by Devin Hanson
The cart track wound upwards into the mountains and the air grew colder with their gain in altitude. The wind started to pick up, blowing their cloaks about their legs and digging chill fingers into the flesh. At one point, Jules turned around and spent a minute scanning the valley below.
"I don't see the rider," she commented.
"Probably left the valley by now."
"No, a horse couldn't run that distance without being foundered in the effort." She frowned, thinking. "Perhaps turned back to the city?"
Andrew sat down with his pack against a rock and drank from his waterskin. "Perhaps."
Jules rounded on him. "Doesn't it bother you?"
"Why would it?"
"He could have seen which path we took!"
"So?"
Jules growled her frustration at him. "Our safety lies in not being known. If everyone knew Jules the Collector had a late-night meeting with Professor Milkin then left town again first thing the next morning and went straight to the hills, we'd have every amateur in the city trying to find out what we thought was so interesting up in the mountain."
Andrew got it. "So what? We turn around? Go a different way?"
Jules sighed. "The rider is probably hidden behind a bush or a rock or something, watching us. We turn around now, he'll know it's a feint."
"So what do we do? I'm lost here."
"Obviously." Jules pinched the bridge of her nose again, something that was a habit for her when she was deep in thought. "No, we have to continue on. Once we crest a ridge, there's no way for the rider to know where we went after that."
"Well, let's push on then."
"A better idea. Why don't we set up camp in those foothills up there. Maybe an hour's hike left. Then you can show me just how much Milkin taught you."
"And give our watching friend a miserable night without a fire," Andrew grinned.
"You know," Jules chuckled, "I might just come to like you yet."
Chapter 10
The Rune of Fire
They spent an hour climbing around the rocks surrounding their campsite gathering wood for their campfire then settled in with the sun still high in the sky, maybe two hours from setting. Their campsite was sheltered beneath a tangle of stunted oak trees. The trees would provide cover from any dragons that passed overhead, so long as they did nothing overt to attract the attention of one.
"Okay, so what did Milkin teach you?"
Andrew settled cross-legged next to Jules with his new pad of paper in his lap and pencil in hand. "I guess the importance of making a rune just right. And how to do Tan."
Jules nodded. "Two very important pieces of the puzzle. Milkin's always been the best at teaching runes. It's too bad the Guild doesn't see the value in him. But let's not talk Guild politics. Always makes me grumpy."
Andrew didn't want to make Jules grumpy, and he could care less about politics, so he nodded cheerfully enough.
"Right then. Let's discuss runic placement. As you saw with my knife, the sequence runes are drawn can have great effect on the ultimate outcome. Etch Tan too early and you're finished."
Andrew nodded.
"There are three categories of runes, or ways of using runes. Source runes, like An and At, are single meaning runes and have simple effects. There aren't many of them. Then there are runewords, which combine two source runes to form a more complex concept. Tan is a runeword. It's effect is fairly obvious, and combines the basic meanings of its source runes into a more powerful result.
"Lastly there are Sayings, which are a combination of source runes and runewords, all strung together, to produce powerful and complex effects. Most Sayings are known by name, as their creation is complex enough to require months or years of work to perfect. Saying theory is complex and we will only touch on it briefly, if you learn your source runes fast enough."
"How many source runes are there?" Andrew asked.
"One hundred and twelve," Jules replied shortly, irritated at the interruption. "For now, we'll take one that will apply directly to your next effort. Lighting the campfire."
"You use runes to light your fires?"
Jules gave a wicked grin. "Don't you? Oh, wait, you use something archaic like flint and steel, don't you?"
Andrew felt himself flushing despite himself. "Seems to work just fine for me."
"Course it does, but that's only because you don't know any better. Now I will teach you a new source rune. Ig. Ig is the rune of fire. Unfortunately, it's hard to teach as whatever you draw it on promptly burns. So I will show you the majority of the rune then you will have to use your scale to see its completed form."
With a piece of kindling, she drew the rune on the ground in the dirt. "Now watch." She ticked one of the lines in an upward jag, and the dirt coughed into flame then quickly went out, leaving a patch of scorched earth.
Andrew's jaw dropped. "Show me again!"
Jules laughed and drew Ig again, leaving the jag at the end undrawn. "Now look at your scale and find Ig on its own then complete the rune yourself."
Andrew dug the scale out of his belt pouch and unwrapped it, setting it on a piece of rock where he could examine it easily. It didn't take long before he picked out the jags and whorls that formed the rune of fire. He pointed it out to Jules and she nodded.
"Good. Now, carefully, finish the jag."
Andrew took the stick from Jules and, using his scale as reference, completed the rune. The burst of fire was miniscule, more a puff of dust than a proper flame like Jules' had been.
"Too much angle. Look at the rune again." She scuffed out Andrew's attempt and redrew it. "We'll be doing this one in the dirt." She laughed. "Or you'll burn through all your paper before we're done."
Feeling sheepish, Andrew set his pad of paper aside and took up the piece of kindling again. He stared at the scale a bit, until he was sure he had the angle properly memorized, and finished the rune. Flame licked the ground briefly then went out.
"Better, but you made the leg too long. Precision is key. Again!"
It took several more tries before he got the jag perfect and his patch of dirt erupted like Jules' first demonstration had.
"Perfect!" she cheered. "Okay, now that you got the jag down, the rest of the rune is easy enough."
Easy, for Jules, was something of a misnomer for Andrew. The sun was starting to set and his back was cramping before he performed a satisfactory Ig on his own and charred his patch of ground.
Jules patted him on the back, the familiarity making Andrew's face flush. He forced his mind back to his runework, trying to ignore the proximity of the very beautiful Jules.
"Good work, Andrew. Now, we want to combine it with An, the rune of keeping. Together they form the runeword Igan." She sketched it out, leaving out the final jag of Ig. "Never finish Igan until you're good and ready," she cautioned. "Providing there is any fuel at all, it will burn forever until the runeword is destroyed."
"How do you destroy a runeword?"
"A good question. It's very simple. All you have to do is make the rune other than it should be. For example," she grabbed a sheet of paper from the pad and scribed a rapid Tan. "Try and tear the paper."
Andrew tried and found he could not even wrinkle it. Jules' Tan was far stronger than his own, the skill of her scribing belied by the ease with which she had sketched it out.
"Now, we extend the leg a bit here." She handed the paper back to him. "Now try."
With a little effort, he was able to tear the paper.
"By adjusting Tan, I added an imperfection, thus reducing the quality of the rune. Note that you have to adjust the rune, you can't just cross it out. Such simple vandalism is just noise to the rune and it rejects it as proper runing. Enough ‘adjusting' eventually totally negates the efficacy of the rune." She continued the leg until it was a few inches longer than it should be then tore the paper easily. "The Tan is negated and the paper has returned to normal. With Igan, the disruption is extending the jag and curving it downward.
Just extending lowers the strength of the burn; it's the curve that disrupts it entirely."
She finished the last jag of her sketched Igan and the patch of ground burst into flame. Unlike Ig, the runeword kept burning, flashing flames of green and red, until she disrupted the rune with a decisive stroke of the twig.
"Now, draw Igan, but leave out the jag."
Andrew compared his knowledge of Tan, and saw how At and An were combined, and how Jules had drawn Igan, combining Ig and An. Something clicked and he suddenly understood the combination. Without hesitating, he drew Igan, but left out the jag, as Jules had requested.
Jules gave a little exclamation of surprise, but covered it quickly. "Looks alright. Let's see..." She finished the jag and his patch of ground burst into flame and continued burning. Jules sat back on her haunches and stared at the flame, pinching the bridge of her nose.
After a few minutes, Andrew disrupted the runeword and scuffed it out in silence. Had he done something wrong? It was very unlike Jules to remain quiet for so long.
Finally she spoke quietly, almost too soft for Andrew to hear. "It seems I have underestimated you, gunny. We have a saying, in the Guild. Anyone can copy a rune, but a rare few can decipher one. That's what you did, isn't it? You figured out how the two would join, after seeing Igan only once."
Andrew nodded. "It just made sense."
"And so the gunny turned Runemaster," she laughed, but her usual derision was missing.
"I don't think--"
"You're a long way from a Runemaster yet. You know three source runes and two runewords. Hardly a bragging right, but in only two days work, rather impressive. Let's see how you are at problem solving. I want a campfire that will burn until nightfall, but not any longer." She sat back against her pack and crossed her arms, looking at him with the one eyebrow cocked.
"What, now?"
"I'm waiting. Chop chop."
Andrew pursed his lips and looked around at the firewood they had collected. He chose a few pieces and arranged them in a classic pyramid then dug his stylus out of his bag. Glances at Jules provided only an impassive stare back. She wasn't giving any hints.
Right then. Andrew set about carving Igan into the bottoms of the logs, within easy reach but giving enough room for the disrupting tail at the end. After carving each log, he placed them firmly into their pyramid and carefully finished Igan on each one, adjusting the length of the jag until the log was burning in what he hoped was a sufficiently subdued flame. He finished the last log and stepped back, his face shining with sweat from the heat.
Jules clapped, the sudden noise startling him. "Bravo, Andrew. Couldn't have done it better myself."
He doubted it, but accepted the praise with a slight bow and a grin.
"And now we make supper. And by we, I mean you."
Andrew sighed but the mention of food made his stomach growl. It'd been over six hours since his last meal. With his eternal campfire crackling at his back, he set about preparing their evening meal with more cheer than he had felt in as long as he could remember.
After eating, Jules fished a book out of her pack and curled up next to the fire to read. Feeling slightly silly for not thinking of something similar, he picked up his scale using the Tan-protected leather scrap and lay in his own bedroll, staring at the runes covering the scale.
He saw the source runes he knew on their own, but they were rare, lost in the greater structure of runewords he couldn't even begin to define. Patterns repeated themselves, but also an occasional break, usually around an edge of the scale, provided new mysteries in the form of unusual runes and runewords.
Milkin had urged him to study the scale and he did so, searching out the runes he knew and examining them. He stared at an isolated Tan for a long time, idly running the last two days over in his mind. Suddenly something about the Tan caught his eye. One of the curves he could have sworn was smooth in the runewords he had drawn was in fact slightly crooked on the scale.
He rolled over on his side and called softly across the campfire to Jules, "I think I've been drawing Tan wrong."
She chuckled and turned a page in her book. "And now, young Runemaster, you should know the next piece of Guild tradition. Don't show anyone your nuances. Your fine-tuning is your own. If it makes your runework stronger, bully for you. If you drive yourself into a spiral of overcorrecting then you'll never be a runeworker worth a damn. Find your own balance," she said the last words in a deep, sonorous voice, clearly imitating a pompous professor from her Academy days. "Seek the truth and the perfection of the runes."
"That sounds like Milkin."
She laughed, "No, not Milkin. He's more of a," she changed to a more thoughtful tone, "You should learn the runes from the scale, Jules, not from your imagination."
Andrew laughed with her, giving her a bit of quiet applause. His scale demanded his attention, though, and he turned back to it, wondering if there were any other nuances he had missed, yet mindful of Jules' warning. Imagining errors and trying to compensate for them was a sure way to end his progress in learning runes.
Maybe he had only imagined the crooked line. He thought about it for a while then decided to verify his discovery against another Tan. He rotated the scale around until a new Tan hove into view. It too had the same deviation. So it wasn't a trick of his imagination. That little unevenness was indeed a nuance he hadn't been drawing. If there was the one, were there others that he had missed? He gazed at the scale for a long time until his eyes started to hurt from concentrating, but didn't see anything different from what he had been drawing.
The fire had died down to a few embers, and the sun showed a half-disc over the horizon. He got up, stiff from his hunched position, and carefully banked the coals under dirt. The trees overhead would give them cover during the night, but smoke would draw a dragon as surely as a blazing camp fire.
With a sigh, he folded the scale back into its leather covering and secured it in the belt pouch. Jules was already rolled in her bedding, her steady breathing telling him she had fallen asleep. The runes on the scale danced before his eyes as he made himself comfortable then he slipped quickly into sleep to dream of Tan.
Jules kicked him awake with the sun still below the horizon, just enough light making it through the low clouds to see vague forms. "Wake up, gunny. We move in ten minutes. I want to get over the ridge before our friend wakes up."
Andrew rolled into a sitting position rubbing sleep from his eyes. His bedroll was damp with dew and he could tell by the cold air hitting his scalp that his hair was standing up in all sorts of crazy directions. Jules, of course, was perfectly coifed like she had just checked out of an inn. There must be a manual somewhere describing how to look beautiful in the morning, a manual invisible to men. Perhaps a secret society?
He mulled it over as he emptied his bladder behind a rock, trying to build up some logical hierarchy to this female-only society, and how they could keep it a secret from men. What worried him most, he decided as he rolled his bedroll up and tightened down his pack straps, was it was totally feasible.
Andrew was ready to go two minutes before his allotment of time was up and they started picking their way up the slope, going for the shortest distance to the nearest ridge. As the sun was peaking over the mountains in front of them, they crested the rise and slipped into the valley beyond.
"Our shadow wouldn't be able to make us out through the sunrise," Jules decided as they rested for a few minutes, trying to catch their wind back. The last hundred yards had been a sprint up the slope trying to beat the rising sun.
"If he was even awake. It must be what, five-thirty?" Andrew yawned and stretched.
"Hopefully. But we've got to move now. I want to get over the next ridge before noon."
"Just hold on there," Andrew said, irritated. "You don't even know which mountain we're going to."
"At this point, it doesn't matter. We need to lose our tail before we go to your mountain. Even that would be more data than I'm will
ing to give out."
Andrew sighed. "Well, let's prep our cloaks first. This is dragon territory."
"Prep?" Jules asked, "Why do we need to prep? They're brown aren't they?"
Andrew lifted the hem of his cloak and felt the good, if rough, cloth. He was going to regret this, but not properly prepping their cloaks was even worse.
"I'm a gunny, right? Trust me on this. We need to prep our cloaks."
Jules shrugged. "I'm no tenderfoot either."
"This is my mountain, so we do it my way," Andrew said firmly. "Give me your cloak."
Jules shook her head, her face darkening with anger. "Listen, gunny. You don't give me orders."
"Fine!" he shot back, "Suit yourself. But don't blame me when the dragon eats you."
Andrew scanned the mountains, picking out the likely path they would follow. The sleet from yesterday had cleared, and the sun beat down, the hottest it had been so far this year. Grass would be sprouting soon, and their path would follow in the valleys where there would be the most greenery. And deer.
A spring cloak, then. The stone of the mountains around here was sandstone and granite, varying between a light brown and a whitish grey. His own cloak was a neutral color, a light tan pretty close so the color of the earth, but a far cry from the grey of the granite. It wouldn't take much work to make it suffice. He'd have to make a point of staying off any bare rock faces or he'd stand out like a sore thumb.
He swung his cloak off and spread it on the ground before walking around the area, stripping the bushes of every green leaf he could find. Jules paced around, impatient, but it was clear Andrew was determined to finish whatever ritual he had started so she parked herself on a rock and watched him with her chin cradled in her hands.
After collecting a good sized pile of leaves, Andrew knelt next to a flat rock and proceeded to pound the leaves into a paste. He added a bit of water from his skin and added more leaves until he had a double-handful of leaf goo. This he distributed about his cloak randomly then rolled it up tightly and squeezed until he had chlorophyll-stained water running through his fingers.
