He shuddered. ‘Although he was still visible, his body was beginning to disintegrate – his flesh looked translucent in the torchlight. At the time I wasn’t sure what was happening, but now I know the force that overpowered him along a seam in the Fold had no use for his physical being. It needed only his knowledge – and his soul. It would use others as physical hosts, but Nerak’s body was allowed to break apart, to fall away in pieces until only a shadow remained. By the end of the evening, Nerak had taken possession of several Larion Senators, each through a small wound he opened in their wrist or on the back of their hand. With each, evil’s minion learned more about Eldarn’s people and our weaknesses.
‘I saw Nerak holding two Larion Senators by the throat, a woman from Falkan named Callena and a young Pragan man, Janel. Their names are engraved on my memory. They were screaming in abject terror, and both of them were looking at me as if I were their only hope for survival. I stopped then and implored him to set them free. He looked at me from across the balcony, then, without flinching, he snapped their necks. Just a quick turn of his wrists. I heard the bones break. He didn’t take his eyes off me as he tossed their bodies over the ledge to the stone floor below.’
Brynne shifted uneasily on the log next to Steven, and Mika absent-mindedly scratched at the back of his wrists. ‘Go on,’ he said quietly.
‘I doubled back and raced upstairs towards the stone tower. All the passageways in the castle were closed by spells to keep intruders from breaking in and stealing potentially devastating magic. As I ran, I shouted the spells out in front of me to clear the way of any enchanted obstacles. At the top of the spiral staircase leading to the tower’s uppermost room, I found the door open, the spell already cast. I burst into Lessek’s chamber, horribly afraid I would find only the corpses of Nerak’s research team. Instead they were all there, poring over Lessek’s table, desperately trying to find an antidote to Nerak’s possession. Lessek’s chamber wasn’t used by anyone. The black granite table stood alone in the centre. The room was normally lit by torchlight, but that night the only illumination was the rainbow of colours that flashed and faded inside the spell table. I could see Lessek’s Key in its place – at least Nerak hadn’t taken it with him when he went downstairs to begin killing off Larion Senators.
‘Three members of my own team soon arrived and I ordered them to stand fast at the top of the stairs, ready to hurl every destructive magic they had down upon Nerak if he tried to reach Lessek’s chamber. I will never forget their grim faces, the look of fear and determination as the door closed slowly on them. I cast a quick spell to reseal the chamber.
‘I was their leader. I should have stood with them on the stairs and fought to the end against Nerak. Instead, I shut them out in the hall, protected only by their pitiful powers and what courage they could draw from one another. They were researchers, teachers, not magicians. I should have known they would be no match for the coming evil.’
‘Why did you not stand and fight with them?’ Sallax broke the silence, staring hard at Gilmour.
‘I feared the worst,’ Gilmour responded in flat tones. ‘I knew Nerak’s team could not interrupt their work to defend the spell table, or even to fetch any necessary scrolls from the library adjacent to the room. They were used to working with the spell table; I was not: but I could fetch spell scrolls, and I would be their last line of defence against the force I knew was coming for us. I called to Nerak’s assistant, Pikan Tettarak, a skilled sorcerer herself, that I was available to run back and forth between the spell chamber and the scroll library. She nodded to say she understood and immediately turned back to the wall of blue and red energy that fought to escape the table into the room; instead it found her there, channelling its power into a single defensive spell of enormous strength. Harnessing the magic of the table had been a lifelong undertaking for Lessek; it was an ongoing research endeavour for Nerak.
‘Pikan looked as if she was being overwhelmed by the power of the table; if she had not been able to call upon the strength of Nerak’s other team members, I am certain she would have been pulled into the bottomless morass of knowledge and magic within.
‘For what felt like an aven I stood there, helpless. Pikan and her colleagues worked without pause to discover magic that would protect us from Nerak while freeing his soul from whatever entity held it prisoner. Then the crashing began at the chamber door. It started as spell noise in the stairwell, and I hoped that my team members were holding firm. Soon the sounds changed; I could tell these incantations were focused entirely on the outer doorway. I wondered why, if my team were already dead, Nerak didn’t simply call out the spell that opened the chamber. I can only guess that in a dying breath, one of my brave martyrs changed the spell and committed suicide, dying before Nerak could take possession of his or her soul and learn the necessary magic.’ Gilmour stopped. Steven could see he was trembling as he refilled his goblet and took a long swallow.
‘Are you okay to go on?’ Steven asked quietly.
‘Oh yes,’ Gilmour said, visibly pulling himself together. ‘I know it happened so long ago, but for me, it will always feel like yesterday. It’s not a story I have told very often. Maybe it’s time that changed.
‘I knew the passageway would soon fall to the demon’s power, so I tried to get Pikan’s attention, hoping to warn her that Nerak was about to breach our last defence. There was a broadsword leaning against the wall – I don’t know whose it was, but I picked it up and prepared to battle whatever burst into the room. I knew magic, of course I did, but nothing nearly as powerful as that hammering away at the chamber door. It shook the stone masonry of the tower itself and for a few moments I feared the palace would collapse and we would all tumble to our deaths.
‘Everything seemed to move in slow motion. I realised I was about to die. I was not a brave man. I hoped to perhaps strike out with one fierce blow before my resolve disintegrated and I stood in mute horror awaiting death. No great wellspring of anger or defiance arose from inside my being and I knew the gods were giving me a few extra moments to contemplate how inadequately I had behaved when the end finally came.
‘Then, as if from a distance, a lifetime away, I heard my name. I turned to find Pikan calling to me with great enthusiasm. She was such a beautiful woman… she actually seemed to smile as I hurried across the room to her side. “I need the third Windscroll,” she shouted above the din of so much magic moving in and around the room. “It’s in the library near the top shelf behind Lessek’s desk.” Taking the broadsword, I ran as quickly as I could down the short flight of stairs separating the spell chamber from the scroll library. Lessek’s desk stood near the far wall, and shelves upon shelves of parchment scrolls lined every inch of the chamber. Racing to the shelf behind Lessek’s desk, I searched for the Windscrolls, powerful ancient spells compiled by Kantu and Nerak on their frequent journeys to Larion Isle, off the coast of Malakasia.
‘But I never found them.
‘Blue- and red-flecked energy preceded the blast down the stairs into the library and scrolls were blown from their shelves as a shockwave tore through the chamber and knocked me unconscious.
‘When I woke, blood had run into my eyes and for several terrifying moments I could see the world only in shades of red. The only light came from our two moons, shining through the falling snow. I looked out of the window and watched as red snowflakes blanketed Gorsk. I wondered if anyone was left alive in all Eldarn. The silence was dreadful; I called out several times just to hear my voice in the darkness.
‘When I felt steady enough, I made my way through the remains of the library, climbing over fallen shelves and through a sea of scattered parchment scrolls to the spell chamber beyond.