‘Aye, Captain!’ came the distant reply.
‘Then wear this motherwhoring tub about! Into the wind; let’s go! Kellin!’
‘Captain!’ Her voice was even further away.
‘Get down here and learn something! Bloody hurry!’
‘Aye, aye, Captain!’
Garec laughed and shook his head. Steven motioned Gilmour to Captain Ford’s empty chair and said, ‘Hannah, where’s your mother tonight?’
‘Cape Cod.’
‘Good.’ Now he did stand up; he wanted to feel the magic rouse itself to help him. ‘You go back at seven. Get the portal from her and drive like holy hell to Jones Beach, or someplace nearby. Alen, Gilmour and I have a bit of work to do with the spell book, but we’ll come through… when should we open it?’
‘Cape Cod to Long Island? I don’t know enough about the East Coast to even hazard a guess-’
‘I think there’s a ferry from Buzzard’s Bay,’ Steven broke in. ‘Take that; it’ll save time, but you’ll need to open the portal by the following day, let’s say five o’clock, regardless of where you are. That gives you twenty-two hours to get your mother, get the portal and get to Long Island.’
‘It should be plenty of time.’
The Morning Star turned into the wind. To Steven it felt like the nautical equivalent of running into a wall. He sat back down, his knuckles white on the chair.
Hannah braced herself against the bulkhead. ‘Even if it takes me all day to talk her into it, we can make the Island in a few hours.’
‘I don’t know. Your mother can be awfully persuasive,’ Steven recalled getting the hell beaten out of him. She wasn’t someone he would ever underestimate again. ‘Either way, there or not, open the portal at five o’clock, twenty-two hours after you step through. We’ll come through at five past five.’
‘Steven, you haven’t answered my question,’ Garec said. ‘How are we going to do this? How do we “take the head off the snake”? Can we attack Mark from the other side before he brings this army of killers through to wipe us all out or, worse, invites a wave of fury and death to mow us down where we stand?’
‘I don’t know,’ Steven said, truthfully.
Alen sighed, clearly unconvinced.
Steven said, ‘We’ve known since my return to South Carolina that Nerak could detect the far portals when they were opened. He followed me through to Charleston Harbour, despite the fact that he should have been tossed anywhere on Earth. Why is that?’ Steven didn’t wait for an answer. ‘He chased me across the country, racing me to Lessek’s key, and all the while Garec, Mark and Gilmour were opening their portal every twelve hours. Why didn’t he come back, take their portal and simply wait around for me to return? I would have been a sitting duck.
‘When I returned, I started paging through Lessek’s spell book; Nerak could have used that to return to Eldarn. Eventually, he did. Why did he linger in Colorado? We know he pursued Jennifer Sorenson, Hannah’s mother. Why? If he didn’t need the portal, why did Nerak follow Jennifer into the mountains? Was it for fun? Did he want the portal, even though he could have returned without it? What was he doing hanging around over there?’ Steven tried to answer his own questions. Nerak knew we had Lessek’s key and that we were about to waste our time running for Sandcliff Palace. With us heading in the wrong direction, there was no need to rush back. We were no threat without the table and he assumed we had no idea where the table was; so he waited-’
‘And he learned,’ Gilmour interjected. ‘He took souls, how many we can’t begin to guess, but he probably took new souls every few avens: workers, teachers, doctors, anyone who might help him develop an accurate and comprehensive knowledge of Earth.’ He looked at Alen. ‘He was filling his own head with a thousand Twinmoons of missing information.’
‘And deciding how and where to take your world,’ Brexan finished Gilmour’s thoughts.
‘Taking Mark Jenkins clinches it,’ Garec said. ‘He’s been going on and on about that rutting beach since he arrived. He claims it was Lessek showing him that he’s some kind of heir: the prince of Eldarn.’
‘The prince of all worlds,’ Hoyt said to himself.
‘So, Garec, to answer your question, finally,’ Steven chuckled, ‘I don’t know if we can hit Mark before he opens the spell table. If we try, he’ll know, because our only resources across the Fold are the far portals and he’ll know when we’ve opened them. However, if we wait to strike until Mark has opened the table-’
‘We run the risk of him first inviting this evil essence into Eldarn.’
‘He won’t,’ Steven said. ‘He’ll be preoccupied with the Fold itself. Moving that many people is a big job, even for the world’s most powerful magician. There are only so many ways to do it and if he wants to shift a sizeable force to Jones Beach, Mark will have to rend a significant window for them to cross.’
‘They’re not going in single file,’ Hannah said.
‘I’d have to pee about every half-aven,’ Hoyt laughed at his own joke.
‘While Mark’s opening the door, or widening the door, I should say, that’s when he’ll be vulnerable… well, relatively. And, yes, that’s when we’ll hit him from the other side.’
‘So he’ll know we’re there?’ Garec asked. ‘He’ll know we crossed?’
‘Maybe,’ Gilmour said, ‘if he detected Hannah’s little field trip yesterday, he might think we’re moving back and forth. If Hannah goes through at seven o’clock and opens the portal for us the following day, Mark may believe one of us is ferrying supplies or weapons.’
‘It can’t hurt to hope,’ Brexan said.
‘What time is it now?’ Gilmour asked.
Garec checked Steven’s old watch. ‘Four and forty minutes.’
Hannah suddenly looked nervous. All right,’ she said, ‘I have two hours. I’m going to try and get some sleep.’
‘We all should,’ Alen said, moving towards the door. ‘Tomorrow’s going to be a busy day.’
‘You’re a master at understatement, my friend,’ Hoyt said, passing what remained of his bread to Brexan.
‘Thanks,’ she said as she followed him into the companionway. ‘Are you going back?’ Brexan whispered.
‘Back to Falkan? To Orindale?’ Hoyt said.
‘Yes.’
Alen slowed to listen; he didn’t look back.
Hoyt pressed against the wall, allowing Steven and Hannah to pass. He watched them disappear together into Marrin Stonnel’s old cabin. Turn and look at me, Hannah. Just once. Look at me once, and I’ll follow you wherever you’re off to. When the door closed, Hoyt sighed and said, ‘Yes, I think I am. You?’
Alen’s shoulders slumped and he made his way through the darkened companionway to the stairs in the main hold. Good, he thought to himself. That’s good. Alen never heard Brexan’s reply.
Garec waited for Gilmour on the main deck. The breeze was numbingly cold, but it was welcome after the closeness of the captain’s cabin. The discussion hadn’t taken long, but the Ronan archer was weary, and he could sense that the exhaustion in his bones was not about to let up. He waved to Kellin, gestured that he would be right there and then listened for Gilmour on the stairs.
When Gilmour arrived, he was smiling. ‘I wondered where I would run into you.’
‘You promised to tell me.’ Garec kept his voice down. It was unnecessary on the brig-sloop’s deck, but he felt the need to whisper, regardless. ‘First, it was at Seer’s Peak, when you said you were sure Lessek would want to communicate with me. Then it was in Wellham Ridge, when-’
‘When I said that one day I would tell you the truth; yes, I remember.’ He pulled a pipe from his tunic and as he put it to his mouth the tobacco apparently already packed tightly in the bowl started smouldering. ‘I did promise, didn’t I?’
‘And since I’ve just agreed to follow you into another world, a world of pizza and barefoot coffee and turkey and bullshit, I think now might be a good time.’
‘I want you there with us because I am worried that Mark’s analysis of his lineage might be accurate.’