had no idea what Lessek’s Key looked like, he was willing to bet William Higgins’ stone was the missing piece of the Larion spell table.

  ‘That rock,’ Mark added under his breath.

  ‘That’s right,’ Steven agreed, ‘it has to be that rock.’

  ‘It is a small stone,’ Gilmour explained, ‘about one hand across, and dark, like the land’s deepest granite.’

  Versen and Sallax exchanged worried glances while Brynne sat transfixed by the conversation between her new friends and her old mentor.