‘I hear them,’ Gilmour said. ‘Steven, cloak the cart.’
‘Got it. Mom’s old blanket.’ Steven closed his eyes in concentration. Time slowed. The air thickened to a paste and the forest of green and brown melted into a waxy curtain. Draping the small company, their horses and Brand’s stolen cart, Steven said, ‘Done. We’re hidden.’
‘Excellent,’ Gilmour whispered, dropping to one knee and peering back towards the river. ‘They’ll be along in a moment.’
Garec crossed to Gilmour’s side and considered nocking an arrow. He placed his hand palm-down in a frozen footprint the old man had left in the snow. Nothing, not the slightest vibration; the riders were close now, but not making much noise, no pounding the earth in great numbers. He wouldn’t need his bow… not yet, anyway.
‘There aren’t many,’ Gilmour whispered.
‘No,’ Garec agreed, ‘a handful at the most.’
‘Let’s hope it’s Brand and Kellin.’
When the Falkan partisans came into view, Garec was both relieved and alarmed. Seeing Kellin safe, obviously uninjured, lifted a stony weight from his chest; he was glad to see her and wondered briefly if it would be inappropriate to hug her when she slipped from the saddle.
Garec’s amorous musings faded quickly, as he saw how hard Kellin and Brand were riding. The Falkan soldiers had loosed their reins and were frantically galloping, guiding the horses south. Chasing one another along the winding path would have been dangerous at half their speed; Garec looked away, afraid he might see one of the mounts slip on an icy patch or even shatter a limb on an exposed root or a snow-covered rock.
‘Something’s wrong,’ he whispered.
‘Yes,’ Gilmour said, and cupping his hands over his mouth, he murmured a spell and whispered, ‘Brand, Kellin,’ across three hundred paces of empty forest.
As if they had been struck, Kellin and Brand reined in and searched the woods, patting the frothing animals gently, thanking them for what had obviously been a harrowing flight.
Their voices came in garbled snatches of adrenalin-charged conversation:
‘Hear that?’
‘… over there?’
‘Don’t see -’
‘… keep going…’
‘…just the wind.’
Gilmour cupped his hands and whispered again, ‘Brand, Kellin.’
Garec barely heard his raspy whisper from less than two paces away. How they heard him from the riverbank was astonishing.
‘Here,’ Gilmour said into his cupped hands, ‘east of you, three hundred paces.’
The Falkans turned as one, peering through the late-day shadows; even from this distance, Garec could see them looking perplexed.
‘Let them see me, Steven,’ Gilmour said.
‘All right,’ Steven answered, ‘just wave an arm or something.’
Gilmour did, and suddenly Brand pointed in their direction.
All Garec’s fears were realised when instead of coming at a gentle trot they plunged into the trees at a gallop. They were still a hundred paces out when Garec heard Brand shouting. ‘Mount up! Get in the saddle now!’
‘What is it?’ Gilmour said as Steven let the cloaking spell dissipate; Brand reined in, a little surprised at suddenly discovering Garec, the foreigner and the spell table all secreted amongst the trees.
‘How did you-? Never mind. It’s an infantry company, at least one, maybe more – there were several mounted officers, so it might be an entire battalion.’
‘How far?’ Steven asked.
‘An aven, maybe less,’ Kellin said. ‘They’re coming south along the west bank.’
The Larion spell table was balanced on one side, leaning against the slat rails of the little cart. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide it, not within an aven.
A battalion.
Garec’s hands were clammy; he wiped them on his leggings and looked up at Kellin. She was pale, obviously nervous. He shot her a half-hearted smile; she grimaced back at him. ‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered. ‘There’s good news too.’
‘What’s that?’
‘We can’t fight a battalion,’ he said.
Kellin frowned. ‘How is that good news?’
‘All we can do is run.’
Steven rinsed his mouth with snow and spat it out. ‘We can’t leave the table here,’ he said.
Garec brightened. ‘Let’s drop it back in the river. You two hauled it out with no trouble at all. We can come back for it after we slip past Mark and the soldiers.’
‘He’ll know right where it is,’ Gilmour said. ‘He has Lessek’s key; when Mark gets closer, he’ll sense the table, no matter where we put it. It will knock his legs out from under him.’
‘Like hitting a speed bump,’ Steven agreed.
‘Then let him have it,’ Garec said.
Brand said, ‘Kellin, check him for a pulse, please.’
‘No, I’m serious. Let him have it. He’s got at least a company of soldiers working for him. Let him haul it back to Wellham Ridge.’
Steven stared, then smiled. ‘And then we steal it.’
‘Exactly.’
‘It’s too risky,’ Gilmour said. ‘He has the key; he might clear a space right here and begin using the table against us.’
‘Then we destroy it,’ Steven said.
‘We won’t be able to seal the Fold without it.’
‘We might,’ Steven argued, wishing he had more time to experiment with his own magic. He had been able to cast spells that took form when his magic worked in tandem with knowledge he had of his environment, or the quandary at hand. A college physiology class had saved Garec’s life in Orindale, a rudimentary knowledge of chemistry destroyed the acid clouds above Sandcliff Palace and a childhood memory of a loosely woven blanket had hidden them from Nerak outside Traver’s Notch. ‘We might just be able to do it, Gilmour.’
‘The maths and compassion thing?’ Garec asked.
‘Yes,’ Steven said. ‘I know it can work.’
‘And if it can’t?’
‘At least he won’t be able to release his evil master,’ Steven argued. ‘Eldarn will be saved. And afterwards we can find some way to destroy the evil controlling Mark.’
‘Without killing him,’ Kellin said.
Brand shrugged slightly; Mark’s survival was immaterial to him. Garec was glad Steven had been looking the other way.
Gilmour closed his eyes. The air was damp and cold, like a wet cloak. He thought of the lump of folded cloth lashed to the back of his saddle. Lessek’s spell book was hidden there, protected. The ash dream. Nerak had used the book to reach across the Fold. Could Mark use it to usher an unthinkable evil into Eldarn? It was too great a risk. ‘No, we can’t destroy it yet,’ he said.
‘Why?’ Steven said. He cleared his throat, trying to control the tone of his voice. It would do no one’s confidence any good to hear him whining in fear. ‘He can’t open the Fold without it, Gilmour.’
‘I think he can.’ The Larion sorcerer pointed at his horse.
‘What? The book?’
‘Can you open the Fold, Steven?’ Garec asked. ‘Isn’t that where you tossed Nerak?’
‘It is,’ Steven said, ‘but I need more time, I need more practice. I need some frigging paper, a decent pen and a couple of days to think it through. If Eldarn’s fate boils down to a fistfight here in the woods, ankle-deep in the snow, we’re going to lose. I’m not going to kill my friend; it’s my fault he’s here at all.’
‘But that’s not what-’ Garec began.
Steven interrupted, ‘We can win, Garec, I know we can. But I’ve no idea at all what that book’s about. If there’s something the rest of us need to know, Gilmour, the clock’s ticking. As for Nerak, if he could have used that book to open the Fold, I’m betting he would have done it Twinmoons ago. He wouldn’t have hidden the table; he wouldn’t have hidden Lessek’s key, and he wouldn’t have committed himself so diligently to running us all over Eldarn. I know it’s a gamble, but we have to assume the book is secondary to Mark’s goals. We can’t have come this far just to change gears now. The book may be powerful; it may be cruel or beautiful or as pernicious as a bad case of crabs, but we have to focus on the table, because we know that can ruin us.’