‘Well then, if we’re being frank, I don’t much care for our chances without Steven,’ Gilmour admitted.
‘The staff wielder?’ Alen asked.
Gilmour nodded. ‘That’s him – though he doesn’t need the staff any longer. He gave it to Nerak, and its power drained – at least I believe – into Steven himself.’
‘Gave it to Nerak? I don’t understand.’ Alen looked as bemused as he sounded.
‘We’ve such a lot to discuss,’ Gilmour sighed. ‘This was an act of compassion. Steven handed the staff over so that Nerak might gain critical knowledge and, in turn, sever the bonds holding him fast to the evil that had taken him all those Twinmoons ago. It was a chance for Nerak finally to die in peace. Well, you know him; he didn’t take advantage of it. Instead, he tried to use the staff to kill Steven… so Steven threw him into the Fold.’
‘Steven threw him into the Fold?’ Alen repeated, incredulously. ‘So Nerak’s dead?’
‘Sorry, I should have mentioned that.’
‘Then who’s-’ Alen hesitated. ‘The thing – the minion itself?’
‘Broke from Nerak at the last moment.’ Gilmour swallowed a mouthful of wine. ‘It sensed that Steven was about to send it into the Fold, and it broke away.’
‘And later it took Mark Jenkins?’
‘Confirming for all of us that for the past nine hundred and eighty-three Twinmoons we have been focusing on the wrong thing.’
Alen was still bewildered. ‘So it was never him, the motherless horsecock.’
Gilmour patted his old friend’s shoulder. ‘Oh it was, and it wasn’t – but don’t worry about it now. We have more important things to do.’
‘Which brings us back to my question.’ The captain had been listening carefully, but felt none the wiser.
Alen said, ‘Captain Ford, I fully intend to survive this ordeal, as does my friend here. However, if anyone is going to die on this journey, it will be us.’
‘And Steven, I’m afraid,’ Gilmour added. ‘But you’re right: we should give the others the option of staying behind with the sick.’
‘They won’t,’ Alen said.
‘That’s probably true.’ Ford poured more wine. ‘But for my own sanity, I need to make the offer. I’ve lost too many good people on this journey. I have too many difficult visits to make when I return to Southport.’
‘I’m sorry for that, Captain,’ Gilmour said. ‘It might be some small comfort to their families to know that they died doing the most important thing any of us will ever do.’
‘Would it comfort you?’
‘No,’ Alen said.
He leaned back in his chair. Sighing, he said, ‘This is all a mistake, this whole thing.’
Gilmour got up and started pacing, trying to explain. ‘Captain, a Falkan merchant named Carpello Jax has been sending schooners to Welstar Palace, filled to bursting with some kind of bark or bits of tree.’
‘Old Carpello,’ Captain Ford said, ‘Yes, I know him – knew him, I should say. What’s your point?’
‘The bits come from a forest of enchanted trees near Estrad Village in Rona, planted when Prince Marek took control of Eldarn nearly a thousand Twinmoons ago. The forest is closed to the locals, the trees have grown over time, and Carpello has, over the past hundred Twinmoons or so, begun harvesting the bark, leaves and roots for Prince Malagon, Princess Bellan, our former colleague Nerak, and now Mark Jenkins.’
‘He’s harvesting the Forest of Ghosts as well,’ Alen said.
‘Given what we learned from Brexan,’ Gilmour continued pacing, ‘I can’t say that I’m surprised at that either.’
‘How does this impact the orders I have to give in the next aven?’ The captain was trying to stay focused on the safety of his ship and his crew.
Alen took up the story. ‘We believe Nerak was milling the bark into a powder, then using it in a powerful spell that traps soldiers – men and Seron warriors – in an endless, mindless nightmare, scenes from their lives, played over and over again. It’s a spell Lessek, the Larion founder, called-’
‘The ash dream,’ Gilmour interrupted, ‘holy whores, it’s the ash dream!’
‘Nicely done, my friend – you have been paying attention.’
Gilmour was as pale as a sheet. He managed a smile. ‘At least I’ve been awake for the past thousand Twinmoons.’
‘And you’re no further ahead than I am, so maybe there is something to being well-rested.’ Alen grinned back at him.
Captain Ford asked, ‘Can we get back to the sorcery bit? The stuff about the trees, please?’
‘Right, sorry,’ Alen continued, ‘so all of us, Hannah included, have experimented with bark from the Forest of Ghosts. Some of us were attacked by the trees, but all of us, even my friend Hoyt – who came through the forest unscathed – were subject to the power of the bark once it was harvested. So the implication is that while some can pass through the Forest of Ghosts freely, no one can escape the power of the bark in its milled form. By experimenting, we were able to determine that the bark is unpredictable. Hoyt was entranced for several avens, happily reliving an enjoyable dinner conversation from his youth, and while ensnared, he took orders and performed basic tasks – and even though he should have been falling-down exhausted, he continued working, without a break, until Hannah and I removed the bark. But that only worked with Hoyt; the rest of us, when we were caught in the forest, were inconsolable, unable to take direction, and certainly unwilling to perform even rudimentary jobs.’
‘Hoyt was under the influence of the harvested version?’ Gilmour asked.
‘Yes,’ Alen clarified.
‘So harvested and milled, this tree bark makes it so that you can listen to orders but not care about what you’re asked to do?’
‘Yes,’ Alen said, ‘but again, that’s just the harvested bark. We hadn’t milled it, and Hoyt hadn’t ingested it in any way – he’d not smoked it, snorted it or eaten it; it was just tied round his neck in a leather pouch.’
Gilmour said, ‘And presumably the milled form would be even more destructive.’
‘But why?’ Ford asked. ‘Who needs something like this? Prince Malagon, or whoever it is now, already has everything Eldarn has to offer. What more could he possibly want?’
Gilmour swept his cloak back and sat down opposite the Pragan sailor. ‘He is probably preparing himself and his army for the advent of an Era so evil, so rife with terror and hatred, that only such a drugged creature could hope to bear the reality of life in Eldarn.’
‘Actually, I think we saw them,’ Alen said.
‘The Seron? They’re in the Eastlands as well. I think Nerak started breeding them again when he knew his crop was ready for harvest.’
‘No, worse than Seron. There’s an encampment at Welstar Palace packed with hundreds of thousands of soldiers, most of whom were obviously under the power of this spell, potion, whatever it is.’
Ford swallowed dryly and checked his tankard. ‘Whoring rutters, and that’s where we’re heading. I hope we catch Mark before he arrives. If we get moving, there’s no reason to think we won’t.’
‘Were they working?’ Gilmour asked, ‘following orders? Keeping busy?’
‘Some, yes,’ Alen replied, ‘but most were simply staring across the river. It was a wretched, dismal place, the worst conditions I’ve ever seen… ever imagined. Boils, pox, infections, broken limbs, severed body parts, bugs and lice – and all of them completely ignored by the officers. The stench of the place was unbearable: rotting flesh, dead but not quite convinced of it yet.’
‘So that explains the Estrad variable,’ Gilmour guessed aloud. ‘If the bark from the Forest of Ghosts sends them reeling back through their lives, only to get ensnared in something hideous – or lovely, maybe – I suppose the bark from Estrad is the leveller.’
‘I don’t understand.’ The captain was feeling nauseous.
‘The leveller, a fixative,’ Gilmour explained. ‘The Forest of Ghosts in Praga is legendary, yet no one has ever heard of the Forbidden Forest near Riverend Palace. And why not?’
‘Because there are no stories,’ Ford answered the rhetorical question, then blushed.