Robert Scott - Lesseks Key (Eldarn Sequence, Book 2)

A Gollancz eBook

Copyright Robert Scott 2006

All rights reserved.

The right of Robert Scott to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in Great Britain in 2006 by

Gollancz

The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

Orion House

5 Upper Saint Martins Lane

London, WC2H 9EA

An Hachette UK Company

This eBook first published in 2010 by Gollancz.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 575 10508 9

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

www.orionbooks.co.uk

The Hickory Staff

In memory:

Jay Mark Gordon

(1944-2005)

Last year, while Jay and I were busy telling Steven Taylors story, there were many people who took time to tell Jays. His family and I are indebted to all of them but my sincere appreciation goes to Heather Nicholson, Tali Israeli, Sam Altman, and Richard Marcus. I know Jay appreciated their efforts as well. I would be remiss if I did not mention the staff of caring people who helped Jay remain comfortable in the last months of his life. Ardent supporters of his writing, Jays nurses took time from a gruelling daily regimen to celebrate every bit of good news he received about the Eldarn books. Speaking for Susan, Stacy and Karen we cannot thank all of you enough.

I owe thanks to Bill Bixby, Jamie Addington and the staff at Bull Run for their ongoing support and flexibility. Thanks Gena Doyle and Uncle G for reading, asking questions and calculating irritating math problems. If reading chapter drafts wasnt enough, Pam Widmann was invariably willing to drive around Idaho Springs with a cell phone and a camera, snapping pictures of roadside ditches, empty lots, alleyways and even the city landfill. Thanks Pam. Thanks to everyone at Caribou Coffee for the 239 gallons of free refills, and thanks to Mr Macbeth and the Gypsyman for their efforts to rouse the cheering section around the world.

As ever, I owe sincere thanks to Jo Fletcher and the staff and writers at Victor Gollancz. Jo herself has given countless hours to these books weekends, late nights, vacations, even commuter time. My gratitude also goes to Gillian Redfearn, Jonathan Weir, Sara Mulryan, Simon Spanton, and James Lovegrove for making a fledgling writers introduction to this industry painless and enjoyable.

Finally, thanks to Kage, Sam and Hadley for their love and support.

The creature huddles in the recessed doorway of a waterfront tavern. Closed now, and empty, the windows look in on an abyss, a room so shrouded in middlenight that the glass might mark the entrance to the Fold itself. Light from sporadic sentinel torches left burning along the Orindale waterfront reflect off the windows, but, ignoring the laws of physics, their glow doesnt bring any illumination to the darkened tavern; the diffuse glow merely bounces back.

The creature knows well that places exist where nothing matters, where light cannot penetrate, where the absence of perception provides for the absence of reality. The Fold. Isnt that how the old man described it? Its worse than death, because death, like life or love, is held so close. Death has meaning; its a profound event, feared above most horrors, but meaningful nevertheless. This place is worse, more tragic: the Fold embodied. This is a place so devoid of colour and touch, scent and sound, that nothing can survive. This is the place mothers go after the broken bodies of their children are found washed up on a beach or lying in pieces across a field. Its the end of all things, the event horizon.

Nothing can remain here long except for the creature. Stooped and broken, hunched at the waist and dragging much of its torso like a disintegrating appendage, the thing in the doorway resembles a tree that has lived too long, the victim of too many woodsmen hacking deep, disfiguring scars. It can stand upright, but thats painful, that requires effort, and hope, and the creature refuses to have hope. Instead, it waits. Fortified by its ability to see and understand its own condition, as if seeing itself from above, the creature becomes the darkness, dragging it along as it drags its own body. It sees the mossy nubs that work their way through the rotting planks of the waterfront walkways. It steps in the puddles of piss and vomit that surround the taverns. It watches rats battling over half-stripped chicken bones tossed from windows two and three floors up, and insects devouring half-digested bits of venison regurgitated by drunks reeling towards home, their ships, maybe, or the downy beds of the local whores.

One night it finds a finger, lost in a bar fight and on another, a portion of someones ear, which it turns over and over in its fingers, trying to imagine the whole from which this bit was severed. Finally, it stashes the lobe in its robes, tucked beside the finger, the chicken bones and the bits of venison, before starting out again.

This wretched thing would be willing to die if it were willing to allow itself an experience so meaningful. Its pallid flesh is hidden beneath the folds of a stolen cloak as it stares out at the Orindale night, listening, waiting and planning. It does have a mission: it is driven by its desire to hunt and kill the black and gold soldiers. There are so many; thousands have come here, and it kills one, two, sometimes five in a night. Men or women, it doesnt care. It doesnt dismember them, or eat them not much of them anyway, there is plenty of food along the waterfront and nor does it perform deviant acts with their corpses. Instead, the creature slices them open: through the neck is quiet, but the gullet works well, too. It finds some strange satisfaction watching the young Malakasians struggling to replace handfuls of innards, as if packing lengths of moist summer sausage into a torn canvas sack. From some come moist clouds of exsanguinous fog, particularly when they are gutted in the early morning.

The creatures pain comes and goes, but when it strikes it is searing, nearly unbearable. Beginning in its neck and shoulders, the fire bolts across its back, paralysing its legs and forcing it ever deeper into its crouch. Though it cannot remember the past very well, it knows that it has brought this upon itself. There are hazy recollections of a frigid river, a flat rock, and an aborted attempt to straighten itself, to regain its previous form, but it did great damage that day, hurling itself repeatedly against the unforgiving stone. Then the pain was glorious, making it see things, hallucinations, nearly translucent lights like wraiths scurrying over hillsides and flitting between sap-stained pine trunks. Now it salves its wounds with the black and gold soldiers.