The Last Rune 4: Blood of Mystery

by Mark Anthony

  “It was Brother Cy. I saw him, Grace, in—”

  Ruby light filled the tower. They all turned to see a small figure pad through the open door on bare feet. The girl wore the same simple gray shift Grace remembered, and her fiery hair was as wild and tangled as ever. In her hands was a stone.

  Not a stone. The Stone. Krondisar. The Stone of Fire.

  It was from the Stone that the light radiated. It danced on the air like crimson fireflies, its touch warm and gentle. So that was why her star had vanished. She was here.

  Grace’s heart melted. “Tira,” she said, smiling, even as tears streamed down her cheeks.

  The little girl laughed and padded toward her. No, not toward her. Toward Travis. He knelt before Tira, and the girl held out the glowing Stone.

  “Runebreaker,” she said, and laughed again.

  Here ends Blood of Mystery, Book Four of The Last Rune. The story of the Final Battle for Eldh will continue in Book Five, The Gates of Winter.

  Don’t miss

  BOOK FIVE of

  The Last Rune

  THE GATES OF WINTER

  by

  MARK ANTHONY

  Coming in spring 2003 from Bantam Spectra

  Here’s a special excerpt:

  Deirdre Falling Hawk sat in a claw-footed chair that was older than her by a good four centuries and stared at the closed mahogany door across the hallway.

  All right, Deirdre—blink already. You don’t have X-ray vi sion. And even if you did, the room is probably encased with lead shielding. Gods know, the Philosophers always think of everything.

  With a sigh, she leaned her head back against glossy wood paneling. She wasn’t certain she believed in fate. All the same, she had a feeling hers was being decided on the other side of that door right now. She reached up and touched the polished bear claw that hung around her neck, wishing she could muster some kind of clairvoyance, some kind of true vision. Wishing she knew what Hadrian Farr was telling them.

  She wasn’t surprised they had asked to see her and Farr separately. That was standard procedure in interrogation, wasn’t it? Divide and conquer—convince each accomplice the other was ratting on him. Nor was she surprised the Philosophers themselves had wished to conduct this final interview, as they termed it. The fact was, compared to what she had witnessed on the weathered asphalt of Highway 121 outside of Boulder, Colorado, nothing in the three months since—the midnight phone calls, the endless question and answer sessions, the surprise early morning visits to the South Kensington flat they had granted her—could possibly have come as a surprise.

  If she closed her eyes, Deirdre could still see it: the window rimmed with crackling blue fire, hanging in mid air. It was what she and Farr had joined the Seekers in hopes of finding— a gateway to another world. They had watched as Travis Wilder and Grace Beckett stepped through the gate, along with the wounded man Beltan and the spindly gray being that was, impossibly, a fairy. Then the window collapsed in on itself and they were gone. In silence, they had walked from the accident scene where Duratek’s transport vehicles lay scattered on the highway. Not two hundred yards away, the Seekers were waiting to pick them up. So much for the policy of not interfering with those who had otherworldly connections.

  Twelve hours after the Seekers picked them up, they had touched down in London; to Deirdre, it felt like traveling to another world. In the time since, she and Farr had both written detailed reports about their activities in Denver. They had been questioned and questioned again by Seekers at nearly every level in the organization. Deirdre was no psychologist, but she knew enough to be sure the subtle repetition was conceived to reveal any inconsistencies in their stories. However, she simply told them the truth; she guessed Farr did as well.

  Maybe not all of the truth, Deirdre. Do you think he told them he really is following in the footsteps of the famed Seeker Marius Lucius Albrecht? Albrecht fell in love with Alis Faraday, the woman he had been sent to observe. Do you think Farr told the Philosophers what he feels for Dr. Grace Beckett?

  Regardless, it was almost over. Deirdre knew the only ones left to talk to were the Philosophers themselves—if they even really existed.

  Evidently they did; the summons came that morning. Deirdre had actually dressed up for the occasion, donning a simple but tasteful skirt suit of black wool. However, she had kept her bear claw necklace, and she had been forced to grab her leather biker jacket against the chill January drizzle that slicked the London streets.

  She had spent perhaps an hour in the room beyond that mahogany door. It had been dark and empty except for a single chair carefully placed in a circle of gold light. Then the voices had started, and she had seen the row of dim silhouettes just beyond the light. For a moment she thought they were really there. Only that wouldn’t be nearly mysterious enough for the Philosophers, would it? After a minute, a crackle of static passed in front of the figures. It was a projection, that was all—their electronically altered voices coming through speakers, her replies returning to them by hidden microphone. They could have been a thousand miles from that room.

  It was only at the end of the interview, after a long pause, that a different question finally came.

  “Please tell us one last thing, Ms. Falling Hawk,” said the anonymous vocoder tones of one of the Philosophers. “If you were given the opportunity, would you go there?”

  She stiffened in the chair. “Go there?”

  “Yes, Ms. Falling Hawk. To AU-3, the world some call Eldh. Would you go there, if you could?”

  She leaned back, unsure what to say, and touched the silver ring she wore on her right hand. It was the ring Glinda had given to her at Surrender Dorothy—the London nightclub that had been a secret haven for people with fairy blood in their veins. Duratek had been controlling the folk of Surrender Dorothy, supplying them with the drug Electria, hoping to use their blood to help open a gateway to Eldh. Only then Duratek had captured a true fairy; it had needed the others no longer. The nightclub had burned to the ground, but not before Deirdre had gone there, not before she managed to talk to Glinda.

  As she had a thousand times since that night, she thought of Glinda’s purple eyes, and the impossible forest she had glimpsed when they kissed. A forest she was certain had not been anywhere in the nightclub, or anywhere in London.

  “Please answer the question, Ms. Falling Hawk. If given the opportunity, would you go to Eldh?”

  She twirled the ring on her finger and smiled. “I think maybe I already have.”

  The lights came up, and it was over. She had gone into the hall to wait while Farr took his turn.

  Once again Deirdre sighed. How long had he been in there? There was no clock in sight—nothing that would mar the precisely engineered patina of age and tradition that permeated the London Charterhouse. The only concessions to modernity were an EXIT sign at the end of the hallway and electric bulbs in the brass sconces that once burned oil.

  Built just before Shakespeare’s time, the Charterhouse had originally been the guild lodge of some of London’s most notorious alchemists. These days, passersby thought it some exclusive club. They weren’t all that far off. The Seekers weren’t so very different from the geographic societies of Victorian times, planning trips to exotic locales. That these locales resided not on other continents, but on other worlds, was merely a matter of degree.

  Just as Deirdre contemplated getting up and pounding on the door, it swung open.

  Farr stood half in the darkness beyond, so that she could see him only in stark black and white. With his chinos, rumpled white shirt, and before-noon five o’clock shadow, he looked as if he had been digitized right out of a Humphrey Bogart movie.

  “Well?” Deirdre stood.

  Without looking back, Farr shut the door and stepped into the light. “I wouldn’t have thought it would go like that.”

  “Go like what?”

  A camel hair jacket drooped over Farr’s arm. He unfolded the garment and shook it out, but this actio
n only seemed to encourage the wrinkles. Farr slung the jacket over slouched shoulders.

  “Do you know how many of the Nine Desiderata we broke?”

  “Yes, actually. Numbers One, Three, Four, Six, and Seven. Although I never could see the difference between Desideratum One and Desideratum Three. Do you think something was lost in the translation from the Latin?”

  “And do you know how many other directives and regulations we ignored in our actions?” Farr went on.

  “Let’s see. There was the Vow, of course. Plus a dozen or so local, state, and federal laws applicable in Colorado. And as I recall, Hadrian, you only flossed once the entire time we were in the States.”

  He ran a hand through his dark hair, as if it could be any more perfectly mussed than it already was. “It doesn’t make one whit of sense.”

  “No, Farr, you don’t make one whit of sense.” She plucked a bit of lint off his coat, noticed it had been covering a spot, and gently replaced it. “And nobody says whit anymore. Or at least they shouldn’t. Now tell me what happened. They’ve taken three months to decide what to do with us. Are we to be censured? Exiled? What?”

  Farr’s brown eyes finally focused on her. Even dazed and disheveled, he was handsome. Deirdre realized he should have been a poet or an artist a hundred years ago; he would have looked absolutely beautiful dying of tuberculosis.

  “They’ve invited us to rejoin the Seekers. All privileges and benefits restored. And each of us at one rank higher than we were previously.”

  Deirdre gaped, at last surprised.

  “So what do we do?” she finally managed to say.

  Farr stuck his gray fedora atop his shaggy head. “We go downstairs. The Philosophers have politely requested we stop by the main office before leaving the building.”

  “And what if we don’t?” Deirdre said. She felt light-headed, as if the air all around had gone thin.

  “What, Deirdre? How could you possibly think to disobey the wise and benevolent Philosophers?”

  Farr’s voice was strangely soft; nor was he looking at her. Instead he gazed down the corridor, brown eyes haunted.

  Deirdre started to reach toward him. “Hadrian?”

  He turned his back and moved out of reach. “Be a good Seeker and come along, Deirdre. We’d best see what wonders the Philosophers have in store for us.”

  A quarter of an hour later they stepped through the door of the Merry Executioner, a pub three blocks from the Charterhouse and their haunt of old.

  Over the last few years, a shocking number of London’s centuries-old drinking houses had been quietly replaced by chain-owned franchises—establishments that were not genuine English pubs but rather deftly manufactured replicas of what an American tourist thought a pub should be. Deirdre had mistakenly walked into one not long after their return to London. The too-bright brass railing on the bar and the random coats of arms on the walls couldn’t hide the fact that the steak-and-kidney pie came out of a microwave and the bartender didn’t know the difference between a black-and-tan and a half-and-half.

  In a way, the bland commercialization of London’s pubs reminded Deirdre of the workings of Duratek Corporation. That kind of thing was right up their alley—take something true and good, and turn it into a crass mockery in order to make a tidy profit. Wasn’t that what they wanted to do to AU-3, to the world called Eldh? She could see it now: rollercoasters surrounding the medieval stone keeps, and indigenous peasants in the castle market hocking cotton candy and plastic swords imported from Taiwan in order to keep sticky-fingered Earther tourists from noticing the smokestacks rising in the distance.

  Luckily, the M.E. hadn’t succumbed to the scourge of commercialization in Deirdre’s absence. The dingy stone exterior and slightly grimy windows were just unsanitary-looking enough to assure foreigners would hastily pass by, shrieking children in tow. Inside, things were as dim and warmly shabby as Deirdre remembered. A comforting drone of conversation rose on the air from a scattering of locals. She and Farr slipped into a corner booth and caught the bartender’s eye. He nodded. Scant minutes later they sipped their pints: Newcastle for Farr, Bass Ale for Deirdre.

  Deirdre gave Farr a speculative look over the rim of her glass. “Better now?”

  He set down his own glass and leaned back. “Marginally,” he said, gazing at the battered surface of the table and the pair of manila envelopes they had been given.

  “So, are you going to open it, Hadrian?”

  “Maybe. I suppose I really haven’t decided.”

  Deirdre let out a groan. “Please spare me the I’m-too-cool-to-care routine. You know as well as I do, that for all the rules we broke, and for all the havoc we caused, we’re the first Seekers in centuries—maybe even the first since Marius Lucius Albrecht was a Seeker himself—to report real, verifiable, and multiple Class One Encounters. We’ve done the one thing the Seekers have always wanted to do: we’ve met travelers from other worlds.” She leaned over the table, letting her smoky green eyes burn into him. “Admit it. You want to know what the Philosophers have planned for us now as much as I do.”

  Farr’s expression was unreadable. He flicked a hand toward the envelopes. “Ladies first.”

  He had called her on this one. It was time to show she wasn’t bluffing. Deirdre picked up the envelope marked with her name, tore off one end, and turned it over.

  A laminated card fell to the table. On the card was a picture of herself, her name, her signature, and the sigil of the Seekers: a hand holding three flames. So it was a new ID card, that was all, a replacement for the one they had taken from her at the first debriefing months ago. She turned it over to look at the reverse side.

  Farr sat up straight and drew in a sharp breath. Deirdre raised an eyebrow, glancing at him.

  “What is it, Farr?”

  “Those bastards. Those cunning, diabolical bastards.”

  Deirdre frowned and followed Farr’s gaze to the back of the card. It bore her thumbprint—no doubt in ink laced with her DNA, taken from blood samples the Seekers had on file. The DNA signature in the ink could be read with an ultraviolet scanner, providing a level of authentication that was virtually impossible to counterfeit. However, as interesting as the technology was, that couldn’t be the source of Farr’s outburst.

  Then, in the lower corner of the card, she saw the small series of dots and lines—a computer code printed in the same DNA ink. Next to the code was a single, recognizable symbol: a crimson numeral seven.

  A jolt of understanding sizzled through Deirdre. She looked up at Farr, her eyes wide. When she spoke, it was in a whisper of wonder. Or perhaps dread.

  “Echelon 7. . .”

  Farr grabbed the other envelope, shredded it, and snatched his new ID card form the debris. He flipped the card over, then tossed it on the table with a grunt. Like Deirdre’s, his card was marked with a red seven.

  He slumped back in the booth, his expression stricken. “Now,” he murmured. “After all these years, they finally give it to me now. Damn them to hell.” He leaned over the table, voice hoarse. “Do you understand what this means? With this card, there’s nothing that’s barred from you. Every file, every artifact, every document and bit of data—this card gives you access to all of them. With this, the deepest secrets of the Seekers will be at your disposal. Everything but the private files of the Philosophers themselves. It’s all yours.”

  “And yours, too, Hadrian.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Deirdre gave an exasperated sigh. “What are you talking about? I thought this was what you wanted.”

  Farr shrugged, running a thumb over his card. “I suppose I did want this once. But I can’t say I really know what I want anymore. Except maybe that’s not true, either. Maybe I do know what I want, only it isn’t this.” He flicked the card away from him across the table.

  Deirdre snatched it up. “This is ridiculous, Hadrian. You’re one of the most important agents the Seekers have, and they’ve rewarded you for
your work. Why is that so hard to bear?”

  Farr let out a bitter laugh. “Come now, Deirdre, certainly you’re not that guileless, not after what we’ve witnessed. This is no reward. It’s simply another ploy to control us, to make us behave in the manner they wish. Think of what we’ve seen, what we know. And think of who besides the Seekers might want that knowledge for themselves.”

  “Duratek,” she said on reflex.

  “Exactly. The Philosophers will do anything to get us to come back and to keep us out of the hands of Duratek—even if it means giving us what we’ve always wanted. But that doesn’t mean we’re anything more than the puppets we were in Colorado, when they cut us off from the order.”

  Anger bubbled up inside Deirdre, at Farr—and, she had to admit, at the machinations of the Philosophers. As much as she would have liked to deny it, there was a ring of truth to Farr’s words. But it didn’t matter.

  “So what?” she said. “So the Philosophers are trying to manipulate us. The fact is, no matter why they gave them to us, these cards still work.” She reached across the table and took his hand. “Think of what we can do with them, Hadrian, what we can learn.”

  “No.” Farr pulled his hand from hers. “I’m not resuming my work with the Seekers, Deirdre. I’m resigning from the order as of this moment.”

  She glared at him. “You can’t quit, Hadrian. I know; I tried it once. And you were the one who told me that leaving the Seekers isn’t an option, that it’s a union that can’t be broken.”

  “It seems I was mistaken.”

  Deirdre hardly believed what she was hearing.

  Farr’s handsome face was haggard but not unsympathetic. “I’m sorry, Deirdre, I truly am. I know it’s difficult. But you have to face the fact that we’ve lost.”

  “That we’ve lost what?”

  “Our belief.”

  She sat back, staring as if slapped. In all the years she had known him, Farr had never wavered in his quest for other worlds, had never stopped believing in them. “I don’t understand. You were there, Hadrian, on the highway to Boulder. You saw it all with your own eyes.”