‘How about you, Steven?’ Kellin asked. ‘Can you read it?’
Steven chuckled. ‘I’m able to open the pages and look through it, but much of what it says seems like gibberish to me. I can’t understand it at all.’
‘But you can touch it; you can flip through it, look at the writing, feel the pages, and nothing leaps out to cripple you, pull at your beard or slap you stupid?’
‘The first time I touched the book was on the Prince Marek, the night I went back for Lessek’s key. I had just begun to tap the power Nerak sublimated into Kantu’s old walking stick-’
‘That hickory staff?’ Kellin interrupted.
‘Yes, the one from the glen, but I hadn’t come to grips with the suggestion that there might be magic inside me, that I might be one of those rare few who – Twinmoons ago – would have been driven out of my town or shipped off to Sandcliff Palace to join the Larion Senate. When I touched the book that night, it tried to take me.’
‘Take you?’ Brexan recoiled.
‘Engulf me, swallow me whole, I don’t know, drag me into oblivion, just for fun. It was phenomenal power; I felt it through my fingertips, everything all at once, everything Gilmour just described, the essence of the book, not just what’s written on its pages.’
‘So it reached out to you with something true, something false, some joke, what?’ Brexan asked.
‘I think it reached out to him with everything about itself, about magic,’ Gilmour tried to clarify. ‘The book understood Steven’s potential, long before Steven did, and whether it was communicating with him or trying to purloin his power for itself, the book definitely embraced him with more than just the words written on the pages.’ He grinned. ‘From one perspective, it was quite an honour for Steven.’
‘To be absorbed into the comprehensive essence of magic?’ Kellin said. ‘No thanks; I’m full.’
Brexan laughed. ‘So why can you read it now?’
‘I hit a speed bump,’ Steven said. ‘Lessek’s key taught me, by kicking me solidly in the backside, several times, how to recognise the key elements in any magical equation.’
‘Equation?’
He shrugged. ‘I’m a mathematician; it makes sense to me that way. I was in the garbage dump near my home, preparing myself to spend the next ten Twinmoons digging through rotten meat and broken glass, when the key taught me how to separate what’s important from what’s not, essentially.’
‘What happened?’
‘The less important parts blurred together.’ He frowned. ‘I guess I did it… I do it to them.’
‘Do what?’
‘Blur them, take them out of the equation so the key variables can come into focus, and then manipulate them based on my knowledge and whatever magic happens to come bursting out of me at the time.’ He raised an eyebrow at Gilmour, who smiled and nodded. ‘Anyway, after that day, I was able to flip through the book. It was as if on our second meeting, the book recognised that I had grown a good deal in my understanding of my own magic.’
‘But you still can’t read it,’ Brexan persisted.
‘Not really, no.’
‘And Gilmour, you haven’t felt comfortable opening it.’
‘The last time I opened it, the book spewed forth a coil of otherworldly serpents armed with a poison so toxic that I had to abandon my former body and go in search of a new host.’ He posed comically, then said, ‘But to answer your question, no, I haven’t been thrilled about opening it again.’
‘So do we consider it an asset?’ Brexan went on, ‘if no one can use it to help us?’
‘No one can use it against us, either,’ Steven pointed out.
‘I suppose that’s true,’ Brexan said.
‘And who knows?’ Gilmour added, ‘between now and the end of this struggle, it may become necessary to use the book’s information again.’
‘Information,’ Brexan mused.
‘Exactly,’ Gilmour said, ‘more information than power. Granted, it’s a monstrously powerful tome, but its purpose is educational.’
From beneath the bow, Marrin called, ‘Steven, Kellin, anyone!’
Steven hugged the bowsprit, leaned over and said, ‘Since you’re going out, I’ll take a tube of mint toothpaste.’
Marrin frowned. ‘Rutting foreigners!’
Garec grinned. ‘They move in and just ruin the village.’
‘What do you need?’ Steven asked.
‘I need a pot of tecan and a burning brazier,’ Garec said. ‘It’s gods-rutting freezing down here.’
‘Please tell Captain Ford to leave the anchor in place for now,’ Marrin said. ‘We’ll row over there, around the west side of that big island. It shouldn’t take us long to get there and back, but I want you to know where we’re going in case this fog gets any worse when the tide starts moving again.’
‘Shouldn’t it blow north?’
‘It probably will, but I want him to know where we’ve gone in case it doesn’t. And don’t worry, Garec has a lovely singing voice. If it gets thick, we’ll give you a holler.’
‘Oh, I understand,’ Steven said. ‘You don’t want us moving from here-’
‘Because there might not be enough draft around that island, because you might run aground again between here and there, because I don’t want to lose you in the fog, but mostly because I don’t want you losing us in the fog.’
Garec smirked. ‘The last sounds you hear are your own bones breaking.’
‘Got it.’ Steven tallied their orders. ‘Don’t get lost, don’t run aground, but most of all, don’t run over the little boat with the big boat.’
‘Very good,’ Marrin smiled. ‘We’ll make a sailor of you yet. Could you pass that along to our fearless leader?’
‘Right away,’ Steven started aft.
At the capstan, Brexan asked, ‘When Prince Malagon, Nerak, came to Orindale, was he heading for Sandcliff Palace?’
‘I thought he was,’ Gilmour said, ‘because I thought that’s where he would go to operate the spell table.’
‘But he had actually come to Orindale, because he was going into the Blackstone foothills to retrieve the spell table?’
‘It was his understanding that Steven and I were making way for Orindale, hoping to secure a transport to Malakasia, or at least Praga, to search for Hannah Sorenson. Nerak acted under the assumption that with a military blockade on the town, we would either be captured, killed or forced to wait on the outskirts, while he searched for us, killed us and took the keystone. His spies and minions had failed to collect it for him, so Nerak decided to come and get it himself.’
‘But you didn’t have it, because Steven and Mark had forgotten it back in Colorado?’
‘Overlooked it.’
‘Rutting whores.’
‘My sentiments exactly, my dear.’
‘But his plan was to have the key, get the table and open the Fold from the Blackstone foothills?’
‘Or at least have the key to experiment with the table on his way back to Pellia.’
‘Which is essentially what Mark is doing right now.’
‘Essentially.’
‘So why did Nerak bring the book with him?’
A moment of silence passed between them. Brexan pulled her hood up and flinched as beads of icy condensation trickled beneath her hair and down the back of her neck.
Finally, Gilmour said, ‘I don’t know why. Perhaps Nerak was studying the spells, trying to round out his understanding of magic. Perhaps the book had shown him something he believed he would need in order to open the Fold-’
‘Or,’ Kellin interrupted, ‘the book showed him something he believed he would need after he opened the Fold.’
Silenced by that possibility, Gilmour recoiled from his memory of the spell book’s opening folio. The Ash Dream, he thought. What in all Eldarn is the Ash Dream? Something Mark needs to open the Fold? Something we need to close it for ever? Or maybe Kellin’s right and he needs it after his master’s arrival. Staring down at a nebulous cloud of chilly fog as it billowed about his legs, Gilmour said, ‘You may be right. The book might have shown Nerak something he would need after he opened the Fold and ushered in an Age of unbridled pain, torture and suffering.’