The Last Rune 5: The Gates of Winter

by Mark Anthony

  Grace didn't know what it meant. All she knew was she had one chance. With his scepter raised, his steel breastplate had pulled upward a fraction. Beneath its lower edge was a narrow chink in his armor.

  There's only one operation that will cure this, Doctor, spoke the dispassionate voice in her mind. Make your incision now.

  Grace drew Fellring and thrust the sword upward with all her might. The tip of the blade found the gap in the Pale King's armor—then passed through it. The sword shone with silver light as it plunged deep into his chest. There was resistance as the blade met something hard—then clove it in two.

  With a flash, Fellring shattered in her hands.

  There was a scream, a terrible sound of fury and anguish that should have frozen the marrow of her bones. However, Grace hardly heard it. A coldness came over her, freezing blood and brain. Dimly, she realized she was falling. There was a crunching sound as she struck the ground, and she saw a shadow above her, crowned by antlers. The iron scepter descended toward her head.

  Then came another clap of thunder, and the sky broke open.

  56.

  It was a hooting noise that woke Travis.

  The sound was soft, like the calling of doves at day's end, only deeper, so that he could feel it as a thrum through his body. Though toneless, the sound seemed to weave a shroud of music around him, warming his ice-cold body, breathing breath back into air-starved lungs.

  Gentle hands touched his legs, his arm, his chest. Travis opened his eyes and stared up into strange brown faces. He tried to move, but pain tingled up and down his limbs, paralyzing him. Had his bones been crushed to splinters when he struck the ground? He had fallen what seemed like forever.

  Fingers fluttered across his forehead. The face above him came into focus, and a queer, wrenching feeling filled Travis. It was like looking into a mirror only to see a stranger's visage gazing back. Yet despite the differences, the face was not so alien compared to his own. It was a human face.

  The man studied Travis with brown eyes, small and wise beneath a thick, jutting brow. A leather thong held shaggy hair back from a sloping forehead; his nose was flat and broad, and his cheekbones as sharp as the chipped planes of a stone axe. A scraggly beard covered his jaw, which was chinless and receding but delineated by bulging muscles on either side. He wore simple clothes cut of aurochs hide, colored rust orange with ocher.

  Others knelt in a circle around Travis, watching him with gentle brown eyes: men and women, and even a few young ones. All of them had the same jutting browridges, the same flat noses, the same chinless jaws. However, unlike the man who touched Travis's forehead, their aurochs hide clothes were not colored with ocher.

  “Who are you?” Travis asked. The words came out as a croak.

  The man in the ocher-stained hides made a series of sounds. To Travis's ears they were a stream of toneless hoots, clicks, and guttural purrs. However, in his mind he heard words; the magic of the silver half-coin was at work.

  We are the ones who waited.

  “For what?” Travis said, and the words were still hoarse but louder now.

  More hoots and grunts. For you to fall from the sky. We knew you would come. The end of all things is near.

  Travis tried to remember what had happened. He had spoken the rune of breaking, and he had felt the gate shatter around him. His last thoughts had been of Beltan and Vani, and he had fallen into the Void. Only then something had happened. A crack opened in the Void between the worlds, and it had pulled Travis in, swallowing him.

  He gazed upward, past the faces of the strange people. Above, sickly gray clouds swirled in wild circles, cauterized by forks of red lightning. The sky. There was something wrong with the sky.

  Again he tried to move, and this time he succeeded. His body was not shattered, just stiff as if it had been frozen. However, warmth radiated from the people leaning over him, seeping into him, and it was this that caused the pinpricks of pain. Strong hands helped him sit up. His skin was unbroken, but his clothes had been torn to rags.

  Mountains loomed all around, black as iron, raking at the bleeding sky.

  “What is this place?” he murmured.

  The place where hope ends. The man pointed to the bone talisman that still hung around Travis's throat. The place where hope begins.

  Travis didn't understand. Or did he? With a shaking hand, he gripped the rune of hope the hag Grisla had given him what seemed so long ago now. First came birth, then life, then death. Then birth again, as the circle went round and round.

  The strange people reached out, removing the last remnants of his clothes with gentle motions. He shivered but did not resist, too weary to be ashamed of his nakedness. With deft motions they clothed him again in garments of soft, warm aurochs hide, and soon his shivering subsided. A leather cup was pressed into his hands; it held water laced with some bitter herb. He drank it down, and he felt his mind clear and strength flow into his limbs.

  Travis stood with the help of several strong, brown hands. He was taller than they; even the men stood no higher than his chin. However, all of them—men and women alike—were powerfully built, their shoulders rounded and heavy.

  They were in a narrow valley between two toothy ranges of mountains. The valley was barren of life, its floor covered with a deep layer of ash, its air cold and metallic on the tongue. A few twisted shapes that might once have been trees jutted up from the ground, their blackened limbs cracked and splintered. An eerie feeling of familiarity came over Travis. He had seen these mountains once before, only from the other side.

  “This is Imbrifale,” he said softly. “This is the Pale King's Dominion. But that's impossible. The only way in and out is through the Rune Gate.”

  The man in orange gestured with his hands. We know other ways through the mountains, ways unknown to the servants of He-Who-Wields-The-Ice. Or to most of them, at least. We knew we would be here when we found you, and so we came.

  Again Travis was struck with wonder. “Who are you?”

  “I think they're the Maugrim,” said a familiar tenor voice behind him.

  Travis turned around, and a feeling of joy almost too powerful to bear came over him. “Beltan!”

  He ran to the big man, and they caught each other in a fierce embrace.

  “By all the gods, I thought I'd never see you again.”

  “So did I,” Travis said, and held him tighter.

  At last Beltan pushed him away.

  “Who are they, Beltan?” Travis said, aware of the people gathered behind him. “Maugrim—I've heard that word before, I think.”

  Beltan glanced at the brown-skinned people. “Falken told us about them. They're the first ones, the people who were here when the Old Gods dwelled in the forests and fields. The stories say they vanished long ago. Only King Kel said the Maugrim still existed. It looks like he was right.”

  Finally, Travis understood—that was why they had seemed familiar to him. He had seen paintings of them in books, had seen dioramas in museums where wax facsimiles of them had held spears or squatted over fires, working bone and flint. According to the textbooks, on Earth, the Neanderthals had vanished over thirty thousand years ago.

  Only maybe they didn't vanish, Travis. Maybe they went somewhere else.

  Beltan touched the hide jerkin they had given Travis. “They've dressed you in orange. Just like their shaman.”

  Shaman? Travis glanced over his shoulder. The man who had spoken to him, the one whose hides were stained with ocher, gazed at him, his eyes unreadable.

  Travis turned back. “How can you be here, Beltan?”

  “We used the gate artifact,” Beltan said, brow furrowing. “As we stepped through, we pictured the city of Omberfell in our minds. It was the only place both of us had been to before that was close to Gravenfist. Vani said it's safer to choose a destination you can envision clearly.” He shook his head. “Only something went wrong. There was a crack in the Void, and we fell through. It seemed like we fell a thousand
leagues.”

  Travis crossed his arms. “I saw the crack in the Void, too. It pulled me in, just like it did you. But why did we end up here, in this place?”

  Because this is where it was broken, the Maugrim man said in his alien language.

  Travis shivered. “Where what was broken?”

  The shaman gazed up at the tortured sky.

  Dread spilled into Travis's gut. He looked at Beltan. “Where is Vani?”

  Beltan's green eyes were troubled. “I think you'd better come.”

  Beltan moved across the dusty plain, and Travis followed, the Maugrim shuffling behind. They crested a rise, then came to a rough half circle of stones that offered some protection from the wind. In the center, a fire burned in a pit. Travis didn't know where they had found the wood—maybe one of the few withered trees—but the fire drew him forward like a moth. A group of women clustered near the fire; he saw Vani in their center.

  He ran the last remaining steps. “Vani . . .”

  She looked up and smiled. The expression broke his heart. Her face was lined in pain, as gray as the ashes on the ground. She wore aurochs hide clothes like Travis and Beltan, and another hide, fur side in, over her shoulders.

  The Maugrim women drew back, and Travis knelt beside her. “Vani, what is it?”

  She only shook her head; tears ran from her golden eyes, snatched away by the dry air.

  “There's something wrong with the baby,” Beltan said.

  Vani drew in a sharp hiss of breath. Travis looked up. What was Beltan talking about?

  “How long?” Vani said, her voice trembling. “How long have you known I am with child?”

  Beltan's face was sad, thoughtful. “Since the white ship. It wasn't hard to figure out, even for me. Your sickness in the mornings gave it away.”

  She bowed her head. “I wanted to tell you.”

  “I know,” he said.

  This didn't make any sense. How could Vani be pregnant? Travis and she had never been together, not that way. He looked from her to Beltan, and all at once the sorrow on both their faces made the answer clear.

  He staggered to his feet. “How?” It was all he could say.

  Vani shook her head.

  “It was the Little People,” Beltan said, not meeting his gaze. “On Sindar's ship. They tricked us. We came upon each other in an impossible garden, only we each thought . . .”

  Travis clutched his arm. “You thought what?”

  “We each thought the other was you,” Vani said, looking up at Travis, her gold eyes anguished. “We lay together, and only when we awoke did we know the truth. Why the Little People did this to us, we know not. Only that they did.”

  A tide of emotions surged in Travis: shock, betrayal, jealousy, dread. Vani and Beltan had made love? He fought for comprehension. Only it didn't matter if he understood. The Little People were ancient, and they were not human; their purposes were a mystery. Besides, all that mattered was that Vani was with child. With Beltan's child. And that child was in danger.

  Travis took all feelings save love and put them aside. He sank again to his knees, hesitated, then laid his hand on her stomach. Vani tensed but did not resist. He could feel it: the first swelling of her belly.

  “What's wrong?”

  “I don't know.” Vani grimaced in pain as a spasm passed through her.

  One of the women pushed past Travis. She was old, her face as soft and wrinkled as her robe of aurochs hide. The robe was marked with several bright ocher handprints. She brushed knobby fingers across Vani's stomach and made hooting and grunting sounds deep in her throat.

  The cold of the Void has harmed the child. Its hold upon the mother's womb has been loosened.

  “What can we do?” Travis said.

  The woman looked him up and down, her eyes like hard pebbles. She jabbed a finger at Travis's chest. You are a wizard. Cold has frozen the child, and only fire can warm her. You must use the Stone.

  Travis stared at her. No, that couldn't be the answer. Fire couldn't save, it could only burn.

  “What is it, Travis?” Beltan said. “I could almost understand her, but not quite.”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out one of the Imsari. Krondisar, the Stone of Fire. “She said the cold has harmed the baby, that only fire can save her.”

  “Her?” Vani clutched her stomach. “The child is a girl? But how can she know?”

  The old woman let out a chortling sound. She is awake already. It is too soon, but she speaks to me all the same.

  Travis relayed these words, though he did not really understand them.

  Vani's eyes were frightened. “Travis, please. Do what she tells you. I do not . . . I do not wish to lose her.”

  “You can do it, Travis.” Beltan laid a hand on his shoulder. “I know you can.”

  For so long, he had been afraid of what he was, of what he could do. Afraid of hurting others. In that moment—for the first time since that stormy October night when Jack gripped his hand beneath the Magician's Attic and made him a runelord—Travis set fear aside. Power was not evil in and of itself, he knew that now; it was what the wielder chose to do with it that shaped it for good or for ill. He hadn't asked for this power, but it was his to wield, and he was going to use it how he chose. Not to destroy life, but to preserve it.

  Travis gripped the Stone of Fire in one hand and pressed the other to Vani's stomach.

  “Krond,” he murmured.

  He spoke the rune, not in panic or rage or despair as he had in the past, but gently, out of love. There were no flames this time. Instead, a soft red-gold glow sprang into being around his hand, spreading out over Vani's belly—then sinking into it. Vani gasped, her eyes going wide, her back arching. A shudder passed through her, and color crept back into her skin. Then a strange thing happened. It seemed a voice, tiny and innocent, spoke in Travis's mind.

  Hello, Father.

  Travis snatched his hand back. Vani and Beltan stared at him.

  “What happened?” Vani said.

  Travis shook his head. The voice had been so clear, so full of joy and love. But that was impossible.

  The old woman moved close to Vani, touching her body with probing fingers. At last she let out a grunt.

  It is well. The child's roots are stronger now, and it grows again in her womb. Her eyes narrowed as she gazed at Travis. It grows quickly, in fact. Too quickly. But then, this child has not one father, but two.

  “What's she saying now?” Beltan said.

  Vani looked at him expectantly. Travis opened his mouth, unsure just how to tell them.

  A sound pierced the air, like the keening of cold wind over sharp stones. It was a cry of hatred, of fury, of utter despair. The sound was far off, but not so far that all of them didn't shiver as it faded to silence.

  “By the Blood of the Bull, what was that?” Beltan said, his face pale.

  Before anyone could answer, a column of gold sparks shot up to the roiling sky, plunging into the clouds. It emanated from behind the spine of a low ridge a half league away, near the base of the mountains. The column blazed against the darkness for several heartbeats, then ceased.

  A tug on Travis's arm. It was the man with the wise brown eyes—their shaman.

  Come now, he said in his hooting language. The end has begun.

  Travis looked at Vani and Beltan. “I think we have to go. Toward that light we saw.”

  Beltan helped Vani to her feet. “Can you walk?”

  “Let's go,” the T'gol said.

  57.

  They followed the man in the ocher-stained hides as he set out across the valley. The old woman who had told Travis to use the Stone of Fire came with them, but they left the other Maugrim behind. They did not speak as they walked. Ash swirled on the air, stinging their eyes and making their throats ache.

  They reached the ridge, which sprawled like the carcass of a dragon at the foot of the mountains, and scrambled up its flanks. Loose stones littered the slope, their edges
sharp as knives. Crimson lightning stabbed at the clouds as they climbed. The sky seemed to boil now, like a pot of some vile liquid. A sickness came over Travis every time he looked up; he kept his eyes on his feet.

  They had nearly reached the summit of the ridge when a hot bolt of pain shot through Travis's chest. He staggered and would have fallen and gone skidding down the slope were it not for Beltan's strong hands steadying him. A sound thundered in his skull, like a thousand voices speaking a single word in chorus.

  Bal.

  Death. It was the rune of death.

  “Travis, what is it?” Ash made the knight's face a gray mask.

  The voices in Travis's mind faded to silence. The pain in his chest was gone, but his right hand itched. “I don't know. I felt something, only it's passed now.”

  Vani touched his cheek. “Your face, it's so pale. What is it, Travis?”

  The wizened Maugrim woman pulled at his sleeve. You will see, the coin translated her grunting speech. Come, now.

  They continued on, and after a few more steps they reached the top of the ridge. Travis blinked the grit from his eyes, then stared in disbelief.

  Thirty paces away, on the flat top of the ridge, stood three figures. Travis knew two of them well: Falken and Melia. The third was a tall man, powerfully built, though his white hair and time-etched face spoke of age. The man wore a black robe embroidered with scarlet runes. His fingers twitched around the blade of the sword that pierced his chest. Falken's sword. The bard gripped the hilt in his silver hand.

  The white-haired man opened his mouth as if to speak, but all that came out was a gush of blood. Tears traced lines through the layer of ash on Falken's cheeks.

  “For Malachor,” he said and jerked the sword out of the other's chest.

  The white-haired man fell to the ground. His robe fluttered. He was dead.

  Falken bowed his head. Melia moved to him and laid a hand on his arm. “It is over at last, dearest one.”

  Travis's paralysis broke. He shouted—a wordless sound of joy—and ran over the broken ground toward Melia and Falken. The bard and the lady looked up, astonishment shining in their eyes. Then Melia was running as well, and Travis caught her in his arms, lifting the small woman off the ground.