‘The almor drains the life force from its victims. The Seron have had their souls ripped from their bodies.’
‘Well, we don’t really know that,’ Brynne said. ‘Who knows what Gilmour meant when he said “soul”?’
‘Right,’ Mark agreed, ‘but you must agree something about their individuality, their essence, has been forcibly removed.’
‘Agreed.’
Mark pulled socks over his freezing feet. ‘The wraiths are the imprisoned souls, if we can call that essence a soul, of Nerak’s victims through time. He takes over their bodies and discards the physical being, but keeps the soul, the essence, with him. He keeps it prisoner and can control it, send it against us, and force it to kill.’
‘Okay, I understand what you’re saying, but I still don’t know what you mean.’ Steven was racking his brain, trying to get in tune with Mark’s thinking.
‘Neither do I, yet,’ Mark answered despondently. ‘It’s just that if he has a weakness, I believe this is the way to determine what it is.’
‘This continuum of whole to less-than-whole?’ Brynne was still struggling with the concept.
‘Nerak and the almor are whole, evil, and filled with the life force of thousands of dead. The Seron are still evil, but devoid of that same essence.’
‘And they are alive,’ Steven suggested.
‘Right,’ Mark nodded, ‘unlike the wraiths.’
‘But wait a moment,’ Brynne said, ‘Gabriel O’Reilly seemed alive to me. Granted, a different form to any living thing I’d encountered before, but he certainly didn’t seem dead.’
‘A good point,’ Mark acknowledged. ‘On the other hand, the wraiths, alive or not, are certainly less-than-whole, less real, less
… well, less substantial than the others.’
‘So do we need to redefine what it means to be alive to defeat Nerak?’
‘I don’t know.’ Mark was getting frustrated that his hypothesis was no more clear than it had been when he had awakened several hours earlier. ‘Maybe not alive, but possessing the essence of life.’
‘How is that a weapon?’ Brynne fingered the hunting knife at her belt.
‘It can only be a weapon for us if it works against evil,’ Steven tried.
‘Not against evil, but maybe against Nerak,’ Mark responded. ‘It may be a simple question of perception.’
‘Perception?’ Steven mulled the word over for a moment. ‘So, the evil that possesses Nerak may only be as powerful as it is perceived to be by the people of Eldarn?’
‘Or it may only be as powerful as it perceives Nerak to be – or, better yet, as powerful as it perceived Nerak to be when it took him nine hundred and eighty Twinmoons ago.’ Mark was speaking quickly, trying to sneak up on his conclusion through sheer speed.
Brynne kicked pebbles into the lake. ‘If Nerak has a weakness, then perhaps the evil minion that controls him has the same weakness.’
‘Because it doesn’t know any better.’ Mark was lacing up his boots.
‘But where is that weakness? It certainly isn’t anything Nerak has acquired since he forfeited his soul to evil.’ Steven groaned. They were heading around the same block once again.
‘It is perception.’ Mark scratched at the several days’ beard growth jutting from his chin. ‘What if Nerak had a weakness way back when, but he didn’t believe it? He never admitted it to himself, so as far as he was concerned, there was no one more powerful in all Eldarn.’
‘And the evil minion believed him?’ Brynne sounded sceptical.
‘Why not? In Nerak’s mind it was absolute truth, regardless of how false it might actually have been. Evil arrives via the spell table in its purist form. It takes over Nerak’s body, devouring his soul, the soul of the most powerful sorcerer in Eldarn. So anything Nerak believed to be fact would influence the emergence of evil in Eldarn.
‘Remember what Gilmour said? That evil arrives in tiny pieces and is scattered by the sheer demand of so many people thinking ugly thoughts or committing nasty deeds. But we all know evil is nothing more than perception. One person’s evil might be another’s righteousness. So, Nerak, as weak as he might have been, did have an impact on the evolution of this particular minion.’
‘That’s fine, but I have to ask again: where is the weakness? And surely evil would have figured it out in the past nine hundred and eighty Twinmoons and dealt with it – or gone off to possess a different sorcerer?’ Steven asked.
‘That’s where things begin to unravel in my mind,’ Mark admitted. ‘And I keep coming back to the victims and the creatures. How is it that Lahp and O’Reilly were both able to escape him? What about those common denominators – what can they teach us about Nerak before he was taken himself?’
‘Maybe it requires those souls to continue its domination, perpetuate its power and maintain its status as the most evil thing known. Perhaps there is greater evil, more powerful evil, but it remains unknown, so this evil actually has limits.’ Brynne was still trying to understand; she was beginning to think she would rather have been ordered to drink the lake dry.
‘I’d hate to bet on that. I’d hate to bet on something unknown, never known.’ Steven said.
‘We may have to,’ Mark said grimly. ‘But that’s not all of it. That’s not enough.’ Mark’s frustration was contagious. ‘Let’s say the evil that possesses Nerak was misled. Nerak was never as powerful as he believed when he was taken at Sandcliff Palace. The minion that took him knows what he knows and understands what he understands-’
‘That he is the most powerful and dangerous man in Eldarn,’ Brynne said.
‘Right,’ Mark agreed. ‘But he is not. Would the evil minion be limited to the things Nerak is able to do, to control, or to bring about as a result of his magic?’
Steven chimed in, ‘That might explain why all the creatures he summons or creates seem to spring from the same origins: that might be evidence of his limitations – deadly and nearly indestructible evidence, but evidence just the same.’
‘It would,’ Mark agreed, ‘and because the evil that controls him takes Nerak’s truths at face value, it makes a mistake that costs it dearly over time.’
‘How?’ Brynne was lost again. ‘It doesn’t appear to have any weaknesses, or to care one whit if we and all the armies of Eldarn march against it together.’
‘Yes, it does,’ Steven said. ‘If it had no weaknesses, it wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of bringing Lessek’s Key to the bank, and it wouldn’t have worried about closing down one of the far portals for ever.’
‘And it did know it lacked the skill to operate the spell table.’ Brynne twisted a lock of hair around one finger. ‘Gilmour told us it needed to create a safe environment in which to master the magic of the spell table. That’s taken it nine hundred and eighty Twinmoons, and hopefully longer. So perhaps it hid the key to keep it safe.’
‘And perhaps it hid the key to keep itself safe.’ Mark wanted this to be true, but found himself at a loss for any evidence to prove it. He frowned and then went on, ‘So, you see? It’s just outside my grasp, just on the tip of my mind, but I’m convinced there is something there, some magical loophole through which we can ram that staff of yours and kick this guy’s ass for good.’
Brynne reached out to wrap her arms around Mark’s waist. Pulling him close, she kissed him lightly on the nose and commanded gently, ‘Well, you keep working on it, Mark. I know you’ll crack it. We’ll need all the understanding we can get when we reach Orindale.’
The question of Nerak’s possible weakness was still nagging at him as Mark packed up his things and prepared to cross the lake. Nothing seemed to help. He felt that he needed the answer, right now, and for some reason waiting another day, or another Twinmoon, would mean disaster for everyone.
He and Brynne ate breakfast with several of Gita’s partisans; the addition of cheese, tempine and dried beef made it a feast in their eyes. The aroma of brewing tecan had Mark dashing back to the longboat to collect a mug from his pack; it wasn’t coffee, but it was the best Eldarn had to offer. He smiled wryly as Brynne recounted the loss of their own supplies, and the brown ribbon of tecan mingling in the river waters on its way to the Ravenian Sea.