For nine hundred and eighty Twinmoons, Gilmour had learned to weave common-phrase spells, working wonders with Larion magic- but it had never been enough. Every time he had tested a large weave, he had been forced to go underground again. Working a Larion spell was like ringing a bell and screaming, Come and get me, Nerak, I’m right here in Estrad Village. Running had cost him valuable Twinmoons of his life, perhaps too many; were it not for Steven Taylor and the hickory staff, Gilmour wasn’t sure he would be alive today.
But here he was, armed with some notoriously mercurial magic, standing beside the staff-wielding foreigner who had returned Lessek’s key to Eldarn. Gilmour had done his best to help Steven learn as much as possible, although it had never felt like enough. He wondered why Lessek, the old Larion founder, had permitted him to live so long – for hundreds of Twinmoons, he thought it was because it would be up to him eventually to face Nerak and restore freedom and prosperity to Eldarn, but now, sitting in the snow, cold and damp, his ears still ringing from the hickory staff’s explosive attack, he thought perhaps it was because of Steven Taylor: he had to see this young man to this place and time.
Gilmour felt emboldened by the notion that perhaps his role was to teach, not to work spells. ‘Lessek?’ he murmured, wrestling the old fisherman’s body back to its feet. ‘Is that what you did? Is that why I’m here?’
He looked over at Steven and saw the younger man was still struggling with the fact that he had just condemned his friend’s soul to an eternity inside the Fold. Gilmour’s heart broke for him. Say something, you doddering old fool, he told himself.
‘When you are running, run, Steven,’ he whispered again – trite, but it had the desired effect. Steven seemed to stand a bit taller; the staff glowed a bit brighter.
‘When you are fighting, fight!’ he shouted; Steven nodded and whirled on Nerak-as-Bellan and the rest of the bone-collectors.
Gilmour looked up at the pretty young girl sitting there on the boulder and smiled. We’ve got you, you murdering old horsecock. You’re going to lose.
The attack came from his right as one of the eldritch creatures hunkered down on all its jointed legs, sprang with unholy speed into the low-hanging branches and then leaped for Gilmour. With no time to run, Gilmour crouched, whispered a few words and felt the magic slam into the bone-collector, tumbling it to the ground, where it twitched for a moment and then died.
‘Come on, Nerak!’ he roared, ‘I’m standing right here.’
Bellan held out both hands, a gesture that said be patient, and all in due time.
Gilmour loosed a devastating blast at the girl, but one of the monsters leaped high into the air, exposing its obsidian underbelly and taking the brunt of the spell. The magic split it in half and as its armoured exoskeleton collapsed in a crumpled pile, its steaming guts spilled into the snow. Immediately another bone-collector crawled from the river, picking its way over the corpse. Gilmour, distracted by the monster’s apparent disregard for its dead brother, left himself exposed for an instant; time enough for Bellan to fire a spell at him.
The magic struck him in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him and casting him back across the clearing. As he rolled to a stop, the closest of the bone-collectors skidded in his direction, ready to rip him to pieces. It crouched low, preparing to spring on the incapacitated sorcerer.
‘Rutters, that hurt,’ Gilmour croaked, curling up. ‘Must catch my brea-’ He saw his attacker and reached out to summon a spell. He didn’t have the strength to kill it now; all he could hope to do was to knock it off balance for a moment, just long enough to get out of the way. It was about to leap; it rolled its bulbous eyes, the pupils shrinking to pinpricks in the light. He couldn’t help wondering if the creature was amused as it bent at all its joints and opened a dripping, foetid maw to emit a coarse, high-pitched shriek of laughter.
Thunk.
Thunk.
Two arrows struck the beast almost simultaneously; each shaft buried itself in one of the monster’s eyes. The creature wailed, a horrible cry that made Gilmour wince. He caught sight of Garec and Mark, standing side by side on the hill; they both continued to fire into the bone-collector’s body. Some of the arrows glanced off the armour-plating, but others found their mark in soft, bleeding tissue: where the neck joined the body, the pliable stalks supporting its eyes, the fleshy area between its hinged jaw and its plated underbelly.
Even blinded, it leaped for the old man, but in vain; the archers had given Gilmour the time he needed and the bone-collector’s body blocked out the sun before shattering in midair. Blood, pieces of entrails and bits of chitin showered the clearing.
Garec and Mark had saved his life, but in coming to his aid, they had alerted the remaining monsters to their own position; two immediately made for the forest and clambered through the interconnecting branches towards them.
‘Oh no,’ Mark groaned, ‘here they come.’
‘Get out of here, now!’ Gilmour shouted. He didn’t wait to see what they did, but ran to where Steven was facing off against two of the subterranean monsters – and stopped, frozen in his tracks as Pikan Tettarak waved to him from the water’s edge. She was a wraith, but it was her, nonetheless, calling out to him, gesturing, trying to tell him something. Transfixed, Gilmour walked slowly towards her, only vaguely aware of Steven leaping and striking out in an epic battle, the armoured monsters exploding, imploding, or simply dying where they stood. One was hit so hard that it flew up over Pikan’s translucent body and into the side of the boulder where Bellan stood, watching the fight with delight.
Now Steven whirled towards the forest, levelled the hickory staff and ignited the trees in a blazing inferno, trapping those bone-collectors that had been stalking his friends. One managed to get out; Gilmour heard it splash into the river somewhere upstream. It would be back. But right now he needed to concentrate on Pikan.
How had Nerak brought her here? Had she really been his slave all these Twinmoons? It didn’t seem possible; she had been too strong a sorcerer to have been trapped this long.
‘Pikan? Is that you?’
The wraith nodded emphatically.
‘Tell me how to free you!’ Gilmour took another step forward and reached out as she gestured towards the hillside. She was trying to show him something, maybe some way to free her from Nerak? He turned and watched the trees as Harren Bonn stepped into the meadow.
‘Oh northern gods,’ Gilmour gasped, ‘not you, too – please, not you.’ He felt his knees buckle and then give way as guilt overwhelmed him.
‘Gilmour!’ someone shouted.
‘Harren, I’m so sorry, I should have been out there with you. I belonged on those steps with you – I told myself I would be the final defence, inside the spell chamber, but that wasn’t true.’
‘Gilmour!’
‘I locked you in that stairwell because I was too terrified to stand with you, I was afraid to die. Harren, if I could go back-’
‘Gilmour, get up!’
A bolt of lighting passed through his body; Steven had struck him with the hickory staff. Shrieking, he sprang to his feet. ‘Damnation, Steven Taylor! I hate it when you do that!’
‘When you are fighting, fight,’ Steven growled.
The old sorcerer was suddenly awake and turned back to his former students in time to watch them change from the beautiful young people he had loved to hideous, ghostly killers. Their faces blurred, melted away, and their mouths fell agape beneath empty eye sockets. It was too late to ward himself magically as they attacked together, but Steven was there at his side, and one slash with the glowing hickory staff sent both tortured souls to the depthless abyss of the Fold.