Kellin blanched, looking as though she was about to retch. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘In that case, we’ll just have to get to Mark before he has a chance to… to do… that.’
‘That’s why we’re here, freezing, in this godsforsaken archipelago.’
Brexan looked aft. Most of the Pragan brig-sloop was lost from view; the parts she could see – a few ratlines, the mainmast, a hatch and a stretch of starboard gunwale – looked like bits of a derelict ghost ship. ‘Gilmour, are you confident that Nerak actually read the book? Was he able to understand it, to glean anything from it?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘From what Steven said, Nerak was not nearly as powerful as his legend would have us believe, but it was my experience that he had a good deal more power and knowledge, at least in a mystical arena, than anyone I had ever known.’
‘More than you?’
‘Oh, certainly more than I ever did.’
‘More than Steven?’
Gilmour tried to hide a half-smile. It didn’t work. No, not more than Steven.’
Brexan smiled herself and glanced aft again. ‘Would Nerak have been able to help us now?’
‘What’s that?’
‘If Steven had kept him here, kept him alive somehow, do you think Nerak would have been able to help us close the Fold?’ Seeing Gilmour hesitate, Brexan tried to clarify her thoughts. ‘From what Steven and Kellin said, right in the moments before he was cast into oblivion, Nerak was different: beaten, submissive, I don’t know, maybe less homicidal and power-hungry.’
Gilmour nodded, obviously contemplating his former colleague’s demeanour that day in the glen. ‘That’s true, Brexan, but Steven had made an effort to be compassionate. He gave Nerak the hickory staff. I thought he was insane to do it; we all did. But he gave Nerak the chance to save himself, and instead Nerak used the staff to strike out at him. With the staff, he might have saved himself, banished the evil holding him prisoner, even been restored to his former position of grace and respect. But he ignored Steven’s mercy, and that more than anything was what killed him.’
‘Was Nerak evil before the terrible essence emerged from the Fold to take him prisoner? How long before his fall did he try to kill you, or to kill the other one… what’s his name… Kantu?’
Gilmour frowned. ‘I don’t know exactly, but there was some time before Sandcliff fell that I feared Nerak. I always worried when Kantu, Pikan or I travelled through the far portal. I felt anxious that he was using our absence as an opportunity to develop spells that would kill us or perhaps trap us on the other side of the Fold for ever.’
‘So no, then,’ Brexan said.
‘No, what?’
‘No, Nerak probably wouldn’t have helped us banish this evil essence and seal off the Fold.’
‘No,’ Gilmour shook his head, ‘most likely not.’
Brexan felt the cold seep inside her cloak. ‘I’ll get us some tecan,’ she said, shivering.
‘That would be nice,’ Gilmour said, glad for the change of topic. ‘Biggest mugs you can find.’
Warmed by the morning brew and empowered by the truths Brexan and Kellin had forced him to examine while kedging the Morning Star off the Malakasian shoal, Gilmour Stow of Estrad excused himself from the chilly partisans still watching the fogbank for Garec and Marrin and tiptoed into the companionway leading to his berth, and the leatherbound book of Lessek’s writings. Gilmour rarely felt old, but this morning, despite living inside the youngest host he had purloined in nearly a thousand Twinmoons, his body was stiff, cramped, feeling as if it might disintegrate without warning. His shoulders were sore; his lower back ached. One knee was inflamed, while the other had stiffened with the dampness and fog. His fingers felt swollen, clumsy and arthritic, and his eyes were a beat slow, managing to focus on what he had been seeing a step or two after it had fallen behind him. Being two thousand Twinmoons old was not normally physically gruelling – if it was, Gilmour would have been worn to the bone, dead several times over. Instead, it was an intellectual distance run, a tiresome and wearying adventure, and this morning, with his shortcomings and challenges neatly outlined by the curious freedom fighters, Gilmour felt the emotional exhaustion in every muscle and bone in his body.
It was a symptom of his fatigue; he knew that, and he knew that a few avens’ sleep would have him back in fighting form. But he hadn’t been able to rest; he wanted to finish just one last thing before retiring for the day. Then, he would sleep until the dinner aven, resting like the dead. Or the very nearly dead, anyway, he thought with a wry smile.
But first, he had to read that book, despite his aches and pains. It hadn’t been the actual book lashing out at him; first it had been Nerak, then Mark. The book hadn’t done it… I hope not, anyway. There was no reason to fear the writings. He had explained that to Brexan just moments earlier: the book wasn’t power per se; the book was knowledge, understanding, and whether or not it told him anything useful this morning, Gilmour didn’t care. It wasn’t useful information he required; it was confidence. His conversation with the freedom fighters had kindled a tiny bundle of hope, just a faint glow, wrapped in the protective layers he invariably applied whenever hope was all he had. But this morning, Gilmour wanted more; he wanted to feel that hope burgeon into a comforting blaze, something to keep him warm for the few days it would take Captain Doren Ford and his skeleton crew to see them into Pellia.
‘Just read the damned book,’ he murmured to himself. ‘What can happen? Mark won’t notice; we’re too close already, and he’s following the tan-bak. Even I can feel the tan-bak when I search for her. She’s like a bloody beacon in a storm out there. He won’t bother looking here; we’re nowhere near the Northeast Channel, essentially invisible, so there’s no excuse. Just read the whoring thing, and then go to bed.’
Crunch.
His tired eyes had overlooked it, brought it into focus a moment too late for his mind to care, but when his foot came down on it, Gilmour stopped to see what he had stepped on.
It was an insect – a roach? A beetle, maybe? He scraped up what he could, but he hadn’t been the first to step on it.
It’s just a bug, old man. Leave it, and go get your reading done.
But something was wrong. Gilmour felt the warmth leave his body, that quiet glimmer of hope fading. He absentmindedly tugged at one of his earlobes and then felt around inside his ear, tentatively, as if afraid of what he might discover.
The spell book forgotten, his fatigue ignored yet again, Gilmour tucked the insect’s remains inside his tunic and went back on deck.
Alen and Milla walked along the riverfront quay, heading for the Hunter’s Glade, a quiet cafe that served a cheap midday meal and whose proprietor, a childless woman named Gisella, fawned on the little sorceress as if Milla was a member of her own family. Alen had found the cafe one evening while seeking information about barge traffic along the Welstar River. When Gisella discovered that Alen had a little girl, she insisted he bring Milla around. ‘Children eat free for the Twinmoon,’ she had said, brushing clouds of flour from her apron. ‘My sister has three boys, three! Can you imagine the noise when that lot comes for dinner? Rutters!’
Alen had felt a pang of sorrow for Gisella, who seemed a pleasant enough woman; he was sorry she’d not been able to have children, and he promised to return with Milla.
Now, Milla’s hand securely clasped in his, he felt some of his own trepidation rub off; perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to work with the child prodigy over the next two hundred Twinmoons.