The Last Rune 6: The First Stone

by Mark Anthony

  “I’ve been looking for this person for some time,” the man said. “I recently heard that he lives here, in Greyfriars.”

  “No one lives here, my lord,” I said. “ ’Tis a graveyard.”

  “Is that so?”

  A strong finger touched my chin, tilting my head up. He was even taller than I remembered. As before, a wide-brimmed hat shadowed his face, but I caught two glints of gold light in the darkness. His eyes were locked on me, and they were yellow like a wolf’s.

  “Who are you?” I said in a hoarse rasp.

  “Someone who can help you.”

  My fear receded a fraction, and I felt a spark of anger flicker up in me again. First Deacon Moody, now this stranger in black. Why did they want to help me? Couldn’t they see it was no use?

  “Leave me be,” I said, jerking away from him.

  “As you wish, James.”

  These words stunned me so much that I stopped in the act of turning away. I looked over my shoulder. A stray shaft of light fell from a window above, illuminating a strong mouth framed by a dark beard.

  “If you change your mind, come to Advocate’s Close at twilight on the first day of any month. You’ll find me then, just as you did before.”

  I clenched my hands into fists. “I won’t come.”

  The man said nothing. He turned and walked down the street. When I could no longer see him, I gazed up at the gates of the cemetery. I was weary and longed to lie down in the crypt to sleep. Only I did not dare—not now, not ever again. Somehow he had learned that I made my home there. Someone on the street had told him, and that meant I could never sleep in Greyfriars again. No more would I know the peace of the Gilroy mausoleum, or the comfort of my imagined family. A pang of sadness pierced my heart.

  I crumpled the feeling and tossed it away, like refuse in the gutter. Deacon Moody was an old, drunken fool, but he had been right about one thing. Sorrow was not for the dead. I straightened my bony shoulders and passed into the night.

  After that, I put all thoughts of Greyfriars and the stranger in black out of my head. A change had come over me, as sudden as a storm sweeps out of the Highlands. While before I had been quick to laugh or make a jest with other folk on the street, now I was grim and silent, and I spoke to no person except out of need. I no longer slept in a crypt, but all the same I had died, just like the people Deacon Moody had spoken of.

  It was not simply temptation that had caused me to steal that man’s purse on the stair below High Street. Desperation had factored in as well. As the years passed, despite the wretchedness of my diet, I had sprouted. My breeches had become knickers of their own accord, and my shirtsleeves reached barely past my elbows.

  The taller I grew, the harder it became to compel the ladies to charity. Fewer carriages stopped, and when they did I received smaller coins for my troubles. Then, for a long time, no carriage stopped at all.

  I had all but given up on winning alms by the time I robbed that fellow. However, the day after I fled the dark stranger at Greyfriars, I tried one more time, cleaning myself up as best I could and standing beside the road. To my surprise, it was not long before a glossy coach stopped in front of me. To my further surprise, it was not a woman who opened the coach’s door, but a man: a barrister or other well-to-do gentleman, edging on toward middle years, but still handsome in his fine attire.

  Looking back, I should not have been so astonished. With the change that had come over me, I had not bothered to affect the cherub’s forlorn and beatific expression. Instead, I looked exactly like what I was—a young man with yellow hair, thin and pretty and dangerous. I should have known they would stop for me.

  The piercing light in the fellow’s eyes told me he did not seek to do charity unto me, but the coins in his hand, gold as my hair, removed any qualms I might have felt. I climbed into the carriage, and the door shut behind me.

  After that day, I realized it did not matter if the fair ladies would no longer make a fuss over me. There were men who would give me far more money, and for far different reasons. One thing, though, remained the same: they all favored my golden locks. I let my hair grow long and luxuriant, and always kept it clean.

  Sometimes, as on that first day, I stood beside High Street, waiting for a carriage to stop, but I soon found only the boldest favored that method. More often I could be found as dusk fell, lingering in the square just below the Tron kirk, whose wooden steeple beckoned like a finger against the sky. That’s where I’d find them waiting in shadows, eyes hungry and furtive. I’d give them a look, then lead them away down a side street, toward a crib in a wooden tenement I had rented with my first earnings.

  Usually I’d let them pay their coin and do things to me before I robbed them while they slept on the dirty straw mattress in the crib. If they were fat or smelled bad, I’d just rob them right away, pulling my mother’s knife on them once we were alone in an alley. Either way, I didn’t worry about getting caught. The men would be far too ashamed to go to the constable to report a robbery. After all, there was a special place in Hell for men with appetites such as theirs; that’s what the ministers inside the Tron said—a place where tongues of fire licked at your nether regions and devils dug at your entrails with hot pokers for all eternity.

  As for me, I was not concerned with devils. After all, if I was dead, then I was already in Hell. Or perhaps I was one of Lucifer’s devils myself, sent here to torture the wicked.

  Autumn edged into chill winter, and I used my newfound money to buy clothes, including a gray cloak that was in truth quite plain, but still fine by the standards of those who lived on the street. Those who had greeted me with friendly words when I was younger now gazed at me with suspicious or jealous looks. More than once I saw Deacon Moody at a distance, gazing at me from across the Grassmarket. I paid no heed to any of them.

  One of the men who came to me introduced me to the fiery taste of whiskey, and I found I quite liked it, though more than once I became too besotted to remember to rob my clients, and once one of them rolled me while I slept in a stupor. However, that did not inspire me to caution, and soon the majority of what I earned went to buy bottles of the stuff, for I favored it over food. I grew taller yet, but remained thin as a whip, and pale from haunting the night and sleeping in the crib by day.

  I did not know it at the time, but as winter released its grip on Edinburgh and the warmth of spring seeped onto the air, in the year of our Lord 1668, I was near to death. A cough had afflicted me, and often in the morning I would bring up gobs of yellow phlegm flecked with blood. Even on chill days sweat sheened my pallid skin, for it seemed I always had a fever. I could keep little food down, and only the whiskey seemed to dull the pounding in my head, though it made the gnawing in my stomach worse.

  To compound matters, I found my money running short. Rarely now could I keep my wits about me long enough to rob the men who followed me from the square below the Tron. Too often I would fall unconscious, leaving them to paw at me as they wished without making payment. I would wake to find them gone and my body so sore I could scarcely walk. All the same I would shrug on my clothes, untangle my hair, drink a little whiskey, then head out to find another I could offer myself to.

  I began to grow reckless, not bothering to wait for the shadows of night, and approaching men directly rather than waiting for them to slink after me. When a constable would ask me what I was doing, lurking about, I would try to bribe him by offering my services for free. The first two or three accepted, but then one—a big fellow with ruddy cheeks and red hair—struck me with the back of his hand, so hard that blood burst out from my lip and I had to run through twisting streets to escape him.

  For some reason I could not name, after that happened, I thought to go see Deacon Moody. Not for help—I was beyond that—but perhaps simply so I could remember something of my younger days. It is said that, as death approaches, one often relives the events of one’s life.

  When I reached the Grassmarket, however, I found no sign
of Moody. I inquired here and there and soon learned that the Deacon had been found a few months ago, dead.

  “How did it happen?” I asked the grog seller who told me the news.

  “By his own deed,” the woman said, wiping hands against her dirty smock to no effect. “ ’Tis whispered both his wrists were laid open, and that into each he had carved the figure of a cross.”

  She pressed her thin lips together and made the sign of the cross herself. I turned and left without a word, feeling neither sad nor stunned, simply empty. The dead cannot feel, the Deacon had said. I pressed a hand to my heart, yet it seemed forged of iron. Not even my swollen lip hurt. I walked back toward my crib, and I did not think of Deacon Moody again.

  I might have died that day, curled up like a dog on my matted bed, but something roused me from my torpor. Only what was it? It had sounded like the bells of the Tron kirk, only clearer, more distant. Purer.

  Pulling myself up with weak arms, I peered out the narrow slit in the wall that passed for a window. Outside the day was ending, and twilight filtered down between the tenements like soot. A shadow moved on the street below. It vanished around a corner, heading up toward High Street, but I had caught a glimpse of a black robe, its hem stained with mud, and of lank gray hair.

  Was this sight a hallucination brought on by fever, a regurgitation of what I had learned in the Grassmarket that day? Or was it something more? It is sometimes said that ghosts appear to those who are near to death themselves.

  Even now, after more than three centuries, I still believe it is the latter of these two explanations that was true. Regardless, I knew I must follow the man in the black robe.

  New strength flooded my body. I felt bright and powerful of a sudden, as a candle flaring just before it burns out. I flung myself through the door of my crib and down the rickety stairs of the tenement, then out onto the street. Though evening fell, the spring air was balmy, and already tainted with the rich scent of rot that would ripen into a stifling miasma as summer drew close. A black cat slunk away from me, crossing my path as I lurched up the lane toward High Street.

  I saw the shadow once more as I reached the Tron, just vanishing around the corner of the church, then again drifting past St. Giles cathedral. Why I followed the wraith, I do not know. I had no words for Deacon Moody, except perhaps to ask if he was glad he was dead, if he felt nothing now. The thought occurred to me that I was dead myself—truly dead—and even at that moment my corpse lay stiffening in the crib as the first rats discovered me, squealing their delight.

  The world darkened around me, torches and lanterns burning like distant stars. I saw the shadow just ahead, beckoning to me, and I followed through an archway. Muted laughter drifted on the air. I rubbed my eyes and saw that I was no longer on the High Street, but rather in a courtyard. It seemed familiar to me, and then I saw the moldy stone plaque on the wall. ADVOCATE’S CLOSE, it read. There was no trace of the shadow I had followed.

  “Well, what have we here?” said a rough voice.

  I turned and saw a man in the archway, illuminated by dirty light spilling out of windows above. He was big, clad all in blue. A grin parted the thatch of his red beard, and I recognized him as the constable I had fled from earlier that day.

  “What is it, MacKenzie?” A second shadow appeared in the archway. He was short and heavy-shouldered, his voice slurred with drink.

  “It’s the devil’s own, that’s who,” the constable said, stalking forward at a leisurely pace. The iron gate behind me was locked. “Tell me, boy, given anyone Lucifer’s Kiss today?”

  His companion laughed. “So he’s one of those, is he? How about you bend yerself over, MacKenzie, and let him plant a kiss on you.”

  “Shut your trap, Ralph,” the constable said, glaring. “I’m no lover of Satan or his ilk. Not like this whelp. A scourge on this city, you are.” He edged closer, big hands flexing.

  I didn’t move. “You can’t hurt me,” I said quietly.

  “Think so?” he said with a hard laugh. “Your face looks bad enough from where I got you this morning. Did I ruin your pretty looks? Well, there’s plenty more where that came from. You may serve Satan now, but I can beat the fear of God into you.”

  I didn’t flinch as his fist descended toward my cheek. He could not harm me. I was beyond that now. Although I had not thought of her in many months, I called out to her now.

  I’m coming, Mother!

  “Stay your hand,” spoke a deep voice.

  It seemed impossible, given the force and speed behind it, but the constable’s fist froze not an inch from my cheek.

  “What’s wrong with you, MacKenzie?” the short man said. “Come on, give the whelp a good one.”

  “I can’t,” the constable said through clenched teeth. Sweat glittered his brow. His arm shook, as if all his muscles strained, but his fist moved no closer.

  “Bloody Hell, if you’ve gone all soft, then I’ll do it.” The one named Ralph marched forward and reached for me with both hands.

  “I said stay,” the voice intoned.

  Ralph went stiff as a corpse, arms before him, and his eyes bulged. A gurgle sounded low in his throat, but he made no other sound. A figure clad all in black parted from the shadows and drifted into view. It was not the ghost of Deacon Moody.

  “Are you well, James?” he said, gazing down at me.

  I tried to speak, but I seemed as paralyzed as the two men. I had grown since our last meeting, but the stranger still towered over me, and his voice—full of danger a moment ago—had been as resonant with kindness as I remembered. A stray shaft of light illuminated his face, and I thought it stern and wise and handsome.

  “Who are you?” I finally found the breath to ask.

  “That is a long tale, and there is no time to tell it now, James. I would that you come with me tonight.”

  I glanced at the two motionless men. Spittle dribbled from their mouths.

  “You can do with me as you would,” I said. “I can’t stop you.”

  He bent down and, as he had long ago, laid a hand on my shoulder. “No, James. I’m not like them. I will not make you do something you would not. I want you to come with me because you choose it, because you want something better for yourself than what you have been given. Because you want to live.”

  A moan escaped me. For so long I had believed I was dead, capable of feeling nothing. Only I had been terribly wrong, for at that moment a pain pierced my heart, and a longing came over me—though for what I could not name, except that I thought of the calling of the bells that had awakened me, and how clear the sound had been. I thought as well of Deacon Moody, and how he had wished to save me. Perhaps he had after all.

  “I will come with you,” I said.

  “I am glad, James.” Keeping his strong hand on my shoulder, he guided me from the close, past the two men who stood still as statues, and like ghosts ourselves we passed into the night.

  While it was years before I would finally learn the secret of the Sleeping Ones, before my own eyes would become gold as his, the moment I walked from Advocate’s Close with the stranger was the moment I left death behind and first embarked upon the path to immortality.

  While the days that followed are a blur to me now—events seen through a gray fog—I remember that night with perfect clarity: how he led me to a coach waiting on High Street and spoke quiet words to a man clad in a servant’s coat.

  “Lay him down in the back. Be gentle with him. And after you arrive at Madstone Hall, you must send for the doctor at once.”

  “What of yourself, sir?”

  The servant’s voice was rich with an accent I could not name, unlike the stranger’s speech, which seemed to bear no accent at all.

  “I must finish my business here in Edinburgh. I’ll take a horse to the manor later tonight.”

  “We’ll keep a fire burning in the library for your arrival, sir.”

  I could not see—yet I felt—his smile. “Thank you, Pietro. Even after a
ll these years, I haven’t grown used to the chill of this land. To think, they call this springtime. Here—use this to keep him warm.”

  He removed the dark cloak and wrapped it over me. It was soft, and laced with the sweet, masculine smell of tobacco. Though his hair was white, and his angled face weathered with age, the servant picked me up with little strain, for I was light as a bird. The tall buildings tilted; stars wheeled in the sky above, then vanished as the coach door opened and I was set on the leather seat inside.

  “Go quickly, Pietro. A fever burns in him. I fear he is near to death.”

  No, I tried to call out. I am well now. But my lips could not form the words, and it didn’t matter, for the door was shut, and moments later the coach was clattering down the High Street.

  I lay on the seat, wrapped in his cloak, weary in every bone of my young body, but strangely awake and alert. I had the sense that the coach was heading downward, and in my mind I could see it moving through the Canongate, past the spires of Holyrood Palace, and into the night-shrouded world beyond, like a tiny craft on a wide, dark sea.

  It occurred to me that I should perhaps be afraid. Maybe the stranger had not saved me after all. Maybe he merely wanted me, and sought to use me just as all the others had before him. But no, he was not like other men; that was the one thing I was certain of.

  After that my mind drifted, and soon it seemed I was floating on the dark sea. From time to time I heard voices, and I think they were what kept me from sinking into the water. The voices were difficult to make out; they blended with the murmur of the waves. One was the strangely accented voice, while another spoke in the lilting tongue of a well-to-do lowlander. Then, sometimes, there was the other voice, as deep as the ocean I drifted on.

  “Come back to us, James,” I heard it say once, and I tried to call out in answer, only black water filled my mouth.

  “The fever burns hotter in him than ever,” said the Scottish voice. “It must break soon, or it will burn him to death.”