The Larion Senators

THE RIVER SNARE

It was difficult for Steven to overcome his natural buoyancy to maintain his position in the current. He’d been trapped down here once before, and he didn’t relish the idea of another wrestling match with Nerak’s watchdog spell. To make their excavation even more difficult, Steven found that he couldn’t stop himself from continually checking over his shoulder in case one of the bone-collecting creatures might be coming upriver to tear him and Gilmour to bloody tatters. He appreciated what Gilmour had done for his underwater vision. Being able to see clearly, despite the turbid clouds of silt they were kicking up, helped him feel slightly more confident: at least if one of the cthulhoid monsters did materialise, he or Gilmour would spot it coming.

Steven circled the rock formation until he found the jagged cavelike opening he and Garec had nearly been dragged into the previous autumn. He waved at Gilmour to get his attention, then indicated this was the place.

He felt an ominous sense of foreboding as he hovered before the inky-black crevice. With a thought he increased the water temperature around them, but even that did little to mitigate the cold emptiness of the cave. There were no fish swimming past, not even the ungainly, crippled creatures that had been lurking about last time. A glance across the riverbed confirmed that there were no plants either; nothing grew within eyeshot of the crooked pile of rocks and fallen trees. The moraine was powerful, so compelling that Steven had once knelt before it, awed by its perfectly random majesty. He realised now that it was something more than just a glorious piece of sculpture. There was evil here, and the closer the two magicians swam to the obsidian breach in the rocky wall, the more Steven understood that they needed to be extremely careful or they would die.

Then Gilmour swam about twenty yards out from the cave and plunged one of his hands into the riverbed, startling Steven so badly that he nearly lost control of the spells protecting them. In a moment the old sorcerer was trapped.

Steven nearly inhaled a lungful of water as he shouted, ‘Gilmour!’ What came out was a garbled mouthful of bubbles and vowels.

Gilmour was gesturing. Steven watched him tug fruitlessly against the riverbed a time or two, then he grinned, a sinister smile, as if everything was working out according to some maniacal plan.

Steven shrugged as if to say, I have no idea what you’re doing.

Gilmour pointed to himself, made a twirling motion in front of his face and then pointed at Steven, who looked blank. He repeated the gesture: pointed to himself, twirled two fingers near his mouth and then pointed to Steven.

You’re telling me. You’re telling me what? You’re telling… you’re teaching me! You’re teaching me? What are you teaching me? How can this be teaching me anything other than how to commit suicide? Christ, what timing…

Reading his mind, Gilmour gestured again: motioning downwards with his free palm – calm down – and pointing to his head – and think.

Okay. Okay. All right. I must know what to do. He wouldn’t have done this if I didn’t know how to get him out of here. I must know… I must have done this already. Okay, I get it; I’ve done this before. When? Where?

And then Steven remembered: Sandcliff Palace, with the almor. The magic hadn’t come to him until he needed it. He had been nervous and frightened – I’m nervous now! – and the magic he needed to find and kill the demon hadn’t emerged until he had placed himself in a position of need. He had been so worried, so confused as to which magic to use, his own fledgling power or that of the hickory staff, that he had not been focused on what was most important: finding and killing the creature. He’s right, Steven thought. The lunatic sonofabitch is right again. The magic had come to him when he cleared his mind and stepped into the snow; it would work again.

You’re focusing on the wrong things, he told himself. You’re worried about the bone-collectors, you’re frightened of the cave; it’s the almor all over again. Get into the snow, Steven. The magic will come when you step off the landing and into the snow.

Steven managed a shaky grin and plunged his own hand into the silty mud. Before he could think about retrieving it, he was trapped as well.

Mimicking Steven’s earlier gesture, Gilmour smiled and gave a thumbs-up.

Steven shot him an incredulous smirk. Oh, yeah, sure. This makes perfect sense, you crazy old bastard. I’ll call you from Hell and let you know how things worked out.

But despite his troubling lack of confidence, Steven’s own magic swelled in a gust of protective power. There was no need for them to be concerned with air or warmth; Steven’s initial spells went on without interruption. Now there was only the riverbed and the moraine, the burial ground for the Larion Senate’s most powerful tool. Steven watched as the thin strip of mud separating the rocky cave and the underwater altar came into crisp focus.

He felt Nerak’s old spell.

It was there in the mud, running back and forth between his wrist and the cave. A connection had been established, a linking of two powers, the magic to hold them fast and…

They started to move.

… the magic to drag them beneath the rocks.

Holy Christ, Steven thought, gotta work quick, gotta figure this out -

Just as it had when he had been trapped here with Garec, the underwater moraine began reeling the two sorcerers in, dragging them immutably towards the narrow breach in its foundation. They would soon become a permanent addition; Steven wondered in horror how many others they might find buried inside.

He fought to keep his head.

This is no different than finding and killing that almor. The magic is here; it knows we’re in deep shit. I just have to get the right variables together to dismantle Nerak’s old spells. Right? That sounded easier this morning, while I was still wrapped in my blankets by the fire.

There are two. What connects them? He thought it strange that both times the moraine hadn’t begun to haul him inside immediately; it had been several seconds, maybe even a minute, after he had been trapped by the mud. They’re working in tandem? he asked himself. It doesn’t matter where I put my hand or my foot, the riverbed has to find me first, before the rocks drag me in to die? The communication between them takes some time – why?

They continued their languid journey across the river bottom.

That’s it! Steven looked over at Gilmour, who was engrossed in his own deductions. It’s a web, a net, there is no spot on which to land; one could step anywhere near the thing, and it would eventually suck you in. That’s it. That right hand doesn’t know what the left hand…

A brilliant light flashed, blinding Steven and derailing his analysis. Gilmour had summoned a ball of fire so hot that it burned despite being twenty feet below the surface of the water. It was spherical and pulsing with fury, almost breathing; Steven recoiled from it as far as his imprisoned wrist would allow. With a gesture, Gilmour sent the fireball slamming into the cave. For a moment, the inside of the moraine was illuminated, but the fire was so incandescent that all Steven could make out was that the great stone edifice was hollow where it met the riverbed. An instant later the ball exploded. The concussion reverberated in a nauseating shockwave that pushed Steven downstream, nearly dislocating his shoulder as his full weight bore down against the bones and muscles of his wrist.

Goddamnit, Gilmour! he shouted, you’re going to break my arm!

He grimaced, a nonverbal apology: it was worth a try.

Steven shut his eyes until the clouds of silt cleared, then went back to feeling the connection between the moraine and the riverbed. He sent tendrils of his own magic into the mud, not waves of rage and fury, as he had with the hickory staff, but silent scouts searching for the place where the spells crossed. He was concentrating so hard on his work that he failed to see that he and Gilmour were moving more quickly towards the rock formation. The attack had triggered a response, a retaliatory measure that promised to bury both of them in a few seconds.

Look harder, Steven urged himself, there’s no time. He sent more seekers along the path of the mystical bands holding him down. It has to be there, or maybe just outside the cave?

There was nothing but the same taut, fibrous web; the spider was hiding. Hiding, but where? There’s no place to hide down here. Where would the origin of this thing be?

He pressed his thoughts through the mud, beyond the cave entrance, into the void between the rocky proscenia. It has to be here. There has to be a change; the wiry bands, the manacles, the web: something has to shift. It wouldn’t just hold us for ever, it would have to -

There it was. Buried inside the cave, a few inches, perhaps a foot deep in the mud, the spell changed. Reflexively, Steven jerked his own magic back, for the slightest touch of that place was like pressing a sore, an open wound on Eldarn itself. It was circular and deep, neither liquid nor solid, but some home-grown combination of both: a fatty membrane, coated in Larion mucus, thin enough to slip through into unimaginable horrors below. That’s where the spell table would be. It wasn’t just buried under some rocks; Lessek’s greatest invention had been secreted inside a makeshift, homicidal gullet.

To retrieve the spell table, he and Gilmour would have to be swallowed.

Steven’s mind reeled from the contact and he began to panic. His thoughts started tumbling and he lost precious moments thinking what the vortex of black mysticism might do to him if he failed to free himself in the next few seconds. It was valuable time wasted; he braced his bare feet against the outer edges of the cave.

Do it the old-fashioned way: tug like hell and scream.

A hand took his waist. It was Gilmour, holding on. The old man sent another fireball careening into the cave entrance, a desperate attempt to fracture Nerak’s posthumous magic. Gilmour knew it wouldn’t work, but he had been counting on Steven’s power to save them, and it hadn’t.

The force of the blast knocked Steven’s feet free and he slid wrist-first inside the rock formation. Darkness swept over him. He closed his eyes, ignoring it. The darkness didn’t matter; what mattered was breaking the connection between the power sources. Break it! he ordered himself. You can do it; just cut the thread.

He imagined chainsaws, circular saws, butchers’ knives and great laser-sharpened meat cleavers, but nothing worked. It won’t break. I can’t do it, the web won’t break; the spider’s too strong. The web is too… The web! It’s a web, that’s why it took time to find us. You knew that three minutes ago, dumb fuck! Tangle it, don’t break it! With what could only be seconds to spare, Steven cast his magic into the mud inside and around the moraine. He imagined hundreds of hands and feet pressing themselves into the riverbed, slapping it, digging holes in it, walking back and forth, even dancing across it. Through the skin on his wrist, he felt the impact of a veritable brigade of heavy-booted soldiers marching up the river, stomping their feet, digging their hands wrist-deep into the silt, as if some priceless treasure had been buried there and was free for the taking a fistful at a time.

Their progress slowed, then stopped. It’s working.

Steven, calmer now, looked down at his own hand and thought of an illusion he and Mark had seen at a carnival. A third-rate magician in a hand-me-down tuxedo and his flat-chested hippy assistant had performed a traditional set, nothing spectacular or novel, and halfway through the show Steven was thinking of bailing out when the magician reached suddenly for a cleaver and, chopping down dramatically, severed his own hand. It was masterful: a spray of arterial blood, an unnerving scream and a hand with a gold wedding ring lying palm-up in a crimson puddle of blood on a wooden stage. Mark had yelped and spilled his bucket of popcorn. Before anyone could move, the lights went out and the curtain came down, protecting the integrity of the illusion for all time.

They’d been three or four drinks into the evening and Mark had wanted to believe that the magician had gone insane, lost his mind right then and there. ‘What could be more real?’ he’d said as they made their way back to the beer tent. ‘What could be more real than actually cutting it off?’

‘Not cutting it off,’ Steven had answered. ‘Who in the audience knows what it’s like to actually lose a hand? Probably no one, right?’

‘So?’

‘So if no one knows, then chopping off his hand can look, sound, smell and feel like whatever this guy wants it to. Who are we to argue?’

Mark hadn’t been convinced. ‘If you’re right, then the beer guys ought to be cutting him in at the end of the night, because half the audience is lining up for a stabilising drink right now.’

What does it mean to chop off a hand? Does anyone know? Did Nerak know? He looked down through the darkness. He felt for the hand he could see with his mind; he imagined it had been lost in a childhood accident, a car wreck, a disease, maybe a shark attack. He imagined getting dressed, shaving, brushing his teeth, reading a newspaper, typing at the computer, all with one hand. He tied his shoes, phoned his sister, ate a lobster, folded his Visa bill…

When the riverbed released him, Steven kicked wildly against the walls of the cave and clawed his way back into the light. He broke free with a cry and swam a good distance away before realising that he was alone; Gilmour was still trapped inside.

Shit! Oh shit! He turned in a turbid cloud of silt and swam back as fast as he could The explosions knocked him backwards and he covered his ears as he tumbled downriver. These were different, no flash of a white-hot fireball but more traditional explosions, like the bombs that had levelled Dresden or blew up the bridge on the River Kwai. Steven felt like his head had caved in; he was sure his sinuses had filled with blood, which might even be spilling from his ears.

Finally he was able to grab a submerged tree trunk to stop his downstream fall and, pulling and kicking as hard as he could, he started back against the current, watching for any sign of the old man, blood, torn cloth, or even body parts, through the almost impenetrable cloud of mud stirred up by Gilmour’s attempts to free himself.

By the time he reached the moraine, the water had cleared again to its crystalline clarity. And Steven’s worst fears were realised: the cave at the base of the rock formation had collapsed.

The storm blew in diagonally through the forests of southern Falkan, a howling, ceaseless roar that rolled and bounced off the slopes of the Blackstone Mountains. Lieutenant Blackford did a quick mental calculation and shook his head. It’s not enough. He entered the barracks and made for Captain Hershaw, who was sitting behind Lieutenant Kranst’s old desk, worrying over a goblet of tecan.

‘Six days?’ Hershaw asked.

Blackford nodded.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. Could we be invaded from the south?’

‘Over the Blackstones, in the dead of winter? Sure, Lieutenant, that happens here all the time.’ Captain Hershaw frowned. ‘She’s lost her mind.’

‘I’ve got to go and tell her we won’t be ready.’

‘Don’t do that.’ Hershaw stood, looking alarmed. ‘She’ll kill you too.’

‘I have to,’ the lieutenant said. ‘We’ll lose men, unnecessarily, if we attempt this before spring.’

Hershaw said, ‘Good luck, then.’

‘You want to come with me?’

‘Rutters, no!’ He grimaced. ‘I don’t think you should go anywhere near her, either. Wait for Pace; he’ll clear this up.’

Lieutenant Blackford folded a sheaf of parchment under his arm and started up the stairs to Major Tavon’s private office. ‘Major?’ he called, approaching from the outer hall.

‘Yes, Lieutenant?’ Tavon smiled, but it was a glassy, distant look, devoid of any real emotion. Something about her had gone tragically awry in the past three days, and Blackford hoped her illness – that’s what it had to be, some kind of crippling mental illness – had not done any irretrievable damage; maybe an Orindale healer might be able to cure their battalion commander. He and Captain Hershaw had already dispatched a rider to the capital to bring Colonel Pace and a team of healers as quickly as possible. Three officers and two soldiers were already dead, their bodies reduced to ash, and Blackford trembled every time he was forced to enter this room – but he was the only one man enough to actually do it. Everyone else, including Hershaw and Denne, who ought to be reporting to her, were unwilling even to come up the stairs.

‘We don’t have enough supplies – horses, food, blankets or wagons – to make a six-day forced march.’ He froze, waiting for the major’s wrath to explode. Sweat trickled under his collar.

‘Get more.’ Tavon perused a map she had spread across her desk.

‘Yes, ma’am.’ Blackford turned to leave, then said, ‘Uh, Major?’

Tavon looked up. ‘What is it, Lieutenant?’

‘I’m not certain where we’ll find supplies enough for the entire battalion for that length of time.’

‘Then we will make the journey in fewer days. We’ll run the men day and night.’

‘Yes, ma’am, but-’

‘Lieutenant,’ Tavon cut him off. ‘I am not stupid.’

‘No, ma’am. Of course not, ma’am.’ Blackford kept his eyes on his boots.

‘I know that you have been keeping this battalion running smoothly and well-supplied for the past thirty-five Twinmoons.’

Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.’ His hands shook, and he clasped them together behind his back.

‘So I am not going to kill you, Lieutenant,’ Major Tavon clarified, as if it had been obvious all along. ‘Naked and drunk you’re still worth more to me than any dozen of these rutters.’

Lieutenant Blackford had no idea what a dozen might be; he promised himself he would ask Hershaw when he escaped the office. ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ he muttered. He could think of nothing else to say.

‘So I want you to figure this out, Lieutenant. You have until the dinner aven tonight. We’ll march south after everyone has eaten.’ Tavon returned to her map.

‘That’s just it, ma’am,’ Blackford said. ‘There isn’t enough food. We have daily shipments from Orindale, but we have never had the entire battalion stationed in Wellham Ridge at the same time, so we haven’t ever stockpiled that much food, that many blankets, tent shelters, boots, uniforms, any of it.’

Major Tavon glared at him. ‘Mark me, Lieutenant Blackford. I don’t give a pinch of pigeon shit if half the men expire from hunger, cold or even herpes between here and Meyers’ Vale. It is your job to locate supplies and resources for this battalion. You have done an admirable job of it in the past, and that is why you are still standing here breathing. Take what you require from Wellham Ridge itself. Break into civilian homes, requisition their blankets, food, carts, horses, even trainers, if that’s what you need, but have this battalion ready to move by the dinner aven!’

Blackford trembled as he saluted and agreed, ‘Yes, ma’am. We’ll be ready.’ He backed towards the door, then turned smartly on his heel and hurried out. On the landing, he paused to look out the window. The storm was gaining strength.