The Last Rune 6: The First Stone

by Mark Anthony

  Just like Travis, Morindu had died beneath the sands of the Morgolthi. And had been resurrected.

  “Your blood,” Grace murmured. She took one of his hands in hers; his scraped knuckles were crusted with sand. “Your blood did this, Travis.”

  No, not his blood. It was the blood of Orú that flowed in his veins. The city had known the blood of its god-king. And it had answered.

  Vani stepped to the edge of the pinnacle, her black leathers dusted with sand. “This is why the Scirathi feared you, Travis, why they wanted to kill you. They knew you could command the city. They knew you were fated to raise Morindu from the sands of the Morgolthi, just as the Mournish knew. And now you have.” She turned to look at him, her gold eyes shining.

  Travis sensed all their gazes on him; it wasn’t a good feeling. “So how do the Scirathi plan to control the city?” he said, trying to deflect attention from himself. “If they intended for me to be dead when they reached it, they must have had some other plan for raising Morindu.”

  “Nim?” Larad said.

  Farr shook his head. “Powerful blood runs in her veins, but it is not the blood of Orú. They could not use her to raise the city.”

  “Yet, if what you say is true, if she is a nexus,” Vani said, “then fate is changed by her very presence.”

  “The throne room,” Avhir said. The tall assassin approached Vani. “Where Orú was shackled, and where he slept. Was it not said that only the Seven Fateless could enter?”

  Vani nodded. “For anyone but the A’narai, entering the throne room was certain death. Orú’s power was so terrible that the very threads of fate were twisted in his presence.”

  “You mean like a nexus?” Grace said, her regal visage pale with dust.

  Travis gazed at the city. “Nim.”

  “They mean to use her to enter the throne room,” Farr said. “To find the god-king Orú. And to take his blood.”

  Larad stopped shaking sand from his robe. “But Orú cannot possibly still be alive after three thousand years.”

  “Perhaps not,” Farr said, his dark eyes on the city. “But it may not matter. If even a small amount of his blood remains, in scarabs or vials . . .”

  The others gazed again at Travis. He knew what they were thinking; they had all seen the transformation that a single drop of Orú’s blood had wrought in him. What would the Scirathi do with such blood?

  Maybe not anything, Travis. Magic is weakening. Maybe the Scirathi are too late.

  Or maybe they weren’t. Magic was losing its strenth, yes, but not the Imsari; they seemed as powerful as ever. And so did Travis’s blood—how else could it have reversed the spell of destruction cast upon Morindu the Dark over three eons ago? Orú’s blood might yet have power the Scirathi could wield.

  And even if it didn’t, the Scirathi still had Nim.

  When the city had risen, great clouds of dust had billowed into the sky, masking the glare of the sun. Now the dust had begun to settle, and the sun broke through. Once again heat rose in a choking miasma from the desert floor.

  “Come on,” Travis said. “One way or another, we have to go in there.”

  Avhir found steps hewn into the side of the pinnacle. People from Morindu must have climbed to this place thousands of years ago, perhaps to gaze at their dark city. Or perhaps to watch for the armies of their enemies approaching. In minutes they reached the bottom.

  “The gate must be there,” Vani said, pointing to a pair of delicate spires set into the wall that ringed the city.

  Master Larad turned his shattered face toward her. “Will we be able to open them?”

  No one answered the Runelord. It was a half mile from the base of the pinnacle to the city, and there was no shade or shelter anywhere in between. A parched wind dispersed the last of the haze on the air, and the sun glared down from the sky like a furious eye.

  They ran. The T’gol surged ahead, hardly leaving prints in the sand. The others lumbered behind. In moments they were sweating, and after a minute Grace, Larad, and Farr all began to grimace in pain.

  You can’t feel it, Travis, but the sand is burning them. Any hotter, and it would melt into glass. If you don’t do something, they won’t make it.

  “Larad, the Stones.”

  The Runelord could not manage words, but he held out the iron box in trembling hands. This time Travis took only Gelthisar, the Stone of Ice.

  “Hadath,” he murmured. Again he spoke the rune of frost, and again.

  The sand remained cool only for moments before the sun baked it again, but each time he spoke the rune of frost Travis directed the force of the runespell just ahead of them. Grace, Farr, and Larad were no longer limping, and they were able to make rapid progress. They reached the wall of the city. Vani and Avhir were already there.

  Travis looked up, awestruck again. The wall was a hundred feet high, fashioned of the same glassy black stone as the spire. No crack or crevice marred it, and there was no sign of any gate or doorway.

  He glanced at Vani. “I thought you said the gate would be here.”

  “It is here.” She reached toward the wall, but her hand seemed to spring back before she could touch it.

  Travis understood. It was like the door in the tower. It was a spell woven in lines of fate. One fate was that there was no gate in the wall; that was the possibility they saw now. But there was another possibility. . . .

  Travis approached the wall and reached out a hand. As it drew close to the black stone he felt resistance. He gathered his will, pushing his hand forward, as if through thick mud.

  The resistance parted. His hand touched smooth stone.

  The surface of the wall rippled, like dark water disturbed by a cast pebble. Then the ripples vanished, and Travis was no longer touching solid stone. He looked up. Where before there had been only blank wall, there was now an arched opening wide enough for five men to pass.

  “Interesting,” Larad said. “How did you do that?”

  Travis lowered his arm. He was not a nexus, a center around which threads of fate spun; not like Nim. He was the opposite of that. Lines of fate were not drawn to him, but rather repulsed. Twice he had died, and twice he had been reborn.

  “A’narai,” Vani murmured.

  “Fateless,” Travis said, and stepped through the gate.

  37.

  It was like a garden.

  Travis walked down a broad avenue, shaded from the sun by date palms arching overhead. Lindara vines, lush with yellow blooms, cascaded down walls and coiled above arched gates through which the music of falling water drifted. Beyond they glimpsed cool, dim, green spaces.

  “This is impossible,” Grace said, gazing around. “This place has been buried for three thousand years. How can there be trees?”

  Larad reached out, brushing an orange flower that grew from a niche in a wall. “I half expect the people to start coming out of their doors. It’s as if the city is just as they left it eons ago.”

  “Just as they left it,” Farr repeated the words, casting back the hood of his robe. “You may be right, Runelord. This may indeed be how Morindu looked when it was abandoned.”

  As Grace had said, that was impossible. All the same, Travis was certain Farr was right. He had expected to find a desolate ruin; instead, here was Morindu at the height of its power and splendor.

  Except its people are gone. They turned to dust three thousand years ago, while these walls, even these flowers, remain.

  A sleek black form moved past Travis, gold eyes seeking, hands at the ready. He was wrong; Morindu’s people weren’t gone. They had endured over the years in exile, their blood passing from father to daughter, from mother to son. And now, after all this time, they had returned.

  “I will scout ahead,” Vani said to Avhir. “Watch behind us, but do not stray far. There is no telling what remains here.”

  Travis studied Vani’s face, trying to see what she was feeling. All the Mournish were descended from the exiled people of Morindu the Dark. Bu
t she was a scion of the royal line of Morindu, heir to its ruling class of sorcerer-priests. This was her city.

  He touched her shoulder, meeting her eyes. “You’re home, Vani.”

  For a moment, it seemed her gold eyes shone with wonder. Then they narrowed. “Be on your guard,” she said, and kept moving.

  They came to a square where two broad avenues intersected. In the center of the square, water droplets sprayed up from a fountain, bright as jewels, and fell back into a pool green with water lilies.

  “Water,” Larad said, hurrying forward and dipping his hands into the fountain. He looked up, surprise on his face. “It’s cool.”

  “Be careful,” Vani said, circling around the fountain.

  Grace opened her eyes. “No, this water is pure. It won’t harm us.”

  Larad brought cupped hands to his mouth, drinking deeply, then splashed water on his face and neck. All of them followed suit. Travis had never tasted such sweet water before. It soothed his parched tongue and throat, and it seemed to cool the fire in his veins a few degrees. At last he lifted his head, pushed his dripping hair from his face.

  “Where do we go now?” he said, looking at Vani.

  She gazed at Farr. “If Nim truly is a nexus, they will be taking her to the throne room.”

  Grace turned around. “But where is it? This city is huge. It would take us days to explore it. Weeks.”

  Buildings rose in all directions around the square: low, rectangular dwellings, stair-stepped ziggurats, spires, and burnished domes that called to mind the sheltered sanctuary of temples. All were fashioned of the same glassy black stone as the outer walls of the city.

  “There,” Farr said, pointing toward a dome that soared above all others. Unlike any other building, it was gilded with intersecting lines and circles of gold filigree, shining as if molten in the sunlight. “Gold was a sign of power and royalty in ancient Morindu.”

  That was good enough for Travis. “Let’s go.”

  They followed a wide avenue into the heart of the city, toward the dome traced with gold. The buildings to either side grew grander the farther they went, and each plaza they traversed contained ever more elaborate statuary: gigantic stone lions with the wings of eagles, or obelisks inscribed with angular symbols. Above them, tall spires reached toward the sky. Which of them was the one the Scirathi had entered? Had they already reached the throne room?

  No, Travis. If the sorcerers had discovered the blood of Orú, you wouldn’t still be here, walking, breathing. There’s still time.

  They reached a grand arch dripping with lindara vines. Beyond was a garden moister and more lush than anything they had passed so far. Water tumbled over stone, pooling in dim grottoes. Statues peered between green fronds with lapis eyes. The scent of flowers made the air thick and sweet.

  “Beware,” Vani said as Larad bent his face toward a large, bloodred bloom. “There are flowers here that take their color from blood.”

  The Runelord quickly backed away, giving any flower that was even the slightest bit red a wide berth.

  “Vani,” Avhir said. “Look.”

  The T’gol knelt to one side of the lane, where a smaller side path intersected. Vani moved to him, and he brushed the plants growing in a stone urn.

  “These stems are bent,” Avhir said. “All in the same direction. Several people came from this side path and turned onto the main way. They cut the corner tightly, which means they were moving quickly.”

  Vani glanced at Travis.

  “We’ve got to hurry,” he said.

  They ran along the lane that led straight through the gardens, and each time the fronds parted overhead Travis saw that the black dome was closer. Although the T’gol were ready for an attack, they met no resistance as they went. There were no sounds save for the rasp of their breathing and the music of falling water. Not even the trilling of birds disturbed the silence of the gardens.

  The path ended, and the garden gave way to a vast plaza. A row of thirteen obelisks dominated the center of the plaza, mirrored in a reflecting pool, while on the far side a massive bank of stairs swept up toward a rectangular structure that seemed proportioned for giants. Pyramids capped the wings to either side, while the center of the edifice was crowned by the great dome they had seen earlier, its black stone lined with gold.

  Larad craned his neck. “Astonishing. Nothing created in the history of the north can compare to this.”

  “You can study the architecture later, Runelord,” Farr said sharply. “Keep moving.”

  They raced across the plaza, passed between the obelisks, and reached the base of the steps.

  “They came this way,” Avhir said, kneeling and touching the lowest step. He rose and held out his hand; his fingers were stained red.

  They started up the steps. Avhir went first, stretching his lean legs to take the steps three at a time. Vani swept her gaze from side to side as they ascended, hands raised before her.

  However, no attack came. Breathing hard, they reached the top. A pair of columns framed doors five times as tall as Travis. The columns were decorated with bas-relief figures, their long, delicate limbs intertwined with the shapes of enormous spiders. One of the massive doors stood ajar, leaving a gap just wide enough for a person to squeeze through.

  Together, Vani and Avhir pushed against the door. It opened another inch, then stopped.

  “That’s enough,” Vani said. “We can slip through one by—”

  Travis touched the door and it swung silently inward. He looked at his hand. His knuckles were bleeding again.

  Keeping close to one another, they entered a hall lined with titanic statues hewn of ruddy stone. On the right were figures of men with the hooked beaks of falcons, while on the left were women who gazed with the multifaceted eyes of spiders—eyes that seemed to follow Travis as he moved deeper into the hall. White light shafted down from circular windows high above, the beams weaving a glowing web on the dim air.

  Halfway across the hall they came upon the dead Scirathi. There were five of them. At least Travis thought so; it was hard to be sure. Their mutilated bodies littered the floor in many pieces. Black robes lay in shreds; gold masks were crumpled balls. There was no blood.

  Larad studied the corpses, his expression at once repulsed and curious. “What could have done this?”

  “Maybe it was gorleths,” Grace said, lifting a hand to her throat.

  Vani squatted beside one of the mutilated bodies. “No. There are no claw or teeth marks. These sorcerers were torn apart. I do not know what manner of beast did this.”

  “We may find out firsthand any moment,” Farr said, gazing around. “We should be—”

  A scream echoed down the hall, floating through an arch at the far end. It was high-pitched, and forlorn—the scream of a child.

  “Nim,” Travis said, looking at Vani.

  She was already running.

  Travis pounded after her, with Grace, Larad, and Farr just behind him. Out of the corners of his eyes, he saw a dark blur speed past: Avhir. Vani moved so swiftly she seemed not to run, but rather to blink out of existence one moment only to reappear the next, twenty paces ahead of where she had been.

  As they ran, they passed the bodies of more sorcerers. Like the first group, all were mutilated, their bodies torn limb from limb, and there was no blood. What had done this? Whatever it was, the sorcerers had been unable to defend themselves; the power of magic had grown too weak.

  “Keep your eyes open,” Farr called out from behind. “Whatever killed these sorcerers is probably still here.”

  Travis agreed. However, at that moment another scream echoed through the high arch at the end of the hall. It was weaker than the last, quavering with terror. The sound tore at his heart. He saw Vani disappear through the archway, followed by Avhir. Travis raced after them through the arch—

  —and tried to halt, skidding on the smooth floor. A strong arm struck his chest, halting him just in time to keep him from sliding over a sh
eer edge and falling into endless darkness.

  Travis looked down. Past his toes he saw nothing except an emptiness so black it made him think of the Void between worlds. Vani gripped his serafi, pulling him back. He started to ask her what was happening, then he heard Grace gasp and looked up.

  They stood under the palace’s dome. The circular space housed by the dome was as vast as the Etherion in Tarras. And, before its destruction, that had been able to accommodate thousands of priests.

  Far above, round windows pierced the ceiling, glowing like suns in a midnight sky. A narrow strip of stone ringed the cavernous space, forming a ledge. It was on this ledge that they stood. As Travis had discovered, the ledge had no railing to prevent one from falling into the depths.

  Ahead, in the center of the chamber, was a golden tetrahedron. Given the lack of reference, it was hard to be certain of the tetrahedron’s size, but surely it was as large as a house, or larger yet. It seemed to float in the middle of the emptiness, like an island on a dark sea. However, Travis’s eyes—remade in the fires of Krondisar—pierced shadow, and he glimpsed rock beneath it; the golden structure was supported by a column of natural stone that rose from the depths.

  Travis could see two bridges, one to each side of him. The spans were slender and delicate, like creations of black spun glass, no more than two feet wide and without rails. Each bridge sprang from the stone ledge and arched across the chasm to a triangular doorway in one of the gold tetrahedron’s three walls. While he could not see it, he guessed there would be a third bridge on the far side of the chasm.

  “Mother!”

  The cry, quickly muffled, snapped Travis’s attention to the bridge to his left. There were two figures there. One was Nim. Even at a distance, Travis could see fear on the pale oval of her face. She was dressed in a robe of gold cloth. Her cheeks were smudged with something dark.