Steven reeled right and incinerated another of the monsters, then strode back to face Gilmour. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, clapping Gilmour on the back. ‘We never could have anticipated this.’
‘But I don’t know how to fight them,’ the old man said with a shudder.
‘Can’t you see it?’
‘What?’
‘The Fold is open: there, there, and there.’ He pointed to three places around the clearing. ‘Three tears, just like I saw that morning at the dump. That’s where the wraiths are coming through; the bastard’s sending people we knew, hoping it will weaken us.’
‘I can’t see them,’ Gilmour said, straining to make out these rips in the fabric of the world.
‘Then leave them to me.’ Steven swallowed hard. ‘We have to turn the tide. We’ll never beat him if he keeps us on the defensive, because eventually, one of us will slip.’
But Steven knew Nerak was winning, for the fallen Larion sorcerer was forcing him to fight out of anger and hate, keeping him on his toes, striking out at him again and again. He recognised too many of the wraiths he annihilated, almost weeping as he saw friends and neighbours of Jennifer Sorenson, but having to steel himself as he sent them all into the Fold. There was no compassion here as he ripped through their souls, slicing them open and batting the pieces through the blurry mystical backdrop and into the darkness beyond.
He stood in front of Gilmour, protecting his mentor from the wraiths while the old man blasted away at the bone-collectors until the last of them, one eye blinded and dragging two of its jointed legs, retreated into the river and disappeared with the current.
All the while, Nerak-as-Bellan watched from above, casting a spell down on them from time to time which Steven deflected with ease. The girl watched her ranks of wraiths attack endlessly, enjoying Steven’s display of heroism and bravery and marvelling at his determination to live, to protect his mentor and to win the day. Nerak was impressed with the foreigner’s decision to be compassionate, an emotion he had nearly forgotten in the past thousand Twinmoons, and he felt Steven weakening every time he rended these otherwise peaceful, departed spirits.
That made Nerak chuckle. With a wave, he summoned the final three wraiths; these would weaken Steven enough that he would be able to sweep him up and cast him into the Fold alongside all those he had slain. But first, he needed the key.
Bellan jumped nimbly from the boulder as Steven hacked through the ghost of the little girl Nerak had killed in Rona when he needed a body for his trip across the Fold into Colorado.
‘Well done, Steven,’ Nerak said. ‘I’m sure that little one will enjoy an eternity of cold, dark emptiness, don’t you?’
Steven started towards him. ‘I’m-’
‘No, wait a moment, I have something for you,’ Nerak said, raising Bellan’s hand to stop him.
‘No,’ Steven said as he continued towards the girl. No more tricks, no more games, no more keeping us on our heels. It’s time to send you back to hell.’
Bellan shrugged, raising both palms to the sky. ‘Whatever you say, but here they are anyway.’
Steven stopped as Gabriel O’Reilly, the Seron warrior Lahp and the young mother who had carried her baby onto the plane in Charleston came towards him. In his mind’s eye he saw the mother, barely out of girlhood herself, and he heard the baby screaming in his memory, its cries weaving into Nerak’s amused laughter; a polyphony that threatened to drive him insane. Gabriel and Lahp: these were more than just friends, he owed them his life; without them he would have died in Eldarn.
There was no way he would be able to battle these ghosts.
‘Use the staff, Steven, do,’ Nerak chuckled. ‘It’s quite the most impressive spell Fantus has ever worked. He has my compliments. A silent talisman, really, I am impressed. I look forward to using it myself in the near future – in the very near future.’
Steven felt like he had been punched. ‘What did you say?’
Bellan’s face showed a little surprise at the question. ‘I look forward to using your staff when you and old Fantus are gone,’ Nerak repeated.
‘This staff?’
‘That’s the only one here, my friend.’
‘Mark was right about you,’ Steven said, feeling the staff’s power rise in burgeoning waves. ‘Everything he said was right. I just didn’t put it all together until now.’
‘Mark Jenkins? The Eldarni prince? Worry not, little sorcerer. I have plans for him too.’
‘Shut up,’ Steven spat. ‘Lessek told us about your weakness, and Mark was right all along: this is it, this is the best that you can do. A few ghosts, an almor here and there, and maybe a big spell from time to time when you need to wipe out a city like Port Denis, but all told, that’s all the bullets you have in the gun, Nerak. The evil creature that came through the Fold and took you never knew it, because you never knew it. Or if you did know it, you forced yourself to forget.’
Nerak was amused at Steven’s bravery. ‘I am not sure what you are trying to say, Steven Taylor, but you won’t be saying much more-’
‘I am saying that you are a hack, and you always were a hack. The evil that took you believed what you believed about Eldarn, about the Larion Senate, about the Fold, but especially about a second-rate sorcerer named Nerak.’ Now Steven laughed. ‘You don’t understand power, because as a human, as a sorcerer, you never understood mercy, compassion and love. If you did, you would have been a much more powerful dictator. I am tired of you, Nerak, so now I am speaking to the creature that married you, the creature and the master it serves out there in the Fold somewhere. You picked the wrong magician, creature.’
‘Enough!’ Nerak roared; Steven felt like his head would explode with the noise. ‘That was amusing, Steven Taylor, but you are forgetting one thing: I don’t have to be the most powerful sorcerer the lands have ever known. I only have to be powerful enough to defeat you and that sorry milksop you’ve been following these past Twinmoons. With Lessek’s key in my possession, I will open the Fold and realise all the glory of its power and I will rule all the worlds in eternity.’
‘You still don’t get it,’ Steven said. ‘You can’t beat me.’ He dropped the hickory staff at Bellan’s feet. ‘You can’t beat me, and I won’t fight these wraiths, my friends.’
‘Steven, what are you doing?’ Gilmour whispered.
To the wraiths, Steven said, ‘Gabriel, Lahp, and you, ma’am – I’m sorry I don’t know your name – I won’t fight you. I am so sorry for what has happened to you, especially to you, ma’am, because your death was partly my fault, but I won’t fight you. I won’t send you into the Fold. I won’t do it.’
‘Then you will die, Steven Taylor.’ Nerak gestured to the wraiths, who turned together towards Steven, rage sweeping over their features. They swirled about Bellan’s head, then swooped down on Steven in a wave of homicidal fury.
THE FLYING BUTTRESS
Hannah reached the atrium and stopped, watching Hoyt and then Alen climb out onto the slanted stone buttress. She didn’t want to step through the window until at least one of them had successfully made the jump to the courtyard on the opposite wing of Welstar Palace. She turned back to look for Churn and watched as he slammed the soldier’s head into the stone wall.
Why do that now, Churn? she wondered. Is killing one of them going to make a difference when there are hundreds of thousands of them just outside?
Behind him, the first soldiers reached the landing and started down the hallway after them. She hoped her uniform would give her an extra few seconds of misdirection, and perhaps it would be enough for her to make the jump to the north wing.
The atrium was a grand chamber; thousands of glass panes were carefully fitted into a sphere-shaped leaded framework; the rounded ceiling, which must have weighed tons, was supported by tall stone buttresses, flying up from the greensward below like a Gothic cathedral. This marvel of Eldarni architecture was like a great glass lens upheld by a circle of stony bones.