‘I’ll see what I can do for you,’ Garec said cheerfully as he dismounted to retrieve the fallen animal. ‘Anyone else like to place an order?’
‘A short stack with bacon and a pot of regular coffee,’ Mark answered in English, unable to come up with a Ronan word for pancakes.
‘I don’t know what that means, Mark,’ Garec called back, ‘but if you see it, point it out and I’ll bring it down.’
‘God, I wish you could – but thanks for the thought, Garec. I appreciate it.’ Mark changed the subject. ‘How long will it take us to get to Welstar Palace?’
Gilmour turned in the saddle. ‘That’s a difficult question. It should take us a Twinmoon or so, but I don’t know how long it will be before we can enter the palace.’
‘Sixty days?’ Mark blurted. ‘Well, I suppose the school board might buy my story, especially if I tell them about being attacked by a life-sucking demon in vivid enough detail. They just might let me keep my job, and they might even understand why I missed all of second quarter without calling in or leaving sub plans.’
‘I’ll get fired, too,’ Steven commented to no one. ‘And I don’t suppose Hannah will think this is very funny, either. That’s too bad. I miss her.’
Mark pressed Gilmour for more information. ‘Why will it take so long to get into the palace?’
At that, even Sallax turned to listen in. ‘Malakasia is patrolled by the largest army in all Eldarn. There are thousands and thousands of soldiers moving throughout the countryside every day. Nerak, in the guise of Prince Malagon, rarely appears to offer any leadership to his people. He rules without advisors and calls his generals and admirals to him only when he has dreamed up another cruelty to enact upon us citizens of the occupied world.
‘Few resist him, because he kills without warning or hesitation. When Nerak tires of Malagon’s body, he will allow it to die just before he takes possession of the next member of the Whitward family, Malagon’s daughter, Bellan. It has happened this way for nearly a thousand Twinmoons. To date, no one has been able to get anywhere near Welstar Palace.’
‘Why have you never tried before?’ Steven enquired.
‘Because, my friend, I have been waiting for someone like you to find the far portal and bring back Lessek’s Key.’ Gilmour used a boot heel to tap the ash from his pipe. ‘With Lessek’s Key there would be no need to travel to Welstar Palace. We could simply go to Sandcliff in Gorsk and try to decipher the spell table Lessek used to harness the power of the far portals all those thousands of Twinmoons ago. It was Lessek who discovered a pinprick in the universe, a tiny opening. It is through this the far portals operate. And it was this pinprick that released the evil which eventually claimed the young Larion Senator named Nerak.’
Gilmour paused for a moment, sighed deeply and continued, ‘I suppose Nerak had it coming. He coveted power, more power than he could ever control, and one horrible night, his dream finally consumed him – literally.’
‘Power over whom?’ Steven was intrigued.
‘Over what,’ Gilmour corrected, ‘power over magic, and the knowledge to employ all its forms at will. Nerak’s dogged pursuit of ever-more-powerful forms of magic drove him insane… although the seeds of his insanity must have been there from the beginning, there is no record that anyone had detected such a problem.
‘Nerak studied Lessek’s writings, and planned what he believed would be an airtight operation by which he would capture the power Lessek released when he opened the path to your world. But Nerak wasn’t prepared for the enormous force waiting therein. It was far worse than even Lessek had imagined, perhaps the very essence of evil itself. It sent only one of its minions to deal with Nerak, and that one disciple has been much too powerful for anyone in Eldarn to defeat for the past nine hundred and eighty Twinmoons.’
‘A disciple of evil’s essence?’ Garec sounded dubious. ‘How can that be? Evil’s not a thing, is it?’
‘Oh, Garec, that is the most difficult question of all.’ The old man organised his thoughts. ‘I suppose one way to explain it is to think of any encounter you’ve had with anything evil, those murderous soldiers at Riverend for example, the ones who killed Namont, rather than taking him prisoner. Something made them act evilly. Often it’s a combination of variables which work together to form exactly the right pattern. We cannot put our finger on evil any more than we can put our finger on truth. There is no universal, static and observable truth. There is only the perception of reality by those contemplating any collection of attributes, values, experiences, traditions and so on. Evil is the same way. It is collection of thoughts, failed dreams, depressing notions, forgotten friends and myriad other characteristics, all of which, when combined together, bring about a radical change in behaviour.
‘We never see the evil; we generally experience only a behavioural manifestation of evil’s power.’
‘Like a soldier swinging a sword,’ Garec guessed.
‘Or a parent beating a child, or a thief murdering an elderly woman. These are all evil acts, but they are not evil itself. No, this is our problem: evil itself does exist, and it has been trapped for much of the existence of this world. It has, from time to time, been able to slip one of its minions into our world, or into Steven and Mark’s world. And its minions are tiny. They are notions of evil, and they bring unbelievable havoc every time they manage to escape. And in all of our recorded history, no one has been able to successfully trap and exorcise one of evil’s minions.
‘And it is one of these minions that controls Nerak – and, in turn, Malagon today. Its goal, like every other that has managed to escape, is to open a path for the essence of all things evil to come unencumbered from its prison inside the Fold.’
‘What’s the Fold?’ Brynne asked, slyly checking to see if Mark was as enthralled with Gilmour’s story as she was. Versen and Sallax had slowed their horses to a walk so they too would not miss a single word.
‘The Fold is the space between everything that is known and unknown. It is the absence of perception, and therefore the absence of reality. Nothing exists there except evil, because the original architects of our universe could not avoid creating it. It was a negative thought, a simple flash of anger or frustration, as insignificant as an ant on a hillside, but it happened. Evil was born and with every negative thought, every angry gesture – most of which were directed at evil’s essence by the creators themselves – it grew more powerful.
‘Steven and Mark came across the Fold when they fell through the far portal into Rona-’ Gilmour broke off for a moment, then clarified, ‘actually, they didn’t come across the Fold per se. Instead, they navigated through a window in the Fold, that pinprick in the fabric of the universe Lessek was able to find and control.
‘When Lessek found his pathway, he created an opening, and it was through that Nerak eventually allowed a minion of evil’s essence to come to Eldarn. Arriving here, it immediately diversified into the millions of thoughts and ideas people – we – construe as evil. It varies wildly: for one person, evil may be murdering another, while someone else may consider lying to a friend is evil.
‘So you see, this minion can exist anywhere, inside any living thing that knows what it means to be evil. For some reason, this notion of evil chose the Malakasian royal family. I am not certain why.’
Steven swallowed hard and asked the question everyone feared. ‘What would happen if one of these minions managed to open the Fold for the essence of evil… this vagrant afterthought of the gods or whatever it is… to escape?’
‘Nothing would survive,’ Gilmour answered calmly. ‘Perhaps even matter itself would come apart. It would take only an instant and we would all be gone. Everything horrifying we’ve ever imagined would become a reality, and then be torn asunder as quickly and irretrievably as we would.’
‘How close has it come to succeeding?’ Versen asked.