Hoyt took Hannah’s arm. ‘Hannah, I don’t understand what you’re saying.’
Ignoring him, she kneeled beside Alen. ‘Where did you learn English?’
Obviously still quite drunk, Alen joked, ‘In a place where nice young girls don’t say “shit”.’
Grinding her teeth together, Hannah reached out and grabbed his cloak. Pulling him up, she spat, ‘Don’t fuck with me, old man. I have had just about enough of this godforsaken place. Now, where did you learn my language?’
Something moist trickled between Hannah’s fingers and left a trail of dull orange across her knuckles.
‘In England,’ Alen slurred matter-of-factly. ‘And you, I suppose you learned somewhere in America, right?’
‘South Denver,’ Hannah whispered, and let him go. ‘South Denver, Colorado, where I was born. In the United States of America. My world.’
She turned to Hoyt. ‘All right. You have my attention.’
‘I’m sorry, Hannah, but we don’t speak this tongue.’ Hoyt and Churn had not understood a word.
She switched back to Pragan. ‘Sorry.’
‘What is it?’
‘I’m sorry for what I said. It looks like you were right.’ She rubbed her hands together nervously. ‘This was the right place to start.’ Despite his pitiful appearance and his rancid smell, Alen had changed. He had moved slightly, shifting his entire being in a way Hannah couldn’t even begin to describe, but whatever he had done, he was suddenly a different person, a more confident person, merely draped in the carnage of eighteen months of drunkenness.
Alen tugged at the hem of Churn’s leggings and, suddenly polite, requested, ‘Churn, old man. Please take me outside to the trough. Dunk my head beneath the water repeatedly for half an aven, or until I throw up and start crying for my mother. Will you do that?’
A grin split Churn’s face. Hannah guessed he would set about his task with enthusiasm.
‘I need to wake up a bit. We have a great deal to discuss, young lady. I will be back momentarily. Please make yourselves comfortable.’
THE CAVERN
For the next twelve days the travellers aboard the Capina Fair lived and ate well. Although they never spoke of the wraith attack, Mark and Brynne grew strong once again, and any sign they had ever been invaded by the spirits soon faded. Similarly, Garec and Steven quickly recovered from their ordeal at the hand of the homicidal river creature. The staff had saved them both from drowning, and there appeared to be no other lasting physical effects of the attack. Garec swore he would never venture near water again: he would find Renna, return to Estrad and remain comfortably dry among the rolling hills of the forbidden forest for the rest of his days.
Brynne reminded him he was still spending the better part of every day and most nights aboard a raft in the middle of a river, which was decidedly wet.
‘Okay then, after this trip, I’m never going back in the water.’
‘So, you’ll never bathe?’ she teased.
‘Not often, no, and never in water deeper than my ankles,’ Garec shot back.
‘Imagine the stench.’
‘That’s fine,’ he joked, ‘I suppose I won’t have many friends, but then again, I won’t have strangely dressed foreigners dropping through the Fold, or thousand-Twinmoon-old sorcerers dragging me off on wild adventures in which invisible psychic creatures try to drown me before adding my body to their makeshift underwater sculptures, either.’
Steven chuckled and corrected him. ‘I think you mean psychotic,’ he said with a grin. The English words sounded strange, but sometimes there was no local equivalent. In spite of his smile Steven didn’t feel much like laughing. As they poled the Capina Fair downstream, he found himself periodically struck by bouts of insecurity and depression. The others noticed the gloominess that took hold of him whenever he considered the now-familiar length of hickory. Its failure to free them from the river’s grasp was the first time the magic had fallen short of Steven’s needs: the Seron, the grettan, the wraiths – even the almor – they’d fallen easily beneath its apparently endless reserves of power.
Now Steven was worried: he could no longer rely on the hickory staff. The magic might fail again, and next time the dwindling company might not be so lucky. He felt responsible for the others’ survival, and the magic’s failure on the riverbed sent his confidence reeling: what would happen when they came up against the enormous military and magical force awaiting them on the shore of the Ravenian Sea?
Grimacing, he tried to thrust the problem from his mind, telling himself he had never understood how the staff’s magic worked anyway, so he had no right to question or complain if it began to fade now. It had saved their lives several times, so he should just be grateful.
It wasn’t working. He wanted to have the staff’s power with him, to wrap himself in the sense of security it brought him. Defeating the wraith army had given him a sense of invincibility, a self-confidence he had never before experienced; at that moment he had been sure no force in Eldarn could stand against him. He supposed he was lucky that he and Garec had survived their first encounter with a power strong enough to render the staff useless.
Try as he might to push it away, there was something else troubling Steven. He had wielded a power greater than anything he could ever have imagined, and he liked it. He wanted it with him always – and he was certain it wanted him, that it had chosen him that evening in the foothills of the Blackstone Mountains. He was sure it had responded to his needs because it understood that compassion was right: terror and hatred had ruled Eldarn for generations, and the land was teetering on the brink of collapse. Compassion and caring, brotherhood and a sense of unity and understanding could save this beautiful, strange land; Steven was sure of it.
He could feel a memory of the magic, tingling through his arms and legs, as if the staff had read his mind and was responding to his reflections, encouraging him to believe that he was its rightful wielder, and that all would be well if he remained true. The desire to test it grew within him for a moment, but Steven forced the need back within the confines of his mind. It settled there, among his darkest desires, in a place he was certain everyone had but no one discussed: a cordoned-off section of himself where all his ugliest thoughts were trapped: the desire to feel the thrill of robbing a liquor store at gunpoint, to be a voyeur, to have desperate intercourse with a complete stranger, or to crash through mind-numbing rush-hour traffic and watch as rude commuters burned in a fiery conflagration – all lay sublimated in this do-not-enter region of his consciousness. They would be joined now by the desire to wield the world’s most powerful force, to consume it and become indestructible, confident and powerful – and, most of all, free from fear.
Steven fought his almost overwhelming need to embrace the magic, to let it take him and make him into the instrument of Nerak’s destruction. That might be his eventual end, but until he knew that for certain, he would keep it at arm’s length. He didn’t understand the magic, and after his failure on the river bottom he knew he couldn’t always control it, but it was there, lurking patiently until it was needed.
He felt the power run along his forearms and out into his fingertips, prickly and stinging; it flickered briefly and then faded. All at once he was less-than-himself again.
The journey downstream from Meyers’ Vale through the rolling hills of southern Falkan had been marked by good weather, unlimited fresh fish, wild fruits and nuts, and even a large game bird Garec had brought down, a gansel; it tasted not unlike turkey to the Coloradoans, but Garec’s uncontrollable bellowing laughter when they named it in English was enough to convince them to abandon any further comparisons.
It was too late: throughout the following day, Garec continued trying out the word, as if he were going to perform for an audience. ‘Turkey, tur-key, turk-ey,’ he repeated over and over again, trying different inflections until Brynne was ready to throw him into the river herself. ‘What a strange language you speak. I’m amazed you can understand one another at all.’