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 masterfuclass="underline" 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.