The Last Rune 4: Blood of Mystery

by Mark Anthony

  “I’ll be fine, beshala,” Sareth said, forcing a smile for her sake. “I’m sure Durge will take excellent care of me. Look how good he is with Maudie’s cats.”

  The Embarran knight gave the witch a solemn nod. “You have my word he will not come to harm.”

  Lirith pressed her lips together but said nothing. Travis moved around the bar and took her trembling hand.

  “Will you take Calvin Murray’s body to Doc Svensson?” Tanner said to Gentry.

  Gentry’s blue eyes were as cold as ever. “Don’t you worry about him, Sheriff. We’ll take care of our boy.”

  His words sent a chill through Travis. Two men helped Gentry and Ellis pick up Calvin Murray’s limp form, and they carried him out the door. Tanner and Durge followed, leading Sareth between them. Once they were gone, Lirith buried her head against Travis’s chest, and he held her as tightly as he could as she wept.

  20.

  A hundred icy hands pulled Grace down into dark, endless depths.

  You’re drowning, Grace, spoke the clinical doctor’s voice in her mind. You’ve got to swim. Now.

  It was so hard to move; the shock of the cold paralyzed her. But then, hypothermia could begin to set in almost immediately in water so frigid. The sea roiled around her, and a groaning noise vibrated through her body. The currents spun her around, so that she didn’t know which way was up. Her lungs were already starting to burn.

  Something warm clamped around her wrist. The brine stung her eyes, but she could just make out a figure silhouetted against wavering gray light. Beltan. The light had to be coming from the surface, and the knight’s legs were kicking hard. He was trying to swim upward with her, even as the sinking ship dragged them both down.

  Help him, Grace. If you don’t help Beltan swim, the ship will take both of you with it.

  Her flesh was like clay, but she forced her legs to move. Behind her (below her?) she sensed a hulking shadow. It was the Fate Runner. Had everyone gotten off the ship?

  She reached out with the Touch, and the sea became a starry sky filled with flecks of light. Most of them were fish, but she saw several brighter sparks as well. Some flickered, descending with the dark bulk of the ship. But not all. She could feel others in the water not far away. To whom did the life sparks belong?

  The pain in her lungs grew more urgent, breaking her connection with the Weirding. However, using the Touch had allowed some of the life force to flow into her, warming her, just as it had a year ago in the frozen garden in Castle Calavere, when Lady Kyrene first showed her what it meant to be a witch.

  Through his grip on her wrist, Beltan must have gained some of the energy as well. Both of them kicked harder, and the light grew brighter above them. Needles stabbed at Grace’s lungs. Instinct to draw a breath screamed at her like a furious child, but she fought it. They were almost there.

  Focused as she was on the light, Grace saw it too late to react. A ragged chunk of wood as big as a car spun toward them, carried by a violent eddy. It was a fragment of the ship’s hull. Beltan tried to twist away from it, but the water slowed his movements. She felt rather than heard a sick crunching sound as the piece of wreckage struck them both.

  Grace gasped in pain, and her mouth flooded with water, choking her. Beltan’s grip was jerked away from her wrist, and then she was spinning out of control. Light and dark flashed by in dizzying alternation. On one rotation, she thought she saw two murky shapes sinking away from her. One was large and jagged—the piece of the hull—and the other smaller, arms and legs trailing limply. Was that Beltan? Or someone else?

  She was descending again, and this time she couldn’t resist. Her limbs would no longer respond, and she could feel her consciousness shrinking inward like the aperture of a camera. One more moment, and it would fade to black.

  The darkness vanished, replaced by a shimmering light. The light was different than the wavering gray daylight of before. It was brilliant, encapsulating her as if in a glowing sphere. It seemed she heard a faint, chiming music.

  You’re hallucinating, Doctor, that’s all. It’s the same thing patients in the Emergency Department see when their hearts stop, just before you jolt them back to life. But no one’s here to work the defibrillator in your case.

  The visions would only last a few seconds; they were simply part of the dying process. Except the light grew brighter, and it seemed there was a face inside it, gazing at her with large, tilted eyes.

  Who are you? she wanted to say. Maybe, somehow, she did.

  As if in answer, a profound warmth filled her, making her think of sunlight on ancient stones. The pain vanished from her lungs, and it felt as if she had become marvelously buoyant. She could sense the water rushing around her as the light bore her upward. She was going to make it....

  No. I can’t abandon them. Despite the warmth, panic filled her. I can’t just leave the others down here.

  The sense of motion slowed. The light hesitated.

  Please. Grace felt her consciousness slipping away again. Each word was a terrible effort. Beltan. And Vani and Falken. They’ll drown down here.

  Her last vision was of the eyes in the light gazing at her, and in them was an expression that filled Grace with such wonder that surely she was hallucinating again.

  It was a look of love.

  Grace felt the water swirl past her once again, in a new direction now. Then darkness at last closed around her, and for a time both thought and light ceased.

  21.

  Grace opened her eyes.

  It was still light all around her. Only this light was the color of ashes, and all traces of the warmth she had felt before were gone. She couldn’t see much of anything, and after a time she realized she was lying facedown on wet sand. Every few moments a frigid wave washed over her, chilling her further. Somehow she was alive, but if she didn’t get up, if she didn’t get moving, she wouldn’t be for long.

  Sitting up was a lengthy process. For a time she simply thought about moving, and even that was almost too exhausting to bear. When she finally did move, it was only to flop on the sand like a stranded fish. Eventually she made real progress and rose up onto her elbows, eliciting a fierce bout of retching. Spasms racked her body, and water gushed from her mouth.

  After that, she felt better.

  You’ve cleared the water from your lungs, Grace. You’re getting more oxygen now. You’re going to be fine as long as you don’t get a secondary infection.

  She dragged her body forward until she reached dry sand—it felt soft and amazingly warm, even though she knew it wasn’t— then sat up and got her first good look around. She was on one end of a small horseshoe of sand that rimmed a narrow bay. The coast in either direction was made up of black rocks with cruel edges against which the sea broke and foamed. If the waves had washed her up only a hundred yards to her left, she would have been dashed to bits. Hitting this beach had been good luck.

  Or had it? Grace remembered the silver light that had surrounded her after the ship went down. It had seemed like there were eyes in the light, and a face. Only that was impossible.

  When the brain is deprived of oxygen, neurons begin firing rapidly in a last-ditch e fort to stay alive. Visual and auditory hallucinations are the result. You know that, Grace. It had to be a current that carried you ashore.

  In which case, it might have carried others besides her.

  Grace listened, but all she could hear was the roar of the ocean and the thin lament of the wind over bare rocks. After two attempts, she managed to stand. Her wet clothing clung to her body in a clammy embrace, and she shivered, but that was a good sign. Shivering would generate body heat. So would walking. But which way?

  Behind the beach sloped a high bluff of the same black stone that made up the coast, its edges softened here and there by tufts of brown grass. A gray line snaked up the face of the bluff. Was that some sort of trail? Maybe; she could think about it later. The beach itself was littered with driftwood and gelatinous blobs of kelp. The
n her eyes picked out a large chunk of wood that was dark and wet. The broken ends of planks stuck out like ragged fingers. At once she knew it was a part of the Fate Runner.

  Clutching her arms around herself, Grace stumbled along the sand. Pebbles and fragments of shell dug into her bare feet; she must have lost her boots in the ocean. Walking loosened the muscles of her legs, and she quickened her pace. In moments she reached the flotsam—a section of the ship’s deck.

  Falken was leaning against it.

  She knelt beside him. The bard’s hair was plastered against his face, and a piece of seaweed was looped over his shoulder like a ceremonial sash. Grace touched his neck and felt for a pulse. It was there, strong and slow. She smoothed his hair away from his face, and his eyes opened.

  “Grace...?” he croaked, but he didn’t get any further. Instead he leaned over and coughed up water.

  Grace held his shoulders. When he finished, she helped him sit back up.

  “I thought I had drowned,” he said, his voice still hoarse but stronger. “It’s not the first mistake I’ve made.”

  She picked the seaweed off him. “Can you drown, Falken?”

  “I’m immortal, Grace, not invincible. I don’t age, and I haven’t taken ill in seven centuries. But anything else that can kill a man can kill me.”

  She thought about this. Falken was born in Malachor, and he believed it was his fault that kingdom fell into ruin. She knew that knowledge tortured him. And yet he had endured for more than seven hundred years, when all it would take to end that suffering was a quick thrust of a knife, or a leap from a cliff. Could she have survived so long believing what he did?

  But he had hope all those years, Grace. That was what kept him going. Malachor fell, but one of the royal heirs survived— your grandfather twenty times over. Falken made it his purpose to preserve the line of succession until the kingdom could be reborn.

  And now he thought that time had come. Wasn’t that why he wanted to journey to Toringarth to find the shards of Fellring? He meant to make her a queen in fact, not just in name.

  “Can you stand?” she asked.

  “I think so, if you would be so kind as to give me a lift.” He held out his right hand.

  Grace stared, unable to move. Falken gave her a puzzled look, then followed her gaze to his hand. A sadness stole into his faded blue eyes.

  Ever since she had known him, Falken had always worn a black glove on his right hand. She had never seen him without it, and surely it was because of the glove that he was called Falken Blackhand. Only now the glove was gone. It must have been torn away in the currents of the ocean, just like Grace’s boots, and the bard’s right hand was bare.

  Grace clamped her jaw to stifle a gasp. Falken’s hand was made out of silver.

  He clenched the hand into a fist, and she marveled at the fluid way it moved. The hand was not jointed, like that of some robotic skeleton. Instead it was smooth: a perfectly sculpted mirror image of his left hand, down to the twisting lines of veins on its back. However, Grace was certain the hand was solid metal to its core. She studied it, thinking.

  “It would be warm if you touched it.” His voice was almost lost in the wind. “Wasn’t that what you were wondering?”

  “Yes.” She knelt again beside him. “May I...?”

  He unclenched the silver hand, holding it out. It was warm against her skin, just as he had said, but as hard and unyielding to the touch as ordinary silver. How did he make it function? Through some kind of magic? She tried to see how it was joined to his wrist, but there was only a sharp line where flesh ended and metal began. It looked perfectly healed.

  “How...?”

  The bard shook his head. “It’s a long tale, and one we don’t have time for. Suffice it to say that the Necromancer Dakarreth saw fit to cut off my hand as punishment for the dark deed I had wrought with it. And also that a witch took pity on me, and gave me a hand that I might make music again.” He sighed. “Only now I’ve lost my lute in the sea. After all these years, it’s gone.”

  “Lost things have a way of turning back up, Falken Blackhand,” said a crisp voice.

  They looked up to see Vani standing a few feet away. Her leather clothes were coated with sand, and her usually burnished skin was pale. In her hands was a wooden case.

  Vani set the case down on the sand. “Or should I call you Falken Silverhand now?”

  The Mournish woman’s gaze was curious, but not questioning. Grace supposed she had heard everything Falken said.

  Falken moved to the wooden case, wiped it with his cloak, and opened it. Inside, the bard’s lute was dry and undamaged. He carefully shut the case again.

  A jolt of panic coursed through Grace. Falken had lost his lute in the sea. What had she lost? However, even as she asked the question, her fingers fumbled at her throat and found the steel necklace. The shard of Fellring was safe.

  She let out a breath of relief, but then a new worry filled her. “We have to look for Beltan.”

  “I already found him,” Vani said. “I believe he’s fine, although he’s moving as slowly as a snail. He should be along any moment.”

  Indeed, just then Grace saw the tall knight stalking toward them across the beach. His white-blond hair was wet and tangled, and there was blood on his tunic, although not much.

  “Beltan,” Grace said gratefully as the knight drew close. “Are you all right?”

  He touched his shoulder. “It’s just a scratch. Nothing to worry about. I’m fine.”

  “Thanks to my aid,” Vani said.

  The knight glared at her. “I told you I didn’t need your help.”

  “No,” Vani said, hands on hips, “you said something much like glub, glug, gurgle. And then I squeezed the water out of your lungs, preventing you from dying.”

  “No, you crushed my rib cage and just about killed me. I would have coughed up the water just fine on my own.”

  “More likely you would have coughed up your ghost.”

  “All right, you two,” Falken interrupted. “It’s cold enough as it is here. There’s no need to make it chillier.”

  The bard struggled to his feet, and Grace helped him.

  “Oh,” Beltan said. “You lost your glove, Falken.”

  Grace glanced at him. “Aren’t you, you know...shocked?”

  “You mean about his silver hand?” Beltan shrugged. “Not particularly. I mean, sure, it’s weird and everything. And I’ve always wondered how it stays on.”

  Falken gave the knight a piercing look. “You mean you’ve known about it all this time?”

  Beltan grinned at Grace. “It really is convenient when people think you’re dumb. They have a tendency to get careless around you and let things slip.”

  “You’re not dumb, Beltan,” Grace said seriously.

  “I know, but let’s keep it a secret.”

  “We should get off this beach,” Vani said.

  The assassin was scanning the ocean, and Grace understood. At the moment the rough gray waters were empty. But how long until crimson sails appeared on the horizon? There was no shelter, nowhere to hide.

  “What about other survivors?” Falken said.

  “There aren’t any,” Vani said. “I’ve explored the entire beach. I found some wreckage from the ship, but nothing more.” She cocked her head. “Except...”

  “Except what?” Beltan said.

  “There were footprints in the sand, over at the other end of the beach. They were mostly washed away by the waves. I thought perhaps they belonged to you, Grace, and you, Falken. But now I see that can’t be so. You both washed up at this end of the beach.”

  “Maybe the survivors went up that trail,” Falken said. He pointed to the gray line that crisscrossed the face of the bluff.

  If it really was a trail, it was the only way off the beach, that much was clear. The bard slung the case with his lute over his shoulder, and together the four started across the sand. Vani led the way, and Grace and Falken leaned on each othe
r for support and warmth while Beltan brought up the rear.

  It was a trail, but not much of one. Grace couldn’t tell if it had been carved by men or simply worn into the bluff by the hooves of animals. There was only room enough for them to go single file, and the stone was slick with spray and treacherous beneath their feet. For what seemed an eternity they toiled up the bluff. Grace used the tufts of dead grass as handholds to pull herself along. Soon her bare feet were bleeding, but they were so numb with cold she felt no pain. The wind rose to a howl, the sea bellowed in answer, and the clouds churned in circles in the sky.

  “Is it always like this in Embarr?” she called out to no one in particular.

  “Only on the nice days,” Beltan called back.

  They kept climbing, back and forth along the steep slope. Then, just as Grace began to think she would rather tumble off the cliff than keep going, and the sky darkened to the color of coal, they reached the top of the bluff.

  And there was just enough light left to make out the castle rising up before them.

  22.

  The lord’s name was Elwarrd, and he was the seventh Earl of Seawatch, a fiefdom in northern Embarr of which Grace supposed this castle was the seat.

  The rain had finally broken loose from the clouds, pelting them as they made their way from the top of the bluff, over broken heath, to the castle. Or keep, really, for the castle was no more than a single square tower built atop a motte—or man-made hill—and surrounded by a low palisade of soil. The bailey at the foot of the motte was fenced with wood rather than stone, and it housed, not guards, but sheds under which sheep bleated and cows lowed, huddling together for warmth.

  They saw no people in the bailey—it was hardly fit for the beasts out there, let alone men—but lights glowed through some of the castle’s oiled-vellum windows. They made their way up steps whose edges were rounded by time and wind, and Falken knocked on the keep’s great, ironbound door, his silver hand eliciting a ringing boom.