‘Do you think Mark is in Pellia yet?’ Brexan asked Gilmour. Through the wispy fog they could see the coastal forests of Malakasia, the tall trees standing silent sentry. At slack tide, the winds had died and an eerie silence crept over the narrow channel Captain Ford and his remaining crewmembers were charting through the archipelago. With nothing but a few stripes of breakwater between them and the shoreline, Brexan worried that hard aground on a muddy shoal, the Morning Star – looking more like a shipwreck than a seaworthy vessel – would be reported by a passing military patrol or a fishing trawler.
As if reading her mind, the captain ordered the Malakasian colours run up the halyard; that ruse might buy them a few avens. Eventually, though, someone would wonder what a brig-sloop was doing working its way through the sandbars, atolls and mud flats off the northeast coast.
The deck canted to starboard. Gilmour hung onto the rail in an effort to maintain his balance. ‘No,’ he said, ‘Mark had a few days’ head start, but we were able to come up the coast fast and I don’t believe he’ll be much further than the initial tacks through the Northeast Channel.’
‘So we may reach Pellia before he does?’
Watching the process the captain called kedging off, Gilmour shrugged. ‘That depends on how long we spend dragging ourselves through these shallows.’
Brexan agreed. ‘It doesn’t look like the quickest route, does it?’
‘We need to be a bit luckier than we were this morning,’ he said.
‘That’s not very heartening.’ Brexan had been on deck when the brig-sloop ran aground. She was sure it hadn’t been Captain Ford’s fault – the Morning Star had been tacking towards a narrow channel between an island and a jumble of rocks Marrin had spotted from aloft. There had appeared to be enough draft for the brig-sloop to pass, even with the receding tide, but just as the captain was bringing the bow about, the topgallants – they were the only sheets he would permit Marrin to set – had caught a vagrant gust from the southeast. Under normal conditions, it would have been nothing, but arriving when it did, just as they were tacking northeast, the rogue breeze had shoved the Morning Star just far enough for her bow to catch in the shallows.
An aven later, the tide was out, the rocks Marrin had seen were above the surface and the narrow passage between them and the island was looking a hair’s-breadth too thin for the brig-sloop. Once off the sandbar, Captain Ford would have only one chance to thread the needle.
Brexan watched as Garec and Marrin rowed the ship’s launch into deeper water, looking comically like a crew in search of a ship as they sat on either side of the Morning Star’s anchor. The great metal claw had been lowered gingerly from the cathead and now rested against the bench. It dragged a length of hawser from the capstan to the channel between the island and the rock formation. ‘I wonder why he doesn’t wait for the tide to come back in,’ Brexan mused.
Gilmour pointed towards the shore; though there was not a building to be seen, it was still risky being within hailing distance of Malakasia, especially while immobile. ‘I don’t think Captain Ford likes having his ship stuck in the mud, Brexan,’ he said, ‘and I don’t know if he needs more water than we have now to work his way through that little passage.’
‘It does look skinny, doesn’t it?’
‘I believe that’s why Garec and Marrin are out there.’
Brexan and Gilmour were been whispering. It seemed an appropriate morning for whispering. Both jumped when Marrin, almost out of sight in the grey fog, called in for instructions.
‘Captain,’ Marrin said, surprisingly loud, ‘there’s plenty of draft, but I’m worried about whether she’ll fit.’
‘She’ll fit.’ Ford’s voice was low but resonant; Brexan wondered how far it would carry in the fog. She was reminded of the bells she had heard from the porch at the Topgallant Inn and flashed back to Jacrys Marseth, dipped in blood, trailing blood, but still ringing that whoring bell.
‘We’ll row through,’ Marrin called back. ‘We have enough line, and if I can find a decent handful of rocks on the other side, we’ll pull her through with the capstan.’
‘My thoughts exactly,’ Captain Ford said dryly.
‘You are the commanding officer, after all,’ Marrin teased from inside the burgeoning fogbank.
‘Ha!’ Ford said, ‘and generally the last one to give the orders around here.’
‘Yes sir!’ Marrin, now completely lost from view, shouted. ‘You just keep the old girl on a strict diet while the Ronan killer and I snake through this little stream you’ve discovered.’
‘Good enough,’ Ford said. ‘We are thinking thin thoughts.’
‘Captain Ford?’ Garec called, ‘once we get the anchor set, I can drown him if you like.’
‘Nothing would please me more,’ Ford replied with a laugh.
To Brexan his good humour seemed forced, another mask he fashioned while above decks to keep his crew in good spirits. He, like the rest of them, was mourning the loss of three crew to the shapeshifting tan-bak. Losing Kanthil, Sera – had it eaten her? Or just cast her over the side? – and finding what was left of Tubbs had caused something inside the captain to come loose. Now sneaking along the coast like this, dousing the lanterns and running the blockade all smacked of retribution, something owed to the crew. While giving Tubbs his rites, Captain Ford told Brexan his crew believed in him because they knew that he was a man motivated by just two things: paying them well and seeing them safely home. This voyage had violated an edict he and his crew – his family – had agreed upon Twinmoons earlier. It was the reason so many of them shipped with him season after season: they do it together, and they go home together. Chasing a pocketful of easy silver, Ford had gone against his own core values – and he had lost friends as a result.
Reaching Pellia now, even if he had to get out and push the old ship through the shallows, was the only way he could earn himself a measure of redemption.
‘Got it,’ Marrin shouted.
‘What’s he done?’ Brexan asked.
‘He’s found a place where he and Garec can lodge that anchor. With that done, and the rest of us manning the capstan like all the gods of the Northern Forest are whipping our backsides, hopefully, the ship will pull itself right through.’
‘Kedging off?’
‘Kedging off.’
‘That seems pretty risky in a ship this size,’ Brexan said.
‘Again, my dear, I leave that to Captain Ford; he seems capable.’
‘Yes, he does,’ Brexan mused, watching Ford lean over the rail, straining to see through the fog. She imagined that Versen might have grown to look and act similarly one day. Brexan couldn’t allow herself to get personally involved with Doren Ford. Regardless of how obvious it had become that he might welcome a relationship, however ephemeral, she fought the urge to cross the deck and wrap her arms around him, to feel his muscled body against hers. Becoming intimate with him would be too much like making love with a shadowy, older version of Versen. It wouldn’t be fair to the captain to use him to recapture what she had lost.
After a moment, Captain Ford called, ‘Come back and wait near those rocks. If anything is going to get us, it’ll be that bunch, and we can’t see them as clearly as we could half an aven ago.’
‘Blame Garec,’ Marrin replied, ‘he rows too bloody slow.’
‘It wasn’t my idea to row over here with an anchor in the boat!’ Garec said. ‘I’m not much of a sailor, but I’ve been around the water enough to know that anchors are supposed to go outside the boat.’
‘That’s a good tip,’ he called back. ‘Now shut yourselves up and hustle back to those rocks. I want to be out of here and on our way as soon as possible.’
‘Ah, Captain?’ Marrin’s voice was ethereal through the fog; it came from everywhere at once.
Ford shook his head. ‘What now, Marrin?’
‘Have you noticed the fog, sir?’
‘Three hundred Twinmoons I’ve been at sea, Marrin. Of course I’ve noticed the rutting fog!’
‘Well, sir, how are you planning on getting underway in this fog? There’s rocks and shoals and mud and shit out here, not to mention the islands. There’s hundreds of those lying about. We’re bound to run into something. Not that this morning was your fault, but sir, there’s a lot out here to hit; this place needs a clean-up, and I mean in a raging hurry.’
‘We’ll be fine making way through the fog,’ he said.
‘Again, begging your pardon, sir, but how?’
‘You and Garec are going to guide us,’ he said calmly.
Neither answered, but from their silence it was apparent that they weren’t looking forward to spending the day rowing blind, especially with the Morning Star in tow.
Kellin and Steven emerged from below and joined Captain Ford at the rail, looking for Garec.
‘Can you see them?’ Kellin asked.
‘Not right now,’ he answered, ‘but if you follow that length of anchor line into the fog, you can get a fix on them. They’re out behind those rocks.’
‘Is this dangerous?’
He shook his head. ‘Not much. We won’t get far, but the bit we navigate before high tide will be slow enough that if we should run aground again, it won’t be too bad.’
‘We won’t sink?’
The captain laughed. ‘There’s no place to sink, Kellin. On tip-toe you could just about walk to Pellia from here. I thank the gods that you all drink so much. If we had even an extra few crates of beer on board, we’d have to toss them over the side for fear of being too heavy.’
Kellin smiled in return. ‘That would be a tragic waste.’
‘Anyway, once we get a bit of water coming north again, we’ll be able to make better time, but for now, this journey is going to get a touch tedious.’ Garec and Marrin appeared through the gloom. ‘Ah, there they are,’ the captain said, then hailing them, called, ‘There’s fine. We’ll heave her off. Marrin, watch that line. Shout for your mother if it breaks off or pulls free. I don’t want us floating around up here.’
‘Very good, sir. I’m sure my mother will be happy to help.’
Kellin laughed, then waved to Garec. ‘Good morning.’
‘Well, hello.’ Garec blew her a kiss. ‘What’s a nice Falkan girl like you doing in a shithole like this?’
Kellin said, ‘I understand it’s an excellent place to meet eligible young men.’
Marrin interrupted, ‘So they told you I was here? Stand fast, my dear: as soon as I’m through rescuing Captain Ford’s broken-down old barge I’ll be back to sweep you thoroughly off your feet.’
Captain Ford said, ‘Garec…’
‘Now’s fine with me, sir,’ Garec shouted back.
‘Go right ahead – but one thing: you realise with him gone, you’ll become my first mate.’ He winced, regretting the joke the moment the words left his mouth. No one said anything. Tubbs and Sera’s loss was still too close, too raw for this degree of levity. The time for joking had passed, at least for now. After a moment, he announced, ‘To the capstan; let’s get her out of here.’
Everyone moved at once, happy to have something to do. Brexan joined Ford at the rail. ‘Captain,’ she started, ‘I want to-’
‘No,’ he cut her off, ‘please, just help me at the capstan. We’ll be through this channel in a moment. It’s going to be a long day.’
‘Of course,’ she said. As she helped to take up the slack in the anchor-line, Brexan was able to see the way the capstan worked. With six wooden levers rigged at right angles from one another, they all pushed and rotated the great spindle, reeling in the hawser Garec and Marrin had dragged through the channel. Once taut, the capstan fought back, grinding to a halt as the full weight of the Morning Star came to bear on the anchor line.
‘Great rutters,’ Kellin said, ‘but this ship didn’t look that heavy!’
‘With your nose buried in the mud, you’d be hard to extract as well,’ Captain Ford said. ‘Keep at it, though. She’ll come loose.’ He grunted encouragement.
‘Use your legs,’ Gilmour instructed, straining as well. ‘Get your backs into it.’
The company pushed and heaved, pressing against the unwieldy capstan with all their might. Even wiry young Pel hurried from the quarterdeck to help break the muddy seal.
‘I want you at the helm, Pel,’ the captain ordered, his face flushed and sweaty.
‘I’m doing no good there, Captain,’ Pel said. It was about the only thing Brexan had heard him say since their departure from Orindale. The quiet young man, when not swabbing the brig-sloop from bow to stern, was generally to be found in the rigging, checking cleats, mending frayed ratlines and keeping a wary eye out for the navy. The last encounter had scared him to within a few breaths of the Northern Forest, and simply watching Steven pith the tan-bak had started the Pragan seaman quaking all over again. Talking only to the captain, and keeping his head down, the shy youngster said, ‘I’ll be back as soon as we get her loose, but let me help.’
The anchor line was taut, as tight as the small group of determined travellers could manage. Brexan waited for something to snap, or for the anchor to pull free from its place in the rocks behind the fog. With only wood, hemp and muscle in the equation, something had to give; the strain was too great.
Finally, groaning in protest, the Morning Star moved, just a slight shift to starboard at first. Brexan felt the capstan spin, taking in a bit of line as the deck righted itself.
‘One more like that should do it,’ the captain encouraged. ‘Pel, get back to the helm, now.’
As quickly as he had arrived, the youngster was gone.
Captain Ford called after him, ‘Bring the keel to starboard, just enough to get our backside clear, but as soon as she breaks off, get her back to port. I don’t want us off the mud and onto those rocks, understand?’
‘Aye aye, Captain,’ Pel shouted over his shoulder.
‘Marrin!’ he cried.
‘Captain?’ The reply came from somewhere over the side.
‘Get ready!’ On his mark, everyone redoubled their efforts. ‘Here we come!’
With that, the hull slipped free, the capstan spun easily, unexpectedly, and both Steven and Kellin fell to their knees, cursing.
The captain was gone, calling, ‘Keep taking up the slack, not too fast now, just keep it coming in steady. Then pawl that and wait for me amidships.’ From the rail, he checked their heading, then ordered, ‘Pel, back to port now, back to port.’
The Morning Star bobbed in the channel, turning to take in her anchor line and waiting for a northerly breeze. With another half-aven of slack water, they would have ample time to get through the narrow passage and reset the anchor before another sudden gust threatened to leave them in the mud or push them onto the rocks.
Taking the helm, Captain Ford watched as his crew of seamen and partisans reeled in the anchor line, then guided the brig-sloop carefully through the channel, beyond the island and into deeper, if still fogbound, water.
When the Morning Star passed the rocks, Marrin called, ‘I didn’t think you could do it, Captain, but she’s clear.’
Smiling, he said, ‘I told you we were thinking thin thoughts!’
Steven said, ‘That’s more work than I expected to do today.’
‘You and me both, cousin,’ Gilmour agreed, ‘but I don’t think we’re finished yet.’
‘Grand.’ Kellin wiped her forehead on her tunic sleeve. ‘Don’t you two know anything that might help us speed this process up a bit?’
‘Nothing we can risk right now,’ Steven said. ‘With any luck, Mark is honed in on the magic keeping that… whatever it was-’
‘Tan-bak,’ Gilmour supplied.
‘Keeping that tan-bak alive out there somewhere. We’re in enough danger simply from the fact that he might stumble across the mystical energy coming from the far portal and the spell book down in the cabin.’
Brexan said, ‘I thought that with Carpello’s shipments running north, Mark wouldn’t notice the difference between a ship loaded with that Ronan tree bark and one with your Larion toys.’
‘We have to hope not,’ Gilmour said, ‘but judging from our trip thus far, we haven’t been very lucky at keeping ourselves invisible. I made a mistake the day we encountered that naval cruiser. I don’t know if that’s why Mark sent the tan-bak, but I’m unwilling to risk using magic again until we are closer to Pellia. Once there, I’m betting we can use a bit of sorcery and Mark won’t be any wiser.’
‘Because it will… what? Mix with the other magic already in Pellia?’
‘Correct,’ Gilmour said, ‘if even one of those shipments is moored in the harbour – and with the tides and the traffic in the Northeast Channel, we have to hope that at least one of them was delayed – my magic shouldn’t make much noise at all.’
‘But he detected enough powerful magic to decide to destroy that other ship and then send the tan-bak for us,’ Brexan said hesitantly. ‘Won’t he do that again?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Gilmour replied. ‘When the Malakasian sorcerer was having at us from his ship, his spells were noisy, like pebbles dropped into a dead-calm mill pond. When I cast the spell protecting Steven, it was a bigger pebble, like a small stone.’
‘And Mark felt the difference,’ Kellin said.
‘He did. But the schooner I discovered from Wellham Ridge was radiating so much energy, I believe I could be hammering away with everything I have and Mark wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.’
Brexan untied her cloak and draped it over the forward hatch. ‘So a shipment is like a big rock in your mill pond.’
‘A boulder,’ Gilmour agreed. ‘Once we get near Pellia, if we’re lucky, Mark will have no idea that we’re still alive, still after him.’
‘And then what?’ Kellin looked at him expectantly.
‘By then, it won’t matter. If we can’t sneak into the city, we’ll have to go in the front door, and that will mean using everything in our arsenal.’
Kellin recalled their battle in Meyers’ Vale, and for the first time all Twinmoon, the idea that she was travelling with two deadly sorcerers was comforting.
Brexan broke the silence. ‘Tell me about that book, Gilmour. What’s it say? What’s in there?’
The familiar look of uncertainty passed across Gilmour’s face. He checked on Garec and Marrin’s progress, then said, A very long time ago in Gorsk, a man named Lessek-’
‘The Lessek?’ Brexan interrupted, ‘as in all the stories we heard when we were young?’
‘That’s him.’ Gilmour rooted in his tunic for a pipe and, unable to find one, looked suddenly like a two-thousand-Twinmoon-old man who didn’t know what to do with his hands. Giving up, he went on, ‘Lessek used an exceedingly small bit of… well, call it magic, coupled with his knowledge to create spells. At first, they were nothing terribly impressive, so I understand – this was Ages and Eras before I was born – but he learned to move air around a room, to wilt a flower, to get water to freeze, carnival tricks, really, but over time, he continued his research and generated a long list of spells. He would investigate the nature of something, study it, interact with it, pick it apart – sometimes even tear it apart, and then use aspects of his previous spellwork to create a bigger and more powerful incantation.’
‘Common phrase spells?’ Steven asked.
‘Exactly,’Gilmour replied, ‘spells with parts of various incantations in common so as to harness exponential power, layered magic.’
‘Good gods,’ Kellin whispered.
‘When you think about it, there were few greater discoveries in the history of Eldarn. It’s the innovation that made magic such a dominant force in our cultural history. You two have never been to Steven’s world, where there’s little history of magical innovation, so the culture there is based on religion, common social values and traditions, the family, and democratic and economic ideals. Magic has played almost no role at all in defining who they are; actually, the extent of its thread through the fabric of Steven’s cultural history is as entertainment, and it appears in a handful of religious stories. But here, Lessek’s contributions to Eldarni history, as a researcher and a scholar, are just that: he made magic one of the building blocks of Eldarni culture. It is a stone in the foundation of who we are.’
Brexan said, ‘So before Lessek, there was no magic?’
‘Oh, there was plenty-’ Gilmour gestured as if the seeds of cultural mysticism were all around them, ‘but its purpose had not yet come into focus. It was potential energy, freely floating, essentially useless until Lessek channelled it together.’
‘So the book is a listing of his spells?’ Brexan jumped ahead.
‘Actually, no,’ Gilmour said. ‘You see, what Lessek did was more than generate an array of spells. By bringing magic to the forefront of Eldarni social development, he started a rock rolling down a mountain. There was no way to stop it; people saw what magic could offer, the role it could play in their lives: in education and medicine, in warfare and yes, even entertainment. Over time, they embraced the notion that magic would be going on around them all the time. It went from something people feared to something they accepted, and a few of them discovered that with training, they could wield it.’
‘The Larion Senators,’ Kellin said.
‘Right,’ Steven broke in, ‘recognising that there were people amongst them who could perform magic – everyday people, neighbours and friends – would have made it easier for anyone to accept magic and its widening impact.’
‘Yes and no,’ Gilmour said. ‘Like anything difficult to understand, magic had its naysayers, and a sad number of sorcerers were outcasts, ostracised by their communities.’
‘But I’d wager they were all there, lined up and waiting for their due, when it came time to heal the sick, to bring in a bumper crop or to revolutionise the shipping industry,’ Steven added.
Gilmour shrugged. ‘People will be people.’
‘Nice to know nothing’s really different.’
‘You sound like Mark.’
‘Go on, Gilmour,’ Brexan said, ‘you still haven’t told us about the spells in the book.’
‘Right, sorry, the book.’ Gilmour waved to Garec through the fog, then said, ‘The book is a spell book, but at the same time, it’s more than a spell book.’
‘Great, that’s helpful. Thanks, Gilmour. Anyone know what’s for breakfast?’ Brexan grinned. ‘I hope you’re going to elaborate a bit for us.’
‘If you’ll give me a chance,’ he said, smiling himself. ‘There are spells in that volume that are evident, while others are hidden, though implied, just waiting for the right reader to come along and take them for his or her use. It is a comprehensive look at the nature of magic and mysticism, but it doesn’t read like a normal book. Granted, the pages are filled with Lessek’s handwriting, but it’s what lies between the pages and within the pages that makes this particular book so powerful.’
‘I still don’t understand,’ Kellin said. ‘So the book carries more than just the words on the pages?’
‘Oh, great gods, yes. That book is the gateway to worlds and worlds of information on magic and mystical energy. You see, Lessek’s work didn’t end with the general acceptance of magic as a fundamental tenet in Eldarni culture. Instead, he went on researching, studying, experimenting and improving his ability to tap into the magics of our world, and of worlds beyond the Fold, as evidenced by our new friends from Colorado.’
‘Stop it; I’m blushing,’ Steven teased.
‘With Lessek’s leadership, the Larion Senate was able to find, tap and retrieve magic from planes of existence, memory, emotion, good and evil that we can barely imagine. It was a boom that so changed Eldarn there was no going back. The Larion Senate, a group of mystics, many of whom had been thrown out of their communities, were suddenly the world’s teachers and leaders. They had to be; no one else could understand, never mind manipulate, that power.’
‘It sounds like things were taking a turn for the worse,’ Kellin said.
‘They would have, if Lessek hadn’t invented a safe means by which to tap into the reservoir of power the Larion Senate had accumulated. With that done, tension and fear in the five lands eased, and Eldarn breathed a sigh of relief.’
‘That was the spell table?’ Brexan asked.
‘Exactly,’ Steven said. ‘It was an elaborate… safe deposit box, for lack of a better term.’
‘So the book tells how to operate the table?’ Brexan said.
‘I wish it were that easy,’ Gilmour replied. ‘No, the book outlines magic’s place in Eldarni culture. It uses Lessek’s spells coupled with aspects of Eldarni history, social innovation, creativity and a variety of other common values and cultural cornerstones to describe the very nature of the magic Lessek and the Larion Senate were able to amass in the spell table.’
‘So, the good and the bad,’ Kellin said, looking for Garec herself.
‘More than that,’ Gilmour said. ‘It describes the possible and the impossible, the nebulous regions between the real and the unreal, the future and the past, the truth as concrete, hard and fast and the truth as malleable, uncertain and out of reach. The book is legendary for sometimes showing what a sorcerer wants to know and other times what a sorcerer needs to know. There have even been times – although I can’t say for certain if this truly happened – when the book showed a sorcerer something false and led the poor sod astray.’
‘Just to be funny? It makes jokes?’ Brexan was confused.
‘Because understanding what is true, real and necessary is often enhanced by one’s ability to recognise something unreal, something untrue. Success can only be recognised as the opposite side of failure; without knowing failures and lies, one cannot appreciate successes and truths. The book understands that, and we, even we sorcerers, cannot dictate how magic and knowledge interact. It is a relationship that they form and that they foster. Our lot as the Larion Senate was to try and understand it well enough to tap its power in service to Eldarn.’
‘And you did,’ Kellin said.
‘For a long time, yes.’ Gilmour sighed. ‘But now, a sorcerer with all the knowledge that I have, with all the experience that I have, and with all the conviction that I have, plans to open the table and use it against Eldarn.’
‘Will it stand for that?’
‘I don’t think it cares.’ Gilmour pursed his lips. ‘That may be the reason Lessek wanted us to understand magic on a comprehensive level. It wasn’t enough to be able to work a few spells and help a few people. We were harnessing an energy source, a power unlike anything we had ever seen, certainly more than most of us could comprehend. Our strongest and most promising practitioner, an old friend of mine named Nerak, pushed too far, and it swallowed him in an instant. It is the energy of life, death, creation and destruction; it is raw emotion and raw power.’
‘Can you read the book?’ Kellin asked.
Gilmour sighed again. ‘To be honest, I haven’t tried in about a Twinmoon.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, the last couple of times I opened it, Nerak knew, and he used my wide-eyed innocence against me.’ Gilmour searched for the right words, then said simply, ‘It hurt… a lot.’
‘Wide-eyed innocence?’ Brexan said.
‘Yes, actually.’ Gilmour was amused. ‘For a two-thousand-Twinmoon-old grettan, I have relatively limited experience with magic on this level. Granted, I spent hundreds of Twinmoons hiding all over the Eastlands, generating and experimenting with common-phrase magic, but before our battle on the Prince Marek, I’d only seen the book a few times in my life. Nerak had it at Welstar Palace. Any other copies, if there are other copies, were either hidden there or destroyed.’
‘How about you, Steven?’ Kellin asked. ‘Can you read it?’
Steven chuckled. ‘I’m able to open the pages and look through it, but much of what it says seems like gibberish to me. I can’t understand it at all.’
‘But you can touch it; you can flip through it, look at the writing, feel the pages, and nothing leaps out to cripple you, pull at your beard or slap you stupid?’
‘The first time I touched the book was on the Prince Marek, the night I went back for Lessek’s key. I had just begun to tap the power Nerak sublimated into Kantu’s old walking stick-’
‘That hickory staff?’ Kellin interrupted.
‘Yes, the one from the glen, but I hadn’t come to grips with the suggestion that there might be magic inside me, that I might be one of those rare few who – Twinmoons ago – would have been driven out of my town or shipped off to Sandcliff Palace to join the Larion Senate. When I touched the book that night, it tried to take me.’
‘Take you?’ Brexan recoiled.
‘Engulf me, swallow me whole, I don’t know, drag me into oblivion, just for fun. It was phenomenal power; I felt it through my fingertips, everything all at once, everything Gilmour just described, the essence of the book, not just what’s written on its pages.’
‘So it reached out to you with something true, something false, some joke, what?’ Brexan asked.
‘I think it reached out to him with everything about itself, about magic,’ Gilmour tried to clarify. ‘The book understood Steven’s potential, long before Steven did, and whether it was communicating with him or trying to purloin his power for itself, the book definitely embraced him with more than just the words written on the pages.’ He grinned. ‘From one perspective, it was quite an honour for Steven.’
‘To be absorbed into the comprehensive essence of magic?’ Kellin said. ‘No thanks; I’m full.’
Brexan laughed. ‘So why can you read it now?’
‘I hit a speed bump,’ Steven said. ‘Lessek’s key taught me, by kicking me solidly in the backside, several times, how to recognise the key elements in any magical equation.’
‘Equation?’
He shrugged. ‘I’m a mathematician; it makes sense to me that way. I was in the garbage dump near my home, preparing myself to spend the next ten Twinmoons digging through rotten meat and broken glass, when the key taught me how to separate what’s important from what’s not, essentially.’
‘What happened?’
‘The less important parts blurred together.’ He frowned. ‘I guess I did it… I do it to them.’
‘Do what?’
‘Blur them, take them out of the equation so the key variables can come into focus, and then manipulate them based on my knowledge and whatever magic happens to come bursting out of me at the time.’ He raised an eyebrow at Gilmour, who smiled and nodded. ‘Anyway, after that day, I was able to flip through the book. It was as if on our second meeting, the book recognised that I had grown a good deal in my understanding of my own magic.’
‘But you still can’t read it,’ Brexan persisted.
‘Not really, no.’
‘And Gilmour, you haven’t felt comfortable opening it.’
‘The last time I opened it, the book spewed forth a coil of otherworldly serpents armed with a poison so toxic that I had to abandon my former body and go in search of a new host.’ He posed comically, then said, ‘But to answer your question, no, I haven’t been thrilled about opening it again.’
‘So do we consider it an asset?’ Brexan went on, ‘if no one can use it to help us?’
‘No one can use it against us, either,’ Steven pointed out.
‘I suppose that’s true,’ Brexan said.
‘And who knows?’ Gilmour added, ‘between now and the end of this struggle, it may become necessary to use the book’s information again.’
‘Information,’ Brexan mused.
‘Exactly,’ Gilmour said, ‘more information than power. Granted, it’s a monstrously powerful tome, but its purpose is educational.’
From beneath the bow, Marrin called, ‘Steven, Kellin, anyone!’
Steven hugged the bowsprit, leaned over and said, ‘Since you’re going out, I’ll take a tube of mint toothpaste.’
Marrin frowned. ‘Rutting foreigners!’
Garec grinned. ‘They move in and just ruin the village.’
‘What do you need?’ Steven asked.
‘I need a pot of tecan and a burning brazier,’ Garec said. ‘It’s gods-rutting freezing down here.’
‘Please tell Captain Ford to leave the anchor in place for now,’ Marrin said. ‘We’ll row over there, around the west side of that big island. It shouldn’t take us long to get there and back, but I want you to know where we’re going in case this fog gets any worse when the tide starts moving again.’
‘Shouldn’t it blow north?’
‘It probably will, but I want him to know where we’ve gone in case it doesn’t. And don’t worry, Garec has a lovely singing voice. If it gets thick, we’ll give you a holler.’
‘Oh, I understand,’ Steven said. ‘You don’t want us moving from here-’
‘Because there might not be enough draft around that island, because you might run aground again between here and there, because I don’t want to lose you in the fog, but mostly because I don’t want you losing us in the fog.’
Garec smirked. ‘The last sounds you hear are your own bones breaking.’
‘Got it.’ Steven tallied their orders. ‘Don’t get lost, don’t run aground, but most of all, don’t run over the little boat with the big boat.’
‘Very good,’ Marrin smiled. ‘We’ll make a sailor of you yet. Could you pass that along to our fearless leader?’
‘Right away,’ Steven started aft.
At the capstan, Brexan asked, ‘When Prince Malagon, Nerak, came to Orindale, was he heading for Sandcliff Palace?’
‘I thought he was,’ Gilmour said, ‘because I thought that’s where he would go to operate the spell table.’
‘But he had actually come to Orindale, because he was going into the Blackstone foothills to retrieve the spell table?’
‘It was his understanding that Steven and I were making way for Orindale, hoping to secure a transport to Malakasia, or at least Praga, to search for Hannah Sorenson. Nerak acted under the assumption that with a military blockade on the town, we would either be captured, killed or forced to wait on the outskirts, while he searched for us, killed us and took the keystone. His spies and minions had failed to collect it for him, so Nerak decided to come and get it himself.’
‘But you didn’t have it, because Steven and Mark had forgotten it back in Colorado?’
‘Overlooked it.’
‘Rutting whores.’
‘My sentiments exactly, my dear.’
‘But his plan was to have the key, get the table and open the Fold from the Blackstone foothills?’
‘Or at least have the key to experiment with the table on his way back to Pellia.’
‘Which is essentially what Mark is doing right now.’
‘Essentially.’
‘So why did Nerak bring the book with him?’
A moment of silence passed between them. Brexan pulled her hood up and flinched as beads of icy condensation trickled beneath her hair and down the back of her neck.
Finally, Gilmour said, ‘I don’t know why. Perhaps Nerak was studying the spells, trying to round out his understanding of magic. Perhaps the book had shown him something he believed he would need in order to open the Fold-’
‘Or,’ Kellin interrupted, ‘the book showed him something he believed he would need after he opened the Fold.’
Silenced by that possibility, Gilmour recoiled from his memory of the spell book’s opening folio. The Ash Dream, he thought. What in all Eldarn is the Ash Dream? Something Mark needs to open the Fold? Something we need to close it for ever? Or maybe Kellin’s right and he needs it after his master’s arrival. Staring down at a nebulous cloud of chilly fog as it billowed about his legs, Gilmour said, ‘You may be right. The book might have shown Nerak something he would need after he opened the Fold and ushered in an Age of unbridled pain, torture and suffering.’
Kellin blanched, looking as though she was about to retch. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘In that case, we’ll just have to get to Mark before he has a chance to… to do… that.’
‘That’s why we’re here, freezing, in this godsforsaken archipelago.’
Brexan looked aft. Most of the Pragan brig-sloop was lost from view; the parts she could see – a few ratlines, the mainmast, a hatch and a stretch of starboard gunwale – looked like bits of a derelict ghost ship. ‘Gilmour, are you confident that Nerak actually read the book? Was he able to understand it, to glean anything from it?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘From what Steven said, Nerak was not nearly as powerful as his legend would have us believe, but it was my experience that he had a good deal more power and knowledge, at least in a mystical arena, than anyone I had ever known.’
‘More than you?’
‘Oh, certainly more than I ever did.’
‘More than Steven?’
Gilmour tried to hide a half-smile. It didn’t work. No, not more than Steven.’
Brexan smiled herself and glanced aft again. ‘Would Nerak have been able to help us now?’
‘What’s that?’
‘If Steven had kept him here, kept him alive somehow, do you think Nerak would have been able to help us close the Fold?’ Seeing Gilmour hesitate, Brexan tried to clarify her thoughts. ‘From what Steven and Kellin said, right in the moments before he was cast into oblivion, Nerak was different: beaten, submissive, I don’t know, maybe less homicidal and power-hungry.’
Gilmour nodded, obviously contemplating his former colleague’s demeanour that day in the glen. ‘That’s true, Brexan, but Steven had made an effort to be compassionate. He gave Nerak the hickory staff. I thought he was insane to do it; we all did. But he gave Nerak the chance to save himself, and instead Nerak used the staff to strike out at him. With the staff, he might have saved himself, banished the evil holding him prisoner, even been restored to his former position of grace and respect. But he ignored Steven’s mercy, and that more than anything was what killed him.’
‘Was Nerak evil before the terrible essence emerged from the Fold to take him prisoner? How long before his fall did he try to kill you, or to kill the other one… what’s his name… Kantu?’
Gilmour frowned. ‘I don’t know exactly, but there was some time before Sandcliff fell that I feared Nerak. I always worried when Kantu, Pikan or I travelled through the far portal. I felt anxious that he was using our absence as an opportunity to develop spells that would kill us or perhaps trap us on the other side of the Fold for ever.’
‘So no, then,’ Brexan said.
‘No, what?’
‘No, Nerak probably wouldn’t have helped us banish this evil essence and seal off the Fold.’
‘No,’ Gilmour shook his head, ‘most likely not.’
Brexan felt the cold seep inside her cloak. ‘I’ll get us some tecan,’ she said, shivering.
‘That would be nice,’ Gilmour said, glad for the change of topic. ‘Biggest mugs you can find.’
Warmed by the morning brew and empowered by the truths Brexan and Kellin had forced him to examine while kedging the Morning Star off the Malakasian shoal, Gilmour Stow of Estrad excused himself from the chilly partisans still watching the fogbank for Garec and Marrin and tiptoed into the companionway leading to his berth, and the leatherbound book of Lessek’s writings. Gilmour rarely felt old, but this morning, despite living inside the youngest host he had purloined in nearly a thousand Twinmoons, his body was stiff, cramped, feeling as if it might disintegrate without warning. His shoulders were sore; his lower back ached. One knee was inflamed, while the other had stiffened with the dampness and fog. His fingers felt swollen, clumsy and arthritic, and his eyes were a beat slow, managing to focus on what he had been seeing a step or two after it had fallen behind him. Being two thousand Twinmoons old was not normally physically gruelling – if it was, Gilmour would have been worn to the bone, dead several times over. Instead, it was an intellectual distance run, a tiresome and wearying adventure, and this morning, with his shortcomings and challenges neatly outlined by the curious freedom fighters, Gilmour felt the emotional exhaustion in every muscle and bone in his body.
It was a symptom of his fatigue; he knew that, and he knew that a few avens’ sleep would have him back in fighting form. But he hadn’t been able to rest; he wanted to finish just one last thing before retiring for the day. Then, he would sleep until the dinner aven, resting like the dead. Or the very nearly dead, anyway, he thought with a wry smile.
But first, he had to read that book, despite his aches and pains. It hadn’t been the actual book lashing out at him; first it had been Nerak, then Mark. The book hadn’t done it… I hope not, anyway. There was no reason to fear the writings. He had explained that to Brexan just moments earlier: the book wasn’t power per se; the book was knowledge, understanding, and whether or not it told him anything useful this morning, Gilmour didn’t care. It wasn’t useful information he required; it was confidence. His conversation with the freedom fighters had kindled a tiny bundle of hope, just a faint glow, wrapped in the protective layers he invariably applied whenever hope was all he had. But this morning, Gilmour wanted more; he wanted to feel that hope burgeon into a comforting blaze, something to keep him warm for the few days it would take Captain Doren Ford and his skeleton crew to see them into Pellia.
‘Just read the damned book,’ he murmured to himself. ‘What can happen? Mark won’t notice; we’re too close already, and he’s following the tan-bak. Even I can feel the tan-bak when I search for her. She’s like a bloody beacon in a storm out there. He won’t bother looking here; we’re nowhere near the Northeast Channel, essentially invisible, so there’s no excuse. Just read the whoring thing, and then go to bed.’
Crunch.
His tired eyes had overlooked it, brought it into focus a moment too late for his mind to care, but when his foot came down on it, Gilmour stopped to see what he had stepped on.
It was an insect – a roach? A beetle, maybe? He scraped up what he could, but he hadn’t been the first to step on it.
It’s just a bug, old man. Leave it, and go get your reading done.
But something was wrong. Gilmour felt the warmth leave his body, that quiet glimmer of hope fading. He absentmindedly tugged at one of his earlobes and then felt around inside his ear, tentatively, as if afraid of what he might discover.
The spell book forgotten, his fatigue ignored yet again, Gilmour tucked the insect’s remains inside his tunic and went back on deck.
Alen and Milla walked along the riverfront quay, heading for the Hunter’s Glade, a quiet cafe that served a cheap midday meal and whose proprietor, a childless woman named Gisella, fawned on the little sorceress as if Milla was a member of her own family. Alen had found the cafe one evening while seeking information about barge traffic along the Welstar River. When Gisella discovered that Alen had a little girl, she insisted he bring Milla around. ‘Children eat free for the Twinmoon,’ she had said, brushing clouds of flour from her apron. ‘My sister has three boys, three! Can you imagine the noise when that lot comes for dinner? Rutters!’
Alen had felt a pang of sorrow for Gisella, who seemed a pleasant enough woman; he was sorry she’d not been able to have children, and he promised to return with Milla.
Now, Milla’s hand securely clasped in his, he felt some of his own trepidation rub off; perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to work with the child prodigy over the next two hundred Twinmoons.
‘Are we going to Gisella’s?’ Milla skipped beside him, careful to avoid icy patches.
‘I thought you might want to go back there,’ Alen smiled.
‘She’s fun, and I like those biscuits, the warm ones. They’re so big.’
‘Big as your head!’ Alen pretended to struggle beneath the weight of a giant pastry.
‘Can we bring one back for Hoyt?’
‘Of course.’
‘Is he going to die?’ Milla twirled a length of ribbon around her finger.
‘No, Pepperweed. He’s going to be just fine.’ Alen tried to sound convincing.
‘But there’s a new hole in his shoulder,’ the little girl said sadly. ‘One of those soldiers stuck him with a sword.’
‘That’s almost all better, sweetie. The querlis is fixing that hole right up.’
‘But not the other one,’ she was quick to point out.
‘I know, Pepperweed.’
‘Do you think Gilmour will be able to help him?’
‘That’s a funny thing to ask.’
‘Because he’s almost here,’ Milla said.
‘How do you know? Can you sense him out there?’ Alen knelt beside her, ignoring the damp seeping through his leggings.
‘You know how we felt that big crash from Falkan a while ago?’ Milla whispered as if sharing a secret. ‘It’s like that, only a lot quieter.’
‘It must be.’ He looked around, thinking perhaps his former colleague might be coming up the quay to join them. ‘I can’t feel him at all.’
‘Well, it’s hard, because he’s really quiet, but I know where to find him, because I held him that time outside the room.’
‘Like you did with me and Hoyt in the wagons?’
‘I had to with you and Hoyt, because those Seron things were coming so fast, and you two were dreaming about fireplaces and pretty girls.’ Milla snorted with laughter. ‘But, yes, just like that.’
‘Any idea where he is, Pepperweed?’ Alen aligned his finger with hers and Milla wrapped them both in the ribbon.
‘A little bit that way.’ She pointed southeast, across the inlet and along the coast.
‘Are you sure?’ Alen asked, ‘because if he’s coming by sea, he would have to come from that way.’ He pointed northeast, where deep water met a wall of atolls and shallow islands in the Northern Archipelago. ‘Everyone coming on the water this Twinmoon has to come that way.’
‘Nope.’ Milla shook her head, her scribbled curls jouncing. Not Gilmour. He’s coming from over there, around that piece of ground sticking out in the water.’
‘All right, Pepperweed, we’ll watch for him from that way. And to answer your question: yes, I hope that Gilmour can help Hoyt, or help me help Hoyt get better.’
They walked for a while in silence. Milla stopped to consider, then hopped over a coil of mooring hawser some docker had left along the wharf. Beside them, the Welstar River was a steely grey ribbon.
‘Nice jump,’ Alen said, retaking her hand, ‘but be careful. You don’t want to fall in.’
‘I know,’ Milla shivered. ‘It’s so cold it made my head hurt, and my skin was like it didn’t feel anything.’
‘Numb.’
‘Numb,’ Milla echoed. ‘So I had to warm it up, or I would have been too scared to swim.’
‘I hear you did a good job swimming.’
Milla beamed. ‘I swam the scramble, just like Hannah showed me, but she calls it the dog-paddle, or something like that. I did have to hurt that one man, though – I didn’t want to, but he was going to stab Hoyt, and maybe Hannah, too. So I made him stop.’ Her lip started to tremble.
Alen picked her up and, holding her close, whispered, ‘Don’t you worry about it, Pepperweed, not for one more day. Those men were going to take you back to Welstar Palace.’
‘Back to Rabeth and the others?’ She looked cross. ‘But I don’t want to go back there. I want to go home to Mama and to find Resta with Hoyt.’
‘Resta?’
‘You know: Resta the Wonderdog, who writes his name and sings songs.’
‘Yes, of course, how could I have forgotten?’
A pair of barges laden with tarpaulin-covered crates moved slowly towards Welstar Palace. Milla waved at one of the sailors. ‘You don’t think those other soldiers are going to come and find me?’
‘Not after what you did to them.’
‘That was Hoyt’s idea,’ Milla said. ‘I didn’t know if I could do it, but Hannah helped me to come up with a good story, and I just told it to those men, the ones with the hurt legs, and they thought it was true.’
‘And Erynn too, right?’
‘She was even easier,’ Milla said. ‘I just make her think that Karel had taken me away because he was mad at her for being in love with Hoyt.’
‘That’s silly, isn’t it?’ Alen blew into his cupped hands; Milla mimicked him, warming her fingers.
‘Hoyt’s too old, anyway.’
‘I’m sure he’ll be glad you think that way, Pepperweed.’
She giggled. ‘Hoyt’s silly.’
‘That is an interesting trick you did, though. I wish I knew how to do that one,’ Alen said. ‘Did Nerak teach you that one: helping people to remember things the wrong way?’
‘No.’ Milla wiped her nose on her cloak. ‘It was Hoyt. He told me to try it, and so I did. It was hard at first, because those other soldiers were shouting. So it was hard to think about how to do it.’
‘I’m impressed,’ Alen said, ‘but Milla, please don’t try that one on me or the others, all right?’
‘All right.’ Milla didn’t seem to care. ‘Are we there yet? I’m cold.’
While the Hunter’s Glade did indeed have enormous biscuits, some the size of a child’s head, Milla’s favourite thing about visiting Gisella were her dogs. The lonely cafe owner had two, a big old wolf-like creature, and a small, feisty creature with a mass of tight curls, a fiery temper and a soft spot for children. As soon as they arrived at the cafe, Milla rushed over to the dogs and the three of them rolled and wrestled until, exhausted, she joined Alen at their small table near the fireplace. After devouring whatever delicacy Gisella had prepared for her, Milla donned her cloak, kissed the barmaid on the nose and climb into Alen’s arms for the journey back to the Wayfarer. After most visits, Milla was asleep before they rounded the first corner.
This aven, the little girl didn’t sleep. Alen?’ she asked, a tiny voice in the twilight air.
‘What is it, Pepperweed?’
‘I sent those dogs to the wagons, too.’
‘I know you did, Pepperweed.’
‘Was that a wrong thing to do?’
‘You saved me and Hoyt,’ he said, ‘so no, I don’t think it was wrong.’
‘But some of those soldiers-’
‘They were all fine.’ Alen stopped her with the lie he and Hoyt had prepared. ‘Hoyt and I were watching while we sneaked away, and when the dogs left, all those soldiers were fine.’ She had been so upset at killing the Malakasian sergeant; knowing she had wiped out an entire platoon of Seron warriors would be too much for Milla to handle right now. He changed the subject, saying, ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘What?’
‘How do you do it? How do you get those dogs inside our dreams? Hannah, Hoyt, and I all dreamed about dogs – the same dog, from Southport, the one you sent after Hannah when she came across the Fold. How did you get the dog to follow your orders, and how did you get the same dog to fit so perfectly into our dreams?’
‘It’s the way those ashes work.’ Milla didn’t lift her head from his shoulder.
‘The ashes?’
‘The ash dream,’ she yawned into his ear.
‘What is that, Pepperweed?’ He was getting more confused, not less.
‘The dream you get from the trees.’
Ashes, Alen thought, ashes – yes, there were ashes in the fire grate in Durham, and Hannah mentioned ashes from her father’s cigarettes. Hoyt remembered me smoking, although I never did, and Churn smelled the ashes of his family’s burning homestead. The ash dream? Dreams of ashes? It doesn’t make sense.
He asked, ‘So why did we all dream about ashes, Pepperweed?’
‘You dream about your life. I put in the dog for fun. It isn’t hard to do.’
‘So where do the ashes come from?’
‘From whoever wants you to know about ashes. She must be putting the ashes in there.’
‘She?’
‘Or he. I don’t know.’
‘So the ash dream is a dream about ashes?’ Alen couldn’t hide his confusion.
Milla giggled, snuggling closer to ward off the cold. ‘No, crazy. The ash dream is the dream that comes from the trees. The ashes are in your dream, because someone put them there.’
‘Like your dog.’
‘Yup.’
‘Because he… or she… wanted me to think about ashes?’
‘Wanted you to know the name of the dream, probably.’
He propped her a bit higher on his hip. ‘Go to sleep now, Milla. I’ll wake you when we get back to the Wayfarer.’
‘All right,’ she yawned. ‘Did you remember Hoyt’s biscuit?’
‘And one for Hannah,’ Alen said, feeling her breath tickle his neck.
‘That’s good,’ she whispered and drifted off.
Plodding through the Pellia twilight, Alen analysed what he knew, trying to uncover something salient they had overlooked. So the ash dream is how someone, Nerak probably, referred to the hypnotic state one experiences in the Forest of Ghosts. Milla sent the dog to follow us, then worked him into our dreams, probably without Nerak knowing, or he would have been rutting furious with her for tipping us off. So why the ashes? Was that you, Fantus? What are you trying to tell me? I know it’s the tree bark, but why? What’s the point of shipping it here?
He was still thinking it all through when he arrived back at the Wayfarer Inn. Morgan and Illia Kestral, both working behind the bar, waved to him genially, deeply thankful that they had saved Erynn from Karel, the crazed young soldier, who had kidnapped their daughter and Milla before killing himself. If you only knew, Alen thought. He gestured to Milla and then the stairs: I’ll be right down, just need to take her up.
‘You need a beer?’ Morgan whispered.
‘Please,’ Alen whispered back. An aven or two alone might help him stumble on something he had missed.