‘You’ll never get the wrinkles out,’ Garec teased.
‘Wait,’ Kellin interrupted, ‘don’t change the subject again! How did he get back here, without a portal and without a body?’
Steven hunched noticeably, as if the wind was blowing cold in his face. ‘He could have used anyone to make the trip back here, Kellin. And as for how he returned, I’m worried that he might have killed a friend of mine, a woman whose daughter I-’
‘He didn’t.’ Gilmour cut him off. ‘Nerak returned here because I opened the way for him.’
‘How?’ Brand was cooking venison steaks on a flat rock beside the campfire. ‘How did you manage it without a portal?’
‘I made a mistake.’ Gilmour glanced towards his pack and the collection of Lessek’s spells wrapped inside. ‘I opened a book I had no business reading. It let Nerak pinpoint my location and make the journey home; I’m sure of it. Hannah’s mother probably never encountered him at all.’
‘Let’s hope,’ Steven said.
‘But didn’t you kill him, Steven?’ Kellin asked. ‘I saw you pick up that girl and throw her inside that boulder. She vanished; didn’t she? Is she… or he… dead now?’
‘It wasn’t exactly into the boulder, Kellin,’ Steven explained. ‘It was through a rip, an opening that you weren’t able to see. I threw her… him, if you prefer… inside, and he doesn’t have the power to get back out.’
‘So Nerak is dead,’ Kellin said.
‘Essentially.’ Steven sighted along his finger between a clump of trees and the tip of his grandfather’s nose.
‘Then why are we still here? We’ve been riding these past few days as if someone is chasing us. Mark’s gone; we didn’t even look for him, and we’ve been hurrying through the forest trying to find this cliff, hill, stone table, whatever it is, and I don’t understand why.’ Kellin avoided looking at Brand. She was a Resistance fighter; she’d fought Prince Malagon’s soldiers and shown her allegiance. Hearing her voice rising as she pleaded for understanding was embarrassing; she cleared her throat nosily to cover her anxiety.
Steven’s smile faded. ‘We’re still here, Kellin, because we were guilty of exactly the same offence that allowed me to dispose of Nerak for ever. We focused on the wrong thing; we believed something that wasn’t true, just like Nerak.’
The others, including Gilmour, were listening intently. The battle in the glen had been four days ago, and no one had yet endeavoured to explain what had happened, or why.
‘What did you- What did we have wrong?’ Kellin asked.
‘Nerak believed he was powerful, much more powerful than he turned out to be. He actually used a spell to convince himself that he was the greatest Larion sorcerer that Eldarn had ever known. He removed the part of himself that understood who he really was, almost physically tore it out of his mind, and he hid that knowledge in a friend’s walking stick, an old length of whittled hickory, that I found – that found me – on the other side of these mountains. The evil that Nerak released from the Fold took him, and it believed what it found inside Nerak’s head, because it didn’t have any reason not to. What Nerak believed about himself was the truth to him, as real to him as – as this river is to us.’
‘So he lied to this evil creature?’
‘It was the evil’s mistake to take Nerak’s beliefs as truth.’
‘Where is our mistake then?’ Kellin hadn’t yet made any connection.
‘We did the same thing Nerak did,’ Steven said. ‘We focused on the wrong things.’ He looked over at Gilmour. ‘We spent two Twinmoons worrying about Nerak, when Nerak wasn’t the one threatening Eldarn. We should have been worrying about the evil that had possessed him – it had possessed Prince Marek and the Whitward family all those Twinmoons ago. When I cast Nerak into the Fold, I permitted that evil to break its connection with a tired Larion Senator and to establish a link with-’ He paused.
‘With Mark Jenkins,’ Kellin whispered.
‘We focused on the wrong things,’ Steven muttered. ‘We believed Nerak was at the root of Eldarn’s peril. We forgot that in all the time Nerak worked at Sandcliff Palace, researching, learning, teaching, Eldarn was never at risk. It wasn’t until the evil slipped free from the spell table that Eldarn’s future was put in jeopardy.’
‘Then how can you just-?’
‘Just what, Kellin?’ Steven wheeled on her, sending concentric ripples out across the smooth surface of the water. ‘How can I eat, sleep, make jokes with you and Garec, stand here like a goddamned fool looking for an ancient relic we aren’t even certain will work even if we manage to get it out of the water? How can I do all those things?’
Kellin wanted to back down, to apologise, but the soldier in her took over. Now she did look over at Brand briefly, before saying, ‘Yes, Steven. How can you do all those things when the real root of your problems, Eldarn’s problems, is wandering around back there in the body of your roommate?’
Steven hesitated; Kellin hoped it was because some part of the foreign sorcerer was impressed with how she had stood her ground.
Finally, he said, ‘We hurried up here, because Mark is coming, probably with whatever forces he is able to organise at Wellham Ridge. That may not be too many, and I’m sure Gilmour and I can take care of them, but I would rather not engage them at all, because I don’t want to risk losing the spell table – which might just save us -and I don’t want to risk a confrontation with Mark, because I might inadvertently kill him.’
‘Mark’s dead,’ Kellin said, ‘isn’t he?’
Steven shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘When Nerak took possession of people, both here and in my world, he killed them. He forcibly entered their bodies, took their minds, memories, thoughts and knowledge, and then allowed them to die. He did it to Gabriel O’Reilly; he did it to Myrna Kessler, and he did it to countless others. But when the evil that took Nerak came to Eldarn, it kept him alive. Granted, it abandoned his body, because moving about as a spirit let him take others, hundreds of others, that night and over the Twinmoons, but they worked as a team. Nerak was alive all that time.’
‘How do you know that?’ Gilmour wanted to believe there was still hope for Mark, but he too was sceptical.
‘Because he was there in the glen,’ Steven said. ‘He wasn’t propped up by anything; there was no evil puppet master pulling his strings. That was Nerak. Bellan was dead and long gone. Hell, we might have battled her sorry soul right there amongst those bone-collectors, but Nerak was alive and well when I tossed him into Neverland.’
‘So Mark is alive.’ Garec started up the shoreline. A steely grey day was reluctantly giving way to darkness.
‘I’d bet on it,’ Steven said. ‘That night at Sandcliff, the evil force that consumed Nerak had just burst free from the spell table. It took Nerak and learned that it had hit the jackpot. Ka-blam! First shot, and it wins big: Eldarn’s greatest magical mind. But what of all the others, all the Larion Senators living and working in the palace? Why not join with Nerak and grab a few others, fifty, two hundred, who cares?’ Gilmour was looking sick, so Steven backed off somewhat. ‘The being, the essence of things evil, whatever it is that took Mark didn’t have anyone else to take. We’re all still here, still alive. There were just a few farms between Meyers’ Vale and Wellham Ridge. Does he need a plough-hand? No. He needs Mark. Mark knows us; he knows me. He knows our plans; he knows where we’ve been and where we hope to go, Gita, Capehill, the lot. Granted, the creature can get all that and still kill him, but I’m betting he’s alive.’
‘And what better prize, if Mark truly is Eldarn’s king, Rona’s heir?’ Garec said. ‘First, evil takes Nerak and discovers the greatest sorcerer in the five lands. Then it takes Mark and discovers a long-lost monarch.’
‘Two for two,’ Steven said.
‘But is Mark truly Rona’s heir?’ Brand asked.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Garec said. ‘Mark believes it. It’s truth inside his head.’