Arriving at the aqueduct, Steven and Gilmour huddled amongst the trees that grew along the base of the stone waterway. The Larion aqueduct was enormous, a marvel of engineering and architecture, the gigantic mortared stone archways supporting a veritable river; they climbed the hillside to the top of the mountain. Steven had no doubt that Larion Senators had spent time in Italy during the Renaissance.
He whistled quietly as he looked up the bone-grey wall to where a stream of water ran into the cisterns beneath Sandcliff’s east wing. ‘Sheez, Gilmour,’ Steven shook his head. ‘You didn’t mention it was quite this big.’
‘What can I say? We had a lot of fountains. We had hundreds of students studying at the university,’ Gilmour replied. ‘Now will you tell me what you plan to do?’
‘Well, I will tell you that I don’t plan to get killed,’ Steven said, ‘just in case you were wondering.’
‘It had crossed my mind…’
Peeking beneath one of the stone arches, Steven could see that the clouds continued to work their insidious magic, dissolving what was left of the tower to rubble. Soon they would break through the walls of the main building, and from there it was just a short step to Mark and Garec’s hiding place.
Tucking the hickory staff into his belt, Steven climbed the aqueduct and carefully ran along the narrow edge – keeping his feet dry for as long as possible was critical; he didn’t want to alert the almor until the last possible moment.
He moved quickly back down the slope to where the aqueduct spilled through a tiny breach in the palace wall and into the great cistern. Once he found a suitable spot he stepped into the ankle-deep stream of rushing water and bent low to examine the joints between two of the sections of funnel-shaped ceramic tubing the water ran in. He found an old carpentry nail holding them together and scraped a fingernail across the metallic head, then rubbed his fingertip against the fleshy part of his thumb. ‘Good enough,’ he said to himself, then turned towards the acid clouds and began to shout.
‘Hey! Hey you, over there, you- whatever you are, cloud things! I’m over here! Come on over and get me!’ Steven shouted, trying to taunt the clouds into attacking him; he had never realised how difficult it was to insult a cloud. Still screaming into the sky, he felt the hickory staff warm into a rage once again. This had to work. He just needed one more thing to fall into place.
Steven stood in the water, taking a gamble that the magic had driven the almor far enough out of the palace that the creature wouldn’t come up behind him from somewhere in the cistern. It had been a powerful blast – and he knew the staff had enough strength to kill an almor; he had done it before. It had most likely been driven up into the mountains, where it would wait for another opportunity to ambush them, but Steven wasn’t willing to sit around and be hunted by a demon every time he took a drink of water. He stomped his feet in the aqueduct stream, egging the almor on, while he continued to berate the far-off acid clouds.
Then the twin clouds broke away from the north tower and, independent of the prevailing winds, moved over to where Steven waited, the staff a red glow of vengeance in his fists. ‘Come on, come on you bastards,’ Steven said, uncertain if the clouds could hear him. They had detected him there, and that was enough. Now he needed the almor. He looked for Gilmour below in the trees, but the old man was nowhere to be found, probably hiding in the shadows.
He stomped his feet again, splashing as much as possible without tumbling over the side and plummeting to a broken neck on the frozen ground below. ‘Come on, where are you?’ he shouted. ‘Come and get me, you bastard, I’m right here – I’m standing in the water, for Christ’s sake. What more do you need, a goddamned invitation?’
Looking back to the clouds, he realised it was too late: they would be on him before he had a chance to draw the almor in for the kill. ‘Motherless dry-humping bastards,’ he cursed; this was bad luck: the almor could hit him at any time, probably while he was busy battling the clouds.
‘Shit and double red shit,’ he said, ‘burned to death with acid while being sucked dry by a waterlogged demon. This was a great idea, Steven. No, really, one of your absolute best!’
He waited, furious; the acid clouds were coming, with or without the almor, and he was about to fight. He took a deep breath, murmured insults at the acid monsters, and braced for their assault – until Gilmour’s shouting and splashing distracted him from his immediate doom. The old man was dancing and jumping about barefoot in the water near the top of the aqueduct and even from this distance, he could hear the song Gilmour was singing, an off-key, off-colour ode to a sexually active young man with a wooden leg, surely one of the most hilarious pieces of folk poetry he had ever heard. But now was most definitely not the time; he was quite sure that Gilmour had gone stark raving mad.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Steven shouted, looking back and forth between the dancing sorcerer and the clouds. ‘You’re going to get yourself killed. Take cover. Get out of here now!’
But Gilmour danced and sang; jumping about, he was a dripping mess of wet wool and matted hair – until the Larion Senator turned suddenly and gestured over his shoulder.
The almor was coming.
‘Get down, Gilmour, jump for it,’ Steven cried, but the last few words were lost. The clouds were just overhead.
Gilmour screamed again and Steven risked watching as the old man took a few tottering steps towards him, then dived headlong into the smooth ceramic channel. Steven was surprised by Gilmour’s over-the-edge antics, until he realised that Gilmour’s cry had been one of excitement, not fear or panic, as he came onwards, head-first and bellowing the third verse defiantly. Out of nowhere, Steven recalled a water-park near Denver where periodically a drunk forty-year-old would leap headfirst down the tallest slide and end up airlifted to the nearest hospital. He wondered what might happen when a three-hundred-year-old man tried his hand at such a game.
As he came closer, Gilmour’s song changed from the rhythmic thump of a drinking tune; now he was shouting, ‘Behind me, Steven, look behind me!’
Finally he realised what the crazy sorcerer had been doing as an ivory blur pursued him down the aqueduct, rapidly closing the distance between them. Timing would be everything if this were to work. Steven stepped out of the stream and stood astride the chute on tiptoes, hoping he’d left enough space for Gilmour to pass between his legs. His eyes moved from the almor to the acid clouds: the demon was coming fast, almost too fast now, down the chute, nothing more than a hillock of fast-moving current. Above, the clouds were massing, one spinning tumult of acid death.
Steven found himself remembering a science class on weather: were these stratocumulus, cumulonimbus, stratonymphopolyphonic – whatever? They were weaving themselves together to rain their deadly fluid down on this young fool – and, in a stroke of great luck, poison the water in the palace at the same time.
The almor was close now and Steven watched as one shapeless arm broke the surface and stretched towards Gilmour’s feet. In another few seconds it would have him. ‘Hurry, Gilmour, come on,’ Steven urged under his breath, and called forth the magic of the hickory staff, right at his fingertips The acid cloud dropped, a terrifying storm of pestilence and burning death. It was little more than twenty feet above his head when Steven glimpsed the old man passing beneath him and with a primitive cry, he slammed the hickory staff down into the water between Gilmour and the almor. His magic responded instantaneously, blowing the stream up and out into the acid storm above, carrying the almor aloft as well. Its cry was deafening, reverberating waves of punishing sound.
Steven intensified the magic, calling forth all the water from the aqueduct, throwing great waves of icy snowmelt overhead.
He caught every drop of water and cast it skywards, and when the half-moon channel was empty, the hickory staff pulled forth reserves of water from the mountains, deep caverns of inky-black water, summoned into the skies above Sandcliff Palace. Wave after wave drenched the acid cloud, and when the deadly nimbus realised what was happening, it tried to flee.