The Larion Senators

BOOK IV
The Fold
MALAKASIAN COLOURS

‘Pel! Kellin!’ Captain Ford shouted, ‘prepare to get underway – I want to catch the inbound tide. Garec, you help them – no, wait, you go and find us Malakasian colours, the largest you can track down. Buy them, steal them, I don’t care; I want to look like Malakasia’s greatest patriot.’ He leapt to the deck and started securing hatches.

‘Will do,’ Garec said, then turned to Kellin. ‘This is Alen; we’ll explain later. How’s Steven? And Marrin?’

‘About the same,’ Kellin said, ‘both feverish, pale, sweating up a rutting ocean, but at least they’re sleeping.’

‘Brexan’s bringing someone who might be able to help.’ He tossed his bow to Kellin, then jogged off to find a flag.

‘Let me have a look at them,’ Alen said, starting towards the aft cabins. ‘Are they in here?’

‘No,’ the captain interrupted, ‘not yet. If they’re sleeping, they’ll be fine for now. I need to see you in my cabin.’ He looked at Gilmour. ‘You too.’

‘Very well,’ Alen said, ‘lead the way.’

‘Pel.’ He tossed the boy a line. ‘When Brexan returns, have her join us. She’s bringing someone who might be injured, so make up a berth.’

‘Aye aye, Captain.’ It was clear that Pel was nervous. Circumstances had granted him an overnight promotion and discovering that his maiden voyage as the brig-sloop’s second-in-command would be along the Welstar River was no comfort. He looked as though he might simply lie down and wait to die.

‘Pel, you’ll be fine,’ the captain added. ‘Take a breath; it isn’t a very difficult boat to sail.’ He smiled. ‘Let me know as soon as we’re ready to make way.’

Inside his cabin, the Larion sorcerers accepted wine and he took a bottle of beer himself. ‘I’ll get right to it,’ he said, sitting down across from them. ‘We are about to sail the most dangerous stretch of water in Eldarn. The fact that we have made it this far and are still alive is staggering enough, but at this point, I need honesty from both of you.’

‘What can we tell you?’ Gilmour said.

‘Will we live through this? Will my ship and my crew survive? Or is this a suicide mission?’

Alen said, ‘Captain Ford, that’s a difficult thing to answer. If you’re wondering whether you’ll live through the day-’

‘I’m not worried about myself.’ He didn’t care that he had interrupted one of Eldarn’s most powerful men; recent events had made him willing to forego the social niceties. ‘I’m worried about what’s left of my crew, Marrin and Pel, and Kellin and Brexan, and this new woman too, young Hannah. If you’re not certain we’ll see the end of this endeavour in one healthy piece, I want to give them the opportunity to stay behind.’

‘That’s fine,’ Gilmour said, ‘but won’t we need them to crew the Morning Star?’

‘I’ll manage without them if it’s necessary to save their lives. You two can help.’

‘Well then, if we’re being frank, I don’t much care for our chances without Steven,’ Gilmour admitted.

‘The staff wielder?’ Alen asked.

Gilmour nodded. ‘That’s him – though he doesn’t need the staff any longer. He gave it to Nerak, and its power drained – at least I believe – into Steven himself.’

‘Gave it to Nerak? I don’t understand.’ Alen looked as bemused as he sounded.

‘We’ve such a lot to discuss,’ Gilmour sighed. ‘This was an act of compassion. Steven handed the staff over so that Nerak might gain critical knowledge and, in turn, sever the bonds holding him fast to the evil that had taken him all those Twinmoons ago. It was a chance for Nerak finally to die in peace. Well, you know him; he didn’t take advantage of it. Instead, he tried to use the staff to kill Steven… so Steven threw him into the Fold.’

‘Steven threw him into the Fold?’ Alen repeated, incredulously. ‘So Nerak’s dead?’

‘Sorry, I should have mentioned that.’

‘Then who’s-’ Alen hesitated. ‘The thing – the minion itself?’

‘Broke from Nerak at the last moment.’ Gilmour swallowed a mouthful of wine. ‘It sensed that Steven was about to send it into the Fold, and it broke away.’

‘And later it took Mark Jenkins?’

‘Confirming for all of us that for the past nine hundred and eighty-three Twinmoons we have been focusing on the wrong thing.’

Alen was still bewildered. ‘So it was never him, the motherless horsecock.’

Gilmour patted his old friend’s shoulder. ‘Oh it was, and it wasn’t – but don’t worry about it now. We have more important things to do.’

‘Which brings us back to my question.’ The captain had been listening carefully, but felt none the wiser.

Alen said, ‘Captain Ford, I fully intend to survive this ordeal, as does my friend here. However, if anyone is going to die on this journey, it will be us.’

‘And Steven, I’m afraid,’ Gilmour added. ‘But you’re right: we should give the others the option of staying behind with the sick.’

‘They won’t,’ Alen said.

‘That’s probably true.’ Ford poured more wine. ‘But for my own sanity, I need to make the offer. I’ve lost too many good people on this journey. I have too many difficult visits to make when I return to Southport.’

‘I’m sorry for that, Captain,’ Gilmour said. ‘It might be some small comfort to their families to know that they died doing the most important thing any of us will ever do.’

‘Would it comfort you?’

‘No,’ Alen said.

He leaned back in his chair. Sighing, he said, ‘This is all a mistake, this whole thing.’

Gilmour got up and started pacing, trying to explain. ‘Captain, a Falkan merchant named Carpello Jax has been sending schooners to Welstar Palace, filled to bursting with some kind of bark or bits of tree.’

‘Old Carpello,’ Captain Ford said, ‘Yes, I know him – knew him, I should say. What’s your point?’

‘The bits come from a forest of enchanted trees near Estrad Village in Rona, planted when Prince Marek took control of Eldarn nearly a thousand Twinmoons ago. The forest is closed to the locals, the trees have grown over time, and Carpello has, over the past hundred Twinmoons or so, begun harvesting the bark, leaves and roots for Prince Malagon, Princess Bellan, our former colleague Nerak, and now Mark Jenkins.’

‘He’s harvesting the Forest of Ghosts as well,’ Alen said.

‘Given what we learned from Brexan,’ Gilmour continued pacing, ‘I can’t say that I’m surprised at that either.’

‘How does this impact the orders I have to give in the next aven?’ The captain was trying to stay focused on the safety of his ship and his crew.

Alen took up the story. ‘We believe Nerak was milling the bark into a powder, then using it in a powerful spell that traps soldiers – men and Seron warriors – in an endless, mindless nightmare, scenes from their lives, played over and over again. It’s a spell Lessek, the Larion founder, called-’

‘The ash dream,’ Gilmour interrupted, ‘holy whores, it’s the ash dream!’

‘Nicely done, my friend – you have been paying attention.’

Gilmour was as pale as a sheet. He managed a smile. ‘At least I’ve been awake for the past thousand Twinmoons.’

‘And you’re no further ahead than I am, so maybe there is something to being well-rested.’ Alen grinned back at him.

Captain Ford asked, ‘Can we get back to the sorcery bit? The stuff about the trees, please?’

‘Right, sorry,’ Alen continued, ‘so all of us, Hannah included, have experimented with bark from the Forest of Ghosts. Some of us were attacked by the trees, but all of us, even my friend Hoyt – who came through the forest unscathed – were subject to the power of the bark once it was harvested. So the implication is that while some can pass through the Forest of Ghosts freely, no one can escape the power of the bark in its milled form. By experimenting, we were able to determine that the bark is unpredictable. Hoyt was entranced for several avens, happily reliving an enjoyable dinner conversation from his youth, and while ensnared, he took orders and performed basic tasks – and even though he should have been falling-down exhausted, he continued working, without a break, until Hannah and I removed the bark. But that only worked with Hoyt; the rest of us, when we were caught in the forest, were inconsolable, unable to take direction, and certainly unwilling to perform even rudimentary jobs.’

‘Hoyt was under the influence of the harvested version?’ Gilmour asked.

‘Yes,’ Alen clarified.

‘So harvested and milled, this tree bark makes it so that you can listen to orders but not care about what you’re asked to do?’

‘Yes,’ Alen said, ‘but again, that’s just the harvested bark. We hadn’t milled it, and Hoyt hadn’t ingested it in any way – he’d not smoked it, snorted it or eaten it; it was just tied round his neck in a leather pouch.’

Gilmour said, ‘And presumably the milled form would be even more destructive.’

‘But why?’ Ford asked. ‘Who needs something like this? Prince Malagon, or whoever it is now, already has everything Eldarn has to offer. What more could he possibly want?’

Gilmour swept his cloak back and sat down opposite the Pragan sailor. ‘He is probably preparing himself and his army for the advent of an Era so evil, so rife with terror and hatred, that only such a drugged creature could hope to bear the reality of life in Eldarn.’

‘Actually, I think we saw them,’ Alen said.

‘The Seron? They’re in the Eastlands as well. I think Nerak started breeding them again when he knew his crop was ready for harvest.’

‘No, worse than Seron. There’s an encampment at Welstar Palace packed with hundreds of thousands of soldiers, most of whom were obviously under the power of this spell, potion, whatever it is.’

Ford swallowed dryly and checked his tankard. ‘Whoring rutters, and that’s where we’re heading. I hope we catch Mark before he arrives. If we get moving, there’s no reason to think we won’t.’

‘Were they working?’ Gilmour asked, ‘following orders? Keeping busy?’

‘Some, yes,’ Alen replied, ‘but most were simply staring across the river. It was a wretched, dismal place, the worst conditions I’ve ever seen… ever imagined. Boils, pox, infections, broken limbs, severed body parts, bugs and lice – and all of them completely ignored by the officers. The stench of the place was unbearable: rotting flesh, dead but not quite convinced of it yet.’

‘So that explains the Estrad variable,’ Gilmour guessed aloud. ‘If the bark from the Forest of Ghosts sends them reeling back through their lives, only to get ensnared in something hideous – or lovely, maybe – I suppose the bark from Estrad is the leveller.’

‘I don’t understand.’ The captain was feeling nauseous.

‘The leveller, a fixative,’ Gilmour explained. ‘The Forest of Ghosts in Praga is legendary, yet no one has ever heard of the Forbidden Forest near Riverend Palace. And why not?’

‘Because there are no stories,’ Ford answered the rhetorical question, then blushed.

‘Exactly!’ Gilmour slapped the table, making Alen spill his wine. ‘Granted, not too many people have ever gone that far out on the point. But some of us have – Garec, Versen, Sallax, even I – and we know that there’s nothing enchanted about those trees. We have certainly never found ourselves trapped in our past.’

‘So he uses the two ingredients together, probably burns them into some kind of ash. They might inhale it, or have it rubbed on their skin, who knows?’

‘The ash dream,’ Gilmour said. ‘Well, that clinches it: I have to read that whoring book.’ At Alen’s quizzical look, he explained, ‘Lessek’s spell book – I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve had it for nearly two Twinmoons and haven’t been able to get past the second folio. I acquired it from Nerak’s cabin on the Prince Marek, the night he followed Steven through the far portal.’

‘I remember that night,’ Alen said, ‘because it was also the night his hunters stopped searching for me, the night much of the mystical energy in Eldarn quietly ground to a stop.’

‘I’ve been putting it off for Twinmoons,’ Gilmour admitted. ‘Now we’ve only got a day or two, and I don’t even know if it will do us any good.’

‘You should try anyway,’ Alen said. ‘Once we’re underway, we can look it over together.’

Someone knocked, and at the captain’s word, Brexan peered around the door, not sure if she should interrupt their discussion.

‘Yes, come in, please.’ Captain Ford stood up, offering his chair. ‘Have a seat.’

‘I’m fine standing, thanks,’ Brexan said. ‘How can I help?’

‘You mentioned once that you were stationed at Welstar Palace.’ He unfolded a river chart and spread it across the table. ‘Can you recall how the encampment was organised?’

Brexan leaned over the table. ‘I was stationed somewhere along the river in that valley; I don’t think I ever came within half an aven’s walk of the palace itself – no one did, except for the Home Guard divisions and the Seron warriors. However, I can tell you that if we’re heading up that way, the navy patrols the river and there’s a whole legion of barges running back and forth delivering goods. The river’s a rutting highway.’

‘That could be good for us,’ Ford said, his finger following the river on the chart. ‘We could try to blend in.’

‘It makes it awfully difficult to change direction,’ Brexan pointed out. ‘If you need to turn tail and run, for example, the shipping is so thick that you’d end up ramming someone before you managed to come about.’

‘And I’m certain the encampment will have changed in the Twinmoons since you’ve been there, my dear,’ Alen added.

‘How do you mean?’ Gilmour said.

‘The whole west bank – from the village, up to and beyond the keep – is covered with divisions of soldiers already under the influence of the ash dream. You couldn’t walk a dog through there without it ending up on someone’s menu. There are probably near to a hundred thousand of those creatures there now, Seron beasts transformed into these vacuous, staring monsters, as if Seron weren’t bad enough on their own. The east bank was given over to soldiers too, normal ones – most of the northern corps, I’d guess. I didn’t see much of them; we fled during the night. But on our trip down from Treven, we noticed that most of the hillsides sloping down to the river were dotted with tents, fires, stables, corrals, muster tents – everything a massive army would need.’

The captain traced the east bank on his chart. Tapping his finger on the site of the encampment, he said, And if Mark Jenkins is still transforming soldiers and Seron with his ash stuff, he might already have given the order to administer it to the divisions on the other side of the river.’

‘He might have,’ Alen said. ‘That’s a good point.’

‘Ash stuff?’ Brexan asked.

Gilmour explained quickly, Alen and Captain Ford chiming in.

Brexan shuddered. ‘That’s horrific! But how would he make them take the ash? I mean, he can’t do it individually, can he? If he had to go person to person it would take all Twinmoon.’

Alen considered this, then said, ‘I was masquerading as an officer for a few days while Hannah and the others were locked up and I roamed as much of the place as I could, but the only thing I could see in the monsters’ encampments were fires, huge braziers, that kept burning all day and all night, looking as if Nerak had called down a constellation from the skies and left it burning on the ground around the palace.’

‘That could be it,’ Gilmour said, ‘but they might have been just fires.’

‘I suppose,’ Alen conceded, ‘but why? If they’re trapped in their own fantasies, if they can’t escape their own minds, then they wouldn’t even notice the cold, would they? They did have the odd campfire here and there, but these braziers were huge – were they for light? I can’t quite see what a creature trapped in an endless nightmare would need fire for – unlikely to be light, warmth or comfort.’

Captain Ford gazed out of the cabin window. The sun glinted off the water, blinding him. ‘So you think they’re inhaling it as ashes or smoke?’ he asked, turning back to the Larion sorcerers.

‘It’s possible,’ Alen said. ‘I know I didn’t see anyone administering anything to them – honestly, it would have been suicide for anyone to set foot in that encampment, never mind try to get Seron warriors to ingest anything they didn’t want to, and that includes anything designed to leave them babbling, ignoring all manner of injuries and diseases and following mindless orders.’

‘That’s it then,’ Gilmour said. ‘The evil force that took Nerak and now Mark is using the ash dream to create a massive army of unnatural killers – Seron and men alike – to become his slaves when the essence of all evil is ushered through the Fold and allowed to suck the life from the very land beneath our feet.’

Brexan blanched. ‘Rutting dogs, but I hope you’re wrong.’

‘I hope so too,’ Captain Ford agreed.

‘Why would Lessek have written such a spell?’ Alen asked. ‘What could he have hoped to gain with such a creation?’

‘We need to read to know why,’ Gilmour said, then asked Brexan, ‘Is Hannah in with Steven?’

As Brexan nodded, Alen asked, ‘Where’s Hoyt?’

‘Hannah’s with Steven and Hoyt’s resting up front in Sera’s berth,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t look like much of a healer – in fact, he needs a healer more than any of us.’

‘He’s the best in the Westlands,’ Alen assured her, ‘and I think Hannah has an idea how to fix him up right away.’

Garec appeared in the companionway, a massive Malakasian flag draped over his shoulder. ‘Will this do?’

Captain Ford laughed. ‘It’s the best news I’ve had all this Moon, Garec. Would you ask Pel to run it up the mainmast and leave the small flag on the halyard, aft? Then Gilmour, Alen and I need to speak with all of you on deck, Hannah included.’ Ford rolled the chart, slipped it inside a wall rack and ushered them into the corridor.

Hannah pulled up a bench and rested her head softly on Steven’s chest. His clothes stank of sickness, fever and sweat, and his skin was the colour of turned cream. He didn’t respond to her touch, but at least he was breathing evenly. She took some comfort in that. Steven’s chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm; he was alive, and that was enough for her – for now, anyway.

‘I found you first,’ she whispered, surprised she wasn’t crying. ‘It’s been a while, huh?’ She needed to fill the silence. ‘I’ve heard some remarkable things about you, things neither of us could ever have imagined, back home. Do you remember home? Do you want to go back, maybe just me and you?’ She closed her eyes, content to feel the rhythmic motion of his chest. ‘We have some catching up to do, don’t we? I can’t wait. I’ve missed you, Steven – even though we barely know each other, I do know that if it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have made it this far.’

The Morning Star rolled gently: the tide was coming in. Hannah heard Captain Ford and the Larion Senators shuffle along the companionway and then up to the main deck. She touched Steven’s cheek, and ran her fingers through his matted hair. ‘You look good with a beard. Do all sorcerers have them? Is it some kind of regulation? You’ll have to shave it off when we get home so I can decide which version of you I’ll love more.’ His forehead was damp; she wiped it with the cloth Kellin had left ready. ‘Hey, do you remember that Mexican place we went for lunch? When you came back to the shop to pick up that china cabinet for your sister. I had fajitas. You ate whatever you could stomach after that eleven-course breakfast you thought I didn’t know about. I want to go back there, Steven, just us, and start again. What d’you say? Can we get back there if we both try, or are we too far down this road?’

She wiped his face again and said, ‘I have some things I have to do, then I’ll be back. We need you and Hoyt, both of you, so I’m going to see if I can help.’ She kissed him lightly on the lips. ‘I’ll be back. Promise me you’ll still be here.’

Steven didn’t answer.

Hannah joined the others on deck. To Alen and Gilmour, she said, ‘How do we know when my mother’s opening her portal?’