'We can't destroy it.' Gilmour was adamant. 'We would be cutting off our own hands.'

Like a cheap vaudeville magician, Steven thought. Steven thought.

'So what do we do?' Brand asked. 'We can't roll this cart fast enough to escape, and if we can't destroy the table, we have to stand and fight.'

'Against a whole battalion?' Kellin looked as if she might tumble from the saddle after all.

'What option do we have?' Brand asked. 'Gilmour needs the table. Steven claims we don't. What should we do? We're not sorcerers. If Mark gets it, he'll use it, and we'll all be dead; Eldarn will be lost. If he waits to use it in Wellham Ridge or even Orindale, we might be able to steal it back from him especially after the soldiers return to their normal duties. But there are no guarantees he'll wait.' Brand looked at Gilmour. 'Is that right? Have I missed anything?'

'That's it, and we're wasting time standing here, my friends.'

'So we fight,' Brand said. A battalion of soldiers can't stand against these two. Even if you don't want to kill them, Steven, you can-'

'Drop trees on them, catch the forest on fire, bring the river down on them, flood the whole rutting place,' Garec suggested.

'Vivid imagination, Garec,' Steven said wryly.

'I'd make a great magician.'

'And we'll run south with the table,' Brand said, 'while you delay the soldiers here.'

'West,' Kellin corrected, 'no one would expect that.'

'How far west can we go?' Garec asked. 'We're backed up against the foothills right now.'

'Exactly,' Kellin said. 'It might be slower and harder, but with all the horses working, we'll be hidden in the hills before they get here.'

'Unless they have scouts spread out to the west,' Garec said.

'I hadn't thought of that,' Kellin said. 'If even one of them sees us, we're lost. We'd never manage to escape uphill.'

'Then we cross the river.' Garec gestured east through the trees.

'No,' Steven said.

'No, what?'

Steven ignored them. Turning to the wagon, he allowed the magic to seep from his body, covering him like a bank of fog over a lakeside village. He reached between the wagon slats and pressed his palms against the spell table.

Gilmour whispered, 'What are you doing?'

The rear slats slid aside and the table began rolling backwards, its carved pedestal feet turning a sluggish orbit around a tiny slot into which Steven imagined Mark would fit Lessek's key. The inky granite shone dully in the muted winter light, solid now, impenetrable, but with the forbidding potential to transform into a swirling cauldron of magic and sorcery.

'Garec and Kellin are right, Steven,' Gilmour said. 'We should stand and fight while they get as far from here as possible.'

Steven ignored his friend and focused on his spell, guiding the massive stone artefact out of the cart. He ran his palms over the smoothly polished stone, then reached his fingers into the mal-shaped slot reserved for Lessek's keystone. With a grimace, he released the magic he had dammed up behind his will and watched as the spell table broke into three ragged shards.

'Good rutting whores!' Gilmour shouted. 'I thought I told you-!' The old man fell to his knees. 'After all this time, Steven, have you lost your mind?'

'Outstanding!' Steven crowed.

'What in the name of the great gods of the Northern Forest has come over you?' Gilmour choked. 'What's wrong with you?'

The others stood frozen, gripped by the realisation that something powerful and dangerous was unfolding before them. No one spoke.

'If it fools you, Gilmour, there's a chance it'll fool Mark.'

Taken aback, the Larion sorcerer wiped his eyes and whispered, 'If it fools me? If what what fools me?' fools me?'

'Come, see for yourself.' Steven gestured and Gilmour warily approached the broken pieces, hope returning a breath at a time.

Reaching out to grasp one of the jagged shards, he asked, 'What did you do?'

'I cut off my own hand,' Steven replied simply, 'for the second time since we came looking for this thing.'

Garec gasped, almost unaware he'd been holding his breath from the moment the spell table had shattered. 'It's an illusion? A visual trick?'

Steven nodded. 'Mark won't be expecting it. He knows me too well. He knows how I've been struggling with this power, and how Gilmour has been working with me on magic's ability to truly change what's real, to truly change the nature of something at its most fundamental level. So-' he smirked again, '-I've thrown him a curveball. We'll see if it works.'

'A curveball?' Kellin asked herself, then went on quickly, 'But won't the key still draw him to this place?'

'Yes,' Gilmour answered.

'So we have to hope he doesn't touch it,' Brand said. 'If he's in the saddle, he might see that it's broken and just keep going.'

'Chasing us, most likely,' Garec said.

'Grand,' Kellin echoed.

'Can you mask the power emanating from it, Steven?' Garec waved his hands about, trying to explain what he meant. 'Can you camouflage the magic coming off the thing as if it really is sitting here useless?'

Steven said, 'I don't think so.'

'Then this is a rutting gamble.'

'I don't know what else to do,' Steven admitted. At least this looks like we took the last option available to us: we broke the table to save Eldarn.'

A palpable silence fell over them. No one was comfortable leaving the artefact for Mark, but Steven's ruse was the only thing they could think of. If it worked, and if they survived long enough, they still had a chance to spirit the table away through the far portal.

Brand was first to speak. 'So we hide in the hills, wait for Mark to either just pass along the river or to discover the table. We hope he leaves it here, assuming it's broken and useless, and then we return to haul it north to the nearest farm with a barn.'

'That about sums it up, yes,' Steven said, 'unless anyone has a better idea.'

Garec screwed up his face, racking his mind for anything more promising. Crossing the river was too dangerous, and would take too long. Standing to fight was suicidal. The two sorcerers could ride north to face Mark, but scouts would be bound to discover them while they lugged the table into the foothills. And even if Steven and Gilmour managed to turn the bulk of Mark's battalion, it needed only one squad of armed Malakasians to easily overtake the partisans as they fled. Garec was deadly with a bow, and he would probably kill most of any squad coming for them, but it just took one soldier to escape alive and the force that followed them would be enormous.

'What if we open the portal now?' he asked finally.

Steven frowned. 'That could be our wisest choice, Garec. With the table, book and far portal gone, there would be no way for Mark to follow us.'

'But-'

'But there are massive oceans, vast ice floes and sprawling deserts in my world. When I crossed the Fold from Orindale, I found myself twenty paces deep in the sea, five hundred paces offshore and I considered myself lucky.'

'The table might sink,' Kellin said, 'but you two could haul it back out, couldn't you?'

'The oceans in my world reach depths of over twenty thousand paces, Kellin,' Steven explained, 'and there's enormous water pressure down there it would crush us to jelly.'

Garec laughed, a nervous chuckle. 'It was just a thought,' he said. 'Let's go with this instead.'

Brand agreed. 'If Mark sees through the charade and begins using the table here in the forest, we'll draw our weapons and charge. It'll be our only hope, but we'll have to try and kill him. If he waits, if he hauls the table back to Wellham Ridge or even into Orindale, we'll be able to steal it back.'

'Done,' Steven said. He wasn't willing to fight Mark to the death, but he needed to get the company moving again. 'Let's go.'

Garec looked around. 'We'll leave the wagon here; it looks more convincing that way.'

'Fine,' Gilmour said, 'and we'll ride west, so mount up, quickly now.'

Kellin asked, 'How will we know if Mark starts using the table?'

'We'll know,' Gilmour said.

SNAKES.

A line of Malakasian soldiers appeared in the distance, spread thin and picking their way between the trees, over fallen trunks, and around mounds of blown snow. The line looked ragged and undisciplined, like hunters driving deer. Some were only a few hundred paces off; others, those with an especially unforgiving path through the underbrush, were further away, but there was no mistaking them. However weary they appeared, they were Malakasian soldiers, and they represented an insurmountable barrier, blocking the road north and closing quickly.

Garec was first to spot them. Motioning for the others to dismount and quiet their horses, he whispered, 'Steven, can you-?'

'Done.'

'It's a company, sixty, seventy-five men,' Garec said. 'The line reaches all the way to the river.'

'Where the rest of them are coming south in a rank,' Kellin added.

'Stay down,' Gilmour said. 'We want them to pass by.'

'Should we move off the back slope of this hill?' Brand whispered.

'Too late now,' Gilmour replied. 'Just stay down; they'll pass. We're well hidden.'

Beneath the protection of Steven's magical blanket, the forested foothills were a quiet haven. Garec was anxious that he might be called upon to kill again, but in the shimmering embrace of the spell he barely heard the soldiers as they closed to within a few paces. He rested his head on folded forearms. The diagonal pressure of his rosewood bow was comforting. The sun streamed through a momentary break in the clouds, colouring the forest gold and brightening the ridged wrinkles in Garec's cloak. He watched the shadows as he listened for the telltale sounds of the soldiers moving away.

' ... Denne's rutting bastards get the easy path Denne's rutting bastards get the easy path-'

'Denne's dead.'

'Tavon's gone mad.'

'Shut your mouth about her; I'm warning you.'

'...no one out here-'

'Forced marches-'

'... all too sick, anyway-'

The voices faded and the sounds of crunching snow and snapping branches were soon lost as well. Garec lifted his head and watched the last of the line pick their uncomfortable way through the drifts and tangled brush. He glanced at Steven and whispered, 'That should do it.'

Steven gestured with one hand and Garec felt the old blanket dissipate, leaving the winter chill to move back in almost immediately, reminding them all that despite the sun's momentary appearance, the day was damp and cold.

'That was too close for me,' Kellin said, wishing they had been another thousand paces west. 'What if one of the horses had whinnied?'

'They wouldn't have.' Gilmour sounded certain. 'Steven's refined that spell.'

'I guess he did,' Garec said. 'I almost fell asleep.'

'I did a bit,' Steven admitted. 'I was worried about the horses too, so I intensified it some. If you almost dozed off, that means it was working.'

'You didn't make the sun come out, did you?' Kellin took a wary step backwards.

'No,' Steven laughed, 'that was just good timing.'

'Where to now?' Brand was already back in the saddle; his horse was pawing nervously at the snow, ready, like its master, to get moving again.

'The first farm we come across,' Gilmour said. 'Something else: I'm worried that we came upon these fellows with no warning from Gabriel O'Reilly.'

'Probably not good news,' Steven agreed.

'We'll post a sentry near the river,' Gilmour went on, 'and wait for Mark to bring the battalion back into Wellham Ridge. When he does, Steven and I will return for the spell table. We'll have five days to retrieve it so we can join Mrs Sorenson right on schedule.'

'And if Mark doesn't come back by then?' Brand asked.

'Then we'll take the far portal to the table,' Steven said. 'At the right time, we'll open the port there and push the table through to Colorado.' He scratched at his whiskers and added, 'or wherever she is these days.'

'That's assuming Mark leaves the artefact in the forest,' Kellin reminded them.

'Let's try not to think about that possibility.' Garec mounted up.

'Good idea,' Steven agreed and started north along the ridge.

'Captain Hershaw! Captain Hershaw!' the soldiers milling around the broken pieces of the Larion spell table called.

Hershaw, freezing cold and nearly dropping from the saddle with fatigue, rode through the trees. He winced when a sapling slapped him across the cheek. His eyes filled with tears and he cursed, a string of incendiary obscenity that he hoped would reach all the way to Welstar Palace to Prince Malagon's own ear. 'What is it?' he finally managed through clenched teeth.

'Sir!' A flushed and trembling private with damp, matted hair snapped to attention. The others with him mimicked the gesture. 'Sir, we found something, sir.'