The Larion Senators

BOOK I
The Larion Spell Table
WRAITHS

Jacrys awakened, and listened carefully. There were others in the chamber: Pace, and someone with a familiar accent, a lilt in his voice that was not unpleasant. It was the one leading the Orindale hunt for Sallax Farro. What’s his name?

He could hear them talking.

‘About twenty-five days now, almost a Moon,’ said one.

‘Querlis?’ came the reply.

‘Every day, but progress is slow. The only healer in the barracks that night was a lieutenant from Averil, a farmer’s son who knew something about horses and pigs. He helped us stabilise him until the general’s healer could get back on the Medera.’

‘En route to Rona by then, I’m sure.’

‘Yes sir, he was.’

‘How bad?’

‘Lung punctured and collapsed. Thankfully, the general’s healer had enough magic to clot the blood and inflate the lung. Otherwise we would have lost him.’

‘And Oaklen left his healer here?’

‘Not the only one in the division, sir, but yes. He ordered me to remain behind as well… wants Jacrys healed, said something about the prince.’

‘Word of him?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Dead.’

‘Perhaps.’

The voices drifted too far away for him to hear any more so he turned to his own body. He tuned his senses to the hollow cavity inside his ribs. The pain was gone; it had been astonishing. He tried to fill his lungs, but failed. Time passed, and he tried again. Still no good. He was breathing, but not well. Twenty-five days, almost a Moon. That seemed significant, but he couldn’t home in on why, exactly; answers eluded him, sneaking away behind shadowy folds of confusion. After a while he didn’t care.

More time passed, and the voices, Pace and the other, the lilting one, returned.

‘Is he coherent?’

‘When he wakes, he tries to talk. He seems concerned that the girl got away.’

‘Carderic, right?’

‘Yes, sir. Brexan Carderic, a deserter. She had been posted along the Forbidden Forest outside Estrad. She disappeared the morning Jacrys ordered the siege on Riverend Palace.’

‘Must have known they were hiding something there.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And she was with this partisan, what’s his name again?’

‘Sallax Farro, sir, Sallax of Estrad, one of their leaders.’

‘But he was killed?’

Yes, sir. The girl escaped. She stripped half naked and pretended to be a whore. She walked right out of the barracks.’

Did you now? Good show, Brexan, good show, indeed. You’ve become an adequate spy after all. Jacrys surveyed the room through one slitted eye. The chamber was blurry and indistinct. He could see the two men, little more than smears of black and gold: Colonel Pace and Captain Someone, the one from the searches. Good news about Sallax, though. That rutting horsecock needed to die. Jacrys let the knowledge seep through the paralysis and fatigue holding him hostage. It felt good to know the traitorous partisan was gone. As for you, Brexan Carderic, if I see you again, my succulent little morsel, I’ll gut you and mount your insides on the wall of my dining room.

His eye fell shut; the hushed conversation, somewhere on the other side of the room, faded once again. Dreaming, Jacrys felt the bedding wrap him in a gentle embrace, a comforting, woman’s touch, perhaps even Brexan’s. She was a beautiful girl. And if I don’t see you again, my dear, well, then goodbye.

‘Oh, and Thadrake?’

‘Yes, sir?’

Somewhere out beyond the coverlet’s billowy embrace, Jacrys heard them pushing their way into his dreams. That’s his name, Captain Thadrake.

‘What news do you have on the murders?’

‘We believe it was Sallax all along, sir… killed a Seron with a knife, did it one-handed… same description as the assailant who had been haunting the waterfront…’ Thadrake’s voice tumbled back over itself in layers of sound, until, unable to decipher any more, Jacrys let go. Twenty-five days, that’s a long time. I’ve been here a long time. Jacrys heard footsteps; that would be Colonel Pace leaving the chamber. Thadrake remained behind, but the Malakasian spy didn’t care. It’s time, he thought before spiralling back into oblivion. It’s time to go home.

‘I still don’t understand.’ Kellin Mora stood near the water’s edge. Her cloak covered underclothes, tunic and overtunic, making her look like a wrinkled beige bag topped off with a thin-faced blonde-haired head.

Steven Taylor, wiry, pale and tired-looking, waded calf-deep in the river, his boots and socks in a heap beside the fallen pine he’d been sitting on.

Kellin was still wary of the power she had witnessed Steven wielding against the Malakasian girl, Bellan – or Nerak, or Prince Malagon, or whoever that had been – and she felt a pang of distrust for the foreigner. She wished she was back in Traver’s Notch, with Gita Kamrec and the rest of the Falkan Resistance. Covert strikes, guerrilla attacks, hoarding silver and weapons: she understood these things. Battling wraiths, bone-collecting river monsters and possessed Larion sorcerers was unfamiliar and frightening, and she remained hesitant to trust this man completely, despite Brand Krug’s apparent complacency with their current assignment. Only her loyalty to Gita and Falkan kept her from sneaking back home.

‘Which part don’t you understand?’ Garec Haile, the good-looking bowman from Estrad, joined her near the river. He liked Kellin and welcomed her company.

‘Most of it, I suppose,’ Kellin said. ‘If that little girl was Prince Malagon-’

‘It wasn’t,’ Garec interrupted. ‘It was Bellan, Malagon’s daughter. Prince Malagon’s body was dropped in-’

‘South Carolina,’ Steven interjected without looking back. He gazed across the river, choosing landmarks on the opposite shoreline and lining them up with a rocky cliff above and behind them. The cliff face was dotted with pine trees clinging to the craggy granite. ‘Probably in Charleston Harbour, near Folly Beach. I know that doesn’t mean much to you, Kellin, but rest assured, it’s a long night’s travel from here.’

‘Wherever here is,’ Garec mumbled.

‘Have a little faith.’ Steven turned and smiled at them. ‘This is it. Don’t you remember that hill? It looks like my grandfather’s nose. That’s a hard mountain to forget.’

‘That’s quite a grandfather you have,’ Kellin said.

‘Yeah, well, he wasn’t much of an underwear model, but he could drink his own weight in Milwaukee beer and he could read cigarette ashes in my grandmother’s ashtray. That has to count for something.’ Steven turned back to the river.

‘I thought it was tea leaves,’ Gilmour said.

‘It should be, but old Grandpop never liked tea, and my grandmother smoked enough to kill the neighbour’s dog. So it gave us all something to do between dinner and dessert.’

Kellin raised an eyebrow at Garec, who shrugged. She returned to the previous conversation. ‘So, Prince Malagon’s body lies abandoned in your world?’

‘Right,’ Garec answered for his friend. ‘Nerak, the Larion Senator who had been controlling Prince Malagon, had not been to Steven’s world in a thousand Twinmoons. So when he arrived, he dropped Malagon’s body and probably took the first person he found.’

‘Why?’

‘A head full of updated knowledge,’ Garec said.

‘He can read your thoughts?’

‘Only from the inside, Kellin.’

‘So Malagon was inside his own daughter?’

‘Nope,’ Steven said, ‘that was Nerak.’

‘Oh, yes, right. Sorry,’ she said, ‘I get them confused.’

‘It’s easy to do.’

‘So, Nerak returned here to Eldarn and took Bellan’s body?’

‘Right again.’ Steven wandered through the water, which crept above his bare knees to dampen his rolled-up leggings. ‘Ah, crap. Now I have to dry these again.’

‘You’ll never get the wrinkles out,’ Garec teased.

‘Wait,’ Kellin interrupted, ‘don’t change the subject again! How did he get back here, without a portal and without a body?’

Steven hunched noticeably, as if the wind was blowing cold in his face. ‘He could have used anyone to make the trip back here, Kellin. And as for how he returned, I’m worried that he might have killed a friend of mine, a woman whose daughter I-’

‘He didn’t.’ Gilmour cut him off. ‘Nerak returned here because I opened the way for him.’

‘How?’ Brand was cooking venison steaks on a flat rock beside the campfire. ‘How did you manage it without a portal?’

‘I made a mistake.’ Gilmour glanced towards his pack and the collection of Lessek’s spells wrapped inside. ‘I opened a book I had no business reading. It let Nerak pinpoint my location and make the journey home; I’m sure of it. Hannah’s mother probably never encountered him at all.’

‘Let’s hope,’ Steven said.

‘But didn’t you kill him, Steven?’ Kellin asked. ‘I saw you pick up that girl and throw her inside that boulder. She vanished; didn’t she? Is she… or he… dead now?’

‘It wasn’t exactly into the boulder, Kellin,’ Steven explained. ‘It was through a rip, an opening that you weren’t able to see. I threw her… him, if you prefer… inside, and he doesn’t have the power to get back out.’

‘So Nerak is dead,’ Kellin said.

‘Essentially.’ Steven sighted along his finger between a clump of trees and the tip of his grandfather’s nose.

‘Then why are we still here? We’ve been riding these past few days as if someone is chasing us. Mark’s gone; we didn’t even look for him, and we’ve been hurrying through the forest trying to find this cliff, hill, stone table, whatever it is, and I don’t understand why.’ Kellin avoided looking at Brand. She was a Resistance fighter; she’d fought Prince Malagon’s soldiers and shown her allegiance. Hearing her voice rising as she pleaded for understanding was embarrassing; she cleared her throat nosily to cover her anxiety.

Steven’s smile faded. ‘We’re still here, Kellin, because we were guilty of exactly the same offence that allowed me to dispose of Nerak for ever. We focused on the wrong thing; we believed something that wasn’t true, just like Nerak.’

The others, including Gilmour, were listening intently. The battle in the glen had been four days ago, and no one had yet endeavoured to explain what had happened, or why.

‘What did you- What did we have wrong?’ Kellin asked.

‘Nerak believed he was powerful, much more powerful than he turned out to be. He actually used a spell to convince himself that he was the greatest Larion sorcerer that Eldarn had ever known. He removed the part of himself that understood who he really was, almost physically tore it out of his mind, and he hid that knowledge in a friend’s walking stick, an old length of whittled hickory, that I found – that found me – on the other side of these mountains. The evil that Nerak released from the Fold took him, and it believed what it found inside Nerak’s head, because it didn’t have any reason not to. What Nerak believed about himself was the truth to him, as real to him as – as this river is to us.’

‘So he lied to this evil creature?’

‘It was the evil’s mistake to take Nerak’s beliefs as truth.’

‘Where is our mistake then?’ Kellin hadn’t yet made any connection.

‘We did the same thing Nerak did,’ Steven said. ‘We focused on the wrong things.’ He looked over at Gilmour. ‘We spent two Twinmoons worrying about Nerak, when Nerak wasn’t the one threatening Eldarn. We should have been worrying about the evil that had possessed him – it had possessed Prince Marek and the Whitward family all those Twinmoons ago. When I cast Nerak into the Fold, I permitted that evil to break its connection with a tired Larion Senator and to establish a link with-’ He paused.

‘With Mark Jenkins,’ Kellin whispered.

‘We focused on the wrong things,’ Steven muttered. ‘We believed Nerak was at the root of Eldarn’s peril. We forgot that in all the time Nerak worked at Sandcliff Palace, researching, learning, teaching, Eldarn was never at risk. It wasn’t until the evil slipped free from the spell table that Eldarn’s future was put in jeopardy.’

‘Then how can you just-?’

‘Just what, Kellin?’ Steven wheeled on her, sending concentric ripples out across the smooth surface of the water. ‘How can I eat, sleep, make jokes with you and Garec, stand here like a goddamned fool looking for an ancient relic we aren’t even certain will work even if we manage to get it out of the water? How can I do all those things?’

Kellin wanted to back down, to apologise, but the soldier in her took over. Now she did look over at Brand briefly, before saying, ‘Yes, Steven. How can you do all those things when the real root of your problems, Eldarn’s problems, is wandering around back there in the body of your roommate?’

Steven hesitated; Kellin hoped it was because some part of the foreign sorcerer was impressed with how she had stood her ground.

Finally, he said, ‘We hurried up here, because Mark is coming, probably with whatever forces he is able to organise at Wellham Ridge. That may not be too many, and I’m sure Gilmour and I can take care of them, but I would rather not engage them at all, because I don’t want to risk losing the spell table – which might just save us -and I don’t want to risk a confrontation with Mark, because I might inadvertently kill him.’

‘Mark’s dead,’ Kellin said, ‘isn’t he?’

Steven shook his head. ‘No.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘When Nerak took possession of people, both here and in my world, he killed them. He forcibly entered their bodies, took their minds, memories, thoughts and knowledge, and then allowed them to die. He did it to Gabriel O’Reilly; he did it to Myrna Kessler, and he did it to countless others. But when the evil that took Nerak came to Eldarn, it kept him alive. Granted, it abandoned his body, because moving about as a spirit let him take others, hundreds of others, that night and over the Twinmoons, but they worked as a team. Nerak was alive all that time.’

‘How do you know that?’ Gilmour wanted to believe there was still hope for Mark, but he too was sceptical.

‘Because he was there in the glen,’ Steven said. ‘He wasn’t propped up by anything; there was no evil puppet master pulling his strings. That was Nerak. Bellan was dead and long gone. Hell, we might have battled her sorry soul right there amongst those bone-collectors, but Nerak was alive and well when I tossed him into Neverland.’

‘So Mark is alive.’ Garec started up the shoreline. A steely grey day was reluctantly giving way to darkness.

‘I’d bet on it,’ Steven said. ‘That night at Sandcliff, the evil force that consumed Nerak had just burst free from the spell table. It took Nerak and learned that it had hit the jackpot. Ka-blam! First shot, and it wins big: Eldarn’s greatest magical mind. But what of all the others, all the Larion Senators living and working in the palace? Why not join with Nerak and grab a few others, fifty, two hundred, who cares?’ Gilmour was looking sick, so Steven backed off somewhat. ‘The being, the essence of things evil, whatever it is that took Mark didn’t have anyone else to take. We’re all still here, still alive. There were just a few farms between Meyers’ Vale and Wellham Ridge. Does he need a plough-hand? No. He needs Mark. Mark knows us; he knows me. He knows our plans; he knows where we’ve been and where we hope to go, Gita, Capehill, the lot. Granted, the creature can get all that and still kill him, but I’m betting he’s alive.’

‘And what better prize, if Mark truly is Eldarn’s king, Rona’s heir?’ Garec said. ‘First, evil takes Nerak and discovers the greatest sorcerer in the five lands. Then it takes Mark and discovers a long-lost monarch.’

‘Two for two,’ Steven said.

‘But is Mark truly Rona’s heir?’ Brand asked.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Garec said. ‘Mark believes it. It’s truth inside his head.’

‘Will evil make that mistake twice?’

‘Probably not,’ Steven shrugged, ‘but Mark is still a trophy catch. He knows everything about us.’

‘Rutting whores. I hadn’t thought of that.’ Brand stood, ignoring his steaks.

‘And you won’t fight him?’ Kellin pressed.

‘Not yet, no,’ Steven said, ‘not until I have a better idea how to separate him from the evil holding him captive.’

‘He’s taken Lessek’s key too,’ Garec reminded them.

‘True,’ Steven said, ‘but as long as we have the spell table, the key won’t do him any good.’

‘Why don’t we blast it to fish bait with one of your spells?’ Garec asked.

Steven cocked an eyebrow at Gilmour. ‘What do you say? We certainly don’t need it.’

Gilmour sat on his haunches beside the fire, carved a strip from one of the steaks and said, ‘That one’ll have to be mine, Brand. Sorry, I couldn’t wait. He finished his mouthful and added, ‘Actually, we may still need the table.’

‘Why?’ Garec said. ‘We needed it to fight Nerak. He’s dead or gone or something.’

‘We believed we needed it to battle Nerak, but we also needed it to seal the Fold.’ He popped another strip of meat into his mouth. ‘Rutting hot, Brand, hot!’ He fanned his mouth, then added, ‘Unless Steven thinks he can close the Fold without the Larion magic, of course.’

Kellin said, ‘Can you do that?’

Steven shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

Garec changed the subject. ‘It’s snowing up there.’ He pointed towards the Blackstone peaks in the distance. ‘We may get hit before morning; we should think about finding some decent shelter and gathering a more significant stack of firewood.’

‘I’ll get on it,’ Kellin said, glad to have something to do. Before leaving she asked, ‘Steven, isn’t that water cold?’

He chuckled. ‘I suppose it is, but I’m warming it up a bit. It’s a little experiment I wanted to try before diving in tomorrow morning.’

‘Warming it up?’

‘It’s not much, just the water right here.’

‘Isn’t it moving?’

‘That’s the tricky part,’ Steven said. ‘At least it’s not moving too quickly; I wouldn’t want to try this in a stretch of rapids.’

Gilmour smiled like a proud parent. He said, ‘You’re sure this is the place?’

Steven nodded, ‘Yup. Old Grandpop’s nose was straight across from that clump of trees over there. I remember them because they were all aflame when we came through last time.’

‘On fire?’ Brand asked.

‘Red,’ Steven said, ‘they’re maples. They stood out like a bloody sore against all that green.’

‘Very well, then,’ Gilmour said. ‘Tomorrow, we’ll go in.’

A northerly breeze brushed the evergreen forest with a flurry of snow. A break in the cloud cover allowed the occasional beam of pale moonlight to reach Meyers’ Vale; with a storm blowing off the mountains, even that little light would soon vanish. Eldarn’s twin moons looked distant, almost insignificant. Though their light was faint tonight, it brightened the riverbank just enough for Steven to watch clouds of snow whirling their way north towards Wellham Ridge. Behind him, the others slept, chatted softly or stared into the fire.

The darkness beneath the trees lining the riverbank was depthless. Steven was glad they were in camp this evening; he would not have enjoyed travelling through the woods along the river. The tree trunks were cloned columns marked with the blackened vestiges of autumn sap, and the branches started high enough for him to wander about beneath the overhead confusion of prickly boughs. Something was there, lurking behind the willowy clouds of swirling snow, under the evergreen canopy.

Steven watched and waited.

Reinforcement clouds scudded north from the Blackstones and the moonlight went out. Steven stood at his post, turning periodically to chuckle at a joke one of the others made as they sat beside the fire. No one asked why he was there; they were content to leave him alone with his thoughts, even Gilmour.

Something in Steven’s gut warned him. It felt like something slipping slightly off-centre again and again, until he was forced to stop and listen. They were coming. He had known that, but it wasn’t magic; rather, the sense that something had been left undone, the stove left on, or the ironing board left upright in the guest bedroom…

He caught the flavour of a familiar smell, something tangy and unpleasant on the breeze, like over-ripe garbage: the stench of old melon rinds and rancid chicken fat, the pungent aroma of decay.

Steven wrinkled his nose and peered beneath the trees. The figures came in as indistinct grey mist, as if a handful of moonbeams had broken free and gone exploring. The wraiths were taking shape now, and that too was as familiar as the odour of decaying meat and honeydew. He had been right.

‘Gabriel, Lahp,’ Steven said. ‘Ms…’ He thought of Myrna as he raised the tone of his voice slightly; she’d taught him to do that when he had forgotten a customer’s name. Better to let them fill in the blank, than to fumble around for five minutes and end up filing the transaction in the wrong account. She had always laughed at his attempts.

He tried again, this time more directly. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know your name, Ms-’

‘Can you send me back?’ The woman’s reply resonated between his ears as the memory of her living form took shape enough for Steven to recall the young mother, travelling alone with her baby.

Steven shrugged, then felt sorry for such an offhanded gesture. She regarded him with disdain: in her mind, this was entirely his fault. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound selfish, but I don’t… I guess I haven’t thought about whether I can send you back.’

‘Think about it now.’ She wasn’t pleased.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, ‘but I’m afraid that if I tried, I might only get you as far as the Fold, and I don’t want to leave you trapped in there.’

‘How did you get here?’

Without thinking, Steven said, ‘Mark and I both came through-’ He interrupted himself. ‘That might work. We have one of the far portals here. You could try slipping through. Granted, it might drop you anywhere on Earth, but you don’t mind… I mean, at least it would get you back.’

‘Then you don’t know.’

‘No.’ Steven looked down. Despite everything he had achieved, and everything he had sacrificed, he couldn’t look her in the face. She was right: her death, her baby’s death: they were his responsibility. He didn’t know what she believed, whether she thought she might ascend to heaven and join the child there, or whether she just wanted to get back so that she could haunt the graveyard where her family had interred the bodies. He had sworn to be compassionate, but at that moment he just felt selfish. ‘I truly think the portal will take you back,’ he said.

‘That isn’t good enough for me, Steven Taylor.’ She slipped soundlessly beneath the pines, disappearing in a whirling cloud of dusty snow.

Steven watched her go, frowning. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered.

The wraith that had been Lahp came forward. Even in his ghostly form, the big Seron warrior still ambled awkwardly, as if carrying around that much muscle was difficult even after death.

‘Lahp.’ Steven smiled.

‘Lahp tak Sten.’ The big Malakasian touched Steven’s shoulder with one gossamer hand and he felt the icy chill on his skin, colder than the wintry night.

‘You don’t have to thank me, Lahp,’ Steven said. ‘You saved my life.’

‘Lahp tak Sten,’ the Seron repeated, billowing his facial features into a crooked smile.

‘Where will you go?’

‘Forest,’ Lahp said, gesturing over his shoulder as if the journey would take only a moment or two.

‘Right,’ Steven nodded, ‘the Northern Forest. I wish you well, Lahp. I may see you there before my work in Eldarn is done.’

Lahp raised a translucent eyebrow. ‘Lahp hep Sten?’

‘No,’ Steven replied, ‘you’ve done enough, Lahp. Have a good journey.’

Like the woman from Charleston, the Seron warrior seemed to turn inside out before he flitted silently northwards through the trees.

Only Gabriel O’Reilly remained.

‘It’s good to see you again, Gabriel,’ Steven said. Behind him, the chatter around the campfire quieted to a whisper. His friends were listening in.

‘And you, too, Steven.’ Gabriel looked as he had when Steven first saw him, clad in his nineteenth-century bank manager’s uniform, complete with frilly shirt, braces and a belt buckle embossed with the letters B.I.S.

‘What happened?’

Like the South Carolina woman and the Seron warrior, Gabriel’s voice echoed in Steven’s mind. ‘I fought the almor. It had been hunting Versen and Brexan. When the battle ended, I-’

Steven cut him off, saying excitedly, ‘Versen’s alive?’

Gabriel nodded. ‘He was when I last saw him, but he and Brexan were about to face a fierce-looking Seron, a killer.’

‘Brexan? Who’s that?’

‘A woman, a soldier from Malakasia; she was travelling with Versen. They were both drowning in the Ravenian Sea when I found them; Versen’s life had just about ebbed away when I arrived.’

‘When did this happen?’ Steven was anxious to hear the rest of the strange tale.

‘It was shortly after I led Mark Jenkins to the trapper’s cabin at the southern end of this valley.’

Heartened by this news, Steven asked, ‘How did Nerak capture you again?’

The wraith grimaced. ‘William Higgins.’

Steven started. ‘The miner? But how is-? Oh, right… Nerak took him in 1870.’

‘Before opening the accounts at my bank – your bank as well, I suppose.’

‘You were pulled back into the Fold?’ Steven wasn’t sure how to ask what he wanted to know.

‘A small group of wraiths, led by William Higgins and working under Nerak’s orders, found me crossing Falkan and, yes, they dragged me back into their ranks. When Nerak finally reached me, I was powerless once again. But you set me free; you set us all free there in the glen beside the river.’

‘When I threw Nerak into the Fold.’

‘When you refused to cast us back into the Fold, Steven, that’s when it happened. You freed me – and Lahp and the woman.’

Steven said, ‘We have a far portal here, Gabriel. You should try to go home. She should-’ He broke off and looked towards the trees, but the woman was gone. ‘She should try as well. I can’t guarantee anything, but I’d bet you can make it back.’

‘I’m staying with you.’ Gabriel took him by the forearm and again Steven felt the odd convection of cold and colder pressing through the Gore-tex of Howard’s old coat.

‘You don’t have to,’ he said, touched by Gabriel’s offer. ‘You’ve been trapped, enslaved for so long. Why don’t you-?’

‘That is exactly the reason why I don’t wish to return home, not yet.’ O’Reilly loomed over him, swelling for a moment with anger or pride, Steven couldn’t tell which, before shrinking back to his former size. ‘I’ll help you, Steven, and then we’ll go home together.’

Steven gave up. ‘The evil that was controlling Nerak now has Mark.’

‘I know.’

‘Can you free him?’

‘No.’

Steven sighed. ‘I had to ask.’

‘Have you seen him?’

‘No,’ Steven replied. ‘My guess is that he’s in Wellham Ridge, organising a force to come find us, or maybe to find the spell table.’

‘I will find him, Steven.’

‘Be careful, Gabriel.’

‘I will try to delay him, if possible, and when this is done, we will go home together.’

‘Yes,’ Steven nodded, ‘you, me, Hannah and Mark.’

‘I look forward to it.’ Gabriel glanced beyond Steven’s shoulder to where Garec, Kellin and Gilmour were watching the interchange. Brand slept. Raising one ghostly-white hand, the former bank manager waved to them.

‘Farewell, Gabriel,’ Garec said quietly. ‘We will see you again, soon.’

The wraith looked back at Steven for a moment, then faded into the flurries of snow tumbling along the riverbank.

Mark Jenkins approached the barracks from a side street. Sheltered from view by a lumber cart that had stopped along the thoroughfare, he turned the corner, surprising the sentry posted outside.

‘Move along, Southie,’ the man warned. ‘There’s no need for you to be lingerin’ here.’

‘What did you call me?’ Mark growled. The soldier was a private, a conscripted grunt; Mark needed someone of higher rank, a colonel or a general at least.

‘I said move along.’ The sentry, a broad-shouldered man with two days’ stubble and a weary, hungover look about him, rested a hand on his dagger, clearly a warning.

‘Do you know it was 1619 when the first slave ship arrived in Virginia? Did you know that? Of course you didn’t. 1619. Astonishing really, that only twelve years separated the establishment of the first real settlement in the American colonies and the oppression of African slaves in the west. Twelve years, and I have to stand here now and listen to that kind of bullshit from you, you inbred lump of stinking pigshit.’ Mark spoke a mixture of English and Eldarni Common, but the bleary-eyed private deciphered enough of the rant to understand the arrogant South Coaster was being less than respectful.

‘Ruttin’ horsecock,’ the guard growled, but as he shoved the man away, Mark took him through a moist, filthy sore he opened on the soldier’s wrist.

Mark felt himself being sucked through a dank, cramped canal as he invaded the sentry’s body. He felt suddenly nauseous as two hundred and seventy-five Twinmoons of emotions, memories, hopes and failures washed over him all at once and he thought he might vomit right there on the street. He wanted to collapse into the mud and rest for a few hours. He felt the soldier dying, falling away, and tried to accompany him, to slip past the presence, that creature of smoke and steam that had taken him in the forest four days earlier only to crush his will and press him into submission.

Not you! the voice thundered inside his head, their head. Let him go; we have what we need from this one.

Mark watched his own body collapse to the plank walkway outside the Malakasian Army barracks. He watched himself strip off the jacket Steven had stolen from Howard’s closet, watched himself check the pocket for Lessek’s key and finally watched himself remove his gloves and slip them onto his new hands, his pale, white Malakasian hands, the left one dripping a malign mixture of pus and blood. Mark wiped it on his favourite red sweater.

Let’s go, he heard himself say. We need to find the commanding officer. Where is he? The dead soldier’s memories merged with his own; vertigo gripped his guts with a talon. He needed to throw up.

Upstairs. She’s upstairs. The guard’s recollections provided the answer.

A she? A colonel? A general?

I don’t know if there are any generals left over here except for General Oaklen. Major Tavon is in charge of the battalion here in the South. She’s the senior officer here.

Mark kicked open the barracks door. A soldier, a lieutenant by his uniform, was crossing the foyer. He looked irritated when he saw the private. ‘And where do you think you’re going, Stark?’ he shouted. ‘You’re on duty until the end of the dinner aven. Do I need to remind you-?’

‘Eat shit,’ Mark said, and hit him in the throat; his strength was unfathomable. The officer’s neck snapped, cracking audibly a moment before he sprawled in a clumsy pile of limbs.

Why? Mark tried to speak, to think his outrage, but the creature of smoke and steam pressed him back against the walls of darkness. Mark’s throat closed, his eyes bulged and he felt something inside himself rupture. The pain was instantaneous and unbearable.

I’ll take what I need from you when I need it. The voice was terrifying, that of a monstrous god capable of torturing him for all eternity. Until then, keep still.

Mark screamed; nothing came out. He tried to weep, to call for his mother, his father, anyone at all, but nothing changed. No thoughts breached the shallow well of his own mind. He forgot things the moment he dredged them up from his memory. There was no hope, no comfort; there was not even the relative relief that might come from an anguished cry or a desperate scream. There was only the realisation that he was trapped, frozen inside a stone slab.

Mark took the stairs three at a time and kicked open the door to Major Tavon’s private office. Tearing free from its hinges, it crashed across the room, upsetting a table strewn with maps of southern Falkan and the Blackstone Mountains.

Major Tavon, a thin, grey-haired woman of about four hundred and fifty Twinmoons, sat behind her desk, her feet propped up, a goblet of wine in one hand and a finger corkscrewing so far up her nose that Mark thought she might be trying to scratch an itch in her sinuses.

‘Good day, Major,’ Mark said.

Major Tavon spilled her wine as she hurriedly wiped her finger on her trousers. She looked aghast for a moment, and then flew into a rage. ‘Stark! You great, stupid horsecock! What in the name of all things unholy do you think you’re doing? I swear to all the gods of the Northern Forest, I will have you wiping the backside of every flatulent cavalry horse from here to Pellia for this interruption!’

‘Do shut up, you irritating old bitch,’ Mark said as he leaned on the woman’s desk. ‘I need a battalion, just for a few days.’

‘A what? A what? You’re done, Stark! Life as you know it is over!’ She was still screaming when Private Stark fell dead on the floor of her office.

Lieutenant Blackford, Major Tavon’s personal assistant, burst into the room, flanked by two soldiers brandishing short swords. He skidded to a stop when he saw the major calmly tugging a pair of worn leather gloves onto her hands. ‘Major? Are you all right?’ he asked breathlessly.

‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she said coolly. ‘Nothing to worry about at all, Lieutenant.’ She knelt beside Private Stark’s body, took something from the pocket of a brightly coloured tunic he had been carrying and secreted it inside her own tunic. ‘Would you have the men dispose of this, please?’ She kicked at the body.

The young officer was dumbstruck. ‘Uh, yes ma’am,’ he murmured, wondering what was going on.

‘Oh, and Kranst is dead, too. You’ll find him downstairs.’

‘Ma’am?’

‘And I almost forgot.’ Major Tavon smiled. ‘Out front there is a young man, a South Coaster, in a red tunic. Please see to it that the bodies are incinerated out back, down near the stream. Get some of the others to help you, and be quick about it. We need to get word to Hershaw and Denne; I require an infantry battalion. I want the captains in Wellham Ridge and prepared to march south as soon as possible.’

‘Ma’am?’

‘Within two days, three at the most, understood?’ Major Tavon righted her goblet, refilled it and gulped down the wine with a flourish. ‘Lieutenant?’

‘Yes, ma’am?’ Blackford was still staring at Stark’s body.

‘Do you understand?’

An innate sense of self-preservation slapped Blackford hard across the face. He blinked several times and nodded yes.

‘Good. I am going to write two despatches. I need riders ready to take them north; I want them gone within the aven. One is to the garrison commander at Traver’s Notch, the other to the ranking officer at Capehill; there is to be a Resistance attack on Capehill within the Moon, and I want our forces prepared for the insurrectionists, should they still be in the city when the attack comes.’

‘But Major, how could-?’ Glancing at Stark’s body, Blackford decided not to ask anything else. ‘I will make the preparations, ma’am.’

‘Excellent. I will be at the tavern on the corner. Tell me when it is done.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ Blackford snapped to attention as Major Tavon left the room. When she was gone, he asked aloud, ‘Still in the city when the attack comes? I wonder what that means-’ He looked again at the dead body and hurried to do his commanding officer’s bidding.