The Last Rune 4: Blood of Mystery

by Mark Anthony

  Maybe because they don’t have parents, Grace.

  A band of children approached, eyes and cheeks hollow, holding out their hands. Grace fumbled for the fat leather purse full of coins Emperor Ephesian had given her. However, Beltan was faster. He pressed a small silver piece into each child’s hand, and without a word or smile they ran off.

  “Galspeth is a bit dirtier than I remember,” the blond man said, watching the children go.

  Falken nodded. “Of all the Dominions, Perridon was the hardest hit by the Burning Plague. Who knows how many people died?”

  Of course—that was why there were so many orphans.

  “It will probably take Queen Inara a good while to get the Dominion back in working order,” Falken said. “But I’m sure she’s up to the task.”

  Grace would have liked to have seen the young queen again, along with her spy, the Spider Aldeth. Castle Spardis wasn’t far from there—no more than twenty leagues upriver according to a map Captain Magard had shown her. However, Grace knew there wasn’t time for a visit. It could take some time to find a ship in Omberfell willing to bear them across the Winter Sea. Then, whether or not they found the shards of Fellring in Toringarth—and Grace wasn’t entirely certain she hoped they would—they would have to make haste to the Black Tower to reach it by Midwinter.

  They found a shop that sold a variety of clothes. The owner was a jovial man who looked as if he had decided to emulate seals as well—only with far more success than Beltan. He could barely navigate the cramped store as he chose woolen tunics, thick pairs of hose, leather gloves, and winter cloaks for the men.

  Vani refused any new garb—she seemed quite attached to her tight-fitting leathers—but she did acquiesce to a supple, finely woven black cloak. For Grace, the shopkeeper chose a wool gown with accompanying undergarments, as well as a hooded cape lined with silver fox fur.

  “You men can change over there,” the shopkeeper said, gesturing to a wooden screen in the corner. “And you, my lady, may don your new attire in here.” He opened the door to a small room. “I’ll send Esolda to assist you.”

  Before Grace could say she didn’t really need help, the shopkeeper looked around, then bellowed. “Esolda? Where are you, you wretched girl? Show yourself now!” He glanced at Grace. “If she wasn’t the daughter of my beloved sister, who walks this world no more, I would have turned her out into the streets to beg with the other urchins. I don’t know what happened to her, my lady. She used to be a good lass, but lately she grows more lazy and surly by the day. Esolda!”

  Presently a young woman whom Grace presumed to be Esolda appeared from behind a curtain. Grace didn’t think she looked so much surly as she did simple. She wore a drab gray dress, and the dingy bonnet that covered her hair was pulled all the way down to her eyebrows.

  “Well don’t just stand there, girl. Help the lady on with her things!”

  Esolda trudged after Grace into the side room. She held Grace’s new clothes, staring blankly, while Grace turned around and shrugged off her Tarrasian gown.

  “I’m ready now,” Grace said, teeth chattering. There was no fire in this room. “Esolda, my undergarments, please.”

  No response. Grace turned around.

  The young woman didn’t move, save to blink dull brown eyes. “That’s an ugly necklace,” she said in a thickly accented voice. “It’s not a jewel at all.”

  Grace reached up and gripped the cold shard of steel at her throat. She smiled, hoping that might make the girl more comfortable—and responsive. “No, I suppose it isn’t. I’m told it used to be part of a sword.”

  Esolda chewed her lip, as if trying hard to comprehend what Grace had said. “A sword isn’t a jewel,” she said at last. “You shouldn’t wear that. He doesn’t like it when you do odd things. Things no one else does. I’ll tell him.”

  Grace stared, the cold seeping into her bones. “Who will you tell?”

  The girl spoke faster, as if excited, although her eyes remained expressionless. “Once I spied in a window and saw a man putting his thing in another man’s bum just like it was a woman’s locket. I told him about it, and he took the men away and chopped them to bits. I didn’t want him to chop them up. But you can’t do things others don’t do. And the blood...” She gasped, and a shudder coursed through her thin body. “I’ve never seen anything so red in all my life.”

  If Grace had been in the ED just then, she would have called for a psych consult; the young woman seemed to be suffering from some sort of emotional trauma. The shopkeeper—her uncle—said her parents were dead. Had she watched them die from the Burning Plague? Clearly she was suffering from delusions. But who was the man she was talking about, the one she claimed to have told about what she saw? Was it her uncle?

  It was too cold to think. Grace snatched the undergarments from Esolda and hastily shrugged them on. The young woman simply stood there, so Grace took the gown from her and donned that as well. When she had everything adjusted, she stepped through the door into the shop. Falken had just finished counting coins into the shopkeeper’s hand.

  “What took you so long?” Beltan said.

  “Nothing,” Grace said. “I was confused by all the straps, that’s all.”

  She glanced over her shoulder. The door was ajar, and through the gap she glimpsed a pair of brown eyes gazing at her. While before they had been dull, now there was a dim spark of light in them.

  Grace wrapped the fox fur cloak around herself. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  Newly protected against the bitter chill, they stepped outside and made their way through the streets to an inn the shopkeeper had recommended.

  As they approached the door of the inn, Falken hefted his purse. There wasn’t much jingle to it. “I should have robbed more from Melia’s stash in Tarras. That woman has more gold than she knows what to do with. And our clothes were more expensive than I thought.”

  Grace pulled out the purse Ephesian had given her. “Here, take this.” She plunked the fat purse into Falken’s hand. “I believe it’s my turn to pay.”

  Beltan grinned. “The drinks are on Her Majesty tonight.” The next morning, Grace woke in the ghostly light before dawn. Shivering, she rose, crept to the room’s fireplace, and stirred up the coals. There was no sign of Vani; her bed appeared untouched.

  After Grace dressed, she knocked on the door to Falken and Beltan’s room. The bard answered. “Sorry,” he whispered, “it’s a slow morning. Someone had a bit too much ale last night.”

  “Quit shouting!” came Beltan’s groan from beneath a heap of blankets.

  Grace couldn’t help smiling. “I think he definitely made some progress on the blubber layer.”

  “Indeed,” Falken said.

  “I heard that!” came the wounded reply from beneath the blankets.

  Two hours—and many cups of maddok—later they reached Galspeth’s docks to find the Fate Runner nearly ready to depart. There had been no sign of Vani at the inn, but as they approached the ship she stepped from the shadows of an alley.

  “Do you really have to do that all the time?” Beltan said with a scowl.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the Mournish woman said crisply.

  “Where were you?” Falken said.

  Vani glanced back over her shoulder. “Watching. There is something...wrong in this town.”

  Despite her warm new garb, Grace felt a needle of cold pierce her heart. “What do you mean, Vani?”

  “I’m not certain. It’s a shadow on the people. A shadow of fear.”

  Grace wrapped her new cape around herself and thought of the strange words spoken by the clothier’s niece. He doesn’t like it when you do odd things. However, before she could tell the others about her encounter, a rough croak echoed over the street. Grace looked up to see a dark form on a nearby rooftop, perched atop a weathervane. As she watched, the shadow sprang into the sky, spread dark wings, and was gone.

  Beltan let out a snort. “The
only thing wrong with this town is that we’re still in it. Let’s get going before Magard sails without us.”

  Hefting their bags, Beltan started up the gangplank. The others followed, and Grace couldn’t say she was sorry to leave the grim town behind.

  They left port just as a gray mist poured down the valley. The fog chased them out of the harbor, but soon they outpaced it. The fog seemed to cling close to the shore, and did not extend out into the open sea.

  “Anxious to go north, are you?” Magard said to Grace that first evening when he found her at the prow of the ship, gazing into the distance.

  Under her cloak, she gripped her necklace. “I’m dreading it.”

  The captain nodded, his dark eyes serious. “Best to get it over with swiftly then.”

  Grace could find no reply for that. The captain left her to see to his men. The ship bore only a small crew now that it wasn’t laden with cargo. Before, when Grace was abovedecks, she had heard a constant din of bawdy jokes and cheerful, raucous songs. Now all she heard was the wind through the ropes. It made the empty ocean seem even lonelier.

  For the next five days, as the Fate Runner sailed north, the thick wall of mist was always visible to port, shrouding the land from view. Starting on the third day, Grace sometimes saw flashes of muted light in the mist: yellow, and livid green.

  “It’s the Barrens,” Falken said one evening when the lights were particularly frequent and violent in their intensity. He gripped the rail next to Grace.

  Earlier that year, Falken, Durge, and Lirith had ventured into the wasteland of the Barrens to find the Keep of Fire—a fortress raised by the Necromancer Dakarreth to guard the Great Stone Krondisar. Only the keep was abandoned; Dakarreth had come to Castle Spardis, where Grace had dinner with him, not knowing his true nature.

  “What happened to the people who lived there?” she said.

  Falken shook his head. “No one’s ever lived there. At the dawn of the world, the Old Gods and the dragons warred in that place. The gods tried to build up mountains even as the dragons tried to grind them to dust. The land will never heal from the wounds it suffered.”

  Grace held a hand to her chest and felt the fluttering beat of her heart. She knew about scars that could never heal. But Eldh went on despite its wounds, and so did she.

  “The book I found in the library,” she said. “Have you learned anything more in it? About the shards of Fellring?”

  The wind blew the bard’s hair from his brow; it seemed to have a bit more silver in it than Grace remembered. “I’ve gone through it three times, and while there’s much that’s fascinating, there isn’t a great deal about what happened to the shards. All it says is that, after Malachor fell, one of the last Runelords placed them in an iron box and fled with them to Toringarth. He made it all the way to Ur-Torin, although he was mortally wounded on the way and died soon after.”

  “People seem to get mortally wounded a lot in your stories,” Grace said with a wry smile.

  Falken only sighed and gazed at his black-gloved hand. Grace instantly regretted her words.

  “Falken,” she said, laying her hand on his.

  “No, it’s all right, Grace. Dakarreth may have thought he was cursing me when he made me immortal. But if I can live to undo what was done long ago, then it won’t have been a curse at all, will it?”

  Why Falken blamed himself for the fall of the kingdom of Malachor seven centuries earlier, she didn’t know. But certainly whatever he had done, he had atoned for it long since. She wanted to tell him that, but the pain in her chest made it too hard to speak, so Grace only smiled.

  “No matter,” the bard said. “The book has been an enormous help. I had always thought the shards of Fellring were taken west to Eversea. Now I know that didn’t happen.”

  “Eversea?” Hadn’t she read that name in the book?

  Falken nodded. “Even I’m not sure it’s not just a story. But it’s a good one. According to legend, Merandon, the second king of Malachor, was something of a brash and proud young man. Many were worried he wouldn’t prove to be the king his father was. One day, just after ascending to the throne, he went to an old witch and asked her what would be the greatest deed he would do as king. She told him he should journey to the westernmost end of Falengarth, and there he would find his answer.

  “All the king’s advisors told him to forget the witch’s words, but they burned in Merandon’s brain. So a few years later, once he was certain the Wardens could keep things running in his absence, he set out west with a dozen lords. He was gone for seven years, and when he returned, with him were only three of the lords who had set out with him. However, in his company was also a small band of men the likes of which had never been seen in Malachor. They were Maugrim—the first people the Old Gods found in the forests of Falengarth, long ago in the mists of time. The Maugrim where heavier of bone and thicker of brow than the men of Malachor, and they were said to be hairy from head to toe. They wore only the skins of animals and bore weapons made of stone, not iron.”

  Grace held her breath. Falken could be describing Neanderthals, Grace. Or some similar protosapien species. How long have Earth and Eldh been in contact? Better yet, on which world did Homo sapiens evolve first?

  “Those three Maugrim were the last of their kind ever recorded in Falengarth,” Falken went on. “Merandon could speak their queer tongue, but they never learned to speak the language of Malachor, and none took wives, so they died childless. But it wasn’t just the Maugrim that Merandon brought back from the West. He also told fantastic tales of his journey. In the end, he claimed, he reached the very western edge of Falengarth, and on the shore of a silver ocean he raised a tower, which he named Eversea.

  “It was only thirty years later, on his deathbed, that he whispered to his daughter—who was to become queen after him— the truth of the tower’s construction. It was not Maugrim who had helped him build Eversea. Instead, the Maugrim had taken Merandon to a place in the forest where beings of light danced in a circle. The beings reached out to Merandon, drawing him into their dance. They were fairies, and it was they who bid him to raise a tower by the sea. What’s more, some accounts say that among the light elfs were a few that were dark and twisted. Nor would it be strange if dark elfs—or dwarfs, as some call them—had helped to raise Merandon’s tower, as they were ever cunning at the crafting of stone and metal.”

  Grace frowned; something was missing from Falken’s tale. “The witch said if Merandon journeyed west, he would discover what his greatest deed as king would be. So what was it?”

  Falken laughed. “Why, going west, of course. You see, when Merandon returned, he was changed from his journey. He was older and scarred, yes. And wiser, more tempered, and possessed of a gentle strength. It was ever after said that he was the greatest of all of Malachor’s kings.”

  Grace chewed her lip, mulling over Falken’s tale. How would this journey change her? Somehow she doubted they would find a band of fairies to help them in the end.

  “Falken,” she said before she lost her nerve, “even if we do somehow find the shards of Fellring, what good does that do us? What use are a bunch of pieces of broken metal?”

  He turned his piercing blue eyes on her. “After all you’ve seen, you truly think magic is so easily broken as metal?”

  She opened her mouth, but the bard turned and moved along the deck, vanishing into the deepening twilight.

  14.

  The next day, the Fate Runner turned west and south as it rounded the northern tip of the Barrens. Almost at once the sea grew gray and choppy, and the ship seemed to lurch from wave to wave as a frigid wind sliced at the sails. The wall of mist that had been in constant view to port was ripped to tatters by the gale. Now Grace could see a rocky shoreline.

  “We should reach the port at Omberfell by tomorrow’s sunset at the latest,” Magard said as he handed Grace and Falken their morning lemons.

  Beltan, who had been leaning over the rail of the aft deck, n
ow turned and wiped his mouth, his face as gray as the sea.

  “Is it just me and my stomach?” the knight said, taking his piece of lemon. “Or have things gotten considerably bumpier in the last few hours?”

  Magard’s eyes glittered as he laughed. “We no longer sail the Dawn Sea, my friend. Once we rounded the north horn of the Barrens and set eyes on the shores of Embarr, we entered waters that flow from the Winter Sea. These are cold and treacherous reaches, filled with strange currents and hidden shoals that have been the demise of many a ship.”

  “That’s not exactly reassuring,” Grace said, huddling inside her fur cape.

  The captain laid a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t fear, my girl. I’ve sailed these waters before, and the Fate Runner is nimble enough to dance her way around any trouble we might run into.”

  Grace gave the captain a grateful smile.

  “Where’s Vani?” Beltan said, tossing his lemon rind over the rail.

  “Your silent friend?” Magard said. “I believe she’s up there again.” He grinned, pointing upward.

  They all looked up to see a slim figure perched atop the ship’s foremast.

  “She’s not my friend,” Beltan growled, then turned and made his way along the deck.

  Magard gave Grace and Falken a curious look.

  “Long story,” Grace said, and left it at that.

  The wind grew worse as the day wore on, howling from the north, as if it sought to blow the ship onto the jagged Embarran coast and dash it to bits against sharp rocks. Magard and his crewmen worked constantly, barking orders and replies above the roar of the gale, running from foredeck to aft, lashing down ropes and tying off sails. Grace wished there was something she could do to help them, but it was best to stay out of the way. Once one of the sailors lost hold of a rope, and it cracked like a whip mere inches from Grace’s head.