“Speak,” growled Tosvig.
We listened to Cleavon explain everything. About the Runenmer, about who he was. It didn’t come as a great surprise to Tosvig, even less so Harrien, but Judah and Kayla had hundreds of questions, and they grilled Cleavon on it all. Adi-Boto said nothing.
“And all of this came from the caves?” I said. “The cave that you, Cleft, and Arnet were trapped in, that’s where he got his powers?”
“Not from the caves, but from what he did in there,” said Cleavon. “That was his true beginning.”
“That’s what I mean; he ate the flesh of a fellow circle child, and it turned him into this?”
Cleavon shook his head. “Not exactly. It didn’t make him what we call the Runenmer; it …opened him up to being its host. There was always a reason for our sacred rule of flesh.”
“And now you betray your people to deal with this creature,” said Judah, who looked ready to cut Cleavon into pieces.
“He said he could bring my wife back to me.”
“Did it not occur to you that he couldn’t even bring his own wife back from the dead?” I asked. “You told us she died when Cleft led the gnomes to your camp. Your wife died there too, no? If he could bring the dead back to life, why wouldn’t he do that for his own wife?”
Cleavon said nothing then. I thought I understood; the Runenmer, with magic that none of the other Lonehills possessed, had made an offer to him. An offer too good to be true, but one that Cleavon was all so desperate to believe.
“Why were you so insistent that we take the left passageway?” I said. “Is he waiting for us down there somewhere? Is there a trap?”
Cleavon nodded.
“Do you know what this trap is, exactly?”
“I am not his equal. He doesn’t share plans with me. I was only to lead you to a part of the mines where he would be waiting.”
“Can he hear everything we say in here? Can he read your mind or something?”
“He isn’t godlike; he cannot do anything he wishes. When he needs to talk to me, he creates a rune nearby, one that only I can see. That is how we talk.”
“So, we know that the Runenmer is waiting for us if we take the left tunnel.”
“Then we go right; the song says it is the way through the mines to get what we seek. We can avoid him,” said Judah.
“Or, think about it a different way,” I said. “The Runenmer won’t just give up. If we take the right tunnel, he will still come for us eventually. Come on, he isn’t just going to wait around there and then abandon everything, is he? Only if we go through the right tunnel, then we won’t know where he will strike, or when.”
“What are you saying?”
“That for once, the surprise is on our side. We’d be foolish not to take it. He doesn’t know that we know where he is. He doesn’t know that we know he is waiting. If we do this right, if we plan, we can surprise him. This is our chance to kill the bastard.”
“Too much risk,” said Tosvig. “His magic surpasses anything we have.”
“The Runenmer is just flesh and blood. He can be killed.”
“Killed for a time. Not forever.”
“We don’t need forever, we only need him dead for now. We can’t waste this chance. If we go through the right tunnel, we’ll always be looking over our shoulders.”
Everyone was silent then. Cleavon sucked in short, wheezing breaths.
Judah stared at the tunnel with the horn-shaped rocks jutting out above it. “Let us plan then,” he said. “Listen to Isaac’s ideas. And then maybe we see that he is right, maybe we see he is wrong. But if there is a chance…”
“If it wasn’t for Runenmer, we would never have been forced to make this journey,” said Kayla. “I am ready to kill this bastard.”
“I am starting to like you,” said Tosvig, grinning.
I faced Harrien and Adi-Boto. “Do you agree?”
Harrien looked nervous. “If I didn’t, I would have no choice. I will not walk the other tunnel alone.”
Adi-Boto said nothing.
I remembered what Judah had told me about him, about when he was young, and he’d seen the Runenmer slaughter his parents.
“Adi?” I said. “This is the best chance you will have to face what he did to you.”
He still said nothing.
And then, finally, he nodded.
With his agreement, I knew our course was set. We would use our advantage to plan, and then we would face him.
I should have been nervous, but the knowledge was freeing, in a way. He was just flesh and blood, and he was down that tunnel somewhere, expecting Cleavon to lead us into it and to catch us unaware. The Runenmer was going to get a surprise.
CHAPTER 46 – Plans for Runenmer
“I think that first, we need to know where he is,” I said. “Kayla, you’re the best scout. If you use a dweller buff, do you think you can creep down the tunnel?”
“I will be like a butterfly’s whisper.”
“I have a little yellow alchemooze left, too. That will help you find traps.”
“I will go.”
Kayla moved toward the left tunnel with the horn-like rocks above it. She almost reached the entrance, when Judah grabbed her arm.
“Be careful,” he said. His voice sounded almost paternal.
She patted his bicep. “I will be fine. Just have a plan ready when I return.”
Just a few steps into the tunnel and she was gone, hidden by the darkness. That left the rest of us standing in front of the two tunnels, needing a plan. Cleavon was sitting on the ground, and Adi-Boto held his spear so that the tip was inches away from him.
Now came the hard part. I knew that the Runenmer, or Cleft as he was really called, was flesh and blood, despite the fact he could regenerate or reincarnate or whatever kind of re his ability to come back from the dead was.
Every time I thought of him, I pictured the runes he’d made when I first saw him. The demons crawling out from them and eviscerating the poor guys stood close by.
Did I really want to face him?
There was no choice. My words hadn’t just been bravado; if we took the right tunnel, the easy route, the Runenmer wouldn’t just give up. He’d eventually realize that we weren’t heading where he expected us to, and that something was wrong. Then he’d come for us, and we wouldn’t know where or when. As much as it worried me, we couldn’t let this opportunity go.
“We’ll have to decide which buffs to use,” I said. “But first, let’s think about the Runenmer’s powers. We already know that if we trigger a rune, it drains some of the power he anchored in it, and that leaves him with less of it to use.”
“Share your thoughts,” said Tosvig.
“When Kayla tells us where he is, we should have a better idea of what he has planned. But we can be reasonably certain in one thing; he’ll have runes ready to use. He expects Cleavon to lead us to him, so he will have traps ready.”
Judah nodded. “This is true.”
“So, think about this. He convinced Cleavon to help him by promising to resurrect his wife. We know that he can’t really do this, because he would have brought his own wife back. So, he lied to Cleavon. The pathetic healer is expendable to him. I would guess that Runenmer plans to kill Cleavon, too.”
Judah glared at Cleavon now. “Pathetic.”
“True,” I said. “but we can use this. The Runenmer knows that Cleavon is with us. So, if he sees Cleavon, he will think we are coming, too, and he’ll activate his rune. Or, maybe he has set his runes to activate as soon as he sees any of us, including Cleavon. When we learn where Runenmer is, we will bind Cleavon’s arms. We will gag his mouth so he can’t speak. Then, we will send him forward on his own, straight into the Runenmer’s trap. He will trigger the runes. Then, we wait for the power that is anchored in them to dissipate. That will remove the trap and leave the Runenmer a little bit weaker.”
“You would sacrifice me?” said Cleavon.
“You were ready t
o lead us all to our deaths.”
“Mardak would be ashamed. Nino would be ashamed. Pendras, Siddel, our elder. You have disgraced yourself, your wife, everyone in our clan who trusted you,” said Harrien.
It was almost like someone else entirely was speaking instead of Harrien, he sounded so mature. His words had an effect, because Cleavon hung his head now.
“This will not work as you plan,” said Tosvig. “Look at our healer. See his cowardly soul. Yes, we can bind his arms, we can cover his mouth, but we cannot force him to walk. He will not do it.”
I thought about it, and he was right. “Then we must use Cleavon a different way.” I paced around now, getting my blood flowing, hoping ideas would come.
“Cleavon,” I said. “When does the Runenmer contact you? You said that you have no control over it, but that doesn’t make sense. If the Runenmer can’t read thoughts, can’t see us, then he’d risk us seeing it when he conjured a rune to speak to you with. When does he talk to you?”
“When you are all sleeping,” said Cleavon, his voice sounded soft now. His shoulders were sunken, his face an even paler shade of green than before. He looked like half the person he once was.
I guessed that made sense; he’d given up his clan members on the promise of seeing his wife again, and now we’d made him realize that the Runenmer had betrayed him, that he himself had betrayed his clan for nothing.
“So, you talk to him when it is your turn to be on watch,” I said. “While the rest of us sleep.”
He nodded.
“Impossible,” said Judah. “I sleep lightly. I would hear you prattling in the darkness.”
Cleavon shook his head. “We converse through the rune. We do not actually speak. You would not hear us.”
“Then how does he know when we are sleeping? The only way is if you tell him so, which means you have a way of contacting him,” I said.
“Check my bag,” said Cleavon.
His bag was by Judah’s feet. Judah reached for it.
“Wait,” I said.
Cleavon glared at me then.
“Harrien, do you have some of the yellow alchemooze I gave you?” I asked.
“A little. Not much is left.”
“Spread it on the bag.”
Cleavon sunk even further to the ground now, as all his energy had left him. Harrien spread his last glob of alchemooze on the bag. It began to glow, blinking once, twice, three times.
“His bag is trapped,” I said. “You were going to let Judah put his hand in your bag and set off a trap.”
“Even now the bastard doesn’t repent.”
“Cleavon,” I said. “Disarm your trap. Adi, if he moves in any way you don’t like, run your spear through his throat.”
We all watched, tense, as Judah kicked the bag over to Cleavon, and the healer fumbled with his bag. When the yellow light stopped glowing, Judah snatched it from him.
He opened it up and tipped the contents onto the ground. Various glass vials and bunches of herbs bound by string fell out, followed by a stone.
It was a disc, purple colored and small enough to fit in someone’s palm. There were strange lines etched all over it.
So this was how Cleavon spoke to the Runenmer. I wondered about something now. Could we use it? Get Cleavon to speak to the Runenmer? We’d have to think carefully about what he should say, but if we did it right, we could get Cleavon to lead the Runenmer into a trap.
But there was a problem. Cleavon said that he and the Runenmer conversed through the rune, but they didn’t need words. This meant they spoke using their minds, I guessed. And that, in turn, meant we had no possible way of trusting that Cleavon would say what we wanted him to.
Damn it. It was too much of a risk. We couldn’t use it.
I paced around some more, desperately hoping that something would come to me. I had a bunch of buffs that we could use, and I had lots of elementals. The problem was that only Harrien and I could use the elementals, since we couldn’t trust Cleavon to cast spells anymore.
As I walked to and fro, I felt my thoughts become even more stuck. There just wasn’t a way to…
And then I stopped.
My chest tightened, and I felt a flicker of tension run through me.
I stared at the wall behind the group. The stone was black and slick with dew, the surface uneven with rocks jutting out in places, and with crevices in others.
But there was something else, too.
I turned to Judah and whispered. “Get some ropes ready.”
“We are tying him up?”
“Just have them ready.”
Staring at the wall, at the thing that had shocked me, I formed a spell.
“Hrr-spee,” I said, when enough energy built up inside me.
[Speed] elemental depleted [Total: 23]
[Speed] discipline improved by 4%!
Rank: Grey 19.00%
Feeling the energy ball of hrr-spee in my chest, I pushed some of it to my legs. I darted across the cavern in a flash, and in just a second I was by the wall.
I reached out and took hold of a small dweller clinging to the wall. This was smaller than the others I had seen; no larger than a cat, but with a swollen abdomen and eight legs just like the rest.
I grabbed its throat and gripped tight. As it flailed its legs and desperately tried to move its head to bite me, I wrenched it from the wall and slammed it down onto the ground.
“Judah!”
The others crowded around me while Adi guarded Cleavon. Tosvig kneeled on the dweller’s abdomen, while I gripped its throat tight and Judah tied roped around it, binding its legs against its body.
A few seconds later and it was done; the dweller was on the ground, wrapped up tight with its legs tied so it couldn’t move. It shook from side to side, like a turtle on its shell trying to right itself.
“It was watching us,” I said. “See how its smaller than the rest? It must be a spotter of some kind. Trailing us, ready to go back to its nest and tell the others.”
“So kill it,” said Harrien.
I shook my head. “We can’t trust Cleavon to walk into the runes to set them off,” I said. “But if we take this thing down the tunnel and release it, it will flee from us. Straight into the runes.”
“So, now we need to know where he is,” said Harrien.
Judah stared at the horn tunnel. “Kayla has been gone a long time,” he said. “Do you think something-”
And then, the small, palm-sized disc on the ground began to glow.
The lines etched into it lit up, and Cleavon stared at it.
“It is him. He is trying to contact me.”
“I thought you were the one to initiate contact?”
“He…he must know something.”
“Kayla!” said Judah in almost a gasp, and he darted toward the horn tunnel.
Dread filled me then. Had the Runenmer got to her?
CHAPTER 47 – Runenmer
I stared at the disc as yellow threads of light trailed over it and pulsed as if they were blinking at me.
“I thought you said he never contacts you?”
Cleavon seemed in disbelief. “I…”
Judah stomped over and grabbed him by the throat. In one movement he wrenched the healer from the ground and lifted him so that his legs were dangling in the air. “If he has Kayla…”
I approached them. “Put him down a second.”
Judah released his grip, and Cleavon slammed down onto the ground and made choking sounds. A big, red palm print reddened his skin.
“You…” he said, gasping for breath. “You…sent her into the tunnel…not…me. Can’t blame me for…everything.”
“I’ll smash your teeth through your head.”
“I can’t leave you alone for ten minutes?” said a voice.
We all turned to see Kayla standing at the entrance of the tunnel. Judah rushed over to her and hugged her. “Kayla! I thought that he had…”
She shrugged him off. “I told yo
u; quieter than a butterfly’s whisper. Now, I know where he is.”
“Tell us.”
“No time,” I said. “Look at the disc. The Runenmer is trying to contact Cleavon. Why would he do that?”
“He knows something is wrong,” said Harrien.
Cleavon shook his head. He cleared his throat. “No. He is getting impatient. I haven’t contacted him for a while, and he is not a patient man. He never was; not when he was Cleft, and even less so now. Immortality should make a person at peace with the sands of time, but the longer he lives, the more times he comes back, the more he thirsts for revenge.”
The disc continued pulsing, every flash of light making me feel tenser. “If we ignore it, he’ll get even more suspicious. But he must be rattled if he’s taking a risk like this.”
“Cleavon could speak to him,” said Judah. “Calm him. If he thinks we are still on route, we can lull him into waiting.”
“We can’t trust Cleavon to say a word to him, not when we can’t hear what is being said. But if we ignore it, the Runenmer might grow suspicious and leave that place. If we don’t know where he is, we lose our advantage. We have to do this now.”
“Do what?”
“Kill Runenmer before we lose our chance.”
A few seconds later, the rune disc stopped glowing. I faced the group.
“Harrien, come get some elementals from me. The rest of you, I have a bunch of buffs you can take. Adi, can you tie Cleavon up? Bind his hands, feet, and stuff a gag in his mouth. We’ll leave him here.”
Cleavon shrank back against the wall. “Leave me? But the dwellers…”
I gave him a cold, hard stare. “You made your choice.”
Judah grabbed my elbow. “Isaac, we will need a healer.”
“I have some green alchemooze. It’s helped me out already, so I know that it works. And I’m sorry to say, but I trust a tin of ooze more than I trust that rat-faced bastard. He’s just as likely to poison us as he is to heal us.”
Five minutes was all we could spare to prepare for this. When we were done, Kayla led us into the tunnel. I hated having to follow her lead, and I wished I could have used a dweller buff to heighten my senses, but I had taken another bear buff after seeing how effective it was against the dwellers. If I could punch a hole in a dweller’s stomach, then maybe I could crush the Runenmer bastard’s skull.
Everything Is Worth Killing- Isaac's Tale Page 50
