The Last Rune 5: The Gates of Winter

by Mark Anthony

  “Wait for us,” Deirdre said to the driver. “We'll be down in five minutes.”

  “And where will you be going, Miss Falling Hawk?”

  “Heathrow,” she said.

  Their flight left at noon. They made it to the airport with time to spare, and everything on their trip to Denver went without incident.

  Mostly, at any rate. There was a moment of panic when Vani was pulled aside at the departure gate for a random security scan. Deirdre feared the assassin was going to break the security guard's neck as he ran the magnetometer wand up and down each of her legs. However, Deirdre locked eyes with her, and Vani stood stiffly until the examination was over.

  Vani muttered in outrage as they boarded the plane. “If a man of my people touched an unmarried woman in such a way without her consent, a va'ksha would be placed on him, a curse that would make his thaloks shrivel like raisins.”

  Anders winced. “Does thaloks mean what I think it means?”

  “It does,” Beltan said. “So be on your best behavior.”

  The flight was long, tedious, and frustrating. At least for Deirdre. Vani appeared content to meditate most of the time, and Beltan stayed glued to the miniature television that popped out of the arm of his seat. Occasionally he let out a loud guffaw that caused heads to turn, and once he shouted, “Look out behind you!” at the top of his lungs. Deirdre glanced at his screen in time to see Wile E. Coyote falling off a cliff.

  “That is a cruel bird,” Beltan said, jabbing a finger at the television.

  Once the other passengers stopped staring, Deirdre patiently explained the concept of cartoons, and her words—in combination with the beers the flight attendant brought—seemed to calm the blond man down.

  Deirdre readjusted herself in her seat. Across the aisle, Anders was drinking club soda and plowing through a battered paperback copy of Jane Eyre. Deirdre's head hurt too much to read, so she spent the rest of the flight shredding cocktail napkins and wondering what awaited them in Colorado.

  When they reached Denver International Airport, they found the place crawling with Duratek agents. However, to Deirdre's relief, they breezed through Customs and were approved for entry into Denver. Her fear Vani or Beltan would be recognized was groundless. Whoever her secret helper was, he knew what he was doing; their fake IDs received less scrutiny than the genuine versions carried by actual citizens of Denver.

  They showed their approval papers to a security guard—a patch with the crescent moon of the Duratek logo was sewn to his uniform—and he allowed them to get in line for a taxi. Minutes later they sped along the highway as the skyscrapers of downtown Denver grew larger, rising up against the snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains.

  Beltan started to speak in the cab, but Deirdre shook her head, eyeing the driver's radio. There was no telling who might be listening. They rode the remaining half hour to downtown in silence, then got out when the cab stopped in front of the Brown Palace Hotel. Her mysterious benefactor may have been reluctant to reveal his identity, but at least he had the decency to arrange for first-class accommodations.

  Whether it was chance, design, or merely irony, they ended up in the same suite she had shared with Hadrian Farr last fall. There was a central living area with a fireplace and bar, and two separate bedrooms.

  “Well, we're here,” Anders said, tossing down his bag on the sofa. “Now what?”

  Deirdre eyed the door of one of the bedrooms. Her back ached from all those hours on the plane. She longed to take a hot bath, then lie down and sleep.

  She sighed. “Now we get to work.”

  They began the search that afternoon. A rental car was waiting for them at the hotel. Anders and Vani took the car to do some reconnaissance of the city, while Deirdre and Beltan headed out to cover downtown on foot. While Deirdre didn't like the idea of splitting up, this way they could cover more ground. Besides, two people asking questions were less likely to draw notice than a group of four.

  “So how are we going to find him?” Beltan said as he and Deirdre walked down Sixteenth Street. His expression was hopeful, expectant.

  She shoved her hands in the pockets of her leather jacket. She should have brought a warmer coat; despite the blue sky and sun, it was cold.

  “I have no bloody idea.”

  Beltan stopped and stared at her. “That's supposed to be funny, right? Like when the anvil fell on the dog's head?”

  “Coyote,” Deirdre said. “Wile E. is a coyote. And no, it's not supposed to be funny. I honestly don't know how we're going to find Travis. The Seekers are good for lots of things. We can whip up false IDs and arrange for planes and cars, but it's not like we have an otherworldly traveler homing device.”

  He let out a groan. “Great. So we're just going to wander around and hope we happen to run into him?”

  Deirdre shrugged and gave him a weak smile. “Well, at least it's a plan.”

  Beltan let out a snort. “And people think I'm stupid.”

  “Do they really?”

  “Not anymore, I suppose. And I can't say I'm all that happy about it. Now people expect me to come up with good ideas all the time.”

  Deirdre hunched inside her jacket. “I know. It's a bloody pain, isn't it? But contrary to what people think, the Seekers don't have all the answers. Not even close.”

  It was five o'clock, and the sidewalk was filled with people leaving work, getting into cars, catching buses and trains, going home. But Deirdre knew their own work had just begun.

  “It's so big,” Beltan said, gazing around, awe on his face. “This city is even bigger than Tarras, and that's the biggest city in the world. In my world, anyway. I don't know how we'll ever find Travis.”

  Neither did Deirdre. All the same, a sudden confidence filled her. “We will, Beltan. We'll find him for you.”

  He looked away. “Not just for me. For Vani, too.”

  What did that mean? Before Deirdre could ask, he started down the street, and she had to hurry to keep up with his long strides.

  Two hours later, her legs were aching, and she couldn't stop shivering. Night had fallen over the city, and the lights dazzled her eyes, making her jet-lagged head throb. She drank the last swig of the hazelnut latte she had bought a while back at Starbucks. It was ice-cold. She gagged, swallowed the viscous liquid down, then tossed the cup in a trash can.

  Beltan threw his own cup into the trash, then held a hand to his head. “I feel like there are bees in my skull and wolves in my stomach.”

  She allowed herself a smirk. “I told you two was too many.”

  At Starbucks, the blond man had gotten the largest size mocha they offered, and he had sucked it down so quickly that, when they passed another Starbucks a few blocks later, he had hijacked her and made her buy him a second.

  “I guess I have a lot to learn about this world.”

  Deirdre sighed, regretting her joke. “No, Beltan. You're doing great. Really. No one would ever know you weren't from Earth. You blend in perfectly.”

  Almost too perfectly, it occurred to her. She knew Vani had spent several years on Earth; the assassin had had time to learn the language and customs. But what about Beltan? He had spent most of his one, brief visit to Earth locked in a laboratory.

  “The fairy blood,” he said. He must have guessed what she was thinking. “It helps me to know things I shouldn't. Like how to speak the language of this land.”

  Deirdre felt a tingling in her chest. “What other sorts of things do you know?”

  “I'm not sure. The feelings are weaker here than they are on Eldh. Muffled.”

  “Try.”

  He shut his eyes. “I know the moon is up,” he said after a minute, “but you can't see it. It's behind the buildings. I know there is a storm coming over the mountains, and that it brings snow with it. I know there's a river nearby, even though we have yet to come upon it. It's shallow, and in no hurry to reach the ocean. And I know . . .” His forehead wrinkled in a frown.

  She touched his ar
m. “What?”

  “I know there's something wrong in this city. Something terrible and hungry, like a shadow. And it's growing. I know it, just as I know he's here somewhere, not far away. Just as I know he's in danger.”

  He opened his eyes. They were haunted in the cast-off light of a neon sign.

  “Do you think I'm crazy?”

  She shook her head.

  He sighed. “Neither do I.”

  “Come on.” Deirdre hooked her arm around his. “We've done enough for our first scouting mission. Let's get back to the hotel and get warm.”

  Together they started up Seventeenth Street. They had covered much of downtown on foot, and while they hadn't seen any sign of Travis, they had discovered some things of interest all the same. Beltan was right about the shadow growing in the city. The clues were everywhere. The newspaper headlines warned of the crashing economy, the rising crime rate. The televisions blared the same bleak news. People moved about their everyday lives, only furtively, with fear in their eyes. And everywhere—stapled to every telephone pole, taped to the side of every fence—were the posters bearing the faces of the missing.

  Deirdre had read about it on the plane, but she hadn't realized how serious it was. At first the disappearances had been limited to the homeless—the neglected, the ill, the forgotten. However, over the last few days, others had begun to vanish. The posters that covered the city now showed the smiling faces of well-dressed, healthy people: husbands and wives, sons and daughters. Loved. Missed.

  They turned the corner onto Court Street, and Deirdre saw a woman taping a photocopied flyer to the side of a mailbox. The flyer showed the picture of a teenage girl with glasses, smiling. A high school yearbook picture. The woman looked up, her face exhausted, her eyes red and dry.

  “I'm sorry,” Deirdre murmured, but the woman had already turned away to shuffle down the street, flyers and tape in hand.

  When they stepped into their suite at the Brown Palace, they found Vani and Anders already there. The two had driven through downtown and the surrounding industrial areas, and what they had seen confirmed Deirdre's observations: The fear in the city was growing, and that was only helping Duratek to strengthen its hold on Denver.

  “I don't know what they're up to,” Anders said, “but it's got to be something big. We couldn't turn a corner without running into someone working for Duratek.”

  “Did you see anything that might give us a clue as to what they're doing?” Deirdre said, shucking off her jacket.

  “Perhaps,” Vani said, her leathers creaking softly as she paced. “They are careful not to allow anyone to observe their actions, and people are unwilling to speak about anything they might know concerning the men of Duratek. However, it is clear they are amassing a large amount of resources. We saw many vehicles, including transport trucks, moving in and out of warehouse complexes.”

  “They're getting ready for a war,” Beltan said, rummaging through the minibar. He pulled out a canister of cheese puffs. “If you're going to invade a foreign land, you've got to make sure you have an adequate supply chain to fortify your army as it advances.”

  Deirdre gave Beltan a sharp look. Not stupid indeed.

  “How do you open this thing?” he said, turning the canister around and around.

  All right, so maybe he still had a few things to learn. Deirdre took the canister from him, popped the top, and handed it back. He grunted, then carefully removed a cheese puff and put it in his mouth.

  He looked up. “Is this food?”

  “Technically, yes,” Deirdre said.

  “Just checking.” He swallowed a handful of cheese puffs.

  A knock sounded at the door. Deirdre turned around, but Vani was already moving. She opened the door in a swift motion.

  It was only a bellhop. He carried an envelope for Deirdre. She rose, signed for it, then turned the envelope over in her hands as Vani shut the door.

  “What is it?” Beltan said.

  “I don't know. Except for my name, it's not marked.”

  Vani's eyes narrowed to slits. “Be careful.”

  “She's right, mate,” Anders said. “There's no telling who sent that.”

  Deirdre moved to the window, holding the envelope up to the glass, letting the illumination of a nearby streetlight shine through. However, she didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

  “Here goes nothing,” she said, and opened the envelope.

  There was only a single large sheet of paper, folded into eighths. She unfolded it, then frowned.

  “What is it?” Anders said, moving closer.

  Deirdre turned the paper in her hands. “I'm not sure. It looks like architectural plans for some building. A big building, by the look of it.”

  “Anything you recognize?”

  “No, there's no outside elevation. It's just floor plans. A theater, maybe?” She turned the paper over. “There's nothing else. No message, no explanation.”

  “That's strange,” Beltan said. His lips and fingers were orange. “Any idea who might have sent it to you?”

  A shiver passed through Deirdre. It had come in the same kind of envelope as the IDs and the plane tickets. It was from him, her mysterious Philosopher.

  You've got to tell them, Deirdre. They deserve to know he's been helping you all along.

  Before she could speak, something outside the window caught her eyes. She glanced down. Moments ago the street beneath the window had been filled with people on their way home. Now it was completely deserted.

  No, not completely. A single figure stood in the pool of sepia-colored light beneath a streetlamp. For a second Deirdre wondered if it was he. Only it couldn't be. The figure was small—a girl in a dark dress.

  The girl looked up, gazing at Deirdre with wise purple eyes, her face an ivory cameo framed by hair like shadows.

  The paper slipped from Deirdre's hands, fluttering to the floor.

  “What's out there?” she heard Anders say behind her.

  Deirdre could only shake her head. Below, the girl moved her lips. It was impossible; there was no way Deirdre could possibly have heard her. All the same, the girl's lisping voice whispered in her mind.

  Follow me.

  42.

  For the first time in his life, at thirty-five years of age, Travis felt old. His body ached, and he longed to lay down his head. However, there was to be no rest for him that night. The bowl of soup was empty; it was time to go.

  Sister Mirrim and Child Samanda had both retreated through a doorway, leaving Travis alone at the table with Brother Cy.

  “I'm so tired,” Travis said softly, still watching the pictures of the Steel Cathedral flicker across the TV. “I don't know how much longer I can keep going.”

  The preacher squeezed his shoulder with a bony hand. “You'd be surprised, son. You're a whole lot stronger than you think. But take heart. If what Sister Mirrim has seen is true—and I have never known her vision to be false—then your journey is nearly at an end.”

  Travis didn't know whether to be relieved by those words or terrified. He gazed around the commissary and found that if he concentrated, he could see them as they really were now. Not the men and women who had come to the mission seeking refuge, but the others—the ones who always traveled with Brother Cy, who helped him in his mystery work: goat-men and tree-women, scampering greenmen and ugly little creatures that flitted about the room on butterfly wings.

  Who was Travis to talk of being weary? Brother Cy and his followers been traveling on their own journey for over a thousand years now, ever since they helped banish Mohg from Eldh and found themselves trapped beyond the circle of the world. How long had they drifted in the darkness—not merely homeless, but wordless—until Travis went back in time and inadvertently opened the crack in the world Earth with Sinfathisar? That mistake had allowed Mohg to enter this world. But like the box Pandora foolishly opened long ago, it had allowed hope to steal into the world as well, in the form of Cy and his companions.


  “Will you ever go home?” Travis looked up into Brother Cy's black marble eyes. “You and Mirrim and Samanda and the others? When this is all over, will you finally get to go home?”

  For a moment a light shone in Cy's gaze—a sorrow so vast and deep it was beyond fathoming.

  “Home,” he whispered in his rasping voice. “You don't know, son. You can't possibly know how sorely tempted I have been to dig my fingers into the crack you made in this world, to strain with all my might and pry it wide open.”

  He stood, his voice rising into the exultant rhythms of a sermon. “I can envision it now, as clearly as Sister Mirrim might see it. I would march through the gap with my followers behind me. I would stand before the Nightlord and wrestle with him in a battle that would boil seas and shatter mountains to dust. I would wrest the Great Stones from him. And when I arose victorious from the devastation, all the world would kneel before me, and I would tower above, the master of all!”

  People in the commissary had stopped to stare, spoons frozen halfway to their lips. Brother Cy was rigid, white and frozen as a statue, staring blindly. Then the preacher sighed, passing a hand before his face, and the moment was over. While he had spoken, Travis had caught a fleeting glimpse of the being he truly was. Majestic, powerful, and terrible: a god. Now he was simply Brother Cy again, gaunt and hunched in his dusty black suit.

  “No,” he said, his voice a whisper. “I will not destroy my brother only to become him. Such was my choice long ago. Such was all of ours—Ysani, Durnach, and the others. I will help how I can, but that task is not mine.”

  The preacher looked down at Travis. “There's someone I believe you need to talk to before you go, son.” He pointed across the commissary, at the thirtysomething woman in the upscale clothes. Then he walked to the doorway where Mirrim and Samanda had vanished and passed beyond.

  A low murmur of noise filled the commissary again as people returned to their soup and their conversations. Travis gazed at the woman in the corner of the commissary, the one Brother Cy had pointed at. Her head was bowed over her hands. Was she praying?

  Travis pushed himself to his feet, then headed across the commissary. “Hello.”