The Last Rune 4: Blood of Mystery

by Mark Anthony

  There were people from the old colonies—Georgia, the Carolinas, New England—as well as from the states that had made up the country’s first western frontiers: Kentucky and Ohio, Kansas and Missouri. Others sailed over the Atlantic, from England, France, Prussia, and Sweden. There were Russians by way of Alaska, and Mexicans who had not so long before held claim to this land. Most of the Indians had been forced south and west to the ever-shrinking reservations; still, a few remained. And there were people of African descent, many freed from slavery not twenty years earlier.

  You’ll have to tell Lirith about that, Travis. Only he wasn’t certain how he could explain that, not so very long ago, people like her had been held in bondage against their wills in his country. He would have to find a way.

  Just like he would find a way to help the others manage in this time. He took out the silver half-coin, turning it over in his hand. If he only he had three more of them.

  Then why not make more, Travis? After all, you only have half of the coin, and its magic works fine. What’s to say smaller pieces won’t work as well?

  There was only one way to find out. He closed his fist around the coin, and with his other hand reached into the pocket of his jeans, brushing the smooth surface of the Stone of Twilight.

  “Reth,” he murmured. He felt a surge of power and a sharp tingling in both hands.

  Lirith gave him a sharp look. “What did you just do?” Travis held out his hand and opened his fist. On it lay four small pieces of silver.

  It didn’t take long to verify the slivers of coin were working. Travis was able to understand Sareth when he swore in Mournish after his peg leg caught in a rut in the road.

  “By the bloody milk of Mahonadra’s teat!” he said in the hot, lilting tongue of the Mournish. By the looks on their faces, Durge and Lirith understood as well.

  “Sorry,” Sareth said, noticing their stares. “That’s one of those oaths that’s better when others can’t understand it.”

  Lirith raised an eyebrow. “Indeed. And just who is Mahonadra?”

  “She was the god-king Orú’s mother. And believe me, I’m not going to tell you anything more.”

  As Travis hoped, the miners paid them little heed as they started down the road toward town, although a few of them grinned and doffed greasy hats in Lirith’s direction, some seemingly out of politeness, others with leering looks on their smudged faces. Lirith kept her gaze fixed ahead.

  The crowd thinned as they passed the last few miners who straggled to their work, eyes still red from too much whiskey the night before. However, the road soon grew busy again—as well as broader, straighter, and dustier—when they reached the end of a long line of false-fronted buildings.

  Travis was astonished how little things had changed in his time. There was the Silver Palace Hotel, a long brick edifice three stories high, and McKay’s General Store, neither looking significantly different than he remembered. Just beyond was the Castle City Opera House, with its stately Greek Revival columns, and the assay office—although it was not abandoned as Travis had always seen it, but instead had men lined up at the door, each holding a small sack of ore to be tested. Travis knew what his sharp eyes would see if he gazed a little farther up the street, but he forced himself not to look. Not just yet.

  You won’t own the saloon for more than a hundred years, Travis. So don’t even think about it.

  He took a step forward, then stopped, dust swirling around his feet. A nervous breath fluttered out of his lungs.

  Lirith gave him a concerned look. “What’s wrong, Travis? Isn’t this your home?”

  “I suppose so. Only this is how it was a hundred years before I was born.”

  Durge let out a grunt. “I’m sure Stonebreak Manor has altered little in a century’s time, save for the trees’ growing taller. What could be so different in just a hundred years?”

  As if to punctuate the knight’s words, a stagecoach hurtled past, wheels rattling, driver’s whip cracking. The four of them stumbled back just in time to avoid being trampled. Travis knew just enough about history to be sure that, for everything that seemed familiar, a dozen other things would be dangerously different. People had perished every day in the Old West—from disease, from mishaps, from bullets.

  Another coach rushed by as they started down Elk Street. A few more months, Travis supposed, and the narrow-gauge would reach Castle City; until then, the coaches would ferry people from the end of the line to the town’s main street. The coach lurched to a stop in front of the Silver Palace Hotel. Its door opened, and a man in a fine gray suit stepped out. He turned to help a lady down the coach’s steps. She was clad in yards and yards of black and maroon, with a massive bustle behind and peacock feathers trailing from her tiny hat.

  Lirith brushed her plain brown dress, her dark ruby lips twisting in a wry smile. “Well, that certainly puts things in perspective for a woman.”

  “Are those two the lord and lady here?” Durge said. “If so, we must go beg their hospitality.”

  The man in the gray suit looked from side to side, his eyes shadowed beneath the brim of his bowler. The woman adjusted the netting that hung from the brim of her hat. He slipped an arm around her waist and whisked her inside the hotel.

  Sareth let out a low chuckle. “Something tells me they’re not from around here. And that for all her finery, she’s no more a lady than he is a lord. Or at least not the kind of lady you mean, Durge.”

  Crimson tinged the Embarran’s craggy cheeks. Sareth started to laugh, but Lirith turned her back, and the mirth died on his lips. He gazed at her, confusion in his dark eyes.

  Durge regarded Travis. “If that is not the lord of this land, who is?”

  “There are no lords here, Durge.”

  “But who serves the king and queen?”

  “There isn’t a king or queen, either.” Travis reached under his hat to scratch his head. “Well, there is a queen in England— the country across the ocean I was talking about last night. Her name is Victoria. And nobles from Europe did visit Colorado back then—I mean, in this time. I seem to remember something about a Russian grand duke who came to the West to hunt buffalo.” He sighed. “Although I suppose they’re already just about gone by now, aren’t they?”

  Durge seemed to consider these words. “If you have no king in this land, how is order kept?”

  Travis hadn’t considered how strange things here would be to people from a medieval world. He tried to think of a simple way to explain it. “Well, we have a president. I’m not sure who it would be right now. Grover Cleveland? No, he was a bit later—he was the one who made all of the silver miners go broke.” He shrugged. “Anyway, the people of the country elect a president every four years, along with a number of lawmakers. And each state has a governor. And there are local officials like mayors and sheriffs who are elected as well.”

  “A curious system,” Durge rumbled in obvious distaste. “And who votes for these officials? Peasants?”

  “Anyone over eighteen.” Travis rethought that. “Well, in my time, at least. Right now, women aren’t allowed to vote.”

  Lirith turned back around and let out an exasperated sound. “I see some things are the same on any world.”

  “I think this place is more like the Free Cities,” Sareth said to Durge and Lirith. “It’s not royal blood that matters, but gold and silver.”

  Travis couldn’t argue with that. In his time, Castle City was a quiet town, especially when the handful of tourists left for the summer. However, the small city before him was alive with action.

  People jostled past each other on the boardwalks that lined the streets, some in the dusty garb of miners and cowboys, others in black coats and stiff white shirts, checking gold pocket watches as they went. Some women trudged by in elaborate, heavy dresses, while others wore the drab pinafores of laundry-women and workingmen’s wives. A flock of children in shabby shoes followed a prim schoolmarm, and young men wearing caps ran past carrying stacks of freshl
y printed newspapers. The street itself was a circus of horses, mule-drawn wagons, and more coaches. On rainy days it was probably a quagmire; today it was a dust bowl, and a fine layer of grit covered everything and everyone.

  The buildings that lined the street were every bit as diverse and industrious-looking as the people. Some were brick or stone, but most were slapped together from wood planks, each wearing its false front like a miner who had donned an opera coat. Travis saw banks, restaurants, barbershops, grocers, tack stores, booksellers, and clothiers. And every third storefront looked to be some sort of saloon or drinking house. Silver flowed freely from the mines, and the wealth was everywhere.

  Only it wouldn’t last. By 1883, the mines were already starting to play out. And Travis had heard stories of the crash of 1893, when President Cleveland finally revoked the Bland-Allison Act, which had created an artificial market for silver. Overnight, the price of silver fell to a fraction of what it had been, and just about every mine went bust. Vast fortunes were lost in a day. Henry Tabor, who had been the richest man in Colorado, would spend the last year of his life grateful just to be postmaster of Denver. His wife, the fabled Baby Doe, would die years later, a solitary madwoman. They would find her body frozen so hard to the floor of her shack in Leadville they would have to wait until the spring thaw to take it away.

  “So where do we go for lodging?” Lirith said, eyeing the buildings on either side of the street.

  Travis was pretty sure they couldn’t afford the Silver Palace Hotel. “I’m not sure. Let’s just walk down Elk Street and see if anything looks—” He swallowed the word cheap. “—affordable.”

  They moved onto the boardwalk, jostling their way past workingmen, miners’ wives, and clerks running errands. They passed several establishments that bore signs in the window, offering rooms for rent. However, the prices shocked Travis. Some wanted as much as five dollars a day. At that rate, their remaining twenty wouldn’t last long. They kept moving.

  Travis supposed it was nine in the morning, but as far as he could tell all of the saloons were open. Most of them had swinging doors, just like in Western movies, but a wooden screen or panel just beyond kept anyone from seeing inside. All the same, the sound of laughter and the rattling of dice spilled out, along with the occasional man who squinted bleary eyes— obviously astonished to see the sun was well risen—before stumbling away down the boardwalk.

  Soon Travis caught sight of a familiar sign hanging over the boardwalk. The sign looked almost the same as the last time he had repainted it, its lettering so familiar he could read it without the usual effort: THE MINE SHAFT. The saloon. His saloon—at least one day. What would it be like to walk through those doors?

  Hard laughter interrupted his thoughts. Three men leaned against the boardwalk railing just ahead. They looked to be in their twenties and were dressed in white shirts and dark three-piece suits with silver watch fobs dangling from their vest pockets. Black Stetsons crowned their heads, and black boots shod their feet. One of the men was clean-shaven, one had a downy red beard, and the other a neatly waxed mustache.

  The clean-shaven one spat tobacco juice, then made a lewd gesture and pointed a finger. As he did, the front of his jacket parted so that Travis could see the gun holstered at his hip— some kind of revolver. However, it wasn’t the gun that made Travis’s blood go cold.

  The man was pointing straight at Lirith.

  Travis felt the witch go rigid beside him. She must have seen. The three men laughed again, louder this time. The one with the sparse red beard—the handsomest of the lot—blushed and dropped his head. However, the mustachioed one stared at Lirith, a salacious look on his sharp face, and the clean-shaven one just grinned, a cold light in his blue eyes.

  “May the starving spirits of the morndari consume their manhood,” Sareth hissed.

  Travis winced. He had a feeling that was another of those Mournish oaths that was better without translation. Sareth took a step toward the men, but Travis grabbed his arm.

  “Forget it, Sareth. They have guns.”

  But the Mournish man wouldn’t know what guns were. He started forward again. However, Durge moved in front of him. The knight’s visage was stern.

  “Travis is right. We are strangers here—we must not make trouble. And I know something of these guns he speaks of. They allow a man to kill another without even drawing close.”

  Sareth’s eyes blazed. “But those bastards—”

  “Mean nothing to me,” Lirith said, stepping between Durge and Sareth. “They are foolish boys, nothing more. And we still must find a place to stay. Please. Beshala.”

  Some of the anger left Sareth’s eyes, replaced by a softness as he gazed at Lirith. He nodded.

  Together, the four continued down the boardwalk at a steady but not too-swift pace. Travis and Durge kept Lirith and Sareth between them. Catcalls rang out as they passed the three men, but they kept their gazes fixed ahead, and soon the whistles and whoops fell behind and were gone.

  After walking two blocks, they stopped. Travis risked a glance over his shoulder, but the three men were nowhere in view. They had passed the Mine Shaft a block or so back, but he wasn’t about to retrace their steps. He turned toward the others—then frowned.

  “Where’s Lirith?”

  “She was right here,” Durge rumbled.

  Sareth pointed. “There.”

  They hurried after Lirith, who had moved a dozen paces down the boardwalk. They reached her just as she approached a wooden table covered with small blue bottles. Beside the table stood a man with frizzy gray hair, clad in a shabby suit. A painted canvas sign hung on the wall behind him:

  DR. WETTERLY’S MEDICINAL BITTERS $1

  CURES MANY AND SUNDRY ACHES AND AILMENTS,

  INCLUDING BUT NOT IN ANY WAY LIMITED TO

  BRUISES, CORNS, CROSSED EYES,

  NEURALGIA, HALITOSIS, BOILS,

  DROPSY, A LAZY TEMPERAMENT,

  RHEUMATISM, GOUT, MELANCHOLIA,

  AND HICCOUGHS.

  The man in the suit spoke in a ringing voice, addressing the half dozen or so people who stood around the table as if they were a great throng, extolling the virtues of his patent medicine. Lirith picked up one of the bottles, unstopped it, and took a sniff. Her brow creased in a frown.

  The medicine seller turned to her. “If you want to do more than smell, miss, lay down your dollar and take yourself a drink. It’ll cure anything that ails you.”

  Lirith restopped the bottle and set it down. “You’re lying,” she said in a calm voice, and a murmur ran through the gathering of people.

  The man spread his arms, chuckling. “Now, miss, I can understand why you’re a skeptic. But rest assured that in this little blue bottle—”

  “Is nothing but crude grain spirits flavored with pepper and colored with burnt honey,” Lirith said, her voice sharper now. “I can sense no herbs, no oils, no tinctures—nothing that might cure even the simplest ailment. In fact, this medicine as you call it is little better than poison, and anyone would be a fool to drink it, let alone pay for it. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  The people at the table snatched their silver dollars back, disgust on their faces, and hurried away. Befuddlement gave way to anger in the medicine seller’s eyes.

  “Why, you little trollop,” he growled, all traces of good humor gone. “Look what your words have done. You’ve cost me a morning’s income. And you’re going to make up for it.”

  Lirith started to step back, but before she could the man grabbed her wrist, twisting it. She let out a soft cry.

  Travis and Durge both lunged at once for Sareth, but they were too slow. In a second he was at the table, dark eyes smoldering. Sareth gave the man’s outstretched arm a sharp blow. The fellow let out a yelp, letting go of Lirith and clutching his arm to his chest as he stumbled back against the table. Bottles tumbled, breaking against the boardwalk. The sharp reek of cheap alcohol suffused the air.

  “Let’s go,” Sareth said, s
teering Lirith away from the table.

  “Thief!” the gray-haired man shrieked. “You have to pay for what your harlot’s broken. Thief!”

  Heart pounding, Travis hurried to Lirith and Sareth, Durge just behind him. They needed to get out of there. Fast. As one, they turned around— —and found themselves facing the trio of men in suits.

  The beardless one grinned the same grin they had seen before, although the expression didn’t reach his cold blue eyes. “What have we got here, Doc? A bunch of bummers? Well, we know what to do with the likes of them in this town.”

  He pushed back his suit coat, displaying the revolver at his hip, and the two men flanking him did the same.

  7.

  Dusty air swirled through the empty space that seconds ago had been a crowded section of boardwalk. Frightened faces peered from across the street or through shop windows, but no one came near.

  Travis drew in a gritty breath. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Durge start to reach over his shoulder for his greatsword, then stop. The blade was wrapped in the cloak and bound with rope; it would do the knight no good.

  “Are you all right there, Doc?” asked the youngest of the three men, the one with red fluff on his cheeks.

  The gray-haired man—evidently Doc Wetterly himself— scrambled on his hands and knees on the boardwalk, grabbing stray bottles and stuffing them in his coat pockets. “Yes, yes, Mr. Murray. I assure you, I can manage just fine.” He hopped to his feet, clutching several bottles to his chest. A number of them were leaking, dribbling down his suit, onto the boardwalk. “Now, if you’ll just—”

  Before Wetterly’s lips could finish excusing himself, his legs were already carrying him at a fast clip down the boardwalk. He ducked around a corner and was gone.