THE STAFF’S SECRET
‘Look out, Steven!’ Gilmour cried as he rushed forward take the brunt of the wraith attack on himself.
‘Steven!’ Mark shouted, and ran down into the meadow, followed closely by Garec, Kellin and Brand.
Steven raised a hand to the wraiths sweeping down on him – and Gabriel, Lahp and the young mother halted in midair, their ghostly arms reaching down for him. Steven looked up at them and said, ‘I’m sorry. This must be terrible for you. Wait here and I’ll do what I can when this is finished.’ He gestured towards the boulder at the river’s edge and the wraiths, still trying to break free, floated towards it. They hung there, immobile.
For the first time Steven detected a ripple of fear in Nerak and without pausing he lashed out at the dark prince, determined to exploit every weakness he could find. ‘You see? Even your slaves can’t obey you if I direct them otherwise.’ He allowed the magic to flow from both hands and it pounded into Bellan’s chest. The girl was hurled backwards through the air and crashed with a grim thud into the boulder. Blood discoloured the stone where her head cracked open.
Apparently unfazed by her fractured skull, Prince Malagon’s daughter rose up from where she had fallen and blasted a brutal spell at Steven and Gilmour. The blow sent both men sprawling; Gilmour rolled backwards over what had been one of the bone-collectors. Bellan stood looking down at the hickory staff, then picked it up, brushed the snow from it and held it close to her face.
Steven rolled to his feet and gestured for everyone to stay where they were, willing them to understand: I have this under control, he thought. Let them understand!
Alone, he crossed to Bellan.
‘It was not wise of you to give this up, Steven Taylor,’ Nerak said, still considering the staff.
‘Nerak’s weakness lies elsewhere,’ he replied. ‘That’s what Lessek told Gilmour, and he was right. Do you know where it lies? It lies right there in your hands, and you’re just too blazingly stupid to see it. We all were – all of us except Mark, thank Christ – but now it’s clear, and you… cannot… win.’
‘I already have, Steven Taylor. With this staff, you were the only one who could have stood against me. And with this staff and Lessek’s key, my quest is nearly complete.’
‘Look closely at it, Nerak.’ Steven wanted this conversation done. ‘Have you ever seen it before? I’m betting you have.’
Bellan’s eyes flared as she raised the staff. ‘You have been insulting and tiresome, but now you have crossed into stupidity, Steven Taylor, and I cannot bear stupidity, especially from one whom I have come to respect.’
‘Go ahead.’ Steven felt his hands begin to tremble; sweat trickled down his temples. ‘Kill me with it.’
‘Gladly,’ Nerak said, ‘although in some ways it is a shame. You and I could have been so powerful together.’
Bowstrings thrummed as Garec and Mark fired, but Nerak raised one of Bellan’s hands and the shafts fell harmlessly to the ground. Gilmour unleashed a spell to knock Bellan off her feet, stunning Nerak long enough for one of them to retrieve the staff, but Nerak turned it away with a wave; the spell sailed up and over the river and crashed through a riverside willow.
‘Come on,’ Steven said, ‘do it now.’
Nerak reared back and swiped viciously at him.
Garec had to tackle Mark to keep him from diving into the fray. Brand, Kellin and Gilmour all screamed as the dark prince swung the staff at Steven’s head. Her eyes aflame, Bellan’s entire body heaved with anticipation of feeling the staff’s magic rip through the irritating foreigner’s body. She screamed as she swung; the staff blurred in the air, a reaper’s enchanted scythe.
Effortlessly, Steven reached up and caught the hickory staff in one hand. Pressing forward, he twisted it out of Bellan’s grip and shoved it into her face. ‘Look again, Nerak. Look closely at it. I think you’ve seen it before.’
Now Nerak shook as he reached out Bellan’s hands to take hold of Steven’s throat, to choke the life from him. ‘I’ll kill you the old-fashioned way!’ he roared, but Steven easily batted Bellan’s hands away.
‘You’re not paying attention,’ Steven said, backing the girl towards the river. ‘I want you to look closely at the staff, and I want you to tell me if you have ever seen it before.’ He slapped Bellan hard across the face.
To her great surprise, it hurt; a red welt rose up on her cheek, and a dribble of blood ran from one nostril. It was the first human injury Nerak had sustained in nearly a thousand Twinmoons and it shocked him silent.
‘I think you have seen this before.’ Steven pressed the end of the staff up into Bellan’s face. ‘Haven’t you?’
The girl’s self-assurance began to crumble and she looked over Steven’s shoulder to where Gilmour approached warily. ‘Fantus?’
‘Yes, Nerak?’ Gilmour was still confused.
‘It’s Kantu’s staff,’ Nerak said, almost wonderingly. ‘His walking staff. I hid some things inside it one night, a long time ago.’
‘He hid knowledge about himself,’ Steven said to Gilmour, ‘things Nerak knew about himself.’ He turned back to Bellan. ‘That’s what you hid inside this staff, and that’s why you couldn’t sense it when I used it – and that’s why you couldn’t remember it. It’s also the reason you can’t stop it from reminding you now of just who you really are.’
Steven looked back at Mark, who grinned encouragingly and gestured, Go on!
‘When you opened the Fold that night,’ Steven said, ‘the evil creature that claimed you didn’t get the all-powerful sorcerer he believed to you be, but a lying fool, one who had convinced himself he was something he wasn’t. You hid the truth from yourself inside this staff, and you did it using a deception spell from the second Windscroll. Gilmour told us about it after his conversation with Kantu at Sandcliff,’ he added as an aside to Mark, connecting the dots for his friends.
He laughed. ‘Nerak, you fooled yourself into believing you could master the Larion spell table, but the spell table was too much for you.
‘The evil minion took you hostage; too bad that it believed what you had in your head at the time, because it never knew that you had worked a spell to deceive yourself. I’m almost impressed, Nerak: you couldn’t completely erase your memory – your knowledge – of your own weaknesses, so you hid it inside this staff. Pretty clever idea, really.’
Now Bellan nodded. ‘We were on Larion Isle. Kantu left his walking staff in the common room. I was there alone, experimenting with the deception spell. When I finally managed to get it to work-’
‘You hadn’t realised you would need a vessel to contain the knowledge,’ Gilmour finished for him.
‘You changed your own perception of yourself,’ Steven went on. ‘You lied to yourself- hey, we all do it! But you did it with the help of the Windscrolls, and you made it permanent, in your mind, and, over time, in the minds of those around you. When the evil minion took you, it believed what you believed, because in your mind it was true.’
He motioned across the meadow. ‘My friend Mark there lost the woman he loved, you miserable, stinking bastard. She was one of Garec’s best friends. Her name was Brynne. You probably don’t remember her.’ Steven moved and Bellan retreated again. ‘I had a friend in Colorado, Myrna Kessler; she planned to go to college this year. You killed her.’ Now Bellan was standing ankle-deep in river mud. Steven’s voice was soft, almost conversational. ‘Mika, Jerond, Versen, Sallax, Rodler – remember them? No? You killed them all. It might have been the Nerak who believed himself to be the most powerful man in Eldarn, or the Nerak standing here now, the one suddenly aware of his own weaknesses, but let me assure you, I don’t care. I swore to be compassionate, and I was compassionate: I gave you the hickory staff. I gave you the power to save yourself – and you tried to turn it against me. You, the real you, tried to kill me with it.’