‘One, two, one,’ Steven whispered and depressed the second single cone on the front face of the metal lock box. Now he was able to ignore Nerak as the silver ornament clicked into place; he rushed to press the quadruple cone carving left protruding from the upper edge of the box’s top. ‘Four!’ he shouted triumphantly as the four sides, top and bottom of the metal box fell open and clattered to the wooden deck with a series of resounding clangs. He shuddered as he looked down at the length of folded cloth in his hand: the sensation was just the same as when he and Mark first unrolled the stolen tapestry across the floor all those months ago at 147 Tenth Street, Idaho Springs, lifetimes and worlds away from here. He looked quickly at the hickory staff, wishing he had it to take with him, but it was too late for that – he would be lucky enough if he managed to get the far portal unfurled before Nerak battered through Gilmour’s defences and killed them both.
Nerak almost hovered in the air as he advanced on the infuriatingly resilient old man. His head tilted slightly to one side, he considered Steven’s hasty attempt to escape.
‘Really, Fantus, what is your little protege doing now?’ He looked down at the novice sorcerer. ‘You have impressed me, boy, opening my box, but now you have a choice. I will not just kill you, but I will make your death last days, or weeks, or millennia of your time, if you do not hand over the key. But should you come to your senses, I will allow you to depart my ship alive. Choose now, choose quickly and choose well. My generosity will not be repeated.’
Steven clapped both hands over his ears and dropped the far portal for a moment as Nerak’s voice nearly tipped him into unconsciousness. He shook his head violently to dispel the echoes, then reached down and gripped the portal by a corner and cast it out before him. In a stroke of good luck, most of the tapestry fell flat on the deck of the great black ship; just one corner remained folded back over itself and Steven cursed as he crawled bodily across the cloth in an effort to smooth out that final fold and fall into his living room at 147 Tenth Street. Unnervingly, even that familiar address sounded strange to him.
As Nerak saw Steven crawling on all fours across the tapestry, he finally realised his mistake. He turned to Gilmour and spat, ‘You don’t have it! Where is my key? ’
With studied satisfaction, Gilmour ran one hand across his nearly bald head and grinned. ‘Lessek’s Key, I think you mean – no, we don’t. And we never did.’
‘Jacrys!’ Nerak’s scream rent the night in two and Steven collapsed to the deck, unable to move until the echoes of the dark prince’s anguish had faded over Orindale Harbour. The staff may have been several yards away from him, but once again its magic reached out to envelope him. It thrummed beneath his skin, a protective layer of mystical power without which he would surely have been killed, crushed to a pulp by the force of Nerak’s cry.
The dark prince dived for Steven, bearing down on him like a terrible vision of evil, anguish and death, and Steven cried out as he flicked two fingertips out to flatten the last corner of the far portal. It was not enough. Nerak moved so quickly, faster even than the nimblest of nocturnal hunters As Nerak flew through the air, his cowled face turned towards Steven, he cast a deadly spell out before him in an effort to slay the foreign intruder before he could open the portal entirely, but his spell was an instant too late. Gilmour unleashed his own magic once again, and his power lanced through the night, striking the evil sorcerer a vicious broadside, which sent him reeling across the deck.
And Steven Taylor disappeared.
Mark nearly lost consciousness when the Prince Marek ’s quarterdeck exploded over his head in a thousand splintered planks. His eyeballs throbbed with every heartbeat and his ears felt as though they had been clapped between a pair of cymbals. He sat dazed for a time in the wildly rocking skiff before he was able to collect his thoughts.
‘Nerak’s here, then,’ he whispered.
The stillness that followed on the heels of the blast was unnerving, and for a moment Mark worried that his hearing had been damaged. ‘Sonofabitch,’ he shouted out, and then, encouraged by the sound of his own voice, ‘Brynne! Where are you?’
The rope they’d been using to climb onto the ship had been blown away: Mark was trapped on his little boat, unable to help his friends. He had to have faith that Steven would find the far portal and Brynne would return safely to him. All he could do was what he’d been ordered: sit and wait. He picked up Garec’s bow and the quiver full of arrows and resigned himself to his silent vigil.
As he scanned the night sky, he noticed a peculiar cloudbank, dark, running low to the ground, moving like a fogbank, but backwards, from land to sea. It looked more mist than cloud – and Mark blanched as his mind flipped back to a conversation with Gita Kamrec’s men. He dropped his bow and stood up in the little boat facing east towards the distant lights of the city, remembering the dark river cavern, and the Falkans’ tales of unimaginable nightmares hidden in these clouds.
Hall Storen had told them how they’d tried to keep an eye on the clouds after sunrise, in case they had to avoid an attack from above. ‘It was worse when it came after dark,’ Mark repeated to himself, shuddering. And here they came, Nerak’s own little weather army.
Fear roiled through Mark’s stomach. His thoughts faltered: what could he do? He was defenceless and time was running out. The obsidian fogbank appeared unaffected by the stiff sea breeze as it moved inexorably towards the Prince Marek. Mark, in a desperate effort to warn the others, began to scream.
*
Nerak raised his arms as if in supplication and whispered, ‘Oh, well done, Fantus.’ He exhaled and, voicing a gruesome curse, brought his arms down violently to his sides, sending a destructive spell deep into the bowels of the Prince Marek. The great black ship shivered and creaked as she began to come apart at the seams.
Nerak’s decision to destroy his own ship took Gilmour by surprise. That few moments’ inattention was all the dark prince needed; before Gilmour could strike again he had leaped into the far portal and vanished from view.
For an instant, Nerak’s pursuit of Steven came as such a shock that Gilmour nearly stepped into the portal himself, but rational thought intervened. Even that brief span of time before Nerak followed him gave Steven ample opportunity to close the portal at his home in Idaho Springs. Nerak would be elsewhere, cast somewhere at the whim of the portal, maybe whole worlds away from 147 Tenth Street in Idaho Springs.
As Gilmour smiled to himself, the Prince Marek came apart beneath him. The remaining masts cracked and collapsed, smashing through the upper decks. The forecastle snapped off; thick beams burst asunder and heavy planks warped and splintered, a barrage of cracks that reminded the old sorcerer of rifle-fire at Gettysburg. The dark waters of the Ravenian Sea started to rush into what was left of the Prince Marek ’s hull and the great ship began to list heavily.
Taking a final look around the wreckage, Gilmour breathed, ‘Good luck, Steven Taylor.’ Moving with a speed and grace that belied the old fisherman’s age he crossed the deck and collected the tapestry then dived for Steven’s hickory staff, which was rolling dangerously close to the broken edge. Finally he removed his cloak and wrapped the tapestry and the leatherbound book of Lessek’s spells in its protective folds.
Gilmour took one swift look around what was left of Nerak’s cabin and hustled up the now steeply sloping deck until he was perched on an uneven ledge. The former Larion Senator held fast to the cloak-wrapped bundle and the hickory staff and leaped into the chilly water below.
EPILOGUE