Lessek's Key

by Rob Scott, Jay Gordon

Genres: Fantasy; Epic Fantasy; Urban Fantasy

Synopsis

The Larion spell table has been dormant for nearly a thousand Twinmoons. It waits in a forgotten chamber in Sandcliff Palace, the abandoned Larion Senate stronghold on Eldarn's North Sea. The spell table holds the power to see the people of the five lands safely through the oppression and brutality that have haunted them for generations, but without Lessek's key it is a worthless slab of granite - and Lessek's key itself is just a nondescript stone Steven Taylor and Mark Jenkins overlooked on the night they fell through the far portal into Eldarn. Retrieving the key and freeing Eldarn's people rests with Steven Taylor, the would-be sorcerer from Colorado, who is racing across America with Nerak, the fallen Larion dictator, hot on his heels. Steven must reach Idaho Springs and find Lessek's key before it falls into Nerak's hands and is lost for ever - and with it, the lives of untold millions, in both of Steven's worlds.

Release date: December 23, 2010

Publisher: Gollancz

Print pages: 550

Sample

The creature huddles in the recessed doorway of a waterfront tavern. Closed now, and empty, the windows look in on an abyss,
a room so shrouded in middlenight that the glass might mark the entrance to the Fold itself. Light from sporadic sentinel
torches left burning along the Orindale waterfront reflect off the windows, but, ignoring the laws of physics, their glow
doesn’t bring any illumination to the darkened tavern; the diffuse glow merely bounces back.


The creature knows well that places exist where nothing matters, where light cannot penetrate, where the absence of perception
provides for the absence of reality. The Fold. Isn’t that how the old man described it? It’s worse than death, because death,
like life or love, is held so close. Death has meaning; it’s a profound event, feared above most horrors, but meaningful nevertheless.
This place is worse, more tragic: the Fold embodied. This is a place so devoid of colour and touch, scent and sound, that
nothing can survive. This is the place mothers go after the broken bodies of their children are found washed up on a beach
or lying in pieces across a field. It’s the end of all things, the event horizon.


Nothing can remain here long – except for the creature. Stooped and broken, hunched at the waist and dragging much of its
torso like a disintegrating appendage, the thing in the doorway resembles a tree that has lived too long, the victim of too
many woodsmen hacking deep, disfiguring scars. It can stand upright, but that’s painful, that requires effort, and hope, and
the creature refuses to have hope. Instead, it waits. Fortified by its ability to see and understand its own condition, as
if seeing itself from above, the creature becomes the darkness, dragging it along as it drags its own body. It sees the mossy
nubs that work their way through the rotting planks of the waterfront walkways. It steps in the puddles of piss and vomit
that surround the taverns. It watches rats battling over half-stripped chicken bones tossed from windows two and three floors
up, and insects devouring half-digested bits of venison regurgitated by drunks reeling towards home, their ships, maybe, or
the downy beds of the local whores.


One night it finds a finger, lost in a bar fight and on another, a portion of someone’s ear, which it turns over and over
in its fingers, trying to imagine the whole from which this bit was severed. Finally, it stashes the lobe in its robes, tucked
beside the finger, the chicken bones and the bits of venison, before starting out again.


This wretched thing would be willing to die if it were willing to allow itself an experience so meaningful. Its pallid flesh
is hidden beneath the folds of a stolen cloak as it stares out at the Orindale night, listening, waiting and planning. It
does have a mission: it is driven by its desire to hunt and kill the black and gold soldiers. There are so many; thousands
have come here, and it kills one, two, sometimes five in a night. Men or women, it doesn’t care. It doesn’t dismember them,
or eat them – not much of them anyway, there is plenty of food along the waterfront – and nor does it perform deviant acts
with their corpses. Instead, the creature slices them open: through the neck is quiet, but the gullet works well, too. It
finds some strange satisfaction watching the young Malakasians struggling to replace handfuls of innards, as if packing lengths
of moist summer sausage into a torn canvas sack. From some come moist clouds of exsanguinous fog, particularly when they are
gutted in the early morning.


The creature’s pain comes and goes, but when it strikes it is searing, nearly unbearable. Beginning in its neck and shoulders,
the fire bolts across its back, paralysing its legs and forcing it ever deeper into its crouch. Though it cannot remember
the past very well, it knows that it has brought this upon itself. There are hazy recollections of a frigid river, a flat
rock, and an aborted attempt to straighten itself, to regain its previous form, but it did great damage that day, hurling
itself repeatedly against the unforgiving stone. Then the pain was glorious, making it see things, hallucinations, nearly
translucent lights like wraiths scurrying over hillsides and flitting between sap-stained pine trunks. Now it salves its wounds
with the black and gold soldiers.


They’ll never capture it. They’ve tried. It outsmarts them easily; it avoids their snares, because it lives among the things
that crawl and slither on the ground, safely beneath the gaze of the Malakasian occupation army.


A stray dog happens by, a filthy, disagreeable mutt with mangy fur, a pronounced limp and a broken canine uselessly askew in its lower jaw. The dog gives the creature a low growl, a warning,
more out of fear than any real threat. But it’s too late. Brandishing a long knife, the creature pounces. Cat-quick and deadly,
it buries its knife in the dog’s throat and twists with such force the stray can do little more than yelp before dying on
the cobblestones.


The hood of its cloak falls across its shoulders, revealing an ashen face, a man’s face, sickly-white like the colour of spoiled
milk. His eyes focus on nothing. Though bent, he is a big man, and powerful. He doesn’t feel remorse: the animal will make
a tasty breakfast and, if he rations the meat, lunch too.


The creature – the man – is distracted by something. Licking at the bloody knife, he peers into the darkness hovering over
the harbour. He can make out flames, watch-fires, he assumes, that burn on bowsprits, jib-booms, and stern rails though they
appear to float above the water. He closes his eyes and listens: something has happened. One of the ships is coming apart;
even from this distance, he can hear beams splintering, masts collapsing and planks pulling free and snapping like hickory
knots in a bonfire. He judges the distance at well over a thousand paces and decides it can be only one ship. Hazy recollections
taunt from just beyond the periphery of his consciousness, and a feeling: this is good, this vessel snapping in two and sinking
to the bottom of Orindale Harbour – but he can’t recall why.


Without warning, and surprising himself, he speaks. ‘They must have made it.’ Then he looks around in terror. ‘What does that
mean? Who said that?’


‘They must have made it,’ he repeats and this time realises he has spoken. He is hearing his own voice. It’s as if he hid
part of himself, enough to preserve the integrity of who he was … hid it far enough away to allow himself … the creature,
that is … to eat things like discarded fish innards, severed ears or vomited venison bits. But he is close enough to hear
when his doppelgänger speaks.


‘Say that again.’ He is looking anxiously about the abandoned waterfront, still aware of the cataclysm taking place in the
harbour, but ignoring it for the moment. ‘Say that again.’


‘The ship, the Prince Marek, they must have reached it.’


Bending slowly, an indistinct blur in the darkness, the hunched creature sheathes his long knife. He peers side to side, aware
there are things he doesn’t understand, and mumbles, ‘Good then … back to the hunt.’


Sallax Farro of Estrad tucks the dog’s limp form beneath his cloak, pulls his hood up and hurries south along the wharf.


A tangible silence like a spectre creeps across the countryside. Trees ignore the wind and stand upright; leaves quiet their
rustle as onshore breezes fade to a whisper. Waves lapping against the shoreline flatten to nearly indiscernible ripples;
seabirds land and nest, their heads tucked protectively beneath wings. Even the northern Twinmoon appears to dim, as if unwilling
to illuminate Nerak’s disappearance.


All of southern Falkan draws its shades, closes its doors and waits. Nerak is gone, and Eldarn has not yet decided how it
will respond. Like a battered child finally witnessing her father’s arrest, the very fabric holding this strange and beautiful
land together rumbles with a growing desire to scream out We are free!, but those screams emerge as a nearly inaudible whimper. Many feel the dark prince’s exit, shuddering for a moment, and then
returning to the business of their lives. There is a status quo to be maintained. There are expectations and accountability
because, of course, the dark prince may return.


South of the city is a meadow, just above the inter-tidal zone: more of an upland bog, rife with sedge, rushes and coarse
coastal grass. The meadow, flanked on three sides by the scrub-oak and heavy needle pines that mark the sandy edge of the
Ravenian Sea, is an anomaly. The expanse of thick foliage and dense fertile soil, thanks to a narrow stream rushing by just
out of sight behind a stand of pines, form an unexpected oasis trapped between the intimidating Blackstone peaks to the east
and the cold salt waters to the west.


On this night, the meadow grasses are brushed back and forth by Twinmoon breezes charging unchecked north and south along
the narrow channel. Painted pale Twinmoon white, the grasses glow with the muted brilliance of a snowfield at midday.


Gabriel O’Reilly appears, interrupting the ghostly surface, a blurry cloud of spectral smoke. His battle with the almor has
taken him across the Fold, through the great emptiness and within a breath of the evil force lying restlessly inside. He has
seen the centre of the world, has passed through the dead of the Northern Forest and through the great cataclysm that pushes
the edges of the universe ever outwards. It is all he can do to maintain his sanity as he looks into the face of a god – it
must be a god, for nothing else could generate such beauty, such destruction and such pure, uncomplicated power. But this isn’t
his God; he’s not home yet.


Gabriel O’Reilly has felt the fires of the demon lands, smelled their putrid stench and sensed their inhabitants: legions
of creatures marshalling their resources in an effort to weaken his resolve and purloin his very essence. At times, he has
seen home, Virginia, and though he doubts any of it is real, he imagines he can smell it, touch it, feel those lush rolling
hills beneath his bare feet. Slamming through forests and burrowing through mountains, O’Reilly and the almor careen, a tangle
of demon limbs in a ghostly fog across time and worlds. As they pass through the pristine wilderness of his home, he checks
beyond the rise of each hill, hoping for just one glimpse of a Confederate brigade marching to face the Army of Northeastern
Virginia.


And all the while he holds on to the demon almor, the one sent to take Versen and Brexan, the only friends he’s made in five
lifetimes, forcing himself to remember why he grips the creature so hard, hanging on despite the drain on his sanity.


Now the almor is gone. O’Reilly has no idea how long they have battled, but suddenly the demon vanishes, falling away into
the burned over wastelands of a distant world. It is as if its will to engage him has run dry.


Has it been days? Years? O’Reilly doesn’t care. Instead, he casts his senses about the meadow, detecting no sign of Brexan,
Versen or the scarred Seron they fought together. As much as he can remember of disappointment, the spirit feels it now. He
had hoped that beating the almor would have given him a way home: the path to heaven, the right to look upon the face of his
own God.


But it hasn’t happened, and he is still here in Eldarn. O’Reilly floats above the meadow another moment, his indistinct face
a mask of loneliness; then without a sound he slips between the trees and disappears into the forest.


He is not gone a moment when others appear along the edge of the meadow, following O’Reilly through the trees, hunting him.
One, the leader, pauses to stare across the Ravenian Sea. It has been many years since William Higgins has seen the sea, long
before his daughter was born, before he left his family in St Louis to seek his fortune in the mountains above Oro City, Colorado.
He turns after the others; they are close behind O’Reilly now. As the cavalry soldier-turned-miner fades from view, his ghostly
white boots pass through a fallen cottonwood tree. The sound of a spur, chiming through the ages, rings once above the din
of the onshore breeze.


*

Although the sounds of the Prince Marek shattering in the harbour do not reach her, Brexan Carderic is unable to sleep. Moving north, she is less than a day
outside Orindale, expecting to reach the outskirts of the Falkan capital before dawn. She doesn’t hear the Prince Marek coming apart, but the stillness that follows in the wake of the ship’s death reaches her. She makes her barefoot way slowly
along the shore, recalling the loss of her boots, discarded in the Ravenian Sea after she cut Versen loose from the stern
rail of the fat merchant’s ship. With every step towards the city, the Malakasian imagines first how she will find this man
and second how she will torture him when she does. Burning Versen’s body was the most difficult thing she’d ever done, yet
she did it meticulously, thinking she will have one chance to get something right, but she will live with its memory for ever.
She chose every branch carefully, avoiding green wood so her fire would blaze quickly into a fury. Even as the flames claimed
Versen’s body, Brexan sat, imagining the horror of failing to get that first spark to kindle.


She cries as she remembers that day, sitting by his side, rising only to find a piece of scrub-oak, a pine bough or a thatch
of cedar brambles. She didn’t speak to him, or kiss him goodbye, nor did she take any of his scant belongings as keepsakes.
Instead, she sat with him, watching as his pyre burned down and eventually out.


Mark Jenkins stands on the forward bench of a small skiff borrowed from an elderly fisherman he believes now to be the Larion
Senator, Gilmour Stow of Estrad. He has a half-moon gash above one eye, and blood clouds his vision. Mark thinks he must have
been hit by a splinter of glass when what was left of the aft end of the Prince Marek began breaking apart; he ignores the bleeding and, screaming out her name, searches the wreckage for any sign of Brynne.
He scans the castaway spars, rails, barrels, beams and sections of sailcloth that have begun floating away. He has given up
hope that the Pragan woman will appear alongside the skiff, offer him an alluring grin and ask if she might come aboard. He
tries to spot a pale upper arm, a bare cheek, temple or even a supple leg in the light cast across Orindale Harbour by the
northern Twinmoon.


Before him, the great sailing vessel sinks away. Apart from avoiding the undertow as the tons of metal, wood and tar careen
towards the bottom, Mark doesn’t give the remains of the Prince Marek more than a glance. He is shouting Brynne’s name, but it fails to occur to him that Steven and Gilmour might be lost as well.


Then a thought nudges him. There’s something … he has seen something, something he can’t remember at the moment, but even
that is enough to give him pause, to turn him around stiffly, a mannequin on a rotating pedestal. The last few minutes have
been too traumatic; his search for Brynne has distracted him. There are other problems, other threats.


Where’s Garec?

They left him sleeping in the catboat. That isn’t it. There’s something more.

Versen? No.

Mark’s voice fades until he can barely hear himself whisper the Ronan woman’s name.

The clouds. Those clouds of mist. Where are they?

He saw one; it had been coming out over the harbour, right before the ship shattered in two. He searches the night, rubbing
a sleeve across his face to wipe the blood from his eyes. There it is. It’s as if a black fogbank has blown west to hover over the harbour. Despite Mark’s certainty that he witnessed the cloud
moving away from shore, towards the Prince Marek, not ten minutes earlier, now it looks to have stopped – not retreated; rather, it remains stolidly in place, about
two hundred yards off the waterfront. But it’s frozen there, impervious to the efforts of the onshore breeze to carry it back
into town, thicker than any normal cloud and heavier than fog ought to be. Like a column of ethereal soldiers poised to charge,
the mist looks as though it is awaiting its next set of orders: fall on the partisans and kill them all, or perhaps, return to the city and await further instructions.

If the cloud advances, he’ll swamp the skiff, turn it over and hide in the air pocket below, praying the thin boards of the
fisherman’s boat will be enough to stave off the deadly fumes. Mark clears his throat and begins shouting again for Brynne.


Gilmour Stow allows himself to be pulled beneath the surface as the colossal ship sinks by the bow, then, opening his eyes,
mumbles a quick spell in a cloud of bubbles, and his underwater vision improves. Brighter, nearly in focus now, the Prince Marek floats effortlessly towards the bottom, picking up speed and casting off loose cargo, rigging and more than a few bodies.
It’s a beautiful sight; ironic and tragic that such a ship would look most glorious when wrapped jib to spanker in the very
water that buoyed her for so many Twinmoons. He watches until it disappears from view.


In one hand, Gilmour clasps Steven Taylor’s hickory staff and in the other, the only existing copy of Lessek’s spells, notes
and reflections on the nature of magic and the Larion spell table. He had been so certain the book had been lost a thousand
Twinmoons earlier; he curses himself for not realising Nerak had it all along. He is a powerful foe. Thinking back to their
battle just moments earlier, Gilmour wonders if the fallen Larion magician had given his best: granted, it had been a titanic
blow, and it had required all of Gilmour’s concentration to keep from being pulverised. But had it been Nerak’s best? Had he really felt the sum force of the dark prince’s power? Kicking towards the surface, he wonders if Nerak was telling
the truth: That was naught but the tiniest of tastes, Fantus, a minuscule sample drawn from the very furthest reaches of my power.

The only blow Nerak had an opportunity to land: had it been a feint, a flick of the wrist? Would a focused spell, carefully
woven over time, tear Gilmour to ribbons or reduce him to dust? He hopes he will be in possession of Lessek’s key and in control
of the spell table before he has to discover the full extent of Nerak’s power.


Clutching the staff close, Gilmour emerges from the depths and immediately forgets the dark prince. Fear and regret seize
him as he hears Mark Jenkins, nearby but invisible in the darkness, screaming Brynne’s name.


‘Rutters!’ the older man murmurs, realising Brynne is lost.

It’s not the crashing and snapping of beams in the Prince Marek that finally wakes Garec Haile of Estrad, but the faint sound of shouting. His gaze slowly focuses on the heavy weave
of a blanket he borrowed from his sister’s room the previous Twinmoon. The archer wriggles to a sitting position, shrugging
off layers of wool, draws a few stabilising breaths and feels the gentle undulating rhythm of the harbour tide. ‘I’m on the
boat,’ he says out loud.


In a rush, the events of the past avens return; he jerks himself upright. ‘Steven! I’ve been shot. Oh, gods, I’ve been shot!’
He reaches for the arrow, the black Malakasian arrow he knows he will find jutting crookedly from his ribs – but despite the
recollection of an intense burning pain as the polished shale pierced his skin, the young freedom fighter can find no sign
of injury. ‘Gone,’ he says, feeling nothing but a tear in his tunic and the sticky remnants of blood drying on his clothing.
‘How can this be?’


Wishing for more light to conduct a thorough examination, Garec takes a deep breath. There is no rattle, no telltale vibration
of fluid pooling in his lungs. He places a hand over his heart; it, too, seems strong, thrumming beneath his fingers.


Standing, Garec’s legs falter for a moment and he nearly topples headfirst into Orindale Harbour. Balancing, he stretches
and cautiously considers his apparent good health. ‘I’m all right,’ he whispers and only then realises he is alone on the
catboat. ‘Where is everybody?’


Garec’s question is answered with another cry, faint but urgent. He feels his stomach roil as it comes again: ‘Brynne!’, a
sob recognisable in the distant voice. Instinctively, Garec reaches for his bow.


It’s not there.

For a moment, he feels a nearly overwhelming sense of relief. He hoists the vessel’s small sail and almost immediately it
is captured by the onshore breeze; the keel turns lazily in a loping circle towards the wharf. ‘Rutting boats,’ he grumbles,
picking his way aft to the tiller. ‘I’ll be out here for the next Twinmoon.’


‘Brynne!’ The hopeless cry resonates through his bones; Garec guesses that his friend is dead. What happened? How long had
he slept? Had they tried to take the Prince Marek without him? Awkwardly, he pulls the sail taut and gropes for a wooden stanchion along the starboard gunwale; failing to
find one, he hangs on to the line in one hand while wresting the tiller with the other to bring the boat about. Navigating
as best he can in the moonlit darkness, he sets a course for the sound of the distraught voice.


Carpello Jax shifts three candles closer to the polished looking-glass propped above his fireplace mantel. His beard is coming
on nicely: step one in his transformation.


Sweat dampens his face and neck despite the evening breeze. He drags a ruffled linen sleeve across his forehead, a frequent
move over the past several days. Not that it has been warm in Orindale; rather, Carpello sweats because he is grossly overweight,
and because he anticipates his audience with Prince Malagon. He is sure the dark one knows Carpello’s schooner is moored in
the harbour; it won’t be much longer before he’s summoned to the royal residence to present his report. Carpello has prepared
a convoluted tangle of lies and remains confident he can sell his story to Prince Malagon: he is a businessman, and he lies
for a living.


Through the open windows, Carpello hears the sounds of a cataclysm unfolding in the harbour, but for the moment he doesn’t
move to investigate. He is nervous, and that has awakened a handful of sublimated memories. The most tenacious this evening is Versen, the woodsman. Carpello runs a hand across the ample hillock
of his abdomen, touching the wound dealt him by the woman just before she went overboard in an effort to free the troublesome
Ronan. Carpello had meant to interrogate the girl and then to give her to his crew as a diversion, but things had gone terribly
wrong. By the end of that day, he had lost both prisoners and his Seron escort.


Carpello grimaces. It will be a difficult tale to weave for the prince; he reviews his own version once again, to ensure all
the details are committed to memory, as if they had actually occurred. The sweaty businessman knows the secret to successful
lying is believing one’s own fabrications; Prince Malagon will be Carpello ‘s most challenging audience yet.


Outside, there is another explosion, but Carpello’s thoughts are still with the woodsman. Even facing torture and death, the
young man had surprised him: ‘A very good friend of mine looks forward to meeting you,’ he had said. ‘If I were you, I would
take my own life rather than ever run into her again.’


‘A woman? I shall be enchanted, I’m sure,’ Carpello had responded.

‘You’ll be dead,’ the Ronan had answered flatly, ‘and she’ll make it last for Twinmoons … a grisly death is on its way to
Orindale right now.’


Had Versen been bluffing? Carpello wipes the sweat from around his eyes once more. He doesn’t believe so. Versen had sounded
convincing: a specific woman wanted to find and kill him. But why? Carpello feigns ignorance for a moment, trying out his
‘innocent’ face in the candlelit looking-glass. He watches it fall away. He knows why.


Reaching into his belt, he withdraws a thin fillet knife with a tapered point and a polished edge. Wiping it on a chamois,
he leans in close to the mirror and, with a steady hand, slices the bulbous mole from the side of his disfigured nose: step
two.


Blood blooms from the wound, dripping from Carpello’s sagging jowls to stain the frilly ruffles of his linen shirt. He sways
unsteadily, feeling faint. His vision tunnelling, he staggers backwards to sit with a groan in a nearby chair. Carpello Jax
begins to cry as Versen’s voice echoes grimly in his head: You’ll be dead … and she will make it last for Twinmoons.



Alen Jasper wakes, groans, rolls to one side and vomits repeatedly into a ceramic pot beside his bed. Too much wine tonight. Too much wine every night. Spitting between dry heaves, the former Larion Senator runs a wrist over his mouth and then his forehead: cold sweats; he
might be sick.


‘Nonsense,’ the old man tells his darkened room. ‘You haven’t been sick in eighteen hundred Twinmoons. You drink too rutting
much. That’s all, no need to lie about it now.’ He’s interrupted by the need to retch, but this time Alen vomits on the floor;
the contents of the ceramic pot are too foul for a second round. Collapsing onto his back, he stares at the ceiling and feels
the tremors begin. ‘Pissing demons, you can’t need a drink already.’ With a frustrated curse, he promises to deny himself
another drop until after sunset the following day. ‘Suffer, you drunk fool. Go ahead and shake.’ The sweat rolls from his
forehead, tickling the sensitive skin behind his ears and staining his already damp pillow grey.


Alen breathes shallowly in an effort to ease the pain in his head and calm the angry waste churning in his stomach. He reaches
for a cloth draped across a bedside chair. It’s a gesture he has perfected over hundreds of evenings similar to this, but
tonight something is different. The cloth feels odd in his hands, as if his fingers, deadened from Twinmoons of drinking and
malnutrition, have suddenly rejuvenated themselves. The cloth is softer; he can feel wrinkles, tiny imperfections in the weave
that he has not noticed before. He catches the fleeting aroma of beeswax from a taper burning on his mantel.


He stops wiping his face and inhales deeply. Behind the grim flavour of his vomit and beyond the sharp tang of the candle,
he finds it: roast gansel. Churn prepared the meal two nights ago, and the smell is still hanging about his house. He hasn’t
been able to detect aromas like this in fifty Twinmoons.


Alen swings his feet over the edge of the bed, outside the splatter of this evening’s meal – he can’t recall what it was –
and onto the floor. He runs a hand through sweaty hair and whispers, ‘What’s happened to me?’


Moving to an armoire near the window, Alen splashes generous handfuls of cold water on his face and feels the familiar sensation
as it trickles beneath his tunic to dribble down his back. The cold slaps him awake and he shivers, a genuine shiver rather
than the all-too-common drink-shakes that generally visit him in the predawn aven. He pulls off his rank clothes and considers
himself in the glass.


‘Fat, you rutter.’ Alen purses his lips disgustedly. ‘How did you get here?’

He is unaware that a Twinmoon’s travel to the east, Prince Malagon’s flagship is sinking, nor does he realise that a Larion
far portal has been opened and that Steven Taylor and the dark prince have both crossed the Fold in search of Lessek’s key.
Alen is powerful enough to have detected the brief but powerful battle between Fantus and Nerak only a half aven earlier,
but Alen’s senses were dulled, from apathy, alcohol and grief. He sta