The Last Rune 4: Blood of Mystery

by Mark Anthony

  Grace felt a sudden urge to go to him, perhaps even to try to comfort him. However, the shore was close now; the mountains bit into the sky like white teeth. She could see the mouth of a bay—deep and narrow, like a fjord—and cliffs spattered with the droppings of the gulls.

  “Have you seen Beltan and Vani?” Grace asked Falken instead.

  She hadn’t seen either for some time; she had assumed they were merely off somewhere in the dark, except it had been light for a while now. However, even as she said this, she saw Beltan halfway down the length of the ship, leaning over the starboard rail. And there was Vani on the opposite side of the ship, sitting cross-legged, hands on knees, eyes closed and face tilted toward the sun.

  “I’ll go get them,” Falken said. “Something tells me we all ought to be ready.”

  When the three returned to the prow, the doctor in Grace rose to the fore. “Beltan, Vani, what’s wrong? Are you sick?”

  Beltan was pale, his forehead beaded with sweat. His face had a greenish cast. Vani looked little better. The T’gol’s jaw muscles bulged—she was clenching her teeth—and she hunched over her stomach.

  “I’m fine,” Beltan said in a growl.

  Vani’s words were equally terse. “There is nothing wrong.”

  It was quick, but all the same Grace caught it: The knight and the assassin each cast a furtive glance at the other, then quickly looked away. Grace’s heart skipped a beat. Something had happened between the two, she was sure of it. Something terrible. Only what?

  Like a gull skimming the surface of the waves, the ship sailed between knife-edged ridges of stone into the fjord. Falken let out an oath, and Grace turned around. That was when she saw the frozen city.

  It stood on a prominence above the bay, its parapets and spires reflected in the jade mirror of the water. Except, Grace realized as the ship sped closer, the city didn’t stand on the crag; rather, it had been carved out of it. The smooth walls merged with rough gray bedrock at their bases. Streets angled along natural faults and fissures. Horned towers rose like sentinels, joined without seam to the rest of the city.

  Once before Grace had seen a spire like them. The Gray Tower of the Runespeakers had been hewn in the same manner, from a natural finger of stone. Maybe it was from the folk of Toringarth that the Runespeakers had learned the art.

  The ship skated across the glassy surface of the fjord, closing in on the shore. Gulls dipped and wheeled above, and the snow-covered mountains reached up, closing out all but a narrow strip of the sky. In the preternatural gloom, the city seemed to glow.

  “It’s beautiful,” Grace said.

  Beltan’s mustache pulled down in a frown. “Where are all the people?”

  “And ships,” Vani added. “Should there not be ships besides our own?”

  Falken rubbed his chin with his silver hand. “I don’t know. I always believed Ur-Torin would be a populous city. And it looks impressive enough. But I can’t see anyone.”

  The white ship drifted to a stop alongside a stone pier that jutted out into the bay. The rush of wind and waves ceased, and there was no sound except the murmur of water lapping at stone, echoing and reechoing off the high cliffs of the fjord, like a chorus for the dead.

  “Look,” Vani said.

  They turned in time to see several twisted forms slink through a trapdoor and vanish into the hold of the ship. The trapdoor closed, and Grace could see no trace of it. Looking up, she saw that the plank of grayish wood had been extended from the deck of the ship to the pier. Sindar stood at the near end of the plank, waiting. Grace moved to him, and the others followed.

  “I thought maybe they wanted me to stay,” the silver-haired man said when she drew close to him. “I thought maybe I was to be part of their crew. But I suppose that’s impossible. I’m not like them. Even though sometimes I...” He shook his head. “But it doesn’t matter anyway. They said I wasn’t done yet, that I was to go with you.”

  Grace reached out and took his hand in her own, squeezing it. “I’m glad.”

  Surprise registered in his eyes. Then he smiled, and the expression was like an incandescence upon his face. Grace let out a gasp. His features were fine, even delicate, but she hadn’t noticed before how sharp they were, how proud, how strong. Without doubt, Sindar was the most beautiful human being she had ever seen in her life.

  He bent down and kissed her brow. Somewhere—echoing from the city, perhaps—she heard the faint music of bells. Then the others were there. Grace turned and did her best to give them a brave smile.

  “Come on, everyone,” she said. “Let’s go find my sword.”

  The moment they stepped from the plank onto the pier, the bitter air struck them. Grace felt the skin of her face tighten, and her nostrils pinched in with each breath. Almost at once, ice formed on Beltan’s mustache. They huddled inside their cloaks, raising hoods and donning caps. There was no wind, but, all the same, frigid tendrils seemed to find the gaps in their clothes and slip inside to caress bare skin.

  “This cold air rolls down from the Icewold,” Falken said, pointing toward the snow-covered peaks that loomed above the city. “I’ve heard it said it’s so bitter in those mountains that nothing can live there save for trolls.”

  Grace shivered. “Trolls?”

  “Don’t worry, Grace.” The bard grinned. “I’m sure they’re only a legend.”

  “Like magic swords, you mean?”

  Beltan stamped his boots. “Can we please get moving before we freeze completely solid?”

  Now that they were off the ship and had a purpose, the big knight seemed more his usual self. Vani, too, seemed to have largely recovered from whatever it was that had troubled her.

  “I will lead the way,” the T’gol said. “Beltan, you keep guard at the rear.”

  Grace expected an argument, but to her amazement the blond man nodded.

  In a tight knot, they walked from the pier toward the walls of the city: Vani at the fore, Sindar, Falken, and Grace in the center, and Beltan keeping watch behind them. However, as far as Grace could tell, there was nothing to keep watch for. There seemed to be no living things in the place, save for themselves and the gulls, winging above like ghosts.

  The city gates stood open, but even if they had been shut, Grace wasn’t certain that would have been much of a barrier. The thick iron bars were rough and red, corroded from countless years of salt and water. Beltan grasped an iron point, and the brittle metal snapped off in his hand. He cast it to the ground, then they moved through the gate into the city.

  They found themselves on an empty avenue. Square houses lined the street, each carved from a single piece of stone, their walls thick, and their windows narrow and doors low, designed to let in a minimum of cold air. However, all that remained of the wooden shutters and doors that had once covered the openings were piles of splinters. Beltan peered into some of the houses and came away shaking his head. Empty.

  They moved on, past more empty houses, silent towers, and barren squares. Grace glanced through a few of the windows, and she saw iron pots still hanging from chains in fireplaces, and tarnished silver cups sitting on stone shelves, like heirlooms set carefully away. Wherever the denizens of the city had gone, they hadn’t stopped to take their most precious items with them.

  They came to a well from which water had bubbled up and frozen, forming a fantastical sculpture of ice. Still they saw no signs of people or animals, not even bones. The city was more than dead; it seemed it had never even been alive.

  “What happened to this place?” Grace said, daring to break the silence. “Was it a war?”

  Beltan shook his head. “It wasn’t war. Even if it had happened long ago, there would still be signs. Things would be burned, broken. There would be bones, if not bodies.”

  “But everything is solid stone,” Falken said. “It couldn’t burn. And animals might have taken the bones away over the years. I can’t imagine this city fell without a battle. It was said once there were a thousand
Wulgrim here, and surely no fighters in history have been as strong or as fierce as the wolf-warriors of Toringarth.”

  Vani crossed her arms. “No. Beltan is right. Whatever happened here, it happened without blood, without fire. This city did not die a violent death.”

  Grace clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering. Somehow Vani’s words were even more troubling than the idea of war. A city could be conquered, its people slain; Grace could imagine that. But how could an entire city full of people vanish without a trace?

  They came to a crossing of streets. Grace glanced at Sindar. “Which way should we go?”

  The silver-haired man shrugged. “The Little People said only that I was to follow you.”

  “I was afraid of that,” Grace said with a sigh. “Falken, do you have any idea where we’ll find the sword?”

  “I looked through the book again yesterday.” From inside his cloak, the bard pulled out the small volume Grace had found in the library at the University of Tarras—the one entitled Pagan Magics of the North. Falken flipped through it, past the page with the impossible message that could only have been written by Travis, to a passage near the end. He read aloud. “ ‘And so this pilgrim came to the tower of Ur-Torin, and he was filled with much joy to find the shards of fabled Fellring were not hidden away, but instead were made plain for all the people to see, that they might remember Lord Ulther, who last wielded that fabled blade, and who was their greatest of kings.’ ”

  Grace chewed her lip, trying to fathom these words. “What does it mean, Falken?”

  “I’m not entirely sure.” He spirited the book away beneath his cloak. “But the author, whoever he was, mentions that he went to the tower of Ur-Torin, not the city. I think he was referring to the main keep.” The bard pointed to the great, blocky tower that crowned the summit of the crag from which Ur-Torin had been hewn.

  “Could the shards have been moved since then?” Beltan said. “Maybe the people took them when they left.”

  “If they left,” Grace said softly. She hadn’t meant to speak the words aloud. They didn’t make any sense; if the people hadn’t left, then where were they?

  Vani started up the street that led toward the center of the city. As they went, Grace felt a scream rising inside her. It started as a queasiness in her gut, then became a choking feeling in her throat. Now it hovered right behind her lips, and only by gritting her teeth together did she hold it in. The silence, the emptiness, was maddening.

  More abandoned buildings slipped by, their windows staring like dead eyes. They ascended a wide staircase of a hundred or more steps. By the time they reached the top, Grace gasped for breath, and the frigid air knifed at her lungs. She coughed, and the taste of iron filled her mouth.

  In many ways, Ur-Torin’s main keep reminded her of the central tower of Calavere. It was tall, but broad as well, almost a square, wrought of the same gray stone as the rest of the city, with countless slits for windows. However, while Calavere was crowned with blue banners, the keep of Ur-Torin was surmounted by four horns of stone, like those that topped all of the spires in the city. Only these were larger, wickedly curved like talons.

  “Dragons,” Sindar said beside her. “The horns would keep dragons from landing on the towers.” He must have noticed the direction of her gaze and the question in her eyes.

  Falken gave the silver-haired man a sharp look. “I thought you couldn’t remember anything.”

  Sindar only smiled. “I can’t say who I am or where I’m from. But I know the sky is blue, that fire is hot and ice cold. And I know that those tusks were meant to ward off dragons.”

  “I suppose it’s possible,” Falken said, although he didn’t look entirely convinced by Sindar’s words. “Ur-Torin is an old city—nearly as ancient as Tarras. I imagine a fair number of dragons still lurked about the north in those days.”

  Beltan shaded his eyes with a hand. “I can’t see anything following us.”

  “Then let’s go in,” Vani said, “and get out of this wretched cold.”

  Like the main gates of the city, the doors of the keep were made of brittle iron, and working together Falken and Beltan wrenched them open far enough to slip through, although Sindar seemed loath to do so. Only after Grace coaxed him did the slender man dart through the gap, careful not to touch the iron gates as he did.

  Unfortunately for Vani and her thin southern blood—as well as for the rest of them—it was colder inside the keep. The thick stone walls held in the chill. Despite the cold, a foul scent hung on the air. Grace found herself thinking of her days in medical school, and of the steel cold room next to the Gross Anatomy Lab where cadavers waited before they were infused with formalin to preserve them.

  Like the city, the keep was empty. Bits of rotted furniture scattered the floor, and the remnants of tapestries—gray and feathery as cobwebs—hung from above, rippling as the five walked past. They followed a broad passage toward the center of the keep, then came to a pair of large iron doors. The doors were shut.

  These were not so corroded—or so easily opened—as the outside gates. Grace and Beltan gripped the iron handle of one door, Falken and Vani took the other, and after some tugging they managed to wrench the doors open with a boom. A puff of frosty air rushed out. The sound rolled away through the keep like thunder.

  Grace led the way into the vast space beyond. It occurred to her she should have let Vani go first, to make sure the way was clear, but somehow she knew her leading was right. After all, it was her heritage, wasn’t it?

  Two rows of columns, carved like trees, marched in twin colonnades, their stone branches weaving high overhead to form the arch of the ceiling. Sunlight shafted through narrow windows, and tiny crystals of ice danced and glittered in the sunbeams, disturbed by the opening of the doors. Frost covered the floor, as thick and feathery as white moss. It crunched to dust under their boots as they entered.

  At the far end of the hall, on a dais, was a chair of stone. It was carved in massive proportions, as if the ones who had sat upon it had been giants. But Grace supposed they had been men and women, mortals just like her. Slowly, the five approached the throne. Like everything in the hall, the chair was covered with ice. Several large, jagged crystals rose from its back like the points on a white crown.

  Grace looked around, but she saw nothing save for the columns and the throne. “Are you sure the shards would be here, Falken? Couldn’t they be somewhere else in the keep?” Flecks of ice snowed down, jarred loose by the sound of her voice.

  “No,” the bard said quietly. “This was the heart of the kingdom. If they were on display for all to see, they would be here.”

  However, though they looked all over the hall, they saw no sign of a broken sword. Vani found a bit of corroded iron in the fireplace, but it looked like the tip of an old poker, and Beltan found some hinges from a side door long since rotted away. They brushed patches of frost from the floor and the columns, revealing only stone. Nor were there alcoves or niches where such precious objects as the shards might be displayed.

  “Maybe they’re in a secret room,” Beltan said.

  Falken let out a cloudy breath. “That would hardly qualify as ‘plain for all the people to see.’ ”

  “Might the shards have rusted away?” Vani said, weighing the scrap of iron in her hands.

  “No,” Falken said. “Even broken, there is deep magic in Fellring, imparted to it by the blood of the three fairies who threw themselves upon it.”

  Sindar turned around and stared at the bard. “What did you just say?”

  The bard cocked his head. “Do you know the story of Fellring?”

  Sindar shook his head, and briefly Falken related the tale Grace had heard before: how a thousand years ago King Ulther had stood alone before the Rune Gate, waiting for the Pale King to ride forth and strike him down. Then three fairies had drifted toward him across the field where his army lay scattered. The radiant beings had thrown themselves upon Fellring, and their blood had
entered the sword, enchanting it. Thus, when Ulther smote the Pale King, the sword pierced his breast and clove his iron heart in two, defeating him—if not quite slaying him. At the same time, the sword shattered. Ulther fell to his knees, and the Pale King’s Necromancers drew near. However, at that moment the armies of Tarras, led by the Empress Elsara, entered Shadowsdeep. The forces of the Pale King, quailing at the sight of their fallen master, fell before them. Most of the Necromancers were slain, and a few fled back to Imbrifale with their fallen master. And Elsara came to Ulther, recovering both the king and his broken sword.

  As Falken finished, a visible shudder ran through Sindar. He passed a hand before his eyes.

  “What is it?” Grace said, touching his shoulder.

  “I don’t know. Nothing.” He lowered his hand and met her eyes. “The bard’s tale sounds familiar somehow, that’s all.”

  “Maybe you’ve heard the story before,” she said. “Maybe you’re remembering it.”

  “Maybe.”

  Vani rested her hands on her hips. “What do we do now?”

  “I say we search the keep,” Beltan said.

  The assassin and the knight started to discuss plans with Falken, while Sindar seemed lost in his thoughts. Grace was too cold to just stand there; she had to keep moving. Without thinking about it, she approached the throne. She started to take a step up the dais, then hesitated.

  And why shouldn’t you ascend, Grace? If Falken’s right, then you’re the only person in the world who can claim to be descended from Ulther. That means you’re the Queen of Toringarth as well as Malachor.

  Marvelous. Chalk up two dead kingdoms under her name. Careful not to slip, she walked up the steps. Perhaps having a different view of the hall would help give her an idea of where the shards might be.

  The hope was futile. The hall looked no different from atop the dais. Falken, Vani, and Beltan were still talking in low voices. Sindar had wandered off a bit from them, and he gazed down at his clasped hands. Grace sighed and turned her attention to the throne.