Lessek's Key

THE STAFF’S SECRET

‘Look out, Steven!’ Gilmour cried as he rushed forward take the brunt of the wraith attack on himself.

‘Steven!’ Mark shouted, and ran down into the meadow, followed closely by Garec, Kellin and Brand.

Steven raised a hand to the wraiths sweeping down on him – and Gabriel, Lahp and the young mother halted in midair, their ghostly arms reaching down for him. Steven looked up at them and said, ‘I’m sorry. This must be terrible for you. Wait here and I’ll do what I can when this is finished.’ He gestured towards the boulder at the river’s edge and the wraiths, still trying to break free, floated towards it. They hung there, immobile.

For the first time Steven detected a ripple of fear in Nerak and without pausing he lashed out at the dark prince, determined to exploit every weakness he could find. ‘You see? Even your slaves can’t obey you if I direct them otherwise.’ He allowed the magic to flow from both hands and it pounded into Bellan’s chest. The girl was hurled backwards through the air and crashed with a grim thud into the boulder. Blood discoloured the stone where her head cracked open.

Apparently unfazed by her fractured skull, Prince Malagon’s daughter rose up from where she had fallen and blasted a brutal spell at Steven and Gilmour. The blow sent both men sprawling; Gilmour rolled backwards over what had been one of the bone-collectors. Bellan stood looking down at the hickory staff, then picked it up, brushed the snow from it and held it close to her face.

Steven rolled to his feet and gestured for everyone to stay where they were, willing them to understand: I have this under control, he thought. Let them understand!

Alone, he crossed to Bellan.

‘It was not wise of you to give this up, Steven Taylor,’ Nerak said, still considering the staff.

‘Nerak’s weakness lies elsewhere,’ he replied. ‘That’s what Lessek told Gilmour, and he was right. Do you know where it lies? It lies right there in your hands, and you’re just too blazingly stupid to see it. We all were – all of us except Mark, thank Christ – but now it’s clear, and you… cannot… win.’

‘I already have, Steven Taylor. With this staff, you were the only one who could have stood against me. And with this staff and Lessek’s key, my quest is nearly complete.’

‘Look closely at it, Nerak.’ Steven wanted this conversation done. ‘Have you ever seen it before? I’m betting you have.’

Bellan’s eyes flared as she raised the staff. ‘You have been insulting and tiresome, but now you have crossed into stupidity, Steven Taylor, and I cannot bear stupidity, especially from one whom I have come to respect.’

‘Go ahead.’ Steven felt his hands begin to tremble; sweat trickled down his temples. ‘Kill me with it.’

‘Gladly,’ Nerak said, ‘although in some ways it is a shame. You and I could have been so powerful together.’

Bowstrings thrummed as Garec and Mark fired, but Nerak raised one of Bellan’s hands and the shafts fell harmlessly to the ground. Gilmour unleashed a spell to knock Bellan off her feet, stunning Nerak long enough for one of them to retrieve the staff, but Nerak turned it away with a wave; the spell sailed up and over the river and crashed through a riverside willow.

‘Come on,’ Steven said, ‘do it now.’

Nerak reared back and swiped viciously at him.

Garec had to tackle Mark to keep him from diving into the fray. Brand, Kellin and Gilmour all screamed as the dark prince swung the staff at Steven’s head. Her eyes aflame, Bellan’s entire body heaved with anticipation of feeling the staff’s magic rip through the irritating foreigner’s body. She screamed as she swung; the staff blurred in the air, a reaper’s enchanted scythe.

Effortlessly, Steven reached up and caught the hickory staff in one hand. Pressing forward, he twisted it out of Bellan’s grip and shoved it into her face. ‘Look again, Nerak. Look closely at it. I think you’ve seen it before.’

Now Nerak shook as he reached out Bellan’s hands to take hold of Steven’s throat, to choke the life from him. ‘I’ll kill you the old-fashioned way!’ he roared, but Steven easily batted Bellan’s hands away.

‘You’re not paying attention,’ Steven said, backing the girl towards the river. ‘I want you to look closely at the staff, and I want you to tell me if you have ever seen it before.’ He slapped Bellan hard across the face.

To her great surprise, it hurt; a red welt rose up on her cheek, and a dribble of blood ran from one nostril. It was the first human injury Nerak had sustained in nearly a thousand Twinmoons and it shocked him silent.

‘I think you have seen this before.’ Steven pressed the end of the staff up into Bellan’s face. ‘Haven’t you?’

The girl’s self-assurance began to crumble and she looked over Steven’s shoulder to where Gilmour approached warily. ‘Fantus?’

‘Yes, Nerak?’ Gilmour was still confused.

‘It’s Kantu’s staff,’ Nerak said, almost wonderingly. ‘His walking staff. I hid some things inside it one night, a long time ago.’

‘He hid knowledge about himself,’ Steven said to Gilmour, ‘things Nerak knew about himself.’ He turned back to Bellan. ‘That’s what you hid inside this staff, and that’s why you couldn’t sense it when I used it – and that’s why you couldn’t remember it. It’s also the reason you can’t stop it from reminding you now of just who you really are.’

Steven looked back at Mark, who grinned encouragingly and gestured, Go on!

‘When you opened the Fold that night,’ Steven said, ‘the evil creature that claimed you didn’t get the all-powerful sorcerer he believed to you be, but a lying fool, one who had convinced himself he was something he wasn’t. You hid the truth from yourself inside this staff, and you did it using a deception spell from the second Windscroll. Gilmour told us about it after his conversation with Kantu at Sandcliff,’ he added as an aside to Mark, connecting the dots for his friends.

He laughed. ‘Nerak, you fooled yourself into believing you could master the Larion spell table, but the spell table was too much for you.

‘The evil minion took you hostage; too bad that it believed what you had in your head at the time, because it never knew that you had worked a spell to deceive yourself. I’m almost impressed, Nerak: you couldn’t completely erase your memory – your knowledge – of your own weaknesses, so you hid it inside this staff. Pretty clever idea, really.’

Now Bellan nodded. ‘We were on Larion Isle. Kantu left his walking staff in the common room. I was there alone, experimenting with the deception spell. When I finally managed to get it to work-’

‘You hadn’t realised you would need a vessel to contain the knowledge,’ Gilmour finished for him.

‘You changed your own perception of yourself,’ Steven went on. ‘You lied to yourself- hey, we all do it! But you did it with the help of the Windscrolls, and you made it permanent, in your mind, and, over time, in the minds of those around you. When the evil minion took you, it believed what you believed, because in your mind it was true.’

He motioned across the meadow. ‘My friend Mark there lost the woman he loved, you miserable, stinking bastard. She was one of Garec’s best friends. Her name was Brynne. You probably don’t remember her.’ Steven moved and Bellan retreated again. ‘I had a friend in Colorado, Myrna Kessler; she planned to go to college this year. You killed her.’ Now Bellan was standing ankle-deep in river mud. Steven’s voice was soft, almost conversational. ‘Mika, Jerond, Versen, Sallax, Rodler – remember them? No? You killed them all. It might have been the Nerak who believed himself to be the most powerful man in Eldarn, or the Nerak standing here now, the one suddenly aware of his own weaknesses, but let me assure you, I don’t care. I swore to be compassionate, and I was compassionate: I gave you the hickory staff. I gave you the power to save yourself – and you tried to turn it against me. You, the real you, tried to kill me with it.’

The others had to strain to hear Steven whisper, ‘Nerak, that was a mistake.’

Bellan trembled. She had gone a cadaverous shade of grey. ‘No,’ she begged, her lip quivering, ‘please don’t.’

‘I have to,’ Steven said simply. ‘Goodbye, Nerak.’

He raised one hand above his head and drew a pattern in the air. With the other he grabbed a handful of Bellan’s tunic.

‘Fantus!’ Nerak cried, ‘don’t let him do this – we were friends, Fantus.’

Steven picked Bellan up and heaved her through the tear in the blurry, melted-paraffin backdrop. He stood for a moment in the doorway to the Fold as Nerak’s screams echoed back, then faded away.

Now Steven turned to the three rifts Nerak had opened in the Fold that morning and as he gestured at each, it closed and the forested glen around them came slowly back into focus.

The Fold was closed.

Smiling, Steven turned to his friends, who were staring at him in wonder, speechless. Gilmour held the hickory staff reverently in one hand.

‘What?’ Steven asked. ‘Mark figured it out. I just did the dirty work.’

He walked to Gilmour and gave the old sorcerer a great bear-hug. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘Thank me? For what?’ Gilmour replied. ‘Without you, I would now be dead, not once, but ten or twelve times over.’

‘And without you, Gilmour, I would be lost.’ Steven hugged him again, then walked over to Mark.

Wait,’ Gilmour said, ‘here.’ He held out the staff.

‘Oh, that’s just a stick now,’ Steven said dismissively. ‘You can keep it if you like, or toss it in the river.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘None of us do,’ Garec added.

‘I’ll explain it all,’ Steven said, ‘but the short answer is that Mark was right. Nerak never knew what was in the staff because as soon as he put it there, he forgot it.’

‘He lied to himself and used magic to make it real?’ Brand asked.

‘Basically,’ Steven replied. ‘I began to work it out when Mark and Garec told me I had done magic without using the staff. I was able to do things that should have been child’s play for Nerak, but they weren’t. He was a master sorcerer who’d studied the Larion system for hundreds of Twinmoons; I was a guy with a stick I found in the woods – but we were sparring with one another as equals. So I figured either he wasn’t so powerful after all, or maybe I was a lot more powerful than I appeared. I guess in the end it was a little of both.’

‘How did that all become obvious in the past aven?’ Garec asked.

Steven chuckled nervously. ‘It didn’t. Dropping that staff was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I was so scared; I thought I was going to piss my pants – but I had to give it to him. I had to give Nerak the chance to save himself.

‘Compassion,’ Mark said.

‘Right,’ Steven agreed. ‘That’s when the staff is at its most powerful, so I had to take the risk.’

‘And when he tried to use it against you-’ Garec started.

‘Nothing,’ Steven said.

‘Like that night it shattered.’

‘Exactly.’

Garec was confused. ‘I still don’t know how you took down that pine without breaking the staff,’ he said.

‘Because that wasn’t the staff’s magic,’ Mark said. ‘That was the first time we saw across the Fold. It was a different power.’

Steven clapped his hands together to get their attention. ‘Right, we still have work to do,’ he announced.

‘What do you mean?’ Garec asked.

‘We have to get the table.’

Mark said, ‘But I thought you closed the Fold?’

‘I closed the tears, but I closed those in Idaho Springs, too: that’s not sealing it off for ever. That’s rather more difficult – to do that, I’m afraid we’re going to need the spell table, Lessek’s key and our Larion Senator here.’ He wrapped an arm around Gilmour’s shoulders.

‘Are you saying he could come back?’ Kellin asked, a tremble in her voice.

‘No. He’s gone for good.’ Steven’s face darkened a moment. ‘So are Myrna and all the others I banished today.’

‘But not Lahp and Gabriel,’ Garec said.

‘Oh my God, you’re right-’ Steven exclaimed, ‘they’re still up there. Mark, do me a favour, will you, and get Lessek’s key – you remember where I buried it?’

‘Sure,’ Mark said and trotted towards the tree line, stopping abruptly after a few steps. ‘Uh, Steven, can you put out the fire?’ The flames from the spells and the staff’s incendiary strikes had spread along the riverbank.

‘Sure – well, I think so!’ He closed his eyes and reached towards the river, feeling the air around his fingertips thicken until it was almost malleable. He imagined a great wave, arising somewhere upstream and rushing down to break over the boulders into a shower of droplets that drenched the surrounding area and helped drown the fire. There was a great crash, and he opened his eyes to see thick clouds of steam billowing down to the riverbank.

‘Well, that worked okay,’ Mark said, wiping his face dry. ‘Remind me never to ask you to pick up milk for breakfast – the stampede would kill us all!’

Steven laughed. ‘Sorry – not very subtle, was it? I’ll have to work on that. Now I’ve got to set this lot free.’ He crossed to where the wraiths, translucent once again, waited patiently. Lahp and Gabriel were smiling; the Seron and the erstwhile bank manager appreciated Steven’s over-the-top display of magical prowess.

Gilmour walked with him. ‘So you are-?’

‘I must be, Gilmour. I don’t know how I could have done those things otherwise. I think Nerak hid more knowledge in that staff than power.’

‘So Mark was right on several issues.’

‘He must be – we were drawn to Idaho Springs, both of us, just like his father had been. It’s the reason I turned down all those job offers, and why we both went to college within spitting distance of the town, and then stayed. Lessek’s key was keeping us there.’

‘So is it true about Mark as well?’

Steven shrugged. ‘That he’s Rona’s heir, and Eldarn’s king? I think it must be, don’t you? I can’t see him hanging around long enough to lead this place to democracy or anything, though. Still, it’ll look good on his CV: history teacher, swimming coach, king of all Eldarn.’

Gilmour laughed. ‘You know, something occurred to me today, too: I’ve always thought I was still alive because I was supposed to battle Nerak, but then I realised I’ve been around a long time waiting for you; I think that supports your theory, doesn’t it?’

Steven shook his head and grinned. ‘Who could ever have guessed that I would end up here?’

‘Someone who knew you were a powerful sorcerer, someone who knew where you were – both you and Mark – and why.’

‘Lessek?’

‘Lessek.’

‘But you’re still here, and still alive,’ Steven said, trying to puzzle it through. ‘If your charge has been met, wouldn’t you fade away, or something mystical like that?’

‘The Fold is still navigable,’ Gilmour reminded him.

‘Right. Slipped my mind.’ Steven slapped a hand to his forehead. ‘I forgot these three again, too.’ He turned once again to the imprisoned wraiths.

Steven’s heart froze in his chest as he looked at them; Gabriel and Lahp were gesticulating wildly towards the forest, trying to communicate something.

‘Oh God,’ Steven whispered, ‘Mark.’ He freed the wraiths with a gesture and grabbed Gilmour’s hand.

‘Come on!’ he shouted, sprinting towards the trees. ‘Mark!’ he screamed but he was horribly afraid that they were too late.

Mark came down the hill and stepped cautiously beneath the trees. Water dripped all around as his boots sank into slushy snow made filthy with ash and burned bits of tree. It felt like an acrid cloud of smoke had swallowed him whole, so he covered his eyes and trudged, still coughing, down the trail until he reached the tree with the cross burned into its trunk.

He started digging with the toe of his boot, not really wanting to get either himself or his clothes any more wet than they already were, but after a bit he gave up and crouched down. He dug in with both hands, trying to ignore the freezing slush and icy mud. ‘No matter,’ he said aloud, ‘Steven will dry them out for me.’

He had got down almost far enough when he heard someone say, ‘Hello Mark Jenkins.’

Spinning round, he shrieked, ‘God! You scared me!’

Mark strained his eyes through the smoke to see who was there.

‘Who is that?’ he asked loudly and drew his battle-axe.

The disembodied voice came to him through the haze; for a moment Mark thought he could see the outline of a man, but it flickered in the smoke and then was gone.

‘Who is that?’ he asked again. His voice cracked; his hands were shaking.

‘One half of a marriage that went tragically wrong, Mark Jenkins, but I will not make that mistake again.’

An itch began to irritate the back of Mark’s left wrist and he rubbed it against the coarse fabric of his tunic while he searched the forest for the steam and smoke visitor. When pain paralysed his forearm, he suddenly realised what had happened – and that it was too late to scream. He flailed about wildly for a moment, gripped the tree in a one-armed hug and then slumped to the ground.

In the instant before he felt himself fade away, Mark was given a glimpse of the entity’s vision for the future, Mark’s future. Then he did scream, but no one heard him. He slipped into the darkness and was still falling when the entity rubbed a handful of snow across the back of his bloody, pus-covered wrist. He would need gloves. Reaching into the muddy hole beside the tree, Mark retrieved Lessek’s key, slipped it inside the pocket of his Gore-tex jacket and jogged north along the path into Falkan.