The Stone of Sorrow

by Brooke Carter

  Text copyright © Brooke Carter 2020

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: The stone of sorrow / Brooke Carter.

  Names: Carter, Brooke, 1977- author.

  Description: Series statement: Runecaster ; book 1

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190173041 | Canadiana (ebook) 2019017305X | ISBN 9781459824393 (softcover) | ISBN 9781459824409 (PDF) | ISBN 9781459824416 (EPUB)

  Classification: LCC PS8605.A77776 S76 2020 | DDC jC813/.6—DC23

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019947366

  Simultaneously published in Canada and the United States in 2020

  Summary: In this young adult fantasy novel, seventeen-year-old Runa embarks on a dangerous journey to recover a magical runestone and save her sister.

  Orca Book Publishers is committed to reducing the consumption of nonrenewable resources in the making of our books. We make every effort to use materials that support a sustainable future.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover and map illustration by Song Kang

  Author photo by Laura Housden

  Edited by Tanya Trafford

  Design by Rachel Page

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  orcabook.com

  For my big sister, Tara. It will always be the two of us.

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Stay with me.

  A voice finds me in the forgetting place. I was supposed to be casting a spell, but I can’t remember which one, and now I’m lost, surrounded by a swirling fog so dense it reminds me of the mist that obscures the sea on cold mornings. Frigid air bites into my lungs. My bones ache and I feel brittle as an icicle. If I fall now, will I shatter into shards? I must find my way through, or I may never get home.

  Stay here. Stay now.

  I recognize the voice. It belongs to Sýr, my sister, and it reaches out to me with a warmth that begs me to follow, and I do, clinging to its sound the way a lost navigator might listen for a bell that rings a ship to shore.

  At last the fog clears and I see her face. It’s then that I realize I’m not walking at all. I’m lying on my back, half-frozen on the glacial slopes above our village, and Sýr is looking down at me with concern.

  “Where was I?” I ask, but I already know the answer. I was deep in my sickness again, having lost my hold on this realm. When that happens, I see things—sometimes terrible things—that aren’t there. I don’t know what’s real and what’s not. The sickness comes when I’m scared, and it’s happening more and more often. Sýr is worried that one day I will not emerge from the confusion in my mind, although she would never say this to me. But I feel it. I feel it in the way she tries too hard to reassure me.

  “Don’t worry. I will never lose you, Runa,” she says.

  “Well, how could you?” I say, trying to lighten the mood. “I’ve been right here, stuck on the ice, the whole time.”

  “Ah, you blend in so well,” she teases, a reference to my white hair and pale skin. She’s not wrong. With my coloring and my gray cloak, it would be easy to miss me among the stones and patches of ice. Right now I feel like one of those stones. Cold, stiff, and lifeless.

  “Help me up,” I say. “I can hardly move. It’s so…” I trail off, not wanting to sound weak. I know Sýr has spent many days lying on the ice patches, trying to connect with the powers of Ís, the ice rune.

  “Cold?” she finishes for me, a glint of amusement in her eye. “Ice has a way of doing that.” Sýr doesn’t make me feel bad for failing or for being a coward when it comes to casting runes from the cold embrace of the ice.

  The wind blows her dark hair around her face, and the thick, warm fabric of her green cloak billows, reminding me of the rolling hills and forest beyond our home. What spell would I have to cast to be as beautiful as Sýr? I wonder.

  She cocks her head at me as if reading my thoughts. “It is a bitter cold,” she says, “and I hated doing this too when I was training.”

  She extends a gloved hand to me and I take it, letting her pull me up. Despite her willowy appearance, Sýr is strong, and I have the feeling she could easily lift ten of me. Sometimes I wonder if she could use her magic to lift an entire warship, or one of the horned whales that swim in the cold waters, or even one of our mountains—the ones that spew lava when the gods are angry. How it came to be that I am her sister, I will never know. The gods are not without a cruel sense of humor.

  Though we’re sisters, we’re nothing alike. Sýr has the long, dark hair of our mother, so I’m told, and the tall body and deeply tanned skin that some say is a sign of elven blood in our lineage. I must not have been blessed by our ancestors, because I am short and skinny and pale. Light hair like mine is common in our clan, but mine isn’t just light. It’s an icy, wild, wiry mess, like a bursting cloud. I was born with all this hair, born looking old, as my grandmother, my amma, says.

  “My eyes are causing trouble again,” I say to Sýr. “I was fine on the ice. I think I was even connecting to the cold and could feel it powering through me. But right before I cast the rune of Ís, my eyes started hurting, and I got lost in that strange fog. After that I was so confused that I couldn’t find my way. I’m glad you were here, Sýr. I don’t know what I would do…” I’m too scared to complete the thought. I don’t know what would happen if I stayed lost in the fog. Would I remain inside it for eternity? Would I die?

  “Don’t worry, Ru,” my sister says. “One day you will find a way through that fog on your own. And your eyes, well, perhaps they’re just special. Maybe we can find a salve for them in the spring, when the clans gather to trade.”

  My eyes are the thing I detest most about myself. I wouldn’t mind being so fair, or even so fragile-looking, if it weren’t for my eyes. I long to have the sharp green eyes of my sister. They can pierce you with a look that recalls the wilds of the ocean. But I’ve been cursed with watery blue eyes that don’t work right. They are sore most days and tinged with pink, and sometimes I can’t tell how far away things are. They make me clumsy. I drop things, fall, trip. People and objects are always moving without me seeing it happen. One moment here and the next gone, only to reappear again in a different spot.

  My eyes jump around as if quaking in my head, and I know it makes others uneasy, because no one other than Amma and Sýr ever looks right at me for long. I asked Sýr about it once, and she told me that maybe my eyes shake because the person I’m talking to is so boring that I’m secretly looking for a way out of the conversation.

  “A salve would be helpful,” I say, forcing a smile. “New eyes would be even better.”

  “Well,
” says Sýr, “perhaps you should study your runes more often, and then you could find a spell to fix them.”

  I give her a playful shove. “If you cannot, what makes you think I will ever be able to?”

  “One day, Ru,” she says. “One day.” Sýr smiles her kind smile, though I’m not sure my sister has any other type. She’s the one person I’ve met who never has a mean word to say about others, and she doesn’t wear her bitterness on her face as so many do. Maybe that’s why she is so beautiful and I’m not. I have nothing but bitter thoughts. Sýr has her share of hardships, me being one of them, but she never lets it show.

  “You will learn to cast all the runes,” she says. “You will learn to make their shapes and sounds in your mind’s eye, and you will learn to connect with the powers of the island. I did, and you will too.”

  We walk at the base of the massive glacier that has bordered my family’s settlement since our people first journeyed here. It’s where we come to practice the ice runes. I know that what Sýr says isn’t true. I know it because I hate casting runes.

  I can never say this out loud. After all, I should have inherited my family’s magical gifts. My female ancestors have all been powerful runecasters, but despite extensive training under Sýr’s watchful eye, whenever I cast a spell I screw something up. I have my sickness, or something breaks, or someone falls ill, or the exact opposite of the spell’s purpose occurs. If I want something to float, it sinks. If I want to heal a wart, it grows bigger. If I want to increase the yield of a crop, I kill all the plants. I hate to think what would happen if I was in charge of important things like Sýr is. She is responsible for helping to birth babies, for blessing the dead on their way to the afterlife and for curing the clan of their ills.

  After all, my sister is the keeper of the moonstone—a magical runestone that grants its possessor the power of prosperity. A talented runecaster like Sýr can use it to provide for our clan by harnessing its power to cast spells that help us. It can grow food, aid us in catching fish, or even heal us from sickness. In the hands of the right caster, the moonstone can ensure that we will flourish for years to come. Without it, there would be many hard years ahead, for life on our island isn’t easy. We must be strong, or powerful, or lucky to survive. I am none of these things. Without Sýr I would perish.

  “You cannot grow too frustrated, Ru,” Sýr says, “for this is a difficult path. The way of the runecaster is lonely, and it is hard. No one will understand.”

  “But you do,” I say, reaching out to grasp her hand as we walk.

  She smiles. “You think you are a difficult pupil, but you’re my favorite.”

  I laugh. “I am your only pupil.”

  “Exactly,” she says.

  I know why I’m not succeeding. Instead of holding tight to the runes and their sounds when I cast a spell, my mind drifts to all the times I’ve messed things up and to all the ways I’m different. Some people don’t belong in the lives they were born into, and I am one of them.

  I feel this truth in my heartbeat and in my breath. I feel it crawling underneath my skin, like a worm making its way into my soul. This truth always says the same thing. You’re a fake. Give up. The runes will not listen to a voice like mine. They don’t trust me, because I do not trust myself.

  I know it takes a lifetime to master the basic runes, but I was not blessed with patience. A runecaster must be gifted with imagination, a born dreamer, and while Sýr says I have this gift, I’m not so sure. My feelings are a mystery even to me, and my dreams often feel like they are not the right dreams.

  Sýr never chastises me, and she never lets on that she knows I’m a fraud. She’s the gentlest and fiercest person I’ve ever known, and as much as I hate training to be a runecaster, I hate letting her down even more.

  “Tell me, Runa,” Sýr says, reaching over to brush snow from the back of my cloak. It’s one of Sýr’s old working cloaks. She has promised me that when I complete the next stage of my training, she will present me with the colorful cloak of a runecaster. I am ashamed to say I care more about the garment than I do about the achievement. “What did the ice feel like to you before you got lost in the spell?” she asks.

  I want to say that it was cold and leave it at that, but I know Sýr wants me to think deeply about my training, even if I struggle to find the words to explain myself. “It felt… deceptive,” I say at last. “At first the snow on top of the glacier feels soft and comforting to lie on, but after a while it grows harder, and all the softness turns slippery and so cold that it aches to lie still. I roll over into an impression that no longer fits, and then I’m forced to turn back and settle again into the same aching contortion. It’s like trying to sleep in someone else’s footprint. It’s never going to fit.”

  Sýr nods, looking at me with an odd expression. “Good,” she says.

  “Good? How is that good?” I ask. “I failed.”

  Sýr waves her hand as if swatting the idea away from the air between us. “You understand now why change is necessary. You can’t stay in one place forever, Runa. You’ve got to move forward in life. And I won’t always be here.” She looks away from me to the horizon.

  “But Sýr, what if I can never make the spells work? Half the time they don’t work, or they work in reverse, or I have my sickness. And what do you mean you won’t always be here?” Imagining village life without Sýr around is enough to send me into a panic. She must notice me starting to shake, because she reaches out a strong gloved hand to steady me and then wraps her arm around my shoulders.

  “That’s enough,” she says in her calm way. “We don’t worry about things that have not come to pass. I’m just saying that nothing lasts forever. People change, move, grow, journey, and they die. We know this. We can’t be afraid.”

  We do know this. We have proof. We’ve both already lost so much.

  “Runa,” Sýr says in her gentle voice. I realize we’ve stopped walking and I have become lost in my thoughts again. “Stay here with me.”

  “Sorry,” I mutter, pushing away my dark thought. We continue walking. “When will my casting improve?” I ask. “I try, but I’m always messing up and getting it all backward.”

  Sýr nods. “It’s hard to remember every nuance of each rune. When I started, I could never tell the difference between the bright-staves and the murk-staves,” she says, raising a questioning eyebrow at me.

  I sigh. “You’re always quizzing me, big sister. A bright-stave is the positive side, and the murk-stave is the negative.”

  “And why does it matter?” she asks.

  “It can change the reading of the runes entirely,” I say. “When I’m doing a spell, if I get them mixed up, I could start a fire when I want to put it out, or I could make someone sick instead of helping them heal.”

  “Consequences,” Sýr says. “We have a responsibility, Ru. If we make mistakes—and we will—then we will have to deal with it.”

  I can only imagine what it is like for her. I don’t want to ruminate on the endless mistakes I’ve made, and I always have my sister to help me out when I mess up.

  Sýr kicks a black lava rock, and it bounces and skids across the frozen earth. “But you know, when things seem dark there is always a brightness waiting on the other side. There is always a choice. There is always something you can do.”

  Sýr is eternally positive and has a way of walking through the world as if she’s not tethered to it like the rest of us are. It’s the thing I most admire, and envy, about her.

  “So there is hope for me?” I ask, cracking a smile.

  Sýr fixes her steady gaze on me. “Of course. You’ll be the greatest runecaster this clan has ever seen. Perhaps even the best on the island.”

  I roll my eyes at her. “In our dreams.”

  “Let’s get home,” she says. “The sky is growing dark.”

  I follow her gaze out from where we stand high on the ice-covered clifftop just beyond the glacier. I can see our seaside village from here, a
nd I long to get away from the ice and move toward the sea. A wind is brewing, blowing waves with white crests toward land, where they crash against the rich black soil of our homeland.

  “I wonder where Father is now,” she says.

  The ocean’s horizon is a swirl of gray, and there is no sign of a ship’s sail. Our father, one of the head warriors of our clan, has been on a long expedition with his fellow warriors. It’s not unusual for him to be gone a long time—navigating distant waters to find new lands and settlements takes many seasons—but it is unusual for him to be away this close to the coming of the red moon.

  There have been murmurs and grumblings in the village that our father’s ship is lost on the great ocean. Some say that he and his warriors met an enemy they could not defeat. Sýr dismisses these musings as simple fear.

  “I hope he comes back soon,” I say, but that’s not entirely true.

  We reach our dwelling as the sky is turning red and orange and gold. The sight of the modest hut fills me with relief. Hot soup will chase the chill away. I push open the wooden door and step down inside, my heart swelling with the comforting pleasure of home. Sýr has kept our fire burning with a longevity spell, and our home radiates warmth.

  “There’s fish soup in the pot by the hearth,” Sýr says, knowing me well.

  “Want some?” I ask over my shoulder as I drop my cloak on a chair before rushing toward the fire to warm myself. Pulling off my leather gloves, I see that my fingers have turned blue from the cold.

  “No,” says Sýr, frowning at my fingers. She grabs one of my hands and gives it a rub, trying to get the blood flowing. “These fingers of yours,” she mutters. “Like ice. Even when you were a baby.” She pauses and lets go of my hand. Her face is troubled.

  “Sýr?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m tired, Ru,” she says. “Perhaps I’ll have soup later, so save me some. I have work to do now. Get warm.”

  She disappears into the darkened cupboard where she keeps her hundreds of tiny pots of herbs and salves and who knows what else. Sýr is most herself when she is growing herbs in her garden, harvesting them for her tinctures, and cooking and nurturing at home.