The Last Rune 4: Blood of Mystery

by Mark Anthony

  “Yes, that’s it,” Travis whispered. “Drink.”

  The sorcerer froze, staring with empty gold eyes——then turned to flee the room.

  With a flick of his hand, Travis sent the shadow to do its task. The viper shot out and struck the sorcerer in the back like a black spear. Something gold went flying and clattered to the floor. The Scirathi screamed, arms flung wide, back arching, as the shadow passed through him. Then it was gone.

  The sorcerer fell to the floor. There was no hole in his black robe where the shadow had struck him. All the same, he did not move.

  “Well,” said a hoarse but shockingly cheerful voice, “that was a remarkable display.”

  Jack crawled across the floor, retrieved something, then used the bureau to pull himself to his feet. His face was ashen, his blue eyes were bright.

  “Jack,” Travis croaked. Every joint and muscle in his body ached, as if he was recovering from a severe fever. “Jack, are you all right?”

  “I was going to ask the same of you. You look as white as a sheet. I’m quite well now, thank you. Though if I hadn’t managed to stop things with the rune of time, I wouldn’t have been well at all. My heart felt ready to leap right out of my chest. That’s quite a spell this fellow was able to cast.”

  Jack raised the object in his hands. It was the sorcerer’s gold mask. He spun it around, then started to lift it. “I wonder if I might be able to—”

  “Don’t even try,” Travis said.

  Jack sighed, then tossed the mask back to the floor. “I suppose you’re right. One brand of wizardry is quite enough for me.” He raised an eyebrow. “Although I don’t think you’ll be able to say the same anymore.”

  Travis lifted his hand. The wound was closed now; only a faint white scar remained. All traces of blood were gone. Fear filled him. But there was another sensation as well, one even more disturbing. It was exhilaration.

  Travis moved across the room to the crumpled black heap. With his boot, he flipped it over. A ruin of a face stared up at him, so covered with scar tissue it was barely recognizable as human. Only the eyes revealed that this had once been a man; they stared upward in empty supplication. Travis knelt, reached into the sorcerer’s robe, and pulled out the gate artifact. He rose.

  Jack stood next to him. “I suppose this means you’ll be going soon.” His voice was sad but resigned.

  Travis smiled at his old friend. “Don’t worry, Jack. I’ll see you again.”

  “No, I’ll see you again. In a century or so. But not the other way around, I fear.”

  Travis reached up and slipped off his wire-rimmed spectacles. He held them out. Both of the lenses were cracked; in all the chaos, he hadn’t noticed. “I think I’d better give these to you. For safekeeping.”

  Jack took the spectacles, folded them up, and slipped them into the pocket of his waistcoat. “I’ll give them to you when I see you again.”

  Travis shivered. How could you say good-bye to someone knowing you would never see him alive again? But sometimes you had to. “Thanks, Jack.” He gripped Jack’s right hand between both of his own and squeezed. “For everything.”

  Jack’s smile was slightly befuddled, yet full of cheer all the same. “By the love of Isis and Osiris, of course, my boy. You’re quite welcome. Now, don’t you think we should go find the others and see how they’re doing? I imagine they’ve all had quite a fright. We should fetch them and have a cup of tea before you go.”

  PART FIVE

  THE BLACK TOWER

  64.

  Travis had always heard it said that time was like a river: a great flood flowing inexorably to its destination and atop whose currents one could only drift. But to Travis, time was more like a hall with many rooms—chambers in which one dwelled for a while, either short or long, before opening the door and stepping through to see what was next.

  They passed through many such doors and rooms—many such times—on the road to the Black Tower.

  There was their time in Castle City, their last few hours there. It seemed odd that they should have to hurry. After all, if Jack was right about what they would find at the Tower of the Runebreakers, then they had all the time in the world. There was no reason they couldn’t stay at the boardinghouse with Maudie and Tanner, at least for a little while. No reason except the dark circles beneath Sareth’s eyes, the shadows in the hollows of his cheeks, the rasping cadence of his breathing.

  “We have to go now,” Lirith said, pulling Travis into the dining room, her face drawn, exhausted. The others were gathered in the parlor where Sareth lay unconscious on the sofa. “I can’t hold on to his thread much longer.”

  “But traveling through the Void again—won’t it make him worse?”

  She shook her head. “The damage has already been done. On Eldh, I believe I can bind his thread. But not here.”

  It didn’t take long to get ready. They gathered their scant possessions, and Travis set the gate artifact in the center of the parlor floor. The onyx tetrahedron absorbed the light, but Travis knew what it really wanted. Blood.

  “What is all this?” Maudie said, her voice edging into panic. “What’s going on?”

  Tanner gripped her hand. “I’ll try to explain it later, Maude.”

  “I believe I can help you in that regard,” Jack said.

  Maudie shook her head; she was calmer now. “No, I think I understand.” She looked at Travis, Lirith, and Durge. “You’re going somewhere, aren’t you?”

  Travis nodded. “To another world.”

  Her green eyes were startled for only a moment. Then she pressed her hand to her chest. “I suppose I’ll be traveling soon, too. To another world.”

  They made their farewells swiftly, as if that somehow made the pain less. Travis shook Tanner’s hand. What could he possibly say to express what he felt? He settled for saying, “Thank you, Sheriff, for everything.”

  “You’re welcome, Mr. Wilder. But Miss Lily is right. It’s Mr. Tanner now.” He cast a glance at Maudie, who was giving Lirith a fierce hug. “I sent to the governor for a new sheriff over a week ago. When he comes in a few days, I’ll turn in my badge.”

  “But what will you do?”

  Tanner shrugged. “Mr. Manypenny’s always said he has a job waiting for me, so I suppose I’ll take him up on that. And I need some time to follow Miss Lily’s instructions and get myself off the laudanum. But mostly, I want to spend it with Maude. The time she has left.”

  Travis glanced at Maudie. She was hugging Durge now, holding on as if for dear life, but the stoic knight didn’t resist. “I’m glad,” Travis said.

  It was midnight. Durge and Travis laid Sareth on the carpet next to the gate, and Lirith knelt beside him. Travis removed the triangular top of the artifact, exposing the reservoir within. Travis took the Malachorian stiletto and made a small cut on his left arm. A red line of blood flowed, dripping into the artifact, filling the reservoir.

  Travis replaced the onyx triangle atop the artifact. For a second he feared nothing would happen. After all, only a single drop of blood from the god-king Orú had entered his veins. Then the gate crackled into being: a dark oval rimmed by blue fire. The last thing Travis heard was Jack’s voice saying, “By Jove, what a grand adventure this will be!”

  And it was like a door opening and shutting, taking them from one room to the next.

  After that came their time in Tarras. It was a slow, quiet time, warmed by a gentle southern sun, redolent with the scents of spices, oranges, and the sea. A healing time.

  For a month, they rented a small white house in the bustling fourth circle of Tarras. It had been both Durge’s and Lirith’s idea to come to the city. Durge had reasoned Tarras would have changed less in a hundred years compared to the Dominions, and thus the four had a better chance of reaching their destination intact if they visualized the ancient city when they stepped through the gate. Lirith’s reason was different but no less compelling: In Tarras, of all places, she knew she could find the herbs and m
edicines she needed.

  The first three days were the worst. Sareth drifted in and out of consciousness, his body shaking and drenched with sweat, as Lirith worked over him without rest. She sent Durge and Travis on many errands to fetch herbs, spices, and oils. Her medicines had an effect, reducing his fever and the severity of his spasms. All the same, it seemed her work would be for nothing. The shadows in his cheeks deepened; dark lines snaked up from the stump of his leg, spreading across his body.

  Then, on the third night, as a full moon rose over the sea, a knock came at the door. Durge opened it, and three women in green robes drifted in. Travis knew at once they were witches. Hadn’t Lirith once said she had found a coven in Tarras? But they were strange and secret, not like the witches of the north. All the same, they were there.

  The three women said nothing. Or at least, nothing that Travis or Durge could hear. However, Lirith stood quickly, her dark eyes locked on the witches. The three women joined hands with Lirith, forming a circle around Sareth. They shut their eyes, and it seemed nothing happened as, for an hour, they stood without moving.

  Then Sareth sat up, his eyes open and clear.

  Without spoken words, the three women in green turned and moved through the door, into the night. Lirith was on her knees, her arms around Sareth, sobbing.

  “Beshala,” he said softly, resting his head on hers. “I’m here, beshala. I’ll never leave you again.”

  She pulled away, gazing at him with frightened eyes. “And won’t you, Sareth?”

  “No,” he said. And again, “No.”

  A gasp escaped her. The moment was too private, too sharp with fresh pain. Travis and Durge retreated into the other room, shutting the door behind them.

  After that, Sareth’s strength returned a little more each day. In a week he was making music on a reed flute he had fashioned for himself. In two weeks he was moving about the house on the new wooden leg Durge had carved for him, and in three he took his first steps outside. Color returned to his coppery cheeks. He laughed often, especially when Lirith was in view.

  Their love was clear, in his smile, in her eyes. All the same, Travis sensed something holding them back from one another. Their touches were tender, but tentative, fleeting. Travis didn’t know the reason, and nor was it his place to ask.

  Sareth was not the only one who recovered as the weeks went past. All of them had been weak and exhausted after their ordeal in Castle City. However, the wound in Durge’s side healed under Lirith’s ministrations, and Lirith herself seemed to bloom like a flower under the warm Tarrasian sun.

  Travis’s own wounds, received in the gunfight, had been healed when he turned the spell of blood magic against the sorcerer—although he couldn’t stop using his tongue to probe the empty socket of his missing molar. As for the cut he had made on his arm, it had closed after passing through the gate. Sometimes he ran a finger over the pale scar. How many more would mark his body in the coming years? Would he one day be forced to use a mask to hide the ruin of his face?

  Troubling as those thoughts were, he didn’t dwell on them. The fact was, despite the alien blood running in his veins, he felt good. Not powerful or strange or terrible. Just good. The voices of the runelords in his mind were quiet, and even Tanner’s knowledge of gunfighting—which Lirith had granted him—had faded away as the spell unraveled. He was Travis: nothing more and nothing less.

  Their only real worry was money. There was the rent to pay, and food, and soon they would need to buy horses and supplies for a long journey. They had some gold dollars from Castle City they were able to spend. Lirith made simples and potions and sold them to the neighbors, and both Durge and Travis hired themselves out for day labor. In the end, however, Travis was forced to sell some of his things. He couldn’t bear to part with the Malachorian stiletto. However, he sold the mistcloak Falken had given him to a merchant, and he sold Jack’s handwritten book to a curious scholar at the University of Tarras.

  “My research is specialized in pagan mythology of the north,” the scholar said, eyes eager. “It’s quite fascinating in its crudeness and barbarism, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Travis only gave a tight smile. He hated selling the book. That last night in Castle City, Jack had told him to keep it as a memento, and it was the only copy Jack had made. However, the scholar had offered a huge sum of gold for it, and he had promised to donate the book to the university library when he was finished with it, which made Travis feel a bit better.

  Finally, when the moon was full again, it was time to pass through another door; it was time to journey north.

  Traveling was easy at first. They followed the Queen’s Way north, staying at the clean, if austere, Tarrasian hostels that were spaced precisely a day’s ride apart. Things grew rougher when they reached Gendarra and the other Free Cities, and rougher yet as they traveled into the Dominions.

  “Calavan and the other Dominions are going to get considerably more civilized over the next century or so, aren’t they?” Travis said, as they rode past the umpteenth band of ragged peasants laboring outside a cluster of daub-and-wattle huts.

  “Fortunately,” Durge said, his nose wrinkling at the stench.

  “Of course, some Dominions will always remain a step ahead of others,” Lirith said brightly.

  Durge cast her a sharp look, and Sareth laughed. “Be careful, beshala. You meant to number Embarr among the more civilized Dominions, didn’t you?”

  “But of course,” she said.

  In the Dominions there were no hostels, and inns were few and far between. Occasionally they stayed in the manor of some local lord, but increasingly they found themselves camping out. Travis didn’t mind. It was late summer, and while the days were gold and warm, the nights were cool and bright with stars. He would watch them wheel slowly in the heavens until sleep came.

  Days passed, and weeks, as they rode across the rolling terrain of Calavan and Brelegond. Then, on the first day of Revendath, in a year none of them could number, they reached the edge of the Dominions. To the north was the rocky line of the Fal Sinfath, the Gloaming Fells. Travis knew the Black Tower lay at the western tip of that range.

  “We’ll be riding through wild and empty lands from now on,” Durge said. “I believe we should hire guides who know this corner of the world.”

  However, they were in a dirty village on the far western marches of Brelegond, and the only scouts they found for hire were two sons of a freeman farmer. They were stocky men with rough hands and dull eyes. Travis didn’t miss the look the father gave the sons when he accepted a handful of gold from Durge and told the two young men to guide the travelers where they wished.

  The brothers did seem to know the wilderness well. They led the riders through dense forests and over moors, avoiding bogs and deep gorges, always picking out a navigable path, always keeping the mountains to the right.

  The murder attempt came on the fifth night. By the stars it was well after midnight when Travis woke to see a shadow above him. Moonlight glinted off the pale edge of a knife.

  Speak a rune, Travis, he told himself. But did he dare? What would it be like to work rune magic with the blood of sorcery running in his veins?

  “Step away from him,” Durge rumbled.

  The young man scrambled to his feet. Durge stood five paces away, legs apart, his greatsword—which he had kept concealed in a blanket these last days—naked in his hands, all four feet of its blade gleaming in the silver light. The knight’s eyes were merciless pits of shadow.

  “Now begone with you, lest you suffer my wrath.”

  The farmer’s son stared as if he had seen some fabled monster emerge from the depths of the woods. He dropped his knife and ran, his wail rising in the air. His brother, who had been bending over Sareth, did the same. After a minute, their cries faded into silence.

  “Do you think they’ll come back?” Sareth asked.

  Durge snorted as he sheathed his sword. “Would you?”

  “Now that you mentio
n it,” Sareth said, “no.”

  Just to be safe, they kept watch all night, but they saw no trace of their two scouts. At last dawn drew near.

  “I don’t blame you for chasing away our guides, Durge,” Lirith said as she stirred the coals of the campfire and nestled the maddok pot among them. “But do you think we’ll be able to find our way?”

  Just then the sun lifted above the low downs that were the last remnants of the Fal Sinfath, and Travis saw the black finger of stone jutting into the sky.

  “We already have,” he said.

  Another door, another room. Their journey was over. A new time had begun.

  Unlike the Gray Tower of the Runespeakers, the Black Tower was not carved from the hill it stood on. Rather, it was built of a stone that seemed alien to this region. It was nothing like the gray rock of the Fal Erenn, but was greenish black and had an oily feel to it. The spire rose over a hundred feet to a horned summit, its walls without windows.

  A single door was set into the base of the tower. Though made of iron, the door was untouched by rust. To Travis’s surprise, there were no runes carved on the door. It was featureless, save for a small keyhole in the center.

  “I suppose we’ve journeyed all this way for nothing,” Durge said. “Unless Lord Graystone happened to give you a key?”

  Travis shook his head. But it didn’t matter; somehow he didn’t think he’d need one, that this place would know him. He pressed his hand against the door.

  There was a deep, grinding sound. The door swung open. A puff of dry air struck their faces.

  “Let’s go in,” Travis said.

  In the time that came after, Travis was never certain how long they spent in the tower. Certainly days. Perhaps weeks. He was lost most of the time in study of the runestone.

  They found it on their first day of exploration, floating in the topmost chamber of the tower: a three-sided pillar of black stone, its surface carved all over with runes. Travis had learned his lesson at the Gray Tower, and he never touched more than one or two runes at once, and always let the shimmer of magic fade before he touched another rune and listened to its name spoken in his mind.