Only Gabriel O’Reilly remained.
‘It’s good to see you again, Gabriel,’ Steven said. Behind him, the chatter around the campfire quieted to a whisper. His friends were listening in.
‘And you, too, Steven.’ Gabriel looked as he had when Steven first saw him, clad in his nineteenth-century bank manager’s uniform, complete with frilly shirt, braces and a belt buckle embossed with the letters B.I.S.
‘What happened?’
Like the South Carolina woman and the Seron warrior, Gabriel’s voice echoed in Steven’s mind. ‘I fought the almor. It had been hunting Versen and Brexan. When the battle ended, I-’
Steven cut him off, saying excitedly, ‘Versen’s alive?’
Gabriel nodded. ‘He was when I last saw him, but he and Brexan were about to face a fierce-looking Seron, a killer.’
‘Brexan? Who’s that?’
‘A woman, a soldier from Malakasia; she was travelling with Versen. They were both drowning in the Ravenian Sea when I found them; Versen’s life had just about ebbed away when I arrived.’
‘When did this happen?’ Steven was anxious to hear the rest of the strange tale.
‘It was shortly after I led Mark Jenkins to the trapper’s cabin at the southern end of this valley.’
Heartened by this news, Steven asked, ‘How did Nerak capture you again?’
The wraith grimaced. ‘William Higgins.’
Steven started. ‘The miner? But how is-? Oh, right… Nerak took him in 1870.’
‘Before opening the accounts at my bank – your bank as well, I suppose.’
‘You were pulled back into the Fold?’ Steven wasn’t sure how to ask what he wanted to know.
‘A small group of wraiths, led by William Higgins and working under Nerak’s orders, found me crossing Falkan and, yes, they dragged me back into their ranks. When Nerak finally reached me, I was powerless once again. But you set me free; you set us all free there in the glen beside the river.’
‘When I threw Nerak into the Fold.’
‘When you refused to cast us back into the Fold, Steven, that’s when it happened. You freed me – and Lahp and the woman.’
Steven said, ‘We have a far portal here, Gabriel. You should try to go home. She should-’ He broke off and looked towards the trees, but the woman was gone. ‘She should try as well. I can’t guarantee anything, but I’d bet you can make it back.’
‘I’m staying with you.’ Gabriel took him by the forearm and again Steven felt the odd convection of cold and colder pressing through the Gore-tex of Howard’s old coat.
‘You don’t have to,’ he said, touched by Gabriel’s offer. ‘You’ve been trapped, enslaved for so long. Why don’t you-?’
‘That is exactly the reason why I don’t wish to return home, not yet.’ O’Reilly loomed over him, swelling for a moment with anger or pride, Steven couldn’t tell which, before shrinking back to his former size. ‘I’ll help you, Steven, and then we’ll go home together.’
Steven gave up. ‘The evil that was controlling Nerak now has Mark.’
‘I know.’
‘Can you free him?’
‘No.’
Steven sighed. ‘I had to ask.’
‘Have you seen him?’
‘No,’ Steven replied. ‘My guess is that he’s in Wellham Ridge, organising a force to come find us, or maybe to find the spell table.’
‘I will find him, Steven.’
‘Be careful, Gabriel.’
‘I will try to delay him, if possible, and when this is done, we will go home together.’
‘Yes,’ Steven nodded, ‘you, me, Hannah and Mark.’
‘I look forward to it.’ Gabriel glanced beyond Steven’s shoulder to where Garec, Kellin and Gilmour were watching the interchange. Brand slept. Raising one ghostly-white hand, the former bank manager waved to them.
‘Farewell, Gabriel,’ Garec said quietly. ‘We will see you again, soon.’
The wraith looked back at Steven for a moment, then faded into the flurries of snow tumbling along the riverbank.
Mark Jenkins approached the barracks from a side street. Sheltered from view by a lumber cart that had stopped along the thoroughfare, he turned the corner, surprising the sentry posted outside.
‘Move along, Southie,’ the man warned. ‘There’s no need for you to be lingerin’ here.’
‘What did you call me?’ Mark growled. The soldier was a private, a conscripted grunt; Mark needed someone of higher rank, a colonel or a general at least.
‘I said move along.’ The sentry, a broad-shouldered man with two days’ stubble and a weary, hungover look about him, rested a hand on his dagger, clearly a warning.
‘Do you know it was 1619 when the first slave ship arrived in Virginia? Did you know that? Of course you didn’t. 1619. Astonishing really, that only twelve years separated the establishment of the first real settlement in the American colonies and the oppression of African slaves in the west. Twelve years, and I have to stand here now and listen to that kind of bullshit from you, you inbred lump of stinking pigshit.’ Mark spoke a mixture of English and Eldarni Common, but the bleary-eyed private deciphered enough of the rant to understand the arrogant South Coaster was being less than respectful.
‘Ruttin’ horsecock,’ the guard growled, but as he shoved the man away, Mark took him through a moist, filthy sore he opened on the soldier’s wrist.
Mark felt himself being sucked through a dank, cramped canal as he invaded the sentry’s body. He felt suddenly nauseous as two hundred and seventy-five Twinmoons of emotions, memories, hopes and failures washed over him all at once and he thought he might vomit right there on the street. He wanted to collapse into the mud and rest for a few hours. He felt the soldier dying, falling away, and tried to accompany him, to slip past the presence, that creature of smoke and steam that had taken him in the forest four days earlier only to crush his will and press him into submission.
Not you! the voice thundered inside his head, their head. Let him go; we have what we need from this one.
Mark watched his own body collapse to the plank walkway outside the Malakasian Army barracks. He watched himself strip off the jacket Steven had stolen from Howard’s closet, watched himself check the pocket for Lessek’s key and finally watched himself remove his gloves and slip them onto his new hands, his pale, white Malakasian hands, the left one dripping a malign mixture of pus and blood. Mark wiped it on his favourite red sweater.
Let’s go, he heard himself say. We need to find the commanding officer. Where is he? The dead soldier’s memories merged with his own; vertigo gripped his guts with a talon. He needed to throw up.
Upstairs. She’s upstairs. The guard’s recollections provided the answer.
A she? A colonel? A general?
I don’t know if there are any generals left over here except for General Oaklen. Major Tavon is in charge of the battalion here in the South. She’s the senior officer here.
Mark kicked open the barracks door. A soldier, a lieutenant by his uniform, was crossing the foyer. He looked irritated when he saw the private. ‘And where do you think you’re going, Stark?’ he shouted. ‘You’re on duty until the end of the dinner aven. Do I need to remind you-?’
‘Eat shit,’ Mark said, and hit him in the throat; his strength was unfathomable. The officer’s neck snapped, cracking audibly a moment before he sprawled in a clumsy pile of limbs.
Why? Mark tried to speak, to think his outrage, but the creature of smoke and steam pressed him back against the walls of darkness. Mark’s throat closed, his eyes bulged and he felt something inside himself rupture. The pain was instantaneous and unbearable.
I’ll take what I need from you when I need it. The voice was terrifying, that of a monstrous god capable of torturing him for all eternity. Until then, keep still.
Mark screamed; nothing came out. He tried to weep, to call for his mother, his father, anyone at all, but nothing changed. No thoughts breached the shallow well of his own mind. He forgot things the moment he dredged them up from his memory. There was no hope, no comfort; there was not even the relative relief that might come from an anguished cry or a desperate scream. There was only the realisation that he was trapped, frozen inside a stone slab.