The Larion Senators

The Larion Senators
SANDCLIFF PALACE

Second Age, First Era, Twinmoon 2,829

Lessek paused long enough to cough up a mouthful of viscous phlegm; he spat into the mud beside the tower wall and wiped his face dry. They were coming; he could feel them close behind him now. His side burned with a runner’s stitch, a pain he hadn’t felt in almost a thousand Twinmoons. The Larion brother mumbled a spell, coughed again and waited – it’s taking too long – for the sting to fade. His feet were bleeding, his boots forgotten in his bedchamber; his hands and face were marked with a cobweb of glass and bramble scratches, and his fever had returned.

Flu. Influenza. That’s what Francesco Antonelli had called it, an infection: a sinister and calculating virus, and to date the Larion Senate’s most reprehensible – if inadvertent – contribution to Eldarni culture. He didn’t know which of them had contracted it, or who had brought it back, but that was irrelevant. It was here.

And thousands had died.

Tonight, they were coming; it was time to atone.

The first pursuers appeared as shadows from around the southwest corner of the keep. They had no torches, yet they were visible enough in the backlighting of the southern Twinmoon. The full Twinmoon was still a night or two away, but the winds had picked up noticeably since Lessek had gone to bed an aven earlier. The Larion founder used the howling gale and crashing surf to mask his retreat. He supposed he could kill them, conjure some spell to eviscerate the entire mob, but that would do nothing to exonerate him, or to redeem the Larion brotherhood in the eyes of their true appraisers: the Eldarni people. His only real choice was to flee, to reach the tower and to escape back to Italy for a cure. Besides, his own brother was with them, and Evete was there, too. He wouldn’t risk either of them.

Just run, he thought. It’s not far now.

Magic quieted the ache in Lessek’s side and he ran for the north tower. The spiral stairs would be cold and unforgiving this evening but with the tribesmen, Harbach, that meddlesome businessman, and Gaorg – and don’t forget Evete, how could she side with them? – running him to ground, Lessek used another incantation to quicken his stride, lowered his head and sprinted the last fifty paces to the tower entrance. I hope they haven’t posted a guard.

He shouted the spell to unlock the wooden door and watched through the half-light as it swung open to welcome him, the master of the house.

Metal hinges. Do you see that, Harbach? The rest of you? Metal hinges. I brought back metallurgy unlike anything you’d ever seen – and what did you do? You forged weapons. Selfish bastards.

For the tenth time since leaping through the window of his bedchamber, Lessek thanked the gods of the Northern Forest that he had remembered to take the keystone. It had been lying on the nightstand, beside a basin of cold water and a stump of paraffin taper. Picking it up had been second nature; he’d been half asleep, still lost in the heady slumber that accompanied his weakening symptoms, for he had been getting better, no question. Lessek patted the pocket of his nightshirt and felt it there, irregular and nondescript: a rock.

I’ll take it with me, he thought, that, and the book. They’ll be begging for me to return. Antonelli will know what to do; I’ll find him. He’ll be in Roma, his civitate Dei.

He made it across the threshold, spinning around when an alarm, faint behind his fever, clamoured in his head. Arrow! He cast quickly, flailing with one hand as he incinerated the shaft in midair. The spell was a simple one, slow, but effective; he hoped he wouldn’t be forced to summon anything of consequence before escaping across the Fold. The mob behind him had grown to perhaps twenty or twenty-five. There were senators with them, too. A handful carried torches, and sporadic light fell over the group, illuminating some while masking others in darkness. It left his pursuers, his friends, colleagues and family, looking nefarious and deformed.

Would they kill him? Lessek couldn’t imagine they would, but Harbach was there, and at the very least, the merchant wanted to see the Larion leader banished from Sandcliff and a new director appointed in his stead. That alone was enough reason to flee, for the moment anyway.

With a spell Lessek slammed the tower door closed behind him, but as the ponderous echo resonated up the stairwell, he heard a voice from somewhere in the midst of Harbach’s mob, shouting, ‘No, please! Don’t shoot him. Don’t shoot!’ It was Evete, and at that, Lessek felt a surge of adrenalin, energy his magic had failed to provide over the last few days.

Perhaps she is with me still. He started up the steps two at a time, emboldened by love and a sense that there was hope yet for his vision.

Then he fell. Landing hard, he felt blood seep from a gash above his left eye. He pressed on it, regained his feet and kept moving. When he heard the tower gate breached, he wasn’t surprised; the spell securing the door was known to almost all the senators. Any one of them could have called it. It was Gaorg; you know it was. Lessek wiped his eye clear again and ran on, his bloody feet slipping on the smooth stones.

By the time he reached the spell chamber, he was gasping for breath. He had tried twice to cry a spell that would strengthen his lungs, something to keep them full. But the fever, the fall from his chamber window, the cuts, gashes and bruises and especially the long sprint up the dizzying stairway had left him starved of air, too weak to mumble the words. Whatever adrenalin he had felt when Evete shouted for him had ebbed in a bloody trail along the stairs, and now Harbach’s men were only a few steps behind.

Get the book.

Lessek moved hurriedly into the room, sidled past the spell table and started towards the scroll library, his private office.

An arrow, undetected this time, cut the air above his shoulder and glanced off the wall. As it clattered down the steps Lessek stumbled, then used what strength he had left to slam the chamber door, locking most of the mob in the stairwell for a few precious moments. The archer, a tribesman, from the cut of his tunic, looked as though he had seen a ghost. He was alone in the Larion spell chamber with the great one, Lessek himself, bloodied, raging and dangerous. The bowman dropped to his knees. In a tribal dialect Lessek had encountered a few times on trips south of the Blackstones, he begged for his life.

The Larion Senator considered knocking the bowman senseless but decided not to waste the time.

Get the book.

He drew a far portal from its place above the spell table and cast it across the floor.

Behind him, the door clicked open; there was no time to reach the scroll library or the spell book. Gaorg, you horsecock. When I get back, I’ll flay you alive.

‘There he is!’ It was Harbach. ‘Don’t let him escape! Gaorg, do something!’

Lessek called a spell he had used on hundreds of occasions to bring a far portal across the Fold with him, a doorway home. Like picking up the keystone, calling this spell was second nature, but mid-verse, the Larion founder coughed, a feverish hack, wet with infection and phlegm. His last few syllables were lost in a guttural rasping fit and when Lessek disappeared from the spell chamber, the far portal remained behind. Green and yellow flecks of Larion energy danced in the air above the intricately woven tapestry until Gaorg Belsac, Lessek’s own brother, folded a corner with his boot. The Larion spell chamber fell silent.

In one hand, Gaorg held a small grey stone, a piece of granite that had tumbled from his brother’s pocket when Lessek slipped on the spiral stairs.

‘Get started,’ Harbach panted. His hands on his knees, the old merchant looked to be only a breath or two from a massive heart seizure. ‘Do it now.’

Gaorg stared numbly at Lessek’s keystone.

‘You said you could work the spell.’ Harbach turned to Evete and the others. ‘Out of here! All of you. Now!’

Evete pushed past two bowmen and a scared-looking Larion apprentice. ‘Don’t do it, Gaorg,’ she whispered.

‘Get her out of here!’ Harbach shouted, and the archers wrestled Lessek Belsac’s lover towards the stairwell.

‘Gaorg!’ she cried.

Harbach ushered them into the stairwell, then slammed the chamber door. He leaned over the spell table with an air of complacent corruption.

Lessek’s brother hadn’t moved; the portal still lay crumpled at his feet.

‘Get started,’ Harbach said, examining a cracked fingernail, ‘and secure your place in Eldarni history. You’ve been in his shadow too long, my friend.’

Gaorg Belsac woke from his reverie. ‘Very well,’ he said.