The Book of the Rune

by Eric Asher

  The trap ignited.

  Fiery blue and red rings erupted from the courtyard, scorching the basilisk as it twisted and thrashed and tried to escape.

  Ward didn’t realize what had happened until Neil shouted Heather’s name. Only then did he turn away from the dying embers of the basilisk’s corpse. And saw his apprentice.

  “Heather!” Ward screamed as the gray swept back from her eyes, solidifying hair and clothing and flesh alike until only a statue remained. “No!” His voice cracked as grief warred with rage. He’d failed her. Of that, he was certain.

  Ward did not watch as Neil carved his vengeance from the body of a necromancer, but he listened. He hadn’t seen the man approaching. Hadn’t seen anything since Heather fell to the basilisk. A moon rose behind the veil of clouds before the necromancer’s final sobs were cut short with a gruesome crack.

  “What now?” Neil asked, stepping up beside Ward.

  Ward glanced at Neil. “We find our allies.”

  “Allies? Who’s left?”

  “Adannaya and the Old Man.”

  Neil fell silent and squeezed the hilt of his sword. He met Ward’s gaze and nodded once. “We’re leaving the hidden cities? You’re really sure about this?”

  Ward touched the tips of three fingers to his forehead and focused on the Old Man. The ley lines shimmered in his vision, sharpening in the direction they’d find him, and degrading into a static blue blur toward the opposite horizon.

  “Sure about this?” Ward said with a small smile. “I am only sure of a single step, Neil.” Ward took a step toward the Warded Ways. Neil followed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “She died?” Kat the bartender asked. “Is a different Heather working with the Unseelie?”

  Ward blew out a humorless laugh. “No. That’s her. It was a damn fine illusion. I thought she’d died there, which is exactly what she wanted me to see. More than a year went by before I learned otherwise.”

  “I saw that battle,” Calbach said. “It wasn’t long after that I met you here for drinks for the first time.”

  Ward nodded.

  “Hell, I bet you wish she was dead now,” Kat said.

  Ward didn’t answer. He stared down into his stein and frowned.

  “A bit more complicated than that,” a voice said as the front door to the bar slammed closed.

  Ward looked up to find the Old Man. “Any luck? You just missed Foster.”

  “A few new recruits,” the Old Man said. “It was a lot easier in the old days, when people were just expected to fight. You ask me, all this voluntary crap is making people go soft.”

  “Oh,” Kat said. “We aren’t people as you say, but maybe we have gone soft? And speaking of that, seeing as I’m the new owner, I’m going to need you to pay your tab.”

  The Old Man spluttered. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “And yet it’s what you’re getting.”

  The Old Man blinked at the bartender before releasing a long sigh.

  Happy chuffed.

  Ward scratched the panda bear behind the ears. “We need to recruit more Fae for Morrigan.”

  The Old Man pondered that and then nodded. “I think it would be wise. If we lose Damian and the girls, we’ll still have to fight this war.”

  “They need a Ryō coin, a very particular coin, to save that girl.” Ward hesitated. “Just don’t let any of them hear you call them girls.”

  “If I’m a thousand years older than someone, I can call them whatever I damn well please. What are we waiting for?”

  Kat slapped a slip of paper down in front of the Old Man before Ward could answer. “Well, you can call me your bill collector.” Ward had never seen any bar in Faerie use paper bills, but Kat must have made a note about the stories they’d told her of the Old Man’s bad habit of skipping out on his tabs.

  “Not dodging that one,” Ward said with a small smile.

  “I didn’t dodge my tabs. It was war. The killing just started before I had time to pay.”

  “Or you can always owe me a favor.” The bartender flashed a smile that could inspire trust in the wariest of travelers.

  “I’m not that dumb.” The Old Man scowled at Ward. “Spot me fifty, Calbach?”

  The iron-touched rolled his eyes. “Of course. I suppose the price for you stopping that blade is worth fifty.”

  Calbach tossed two worn coins onto the table. “And an extra for your trouble. I don’t want his ill manners getting us banned from your fine establishment.”

  Kat snatched up the coins and exchanged a grin with Calbach.

  “Let’s finish this recruiting run,” Ward said. “Then we can get that coin for Happy.”

  “Or we can get the coin first,” the Old Man said.

  Ward shook his head. “I’d rather have Happy with us. If we’re going to those boroughs up against the wall again, the more company the better.”

  The Old Man inclined his head. “Well, quit sitting around. Let’s get this over with.”

  * * *

  The group made their way outside, Calbach leading the way. The Old Man and Ward trailed behind him while Happy brought up the rear.

  “I don’t know why anyone would stay down here,” Ward said. “You have the entire Golden City, and you choose this?” He gestured to the littered streets and tall stone that formed the walls of the boroughs at the edge of Gorias. On the other side of the gate was the wasteland between the Golden City and Murias.

  “It is not a choice for all of them,” Calbach said. “Some are oath-breakers, given only the option to live here or in the wastes.” He smiled at a street vendor roasting something on a spit. “Others like the freedom. No regulations, no rules, no one telling you what you should be doing with your life. But the ones we need are here too, soldiers without an army. A great many who defected from Nudd but remained in Gorias are here.”

  “There are slums in every city,” the Old Man said. “Some are just nicer than others. It’s livable here, and not everyone needs a gilded cage.”

  Ward knew both of the men were right. But there was still something that rubbed him the wrong way. He knew these hovels had been Heather’s sanctuary after she ran. He didn’t know how long she’d stayed there until she partnered with the Unseelie Fae. And even then, had that been a willing partnership? He didn’t know, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted the answer.

  The Old Man led the way past another run-down bar. There were five like it on every block, and it seemed each one showed loyalty to a different faction in Faerie. Ward hadn’t realized just how fractured Gorias had become. Once, a long time ago, it was more unified than any of the great cities. Its people had come together in the darkest ages of Faerie, but each war that followed carved a crack into its foundation.

  Ward didn’t recognize the storefront the Old Man led them into. Burning sage and the heavy scent of aging leather permeated the place. Ward’s steps faltered when he recognized some of the coats of arms and the armor along the wall.

  “We shouldn’t be here,” Ward said.

  The Old Man grinned at him like a lunatic, and he almost sounded happy. “You need an inside man in every war. This one is no different.”

  “We have plenty of spies within Nudd’s forces,” Calbach said.

  “It’s not Nudd’s forces I’m interested in,” the Old Man said. “You’re not looking far enough ahead.”

  Ward pondered the Old Man’s words as a curtain of delicate metal discs that glowed orange in the torchlight slid to the side. A small hunched fairy walked through, her skin as gray as death and her eyes an oily black that swam in the flickering lights.

  “Leviticus.” She said his name as if she was scolding a petulant, but not wholly unwelcome, child. “I already told you you’ll find no recruits here.”

  “Those lads who were here earlier seemed interested.”

  “Oh, yes.” She said, raising her eyebrows. “They’re quite interested in killing you. I do not give idle warnings. You may call upon me as an
ally for what you’ve done for my family. Other Unseelie are not so benevolent.”

  Calbach stared at the woman. Recognition flickered through his eyes. But he didn’t speak to the old fairy, and Ward wasn’t sure if that was a good thing, or something far from it.

  “Did you give any more thought to selling me one of your breastplates?” the Old Man asked.

  The old woman sighed. “Promise me you’ll take your friends and leave this place. I don’t need your kind of trouble here. Cleaning your blood off the floor would annoy me.”

  The Old Man flashed a smile. “You have my word. If I return, it will be alone.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You humans and your empty words. So be it.” She pulled a breastplate out from behind the counter. The armor made of such a dark silver metal Ward thought it had been tarnished. But the longer he looked at it, the more he realized it was polished to a nearly obsidian glean.

  “Take it off.” The woman walked around the bulky wood counter as the Old Man slipped out of his cloak. She slid the breastplate over the front of his armor, and Ward blinked as he recognized the symbols. The stuff of the old legionnaires of Rome.

  “Do these two know how you know an old Unseelie Fae?” the fairy asked.

  “I’ve not broken my word,” the Old Man said. “No one knows except the water witches who were there.”

  “You might as well tell them now, with the story written upon your armor. As it should be.” She pulled the crisscross metal band over the Old Man’s back, locking the breastplate in place. She checked the fittings, running her fingers around the edge of the breastplate before nodding. She didn’t ask the Old Man how it felt, how the fit was. And Ward suspected she didn’t need to.

  The Old Man glanced at Calbach and Ward. “You know the story of the fall of Atlantis. You know I was there. It wasn’t the first time someone had attacked that great city. Long before, the Unseelie had made advances.”

  “Advances we tried to stop,” the old fairy said.

  Leviticus nodded. “But some soldiers are harder to control than others, and they came for the water witches. I helped fight them off.”

  Ward waited for more. Calbach just stared at the old fairy, never taking his eyes from the woman. She made her way back behind the counter and picked up a small gray ball. Before Ward could even register what was happening, that small gray ball hurtled through the air and smacked into Calbach’s palm where it was almost swallowed by his massive hand. He stared down at it and then looked back up at the fairy.

  “You. You are the Iron Queen, matriarch of some of the most powerful iron-touched bloodlines.”

  She inclined her head. “And if you can hold that chunk of metal in your hand, you are more gifted than many of the iron-touched who still walk the streets of Faerie.

  “I did not know…”

  The Iron Queen waited for him to finish, but he fell silent.

  “That I am Unseelie?” she prompted.

  Calbach nodded as he walked forward and set the gray orb back into her hand.

  “We’re not all so lost. The Seelie Court might want you to believe we are a homogenous band of evil that needs to be stripped from Faerie, but never forget the actions of one do not represent the heart of all.”

  “Soldiers are soldiers,” Leviticus said. “They’ll all kill you.”

  “It is not so simple as that,” the Iron Queen said. “And I think somewhere in that thick head of yours you know that.”

  The Old Man smiled at her and tugged on his breastplate before rapping on it with his knuckles. “It’s beautiful work.”

  “May it protect you so I can … kick your ass later.” Her words were slow, like she was trying to remember an expression she’d only heard once before.

  “I’m sure it will,” he said, pulling his cloak over it.

  With that, the Old Man ushered them out of the store. Calbach gave a glance once more to the Iron Queen and then let the door fall closed behind them.

  “There’s a pub with a few dissenters a couple doors down,” the Old Man said. “Let’s try that.”

  Ward followed behind Calbach’s broad shoulders and could’ve sworn he heard him whisper, “The Iron Queen lives.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Old Man led the way through the towering wooden doors. Ward figured they had to be at least ten feet high and broad enough Calbach didn’t have to turn to the side to make his way through a single door. The Iron Queen’s armory had been far different than this place.

  Here, light woods long stained dark by time adorned the walls. Planks ran the circumference of the open room, forming a standing bar. Low tables circled the center of the hall and in the back was a bar that must have been quite grand in its time. But now old bottles with peeling labels lined the shelves, and the mirror showed more dirt than reflections.

  A wingless Fae worked the bar back, and Ward wasn’t sure what it was. Pale flesh surrounded paler eyes, with no pupil to identify where the creature was looking. But it moved with confidence and grace, snatching a glass out of the air when the Fae bumped it off the bar, which made Ward fairly certain it wasn’t blind.

  “Supposed to give you these,” the barkeep said, his voice as articulate as a landslide. He hefted two Unseelie cuirasses onto the bar top and flashed a savage grin of dagger-like teeth.

  The Old Man cursed and brought up a shield in one breath. Ward was trying to figure out what had happened when the sword came out of the shadows.

  The Old Man and Calbach were already moving, turning to face the Unseelie soldiers dropping down from the dark places in the rafters. But the third had caught Ward. He grunted as the sword impacted his chest. The patterns of his flesh ignited, and the Unseelie swordsman’s blade shattered.

  The attacker froze for only a second, but that second gave Ward time to draw his fingers up to the pattern tattooed on the left side of his chest and snap them toward the Unseelie Fae.

  Filaments of electric blue light bloomed from Ward’s middle three fingers, tracing a whip-like arc through the air. They cut into the fairy, severing his left forearm and crashing against his armored chest.

  But what should have cut through him like so much paper instead crackled and glowed until an ancient corrupted sigil appeared in fiery blue light on the fairy’s armor. Ward recognized the circle and the crosses around it. It was Heather’s work; of that he had no doubt.

  He clenched his fingers into a fist as he heard the fight intensify between Calbach, the Old Man, and the other assassins. But he had his own enemy to focus on for the moment. He slapped his hand against another set of runes etched across his waist. Ward shot a spear of light down into the Unseelie Fae’s foot, paralyzing it until it suited him to free it.

  With the immediate threat immobilized, he turned to the others. The nearest, facing off with Calbach, had made the mistake of grabbing the iron-touched’s armor. He tried to throw Calbach to the ground, and that seemed insane in itself, like grappling with a wall. Instead, the Unseelie Fae came away with scorched flesh as it stumbled back, Calbach’s armor being lined with iron.

  It was an easy thing for Ward to aim for the head while the fairy was distracted, and those delicate filaments of light expanding from his chest made short work of it. Blood and viscera spilled across the ground a moment before the Fae began to scream and disappeared into the ley lines. Those screams were going to draw a lot more Fae in, even in the seedier parts of the city.

  The Old Man wasn’t so gentle. He had the assassin by the neck, his arm coated in the flesh of gravemakers. Three daggers pierced that arm from different angles, but it was all over for the fairy as the Old Man eased his fingers into the eye socket of the Fae.

  “Tell us who sent you and I’ll make this quick.”

  But the Fae didn’t speak. Its screams only rose higher as the Old Man dug deeper. His feet thrashed until finally the Old Man, in a fit of irritation, simply tore the side of the fairy’s face off. The horrible wet squelch and shattered jaw that came away in his
hand twisted Ward’s stomach. The scene didn’t last long as the Fae faded into a gurgling screech.

  The bartender was nowhere to be seen.

  “Why isn’t that one dead?” the Old Man asked, turning to the fairy Ward had immobilized.

  “Because he knows Heather,” Ward said, his voice low and dangerous. “The art I attacked him with can’t be defended easily. But this fairy’s armor deflected it with a sigil, a twisted sigil, and one I have no doubt Heather etched onto his armor herself, or taught someone how to do it.”

  “Make it quick. I doubt the bartender went to get us drinks.”

  Ward nodded and turned his attention to the fairy, withdrawing the art that anchored him far enough the fairy would be able to speak but not move very well.

  “Where’s Heather? She has to be one of the only other humans you fools on the borders know.”

  “You’re the master,” the Fae said with a broad half-insane smile. It wasn’t a question. This Fae knew exactly who Ward was.

  “Where is she?”

  “She is the left hand of the one true king.”

  “Nudd?” Ward asked, the thought not making much sense in his head. Heather had despised the legacy of the Mad King, and she hadn’t been very fond of Nudd. Once it was revealed he was in fact the Mad King, Ward couldn’t imagine Heather would have served him.

  “Not Nudd. Nudd’s master.”

  “Nudd has no master,” Calbach said, stepping closer to Ward.

  “Perhaps not in Faerie. But there are many realms outside Faerie.”

  The fairy glanced down its arm and frowned. “Your magic is strong, Warded Man.” He looked up at Ward and grinned. “But hers is stronger.”

  The fairy splayed his hand across a nearly invisible set of runes at the base of its breastplate. Electric blue fire raced across it, and Ward watched in awe and horror as the fairy’s armor untied itself in the blink of an eye. The Unseelie Fae threw himself backward, escaping a swing from Calbach’s hammer, and shattering the window as he made a hasty retreat.