The Last Rune 6: The First Stone

by Mark Anthony

  A squawk emanated from the radio. Before Deirdre could move, Anders’s voice crackled out of it. “Is that you, Deirdre? Are you in position yet? I can’t see anything in the flat; it’s too dark in there.”

  The sorcerer hissed, and the gold mask swung in Deirdre’s direction. Beltan drew in a gasping breath, but he still couldn’t move; the sorcerer had not lowered its hand. And it had another. It stretched its left hand toward Deirdre’s chest.

  There was no time to think. Deirdre dived to the floor, grabbing the things lying there. She punched a button on the radio.

  “Now, Anders!” she shouted. And with her free hand she gripped the other object and flicked a switch.

  A beam of white-blue light pierced the darkness of the flat, slicing crazily through the shadows. Deirdre threw down the radio and gripped the flashlight in both hands, angling the beam upward. It struck the sorcerer’s gold mask, and the Scirathi staggered back, dazzled by the sudden light. Beltan started to struggle to his feet.

  Again the sorcerer thrust a hand toward the blond man, and Beltan grunted, falling back to his knees. The other hand pointed at Deirdre, and she gasped as pain crackled through her. She couldn’t breathe; the flashlight started to slip from her hands.

  Something hissed through the open window, and there was a soft thunk. The sorcerer took a step back, and a soft exhalation of air passed through the mouth slit of its mask. Then the Scirathi slumped to the floor.

  Although he had been under the spell of the sorcerer longer, Beltan was the first to recover. As he knelt above her, Deirdre could see his green eyes glowing faintly in the dark. He helped her sit up, and a ragged breath rushed into her lungs.

  “Are you all right?” he said, his voice hoarse.

  She nodded. Her heart had resumed something like a normal cadence in her chest. The sorcerer’s spell had not done as much harm as she would have thought. “How is he?”

  Beltan moved to a dark lump that sprawled on the floor. “He’s not moving, but I think he’s still conscious.”

  Good. The drug was working exactly as it was supposed to. She had feared Scirathi physiology might be different, but it wasn’t. For all their powers, they were still men.

  Deirdre groped for the flashlight, then crawled on hands and knees to Beltan. She trained the light down, onto the crumpled form of the sorcerer. Its body twitched, and gurgling sounds emanated from behind the mask. A silver dart protruded from the center of its chest.

  “The mask,” Beltan said. “Take it off. He’s powerless without it.”

  Deirdre hesitated, then with trembling hands gripped the edge of the gold mask, pulled it off, and handed it to Beltan.

  The sorcerer was not a man after all. The face was a blasted landscape of scar tissue, crudely stitched wounds, and oozing scabs. The ears were gone, and the nose reduced to two pits above the featureless slit of the mouth. However, the bone structure—plain to see—was fine, even delicate. This sorcerer was a woman.

  Or had been once. Now her face was a ruin from which all traces of humanity had been cut away with the blade of a knife. Only the sorcerer’s eyes were recognizable as something human. They gazed at Deirdre with hatred. And with fear.

  “It looks like everything went off without a hitch,” said a cheerful, if breathless, voice behind them.

  Both Deirdre and Beltan glared at Anders as he stepped into the flat.

  “Or not,” he said, grin fading as he shut the door.

  It hadn’t taken him long to get here from his position in the hotel across the street. He had been stationed on the third floor with the dart gun, waiting for Deirdre to shine the light on their target. Once he got off his shot, he must have run here to the flat. Good. That meant he wouldn’t have had time to communicate with anyone else.

  Anders knelt beside them. “Gads, that’s a nasty sight.” He looked up from the sorcerer. “Are you both all right?”

  “We’re alive, if that’s what you mean,” Beltan said, his voice still ragged.

  “Let’s talk to her,” Deirdre said.

  Anders reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a syringe. He handed it to Deirdre. She took off the cap, flicked the syringe to remove the bubbles, then inserted the needle into the sorcerer’s throat.

  “This will relax the muscles around your larynx. You’ll be able to talk, but that’s all.”

  Anders started to reach for the dart embedded in the Scirathi’s chest, but Beltan grabbed his hand.

  “No, leave the dart in place. We do not want her to bleed.”

  Anders swallowed. “Good point, mate.”

  “Blood,” hissed a voice like a serpent’s. It was the sorcerer. The slit of her mouth twitched. “Give me the blood. . . .”

  “Never,” Beltan growled. He made sure the glass vial was stopped tightly, then slipped it into his pocket.

  The mysterious Philosopher had been right; Beltan had indeed possessed something that would tempt a sorcerer. That morning, they had used alcohol to wash the blood from the bandage Beltan had kept from Travis’s arm. Most of the alcohol had evaporated, leaving only the residual fluid in the vial. It amounted to only a few drops of blood, no more, but it was enough. The moment Beltan had opened the vial in the flat, the sorcerer had appeared, drawn out of hiding by the scent of such power.

  “I think it’s time you answered a few questions, friend,” Anders said.

  Deirdre gave him a sharp look. Was he trying to take over the questioning, to keep them from learning everything they might?

  “I’ll do this,” she said. Anders gave her a surprised look, but before he could protest she bent over the sorcerer.

  “Where is the arch you stole from Crete?”

  The sorcerer made a gurgling sound low in her throat.

  “I know you can understand me. You just spoke English a moment ago. Now answer me.”

  The gurgling became words. “I will tell you nothing.”

  She was wrong about that. The drug on the dart had been a potent mixture, one intended not only to paralyze the body but soften the mind, to make it pliant and cooperative.

  “Where is the arch you stole from Crete?” Deirdre repeated. “If you tell us, we’ll give you a drop of the blood. His blood.”

  Beltan gave her a sharp look, but she shook her head.

  “I do not know,” the sorcerer hissed. “Now give me the blood of power! It will heal me.”

  Deirdre made her voice hard. “You’re lying.”

  The Scirathi muttered in a language she did not understand, then spoke again in English. “I do not know, I tell you. We gave it to them, and they took it. That is all.”

  Anders raised an eyebrow, and Beltan let out a low grunt.

  “They were working for someone else,” Deirdre said.

  Beltan leaned over the sorcerer, gripping her shoulders. “Who did you give the arch to? Tell us!”

  The drug had taken full effect by then. The sorcerer spoke rapidly, almost babbling, spittle trickling from her lipless mouth. “I do not know who they are. I do not care who they are. The arch means nothing to us now. We need a gate no longer. The worlds draw near. Soon the walls between them will come tumbling down, and we shall return. We shall take what should have been ours long ago. And both the worlds will tremble before the might of the Scirathi.”

  Anders let out a low whistle. “That doesn’t exactly sound like cause for celebration.”

  It didn’t. The sorcerer’s words sent a chill through Deirdre, even though she didn’t fully understand them. She decided to try a different tactic. “If you’re so powerful, why steal the arch for these others? Why do someone else’s bidding?”

  “Knowledge.” The sorcerer writhed in Beltan’s grip. “They gave us knowledge we did not possess. We did not know she was here—we did not guess it. But they told us where to find him, and of the blood of the scarab that flows in him. We sought him out, to slay him so that he cannot stand in our way. But instead we found her. Like a perfect jewel she is, one beyond wort
h. We were dazzled, and so we took her. . . .”

  “Nim!” Beltan roared. “Where is she? Where have you taken her?”

  He shook the sorcerer—violently, so that her head flopped— and Deirdre gripped his arms, forcing him to stop. If he killed her, they would learn nothing.

  The sorcerer let out a high, keening sound. At first Deirdre thought it was a sound of grief. Then she realized it was laughter.

  “They have taken the child unto the Dark,” the sorcerer croaked. “After so long, all its secrets will be ours. She is the key that will open the way. . . .”

  Deirdre bent over the sorcerer. “Nim is the key that will open the way to what?”

  “Him . . .” The sorcerer’s head lolled back and forth, eyes fluttering shut. Her voice was nearly drowned in a wet gurgle. “The arch . . . blood so near . . . the seven cannot . . . be far.”

  They were losing her. “The seven what?” Deirdre said, shaking the sorcerer herself in desperation.

  “Sleep,” the sorcerer breathed in a faint exhalation. “Sleep . . .”

  Her body shuddered once, then went still.

  25.

  The sun beat down on them like a molten fist. They had been in this place only minutes, and already Travis could feel his skin beginning to crisp. He used a hand to shade his eyes against the glare as he gazed up at the top of the sand dune.

  “Can you see anything from up there?” The air parched his throat and lungs.

  A dark form glided down the lee side of the dune toward him. “We are in Moringarth,” Vani said. “Of that much I am certain. We are not in the wasteland of the Morgolthi, so our circumstance is not as bad as it might be. But we are near its edge, I would guess, so it is not good either.”

  The Morgolthi. Travis had heard tales of it among the Mournish. They called it the Hungering Land. Eons ago, it had been a land of prosperous city-states, strung like glistening pearls along the River Emyr. The river was the lifeblood of ancient Amún, carrying traders between the cities and bringing water to the fertile farmlands along its banks.

  Then came the War of the Sorcerers, when the wielders of magic rose up against the god-kings who ruled the city-states and sought to usurp their place. War consumed city after city, and the river ran red with the blood of ten thousand sorcerers.

  In the final conflagration, the land was shattered, and the course of the River Emyr was changed, so that its life-giving waters flowed west to the sea, not east across Amún, and the once lush land of city-states became a sun-blasted desert, a place of thirst and death.

  Dead though it was, the Morgolthi had given birth in an unexpected way. Over time, the blood of sorcerers that had drenched the sand dried, became dust, blew into the air, and was carried by the wind to the lands of Al-Amún, where civilization had sprung up anew, and across the sea to Tarras and the other cities of southern Falengarth.

  The dust was breathed in by thousands upon thousands of people, and power yet lingered in it, for when enough people had taken the dust into them, their collective hopes, and desires, and fears became manifest. So the gods of the Mystery Cults were born. . . .

  There was a sharp but distant sound, like a far-off gunshot.

  “Travis!”

  Only when pain crackled through his jaw did he realize Vani had slapped him.

  He staggered back. “What was that for?”

  “You did not respond to my words. You must guard yourself in this place. It is said the air of the Morgolthi is strangely sweet to a sorcerer, that it can intoxicate him like wine.”

  “But I’m not a—”

  Travis clenched his jaw shut as she gave him a piercing look. He tried to breathe more shallowly and not to think of the powdery traces of blood that must still swirl on the air in this place. “The sorcerer must have brought Nim here. Once it’s been opened, a gate has only one exit. That means we can’t be more than a few minutes behind them. Did you see their footprints from up there?”

  “A few minutes is all the wind needs to scour the sand clear. We will not be able to track them that way.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “The sorcerer will go north, toward human habitation and water. It is his only choice to survive, and ours. We must do the same.”

  “Great,” Travis said. “And which way exactly is north?” He turned around. Sand dunes undulated away from them in every direction.

  Vani looked up at the sky. Sweat slicked her coppery skin, and she had unbuttoned the top of her leather jerkin. “The sun has risen in the time since we came through the gate. East lies in that direction, so this way is north. We must hope we are not far from a settlement. Come.”

  She started along the trough between two dunes, keeping close to the lee side of the dune on their left, out of the worst of the wind. However, they were soon forced to abandon the path when it veered east, and instead they struggled up the windward side of a dune. Sand hissed through the air and made Travis think of the bodiless spirits of the morndari. They could pass through solid matter, and the sand seemed able to do the same. It dug into any bit of exposed skin, stung their eyes, filtered through their clothing, and worked its way deep into their ears and noses.

  The sun ascended to the zenith, and heat radiated from the sand in waves. Travis sweated in his jeans and sweater—chosen for a misty London evening, not a blazing desert day—but he did not even think of shedding them, as they were his only protection from the wind and sun.

  He and Vani did not speak. They kept their mouths clamped shut, breathing through their noses, trying to keep out the sand and conserve the moisture in their breath. Each time they crested a dune, Vani scanned the horizon, and Travis knew what she was looking for: the green smudge of an oasis and the white shapes of human habitations. All they saw were more dunes.

  You really are an idiot, Travis told himself as he trudged after Vani. We don’t have food or water. We’re completely unprepared for this. You should have thought about what you were doing.

  Only there hadn’t been time to think. He had leaped for the gate, not knowing what he was going to do on the other side, only knowing that jumping through that portal was his only chance to save Nim. He hadn’t expected Vani to follow, but he was grateful she had. He doubted he would survive five minutes in this desert without her.

  Wouldn’t you, Travis? a dry voice spoke in his mind. It wasn’t Jack’s voice; it was his own. Only it was more sibilant, a coaxing hiss, like that of a serpent. Vani is right. You’re a sorcerer. And this land is their home. All you have to do is spill your blood—just a few drops—and they will come to you and do your bidding. The spirits. Those Who Thirst . . .

  Only when he felt pain did he realize his fingernails were pressing into the skin of his forearm. He willed his hand away and instead thought about Beltan. It was possible he would never see the blond man again. But Beltan would have done the same in Travis’s place. He would have gone through the gate after Nim. How could he not? She was his daughter. Their daughter.

  All the same, sorrow scoured at Travis’s heart. What was Beltan doing right now?

  He’s trying to find a way to follow you, Travis. You know he is. He won’t let you go.

  Three years ago, everything had seemed so muddled and confusing. His emotions had been a labyrinth, and he had stumbled through the maze, not knowing who—if anyone—waited for him at its end. Even during these last years in London, as happy as he had been, he had sometimes wondered if things might not have been different had she not left them. Then she stepped through the door of his and Beltan’s flat, and in that moment his wondering ceased.

  Vani did not love him.

  She had loved him once, that much Travis did not doubt. He had held her in his arms, he had felt her body trembling, he had kissed her. And in those moments he had loved her back. However, he knew now their love had been a trick—one every bit as cruel as the ruse the Little People had played on Vani and Beltan. Only this was not a trick of fairies.

  It was a trick of Fa
te.

  Vani had loved Travis because she believed it was her destiny to love him; she had willed her love into being in an act of sheer faith. And he had loved her back because, confronted with such a ferocity of emotion, his only choice was either to drive her away or bring her close. He couldn’t cast her away, not when she needed love—real love—so badly and didn’t even know it.

  However, while the T’hot cards spoke the truth, as so often happened when trying to interpret Fate, that truth misled her. The cards had said she was destined to bear a child by Travis, but not to him, and that destiny had come to pass when she gave birth to Nim. Yet perhaps Fate was not so cruel after all, because in the end Vani had indeed found love—a love that was true, not based on any trick or deceit.

  Her love for Nim.

  Travis had seen it shining in Vani’s eyes when she held her daughter. And he saw it now in the hard set of her jaw as she marched up and down the endless dunes. He quickened his pace—

  —and nearly ran into Vani, who had come to a halt atop a dune.

  “I see something.” She was looking, not ahead, but off to their left.

  “What is it?” He tried to follow her gaze, but the sand made his eyes water. “Is it a settlement?”

  Vani squinted. “I’m not certain. It is difficult to see. Perhaps it is—blessed Mother of Orú!”

  Travis screened his eyes with his fingers. There, on the horizon, a red-brown wall rose into the sky. Was it the mud wall of a city?

  No. The wall rose higher into the sky, sending out swirling tendrils toward the sun.

  “This is ill fate,” Vani said. “It is a blood tempest.”

  “What’s a blood tempest?” Travis said, raising his voice over the howl of the wind.

  “A storm that blows out of the heart of the Morgolthi. To be caught in one is certain death. We must run. Now!”

  Vani grabbed his arm, pulling him down the lee side of the dune. He lost his footing on the slick sand and went tumbling down the slope. At the bottom he rolled to a stop, then pushed himself up to his knees, spitting out a mouthful of sand.