The Last Rune 5: The Gates of Winter

by Mark Anthony

  Durge's cheek twitched, and it seemed an expression—a flicker of pain?—passed across his face. Had Aryn somehow gotten through to him?

  No. Durge's lip curled back from his teeth. “It matters not. Love is a weakness—an affliction of which the Master will cure the world.”

  Aryn shook her head. “You're wrong. Love is the only thing that ever had the power to save us. ‘Love shall yet defy you.' That was what the witch Cirsa said when Mohg betrayed her. And I say it to you now, Durge, and to the Pale King.” She raised her withered hand and pointed at the center of his chest. “Love shall yet defy you.”

  Durge turned away from her. A sizzling sound rose on the air, and silver light welled from the side door. The feydrim hissed and cowered.

  “He comes for you now,” Durge said to Grace.

  The light grew brighter; the sizzling rose to a metallic whine.

  Now, Grace. You have to do something now.

  There—on Durge's right hand was a scratch. He must have received it in the struggle at the secret door. It was shallow but still oozed blood. It would be enough. She slipped a hand into the pocket of her gown, found the vial of barrow root, and unstopped it with her fingers.

  She stepped forward, closing the gap between her and Durge. “If your precious master wants me so badly, why don't you give me to him yourself? Surely you'll get a reward.”

  She reached for him, and—as she had hoped—he snaked out his right hand and caught her wrist. He squeezed, and a gasp of pain escaped her as the bones of her wrist ground together. However, she let the pain clear the fear and anguish from her brain. This thing was not Durge. In a motion of surgical precision, she pulled out the vial with her free hand and splashed the purple elixir over his wound.

  Durge let out a roar. He reeled back, clutching his right hand, his eyes filled with hate. “What have you done to me, witch?”

  The words were a hiss of rage, but slurred. Already his muscles were beginning to spasm; the cords of his neck stood out. He tried to strike at her, but he stumbled and fell to his knees.

  Aryn stared, her mouth open. By Sia, what have you done, Grace? You're killing Durge.

  Each word of Grace's reply was like a dagger in her own heart. No, I'm saving him.

  Durge fell over onto his hands. Foam boiled from his mouth; his body shook as if beaten by unseen hands.

  “Grace!”

  Aryn's frightened shout did not come across the Weirding. Grace looked up. The side door was a rectangle of blazing silver. Then a silhouette appeared against the brilliance. It drifted into the hall: tall, slender, deadly.

  The feydrim howled and pissed on the floor as the wraithling drifted across the hall toward Grace. Its lidless eyes were like black jewels. It had no mouth, but all the same she heard its voice, and the words froze her blood.

  You will be the Master's bride. You will be the Queen of Ice, pale and beautiful and terrible. Together you and the King will rule forever. . . .

  No, Grace wanted to say, but she couldn't speak. She tried to reach for Fellring, sheathed at her side, but she couldn't move. She heard a boom as the main doors of the hall burst open, but the sound was oddly muffled.

  It seemed Aryn called out, and the sound of swords being drawn rang on the air. A group of men were trying to fight past the feydrim and into the hall. Were Sir Tarus and Commander Paladus among them? Grace couldn't be sure; she saw them only dimly, as if they were shadows. The wraithling drifted closer, the silver light blinding her.

  A strange peace came over Grace. Yes, there was nothing to fear when all hope was gone. She would wed the Pale King. He would take away her frail, human heart and all the pain that went with it, and he would give her a new heart of enchanted iron, a heart that would never feel pain or sorrow or fear again.

  Or love. Or laughter. Or joy.

  “Get away from her!”

  Grace blinked, trying to see through the glare. Aryn rushed forward, both of her hands, whole and twisted, weaving together in a spell. The threads of the Weirding hummed with the power of it. She cast the spell at the wraithling. It threw its hands up, letting out a mouthless cry of agony. The silver corona of light wavered—

  —then grew strong again. Before Aryn could weave the strands of the Weirding into another spell, the pale one lashed out with spindly arms.

  This time it was Aryn who screamed. The sound of the young witch's agony shattered Grace's torpor, so that she perceived everything with perfect clarity. Aryn's eyes fluttered shut, then she slumped to the floor. Her body was still, her flesh as pale as snow.

  Grace started to reach out with the Touch, to try to grasp Aryn's thread, to see if she yet lived, but there was no time. The wraithling drifted toward her. However, there were dark gaps in the corona of light surrounding it. Aryn had wounded the thing with her spell.

  “Tell the Pale King this is my answer,” Grace said.

  She drew Fellring and thrust it into the wraithling. The blade passed through the being's slender body. Bitter cold numbed Grace's arm, but she ignored it and twisted the blade.

  The wraithling's cry ceased; the corona of light winked out. The thing slipped from Grace's sword and fell to the floor, dark and thin as a bundle of burnt sticks. It was dead.

  Durge wasn't. Grace sucked in a breath as the knight rose to his feet. He held out his arms and gazed at his hands. The spasms had ceased. He looked up, and the pain was gone from his face.

  That was impossible. The amount of barrow root she had poured on his wound would have dropped a horse. It should have stopped his heart cold.

  But it's already stopped, isn't it, Grace?

  She should have known. He wasn't a true ironheart—it was only a splinter of metal in his chest—but the effect was the same. He felt pain, but not for long, and no poison could kill him. Because Durge was already dead.

  Grace held Fellring before her, then the tip drooped back to the floor. It was no use; what strength she had possessed had fled her. Tarus and Paladus and the others were making headway against the feydrim, but they would never break through in time. Aryn lay on the floor, as still and pale as if carved of ice. In a moment, Grace would join her.

  “I can't do it, Durge,” she said softly. “I know what you are, but I still can't do it.” Fellring slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor. “I can't kill you.”

  Durge gazed at Aryn's motionless form. “Love is a weakness.” A shudder passed through him, his shoulders shaking with it. Was that one last effect of the barrow root?

  It didn't matter. The tremor passed. Durge pulled a knife from his belt and clenched the hilt, his knuckles going white.

  “Forgive me, my lady,” he said.

  Before Grace could wonder at these words, Durge stabbed her with the knife.

  A voice shouted out in anger. Grace thought perhaps it was Sir Tarus, she couldn't be sure. The sound of swords and the screams of feydrim echoed off the walls. Another figure appeared in the side door, all in gray. At first she thought it was another wraithling, only there was no silver light. Something hissed through the air. Suddenly an arrow stuck out from Durge's side, then another, and another. The knight fell to the floor. Blood flowed from the wounds.

  Then, just as before, the blood vanished. The stone floor was smooth and unstained.

  “Your Majesty!” a voice cried out.

  The figure in gray was moving from the door, fighting past the feydrim. Dozens of the creatures lay sprawled on the floor. The men were breaking through. It was almost over.

  Almost over . . .

  Grace looked down. She expected to see the hilt of the knife jutting from the center of her chest. Instead, the blade had pierced the fabric of her gown just above her left collarbone. The blow had gone far wide of her heart, nor was it deep. Even as she touched the knife it slipped free, and blood welled forth, smearing her fingers.

  Blood. Like Durge's blood, which the stones had seemed to drink. Grace sank to her knees. She gazed at the floor, cleared of the rushe
s. Five parallel marks gouged the stones, too sharp and precise to be accidental. She had seen the same pattern before, on Kelephon's ship, when he had tried to steal her blood so he could wield Fellring.

  At last Grace understood. She started to reach her hand toward the floor, then halted.

  Durge was looking at her. He sprawled with limbs twisted, his cheek pressed against the floor, the arrows jutting from his body. His brown eyes were fixed on her. One was dead and lifeless, but the other shone with a familiar light, gentle and true. She had not felt the pain of the knife wound, but she felt this pain, and it was unbearable.

  “Do it, my lady.” Durge's voice was a croak, but it was not flat, not dead. It was he. It was really he. “Awaken the defenses of the keep. Slay the servants of the Pale King.”

  Tears trailed down her cheeks, bitter as they touched her lips. “It will kill you, too, Durge.”

  “I am already dead, my lady. I died over a year ago, on Midwinter's Eve. That I was granted so much time after that to serve you was a reward I did not deserve, though it was one I cherished beyond measure. But now all I deserve is death. I have betrayed you. And I . . . I have slain Lady Aryn.”

  “No,” said a soft voice, “you haven't.”

  Aryn knelt beside Durge. Her face was ghostly and tight with pain, but her blue eyes were as brilliant as sapphires. She lifted his head, cradling it on her lap.

  Durge wept, though from only one eye. “No, my lady. I beg you, do not do this. Do not show me such tenderness, not after what I have done.”

  She smoothed his hair from his brow. “You should have told me, Durge. You should have told me you loved me.”

  “I did not wish to bother you, my lady.”

  Despite her tears, Aryn laughed. “And how could it possibly have been a bother, to be loved by a man as noble and good as you, Durge of Embarr?”

  “I am not so noble, my lady. And you could never have returned such a love.”

  Her eyes went distant. “I might have,” she said quietly. “I might have.”

  His body jerked. “You must go, my lady. I can feel it, digging deeper. In a moment I will be lost again.”

  “No, Durge,” Aryn said, gazing into his eyes. “You will never be lost to us. Never.” She hesitated, then bent down and pressed her lips to his.

  Aryn lifted her head. A sigh escaped Durge, and a stillness came over his body. The lines that had always rendered his face so grim were smoothed away. His eyes stared without seeing.

  “I am a lucky man,” he said, his voice soft with amazement. “I am such . . . a lucky man.”

  Aryn wept silently. Durge groped with a blind hand toward Grace.

  “Tell me, my fairy queen, what is your command?”

  Grace kissed his brow. “Sleep, my sweet knight,” she murmured. “Sleep.”

  Then she pressed her bloody hand to the floor.

  54.

  Grace straddled a gap in the line of sharp-toothed peaks. Her arms braced against the cliffs to either side, so that her broad shoulders guarded the pass. And her head reached up toward the sky, so that she could gaze for leagues around.

  She could see—could sense—the small sparks of life that moved within her. Hundreds of men stood atop the high wall that skirted her, and a thousand more gathered behind, ready to take the place of those who fell. More men moved in the yard between her encircling arms, fletching arrows, sharpening swords. She was pleased; not in seven hundred years had she hosted a force so proud as this.

  Thunder shook the air like the sound of drums. Dark clouds churned in the sky. Grace turned her gaze out over the vale of Shadowsdeep. Three leagues away, outlined by a livid glow, were the sharp spires of the Ironfang Mountains: the walls of the prison in which the Pale King had been trapped for a thousand years.

  Trapped no longer. There was a shadowy hole in the Fal Threndur. The Rune Gate—forged by the same wizards who had bound Grace's stones with magic—had opened. The army of the Pale King streamed forth. Gouts of fire shot up to the black sky. The army marched toward the keep.

  Let them come. She was ready.

  But what was this? Servants of evil already prowled within her. Dozens of them were in the main hall at her very heart, though most them were already dead. However, hundreds more slunk down the passage leading from the secret door that opened into Shadowsdeep five furlongs from the wall. The way had been widened by brute force and the power of runes. The enemy sought to take the keep from within.

  Grace would not allow that. Countless runes carved into the stones that made up her body blazed to life with blue-white fire. A sound like the call of a thousand trumpets rang out, echoing off the cliffs, so that the warriors stopped what they were doing and looked up, while across the vale the river of darkness halted for a moment, the flood becoming a trickle.

  The runes carved into her stones brightened, until a shining nimbus encapsulated Grace. A pillar of light shot up from the tower at her center, piercing the clouds like a glowing sword, so that the stars and moon shone through.

  Inside the keep, creatures of evil died.

  They writhed and shrieked as the touch of the keep's stones became like burning knives. They leaped from the floor, trying to escape the cruel bite, but there was nowhere they could flee, no surface they could touch that did not strike at them. The feydrim gnashed their teeth, clawed themselves and each other, and perished. Their bodies shriveled to charred husks, and the cinders blew away.

  The wraithlings fared no better. Their mouthless keening ceased; their silvery light winked out. They dissolved into puffs of foul-smelling smoke. The men with hearts of iron died as well. The lumps of metal caught fire, turning molten, searing holes in their chests as they fell. The fires kept burning until their bodies were consumed.

  Grace felt satisfaction as the slaves of the Pale King were destroyed. None of them could escape her power, granted to her by the Runelords of old. None who touched the stones of the keep could survive. None. . . .

  Grace.

  The voice was faint, but all the same it cut through the deafening chorus of trumpets. She felt herself shrinking inward, so that she was small again, not built of stone, but molded of flesh and bone.

  Oh, Grace. . . .

  She opened her eyes. Grace knelt on the floor of the hall, in the center of the rune of blood. Aryn knelt close by. Tears stained the young witch's cheeks. On the floor before her was a thin layer of ashes cast in the vague outline of a man. Amid the ashes lay an Embarran greatsword. There was something else as well—a silver star with six points.

  A gust of wind rushed through the open doors. The ashes blew away, stinging Grace's eyes.

  Aryn gazed down at the sword. “He's gone,” she said.

  Grace forced her limbs to move, though it was effort. A moment ago she had been so massive, so strong—a fortress made of stone. Now she was simply a woman: bony, shaky. She crawled to Aryn, then laid her hand over the young woman's heart.

  “No, Aryn. He's here.” She took Aryn's hand and pressed it to her own heart. “And he's here.”

  Aryn said nothing, but she nodded.

  “Your Majesty! Are you well?”

  She looked up to see Sir Tarus rushing toward her, Commander Paladus on his heels. The other soldiers stared in wonder at the cinders that swirled on the air—all that remained of the feydrim they had fought a moment ago.

  Was she well? It was a meaningless question. Durge was dead; she would never truly be well. However, she was alive, and she was far from ready to surrender.

  “Help me up, Sir Tarus. This battle isn't over yet.”

  “You're right about that, Your Majesty,” Aldeth said. He limped toward her as Paladus and Tarus hauled her to her feet, slinging his bow over his shoulder.

  So it was the Spider who had shot Durge. But he couldn't have known. To Aldeth it had seemed Durge was trying to kill her with the knife. He couldn't have understood what she had finally realized—that Durge had saved them all.

  Paladus gave t
he Spider a hard look. “What have you seen?”

  Aldeth reeled, as if he might fall, but Paladus caught him. Blood trickled from a wound on the Spider's temple.

  “Engines,” the Spider said. “The enemy has great siege engines, a hundred feet tall, built of iron not wood, and powered by fire and magic. Leris and I dared to venture out through the secret door, to draw closer to the enemy and spy upon them. When we returned to the entrance, we found the runespeakers had been struck down, as well as the warriors who guarded them. Then the traitor attacked us as well, and he was too strong. We couldn't fend him off.” Aldeth reached a hand toward Grace. “Your Majesty, it was Sir Durge. He was a servant of the Pale King all this while. He betrayed us.”

  Tarus's face was ashen. “King Teravian sent us here while he stayed at the wall to keep watch. He said he sensed treachery in the keep, Your Majesty. By Vathris, I never would have thought it would be Sir Durge who turned against us. His betrayal almost doomed us all. Only you've done it, Your Majesty. You've awakened the magic of Gravenfist.”

  Grace gazed down. “No, it wasn't me. It was Durge. He was the one who saved us.”

  Grace looked back up. The men stared at her, and by their startled expressions she knew her face was hard and white, at once terrible and beautiful.

  “You will listen to me now,” she said, her voice low, commanding. “And you will not dare to doubt what I say. Whatever battle any of us may fight against evil this day, it will be nothing to the battle Sir Durge fought and won. He was braver, and stronger, and truer than any man. And if we have any chance now, any hope at all, it is because of him, because of his sacrifice. Do you understand?”

  Still the men stared at her.

  “I said, do you understand?”

  Her words echoed off the stone walls. As one, Tarus, Paladus, Aldeth, and the others nodded, their eyes wide. Grace was satisfied. She crouched beside Aryn.

  “Can you stand?”

  Aryn's tears were gone, her cheeks dry. “I must. My king needs me.”

  Together Grace and Aryn stood.