The Last Rune 6: The First Stone

by Mark Anthony

  “That’s an excellent idea. Do go have a chat with a sorcerer. That will help you see your next step is not to seek the gate. There are other mysteries that must be attended to first.”

  Deirdre clutched the phone, as if that could keep him from hanging up. “But how can we find a sorcerer? We don’t even know if there are any left in London.”

  “There are. Their work here is not done. Finding the girl, Nim, was simply a happy accident. An act of Fate, as they might say. It was not the reason they came to our world.”

  “But where can we find one of the Scirathi?” she said, unable to keep the words from sounding as desperate as they were.

  “That’s simple enough. The man Beltan possesses something the Scirathi crave, something that is sure to tempt them into the open. As for where to go—I think you already sense the answer to that. They know now what flows in Travis Wilder’s veins. They are keeping watch, just in case he returns.”

  Deirdre thought maybe she understood, but she had to be certain. However, he spoke again before she could.

  “By the way, your friend Sasha was right in what she said to you earlier today.”

  “What?” It was the only word she could manage.

  “You do not know what you think you know, Deirdre. That is the one thing—the only thing—of which you can be certain. Do not let yourself believe you can trust anyone other than yourself. Even within the Seekers, there are those who would work against you.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said, her pulse thudding in her ears.

  “Why do you think I always make contact with you in such a secretive manner? Contrary to what you might believe, it’s not for my amusement. I do it because there are those who, if they knew I had told you the things I have, would not hesitate to—” He paused; she could hear his breathing. “No, that’s not important now. All that matters is that you understand one thing: There is much you do not know, much you cannot even guess at. And there are those who will do anything to keep it that way.”

  The phone was slick in Deirdre’s hand. “What should I do?”

  “I can’t tell you that, Deirdre. But I will give you something to think about. The sorcerers used Travis Wilder’s blood, taken from the belly of the gorleth that attacked him, to power the gate artifact in their possession and abduct the girl.”

  “We already know that.”

  “Good. Now ask yourself this: How did the sorcerers know they could do that? How did they know that blood of power, blood that could fuel their gate, ran in Travis Wilder’s veins?”

  Deirdre hardly heard his words. She could feel him starting to slip away. “Please, don’t go. There are so many questions, and I don’t have any idea how to get the answers.”

  “That’s not true, Deirdre. You’re a resourceful woman. I have every faith you’ll find a way to get those answers of yours.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “And I think a time is coming when all questions will be answered. Perihelion approaches. This world and the otherworld draw nearer every day. It is not chance that the earthquake on Crete revealed the arch. Things long buried are now coming to light because they need to be found.”

  “What do you mean?” Deirdre said, clutching the phone. “What things need to be found?”

  But the only reply was the drone of a dial tone in her ear.

  23.

  It was well after ten o’clock by the time Deirdre straggled into the Charterhouse the next morning. She stopped at the front desk, picked up a pen fastened to a chain, and signed in on the clipboard. The receptionist, Madeleine, looked up from her computer, though her fingers continued to flay the keyboard.

  “How good of you to join us today, Miss Falling Hawk,” she said, peering over moon-shaped reading glasses.

  Deirdre was not in the mood for irony. “You misspelled ‘Sincerely,’ ” she said, pointing at Madeleine’s computer screen.

  The receptionist gave her a sour look, which Deirdre could at least appreciate for its honesty, then pushed her glasses up her nose and studied the screen. Deirdre made her way down the hall and descended a flight of stairs to her office.

  Anders wasn’t there. She didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved. With regard to the lack of coffee, it was certainly the former, but otherwise it could only be the latter. Surely he would have seen it on her face the moment she looked at him. Doubt.

  She tossed the newspaper she had bought on her desk and slumped into the chair. There was a note neatly tucked under the blotter. She pulled it out. It was written in Anders’s cramped, precise hand.

  Good morning, partner!

  Beltan and I decided to get an early start. We’re o f to nose about the city. Back by noon. Shall we lunch at the M.E.?

  Cheers!

  —Anders

  Deirdre winced. Gods, even when he wrote he sounded insanely chipper. She started to toss the note in the trash can, then stopped, folded it carefully, and tucked it back beneath the blotter.

  She hated this. She hated the way she felt, and she hated what she was going to do. However, she had no choice. Once again she asked herself the question that had been eating at her.

  How did the sorcerers here on Earth know about the blood of power that runs in Travis’s veins?

  The only people who could possibly know that information were Travis’s closest companions. And any Seeker who had read the Wilder-Beckett case files. Deirdre could not believe Beltan or Vani had informed the sorcerers. That meant there was only one other possibility.

  There’s a traitor in the Seekers, and Sasha must know it—or at least suspect it. That’s why she was trying to warn you yesterday. Someone with access to the reports about Travis is in league with the sorcerers.

  And, much as it turned her heart to ash to admit it, all the signs pointed to one person. He had read all the reports about Travis. He was capable of keeping secrets; the gun he carried proved that. And the night they were attacked by the Scirathi, he had shown up at the Tube station almost too miraculously.

  Only that doesn’t make sense, Deirdre. If Anders was really working for the Scirathi, why did he save all of you that night?

  For the same reason he brewed fabulous coffee and brought flowers to the office. To win their trust, their affection.

  Think about it, Deirdre. No one actually saw him shoot that sorcerer he claimed he killed. You read his report. Even Eustace didn’t see it happen. A Scirathi could simply have given Anders one of their gold masks to use as a prop, to help back up his story.

  The thought made her sick, but she couldn’t dismiss it. Her grandfather had always told her to trust her instincts. And all those instincts told her that Anders was concealing something.

  So what was she going to do?

  Keep him close, Deirdre. And don’t act as if anything’s changed. Whatever his work is, it isn’t done; otherwise, he wouldn’t still be playing this game. The longer you can make him believe you know nothing, the better your chances of figuring out what it is he’s up to.

  Deirdre massaged her throbbing temples. She had spent all night going over these thoughts again and again. Right now she wanted to think about something—anything—else. She unfolded the copy of the Times she had bought and bent her head over it.

  However, she found little solace in reading the paper. On the front page there was an article about the worldwide increase in violent natural phenomena over the last few months. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes—all were happening with greater frequency than normal. The article discounted the common belief that the change in the Earth’s climate was a result of the celestial anomaly, and instead offered various theories about possible geologic and meteorological causes. However, Deirdre knew the article was wrong.

  It’s perihelion. That’s what the Philosopher said. Eldh is drawing close, and somehow it’s a fecting Earth. It’s like the pull of gravity.

  Only it wasn’t gravity, it was something else. But what then? Magic? All Deirdre knew was that it wasn’t chance that an e
arthquake had shaken Crete, revealing the stone arch.

  And what about the dark spot in space? It can’t be chance that it’s appeared now as perihelion approaches.

  According to a report she had seen on a morning TV news show, the anomaly was now visible to the naked eye in the northern hemisphere—at least to those who didn’t live in major cities. However, even if it hadn’t been cloudy the last several days, Deirdre doubted she would have been able to see it through the glare of London’s streetlights.

  And maybe that explained why people in the city continued to go about their lives as if nothing had changed. That morning, Deirdre had taken the Tube with countless people trudging to their jobs, the expressions on their faces as dull as the leaden sky. On the streets, double-decker buses ferried tired, trapped-looking tourists to Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, and St. Paul’s. Ships oozed up and down the sluggish Thames. Yet surely, if people could see the dark spot in the sky, they would be panicking.

  Or would they? Because even if they couldn’t see it through the London fog, people had to know it was there. Just as it had expanded in the sky, stories about Variance X had grown more prominent on television and in the newspaper. Reports about it were everywhere. Only no one seemed to be paying attention.

  Except for the Mouthers. Deirdre had passed several of them that morning, standing on a corner outside the Blackfriars Tube station in their white sheets. Each member of the group had carried a sign that bore, not words, but instead a black circle scrawled on white cardboard. They did not accost passersby, but simply stared, their eyes as vacant as the circles on their signs.

  Deirdre had ignored the Mouthers, as had everyone else passing by. No one ever looked at the people in white, or up at the sky. Or, it seemed, at the articles in the newspaper.

  Maybe people are tired of hearing about disasters, Deirdre. Fires. Floods. Wars. Famines. Maybe there are too many troubles here on Earth to worry about something in the sky.

  Maybe. But while others might be disinterested, Deirdre was anything but. Like the storms and earthquakes, Variance X had to be related to perihelion somehow. She leaned over the paper, scanning the article in the Times .

  It began with a summary of what was known about the anomaly: how it had first been detected a few months ago, at a distance of about 10 billion miles from Earth—or fifteen hours as the light beam flies. At the time, the anomaly was dubbed Variance X by skeptical astronomers. The name was a joke. Over the years, various astronomers had put forth the theory that the solar system contained a dark, distant tenth planet— Planet X. Such a planet had never been found, and those who theorized it existed were generally regarded as pseudoscientists and crackpots.

  However, no one was laughing now, for the joke soon ended as countless observatories around the world confirmed the existence of Variance X, as well as the fact that it was growing.

  Some researchers speculated that the anomaly was indeed a tenth planet, surrounded by a cloud of black, icy comets, approaching the solar system on the short end of its elliptical orbit. Others suggested it was a disk of dark matter that until recently had been angled with respect to Earth so that it was invisible, like a dinner plate turned on edge. Now, as the disk rotated on its axis, it was coming into view, and blotting out Earth’s view of the stars beyond it. Others suggested Variance X was a cloud of light-absorbing gas trailing a small, wandering black hole.

  However, one researcher—an American astronomer who had recently accepted a position as a visiting professor at Oxford— had proposed a very different theory: that the dark blot was in fact an instability in the fabric of space-time. So far, according to the newspaper article, most leading astronomers had rejected that theory.

  Yet perhaps such an explanation is unthinkable, the article went on, not because it is impossible, but instead because the consequences are so dire. If Variance X is a rip in space-time— the cloth from which our universe is cut—what’s to stop it from unraveling? Nothing, says American astronomer Sara Voorhees. According to Voorhees, unless the instability that gave rise to it somehow corrects itself, the anomaly will keep expanding until the universe is torn apart in one final, violent blending of matter and antimatter that will leave nothing at all. It’s not difficult to see why that prospect has proven unpopular.

  Feeling ill, Deirdre folded the paper and tossed it in the waste bin. What did it all mean? Maybe two different worlds were on a collision course. Maybe that was what perihelion meant. If so, then there was no hope for anyone on Earth or Eldh.

  Except, the problem was, Deirdre did have hope. She couldn’t wait quietly for the end of the world like the Mouthers; she had to do something. And she was going to. With a deep breath she rolled up her sleeves, turned on her computer, and got to work.

  By the time Beltan and Anders showed up, she had a plan.

  “What’s going on, mate?” Anders said, setting a tall paper cup on her desk. “You’ve got an extradetermined look about you today.”

  She picked up the cup and took a sip. It was coffee: rich, bitter, and with just the perfect hint of cream. “Have you found a sorcerer yet?”

  “No,” Beltan said, slumping into a chair next to her desk. “It’s like looking for something very small lost in an enormous pile of things that are also very small. Only not the same as the first thing.”

  “You mean it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Anders said.

  Beltan frowned at him. “By Vathris, why would anyone look for a needle in a stack of hay?”

  “It’s an expression. It means just what you said.”

  “I’m talking about people, not needles. And how did it get in the hay? Did some mad seamstress put the needle there?”

  “Never mind,” Anders growled. He shrugged off his suit coat and glanced at Deirdre. “As you can see, we haven’t exactly made a lot of progress in our hunt for a sorcerer.”

  Muscles played beneath the skin of his forearms as he loosened his tie. Deirdre gulped the scalding-hot coffee.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, her throat burning. “I think I’ve got it figured out.”

  “You’ve got what figured out?” Beltan said.

  “How we’re going to catch a sorcerer.”

  24.

  They waited until nightfall. The Scirathi were more comfortable working under cover of darkness; that was one of the few things they had learned in their dealings with the sorcerers.

  And what about Anders? Deirdre thought as they drove in a black sedan along Shaftesbury Avenue. What’s he learned about them?

  She glanced at him as he drove. Would he betray her tonight? After all, if he was really working for the sorcerers, he couldn’t allow her to catch one of them. Except he had to, if he was going to keep up his act; he would have to go along with her plan.

  As the lights of the city came on against the gathering dusk, Anders turned the wheel, guiding the car onto a narrow lane. Beltan’s and Travis’s flat was just ahead.

  “We already checked out the flat,” Anders had said earlier that day, when she told him where they would go that evening. “Beltan and I sniffed all around his old neighborhood and didn’t see a thing. It wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a sorcerer lurking about there—returning to the scene of the crime and all that. But if so, he won’t come out to play.”

  “He will if you make him want to,” Deirdre had said.

  It was time. Anders brought the car to a halt two blocks away from the flat. Deirdre climbed out. Beltan unfolded his long frame from the backseat.

  “I’m ready,” he said, one hand in the pocket of his jeans.

  Deirdre touched his arm. “Make sure you’re seen.”

  He nodded, then turned and took long strides down the sidewalk, vanishing into the gloom.

  Anders leaned out the window of the car. “Is your radio working, mate?”

  Deirdre held the device to her mouth to test it. She heard her voice emanate from inside the car. She gave him a thumbs-up, then tucked the radio int
o her jacket pocket, alongside something else.

  “Good luck,” Anders said, winking at her.

  The car sped away down the lane. Deirdre didn’t like letting him go by himself, but she had no choice, not if this plan was going to work. Besides, it was too late for him to warn them. If one was keeping watch, then at that moment he was already observing Beltan open the door of the flat. Deirdre looked at her wristwatch, letting thirty more seconds pass. Then she started moving.

  She walked quickly down the sidewalk and up the front steps of the building. If the Philosopher was right, it wouldn’t take long. She waited a few seconds in the lobby of the building, eyes on her watch. The plan called for Beltan to be alone in the flat for three minutes, not one second more. With thirty seconds to go, she started up the stairs.

  Five seconds still remained when she reached the door of the flat. It was closed; no sounds emanated from the other side. She drew in a breath to steady herself. Was Anders in position? What if he wasn’t?

  There was no more time to worry about it. The watch ticked the last seconds away. Deirdre slipped a hand into her jacket pocket, then pushed through the door of the flat.

  The sorcerer was killing Beltan.

  It was hard to see. The flat was darkened, and only a few scraps of light filtered around Deirdre into the living room, but her imagination filled in what her eyes could not discern.

  The window was open, and the night air billowed the white curtains like the garb of a ghost. Beltan was on his knees, his head thrown back, the cords of his neck standing out. One hand clutched at his chest. The other gripped a small glass vial filled with dark fluid. The sorcerer stood above him, clad all in black, a smile frozen on the serene gold face. One hand reached toward Beltan. The sorcerer’s fingers curled together, and Beltan jerked as a spasm passed through him.

  Fear stabbed into Deirdre’s chest, as if it was her heart the sorcerer was stopping with a spell. And if she didn’t act quickly, in a moment it would be. She pulled two objects from her pocket—and fumbled them in sweaty hands. They fell to the floor: the radio, as well as something sleek and silvery.