The Last Rune 4: Blood of Mystery

by Mark Anthony

  It wasn’t hard to locate Mr. Manypenny. Everyone in the saloon was dressed in either the dusty denim and calico of a miner or a three-piece suit—everyone except the man behind the bar. He was a big, red-faced gent, probably athletic in his youth, now growing corpulent in his forties. He wore a crisp white shirt with black garters on his upper arms, and his slick hair was parted precisely in the middle—all the way down to the nape of his neck, as Travis could see in the mirror. He wore an elaborate handlebar mustache, carefully curled and shaped with what had to be enormous amounts of wax.

  A pair of men stepped away from the bar, their whiskey in hand. Manypenny wiped the bar with a towel. Now was Travis’s chance. Hands sweating, he stepped forward.

  Three minutes later, Travis had a job.

  At first, when Travis said he hadn’t come for a drink, Manypenny gave him a scowl. However, as soon as Travis mentioned he had owned a saloon before, Manypenny’s scowl turned into a jovial grin. He asked Travis to pour a whiskey and, starting to feel more confident, Travis risked showing off a bit. He flipped the shot glass into the air, caught it behind his back, and poured over his shoulder before slamming the shot on the bar—without spilling a drop.

  This elicited a laugh from Manypenny, and he slapped Travis on the back—hard enough that Travis took a staggering step forward. He was going to hurt in the morning.

  “You have won yourself a position, Mr. Wilder,” Manypenny said in a surprisingly high-pitched and refined voice. “I haven’t witnessed such fancy pouring in a dog’s age. It seems that all my best bartenders are always doomed to hear silver’s siren call and run off to stake a claim for themselves. You don’t have a yearning for the mining life, do you? If so, tell me now.”

  Travis assured him he didn’t, and Manypenny said he could start that evening. Travis had to promise to buy a white shirt and black-wool pants; that would use up more of their money, but now that he had a job, that wasn’t a worry. The wage was four dollars a day, which would just cover their expenses.

  “I’ll provide the apron,” Manypenny said. “But you’ll need to purchase your own pomade in order to properly coif your head. I find Prince Albert’s works most satisfactorily.”

  Travis gave a sheepish grin, then took off his hat, displaying his shaved pate. This elicited another hoot of laughter and slap on the back. Then Manypenny walked him to the back of the saloon.

  “Employees always use the back door,” the saloonkeeper said. “I find that it’s useful to maintain a discreet distance from the clientele.”

  Given the way most of the men in the saloon smelled, Travis couldn’t disagree. He promised to be back at seven, then shook Manypenny’s hand.

  “I shall send my thanks to fortune fair you came in,” Manypenny said, pumping Travis’s hand energetically. “What saloon did you say you used to travail at?”

  Travis grinned. “It was one a lot like this.”

  Manypenny laughed again and opened the back door. Travis started through to the alley beyond——then froze.

  It was plastered to the wall next to the door—a yellowed poster. It read in bold letters:

  WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE

  FOR SUNDRY AND TERRIBLE CRIMES AGAINST MEN

  TYLER CAINE, THE MAN-KILLER

  REWARD $500

  However, it was not those words that made Travis’s knees go weak. It was the crude sketch beneath them. The drawing depicted the face of a man. He wore a handlebar mustache instead of a goatee, as well as a black hat, but the only other difference was a pair of round, wire-rimmed spectacles.

  It’s you, Travis. It’s you with a black hat and a mustache. And wearing the spectacles Jack gave you.

  The spectacles Travis had found in a box in Jack Graystone’s antique shop, and which Jack had told him had once belonged to a gunfighter.

  A gunfighter named Tyler Caine.

  That’s impossible, Travis. It can’t be.

  Except it was.

  “Is something wrong, Mr. Wilder?” Manypenny was looking at him, concern on his red face.

  Travis licked his lips. “That poster...”

  Manypenny’s eyes lit up. “That’s Tyler Caine, the famous civilizer. Surely you’ve heard tell of him? He’s wanted for shooting men in five different states and territories. The law brands him a villain, but the people know better. Not since Ivanhoe or Robin Locksley of Sherwood has there been such a protector of justice, such a defender of the common man.”

  Travis frowned, forgetting some of the sickness in his stomach. He wondered if Manypenny had been reading those dime novels Sheriff Tanner had talked about.

  “I’ve heard he always wears his spectacles,” Manypenny went on. “Even in his sleep. That’s how you can recognize him. Of course, the stories say he died a few years back of diphtheria up in Virginia City. But I don’t believe that for a moment. I wish he’d come here to Castle City. By Jove, I imagine Tyler Caine could put an end to these—”

  Manypenny bit his lip and glanced over his shoulder at the front door of the saloon. His shoulders were hunched, and the big, good-humored saloonkeeper seemed suddenly fearful. What had he been about to say?

  Better yet, Travis, who is he afraid might have overheard him?

  However, Travis didn’t get a chance to find out. Once more Manypenny bid him good-bye, and the next thing Travis knew the door shut behind him, leaving him alone in the alley behind the Mine Shaft. He reached up and touched his face, but the wire-rimmed spectacles he had worn for so many years weren’t there. His new eyes—reborn in the fires of Krondisar—had no need for spectacles. But in the poster he had been wearing them. What did it mean?

  No answer came but the lonely moan of the wind between the buildings. Hands in pockets, Travis headed back to the boardinghouse to wait for seven o’clock and his new job to begin.

  9.

  Grace helped Beltan carry Sky to the small sitting chamber just off the villa’s main room. Either shock had granted her an uncanny strength, or life on a medieval world had made her tougher than she thought. Whatever the reason, though Sky was nearly as tall as she was—and far denser—Grace lifted his legs as easily as Beltan did his shoulders. They laid the wounded young man gently on a chaise.

  “Place him on his side, Beltan,” Grace said.

  Beltan cast her a quick grin. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  She glared at him, then returned her attention to Sky. What on Eldh was he doing here? They hadn’t seen him since he disappeared from the Tower of the Runespeakers. And who was this peculiar young man really? At the Gray Tower, she had never had a chance to find out; she had never understood why he risked everything to help her save Travis. Maybe now she would.

  First things first. Grace probed his back, neck, and head with expert fingers. His wounds were still oozing blood, and he was unconscious, although a quick check of his life thread revealed that this was not shock, but merely the sleep of exhaustion.

  “How is he, dear?” Melia stood in the door of the chamber, along with Falken and Aryn.

  “The lacerations on his back are deep, but I don’t think they’re life-threatening,” Grace said, speaking in the same brisk tone she had always used in the ED at Denver Memorial. “But he’s suffering from exposure, and he’s lost a fair amount of blood.”

  “What can we do?” Falken said, faded blue eyes grave.

  “You can get me some things.” Grace ticked off the items. “I need warm water, a bottle of wine, a blanket, and clean rags for dressing his wounds. A knife, too. Needle and waxed thread. And a candle.”

  “What about me, Grace?” Beltan said, as the others hurried from the room.

  Grace took the blond knight’s hand and wrapped it around Sky’s wrist. “Do you feel his pulse? Good. If the rhythm starts to get faster or weaker, let me know at once.”

  When the others arrived with the things she had requested, Grace got to work. She cut Sky’s rough brown robe away from his wounds; his back and shoulders were broad and powerfully sculpted with muscle.
Beltan let out a surprised grunt, and Grace met the knight’s eyes. She knew they were both thinking the same thing. One didn’t get a physique like this by cooking dinner for runespeakers.

  She dipped a rag in the warm water, and the sharp, clean scent of alasai wafted upward. Melia or Aryn must have crumbled some dried green scepter leaves into the bowl. That was good; alasai seemed to have antiseptic properties. Grace cleaned away the caked blood and dirt from Sky’s back. There was a set of three gashes on his right shoulder, and another set just beneath the left shoulder blade.

  They look like claw marks—like wounds from a mountain lion or another predator.

  Except what predator had only three talons? None that she could think of.

  And what about feydrim, Grace? How many digits do they have on their forelegs?

  But she couldn’t remember; she had only ever gotten to examine one of those twisted creatures up close once, after she and Travis barely fended it off in her chamber in Calavere. Besides, feydrim were creatures of the Pale King, and Berash had been sealed behind the Rune Gate last Midwinter’s Eve.

  She kept cleaning away the blood—then stared as her work revealed something else on the young man’s shoulders.

  “What in Sia’s name is that?” Aryn said.

  Grace leaned back, staring. “I’m not sure.”

  In the center of the young man’s upper back, just below his neck, was a tattoo. Drawn in swirling, blue-black ink, the tattoo was about as large as Grace’s two splayed hands. It consisted of a trio of intertwined circles, each one rimmed with symbols she supposed were runes. Inside the center of each of the three circles was a single, larger rune.

  Beltan let out a grunt. “I’ve seen marks like that before—on wildmen of the north, like the ones in King Kel’s court. The warriors in those tribes often take such tattoos to signify the chief for whom they fight.”

  Aryn’s blue eyes were startled. “Warriors? But Sky is a servingman.”

  “I’m starting to doubt that,” Grace said.

  “Do you know what these runes signify?” Melia said to Falken.

  The bard drew closer. “I’m not sure about the smaller runes around the edges of the circle. I’d need time to study them. But I recognize the larger runes. This one here, on top, is the rune for sky. That makes sense, I suppose. It’s his name. But the one inside the right-hand circle is the rune for Olrig, and the one on the left is the rune for Sia.”

  Aryn looked up. “There’s a rune for Sia?”

  “Of course,” Falken said. “As well as for each of the Old Gods. Everything under creation has a rune. Except for the New Gods, of course, and the dragons.”

  The baroness chewed a knuckle. Grace understood her conundrum; according to the Witches, Sia was the Mother of Eldh, and she had nothing to do with the Old Gods or rune magic. In turn, the Runespeakers believed that the Worldsmith spoke the runes that brought Eldh and all things on it into being. And it was the Old God Olrig who stole the secret of those runes from the dragons, who had dwelled in the gray mists that existed before the world, and who had heard the runes as they were spoken. So how could Sky serve both Sia and Olrig at the same time?

  “I’ve not seen these two runes in a long age,” Falken went on. “And even then, they were already ancient.”

  Melia’s amber eyes gleamed. “Fascinating,” she murmured, although she did not elaborate.

  Grace pushed aside the questions burning in her mind and focused on her patient. With automatic efficiency, she irrigated and sutured the lacerations.

  “Beltan, help me sit him up. I need to bind these bandages around his chest to hold them in place.”

  With Beltan’s help, they sat the young man up and folded the shreds of his brown robe down to his waist. Like his back, Sky’s chest and arms were massively built.

  “By Vathris, I’d say he could swing a sword if he had to,” Beltan said.

  Grace nodded. But for some reason she wondered if that was really the kind of warrior Sky was. More tattoos snaked up the smooth skin of his chest and encircled his biceps. Most of them were runic symbols Grace couldn’t decipher, but directly over his heart was an elaborately drawn picture she could clearly make out. It showed the jagged outline of a black tower with three circles floating above it.

  No, not circles, Grace. Three moons.

  One of the moons was a waxing crescent, one was full, and the last was waning to dark. Skillfully drawn in the circle of each moon was the faint image of a woman’s face: a girl, a beautiful woman, and a withered crone.

  Grace heard a gasp. It was Aryn; she was staring at the tattoo on Sky’s chest. Grace didn’t like speaking secretly, but there was something in Aryn’s blue eyes—a deep expression of shock—that compelled her.

  Aryn? she said, her voice thrumming across the web of the Weirding. Aryn, what is it?

  It can’t be, came Aryn’s astonished voice. By the three faces of Sia, it can’t be. A black tower—didn’t they raise a black tower?

  Who did, Aryn?

  The Runebreakers...

  What was Aryn talking about? What did she mean about the three faces of Sia? Grace started to form another question in her mind, but before she could send it along the threads of the Weirding, Beltan spoke in a low voice.

  “Grace.”

  Her gaze came into quick focus as she ceased reaching out with the Touch. Sky gazed at her with gentle brown eyes.

  She lifted a hand to her heart, and his homely face crinkled in a weary grin. He made a quick, elegant gesture with a hand, then pantomimed a stitching motion. Thank you, my lady. For sewing me up.

  Startled, she couldn’t help returning his smile. “You’re welcome, Sky. I don’t think your wounds are too serious, not if we keep them clean. But who—what did this to you?”

  His grin faded, and he shook his head. He seemed to grasp her words from the air with a hand and set them gently but firmly aside. That’s not important right now, my lady. He made another set of pantomimes, using a finger to mimic writing on his palm, then holding his hand out to Grace.

  “I don’t understand,” Beltan said with a frown. “What’s he trying to say?”

  However, Grace caught the meaning of his gestures as clearly as if the words had flown to her across the Weirding.

  “A message,” she softly. “He says that he’s brought us a message.”

  Melia stepped closer, her eyes locked on Sky. “A message? But from whom?”

  Again Sky made a series of eloquent gestures.

  From those who are lost.

  For a long moment they stared at the young man in stunned silence.

  It can’t be, Grace. He can’t know they’re missing.

  But who else could Sky be talking about? Who else was lost? No one except Travis, Lirith, Durge, and Sareth.

  The others seemed to recover their wits at once, and all began talking at the same time, questioning Sky. A shudder coursed through the young man’s body.

  He’s lost blood, Grace, and he can’t keep warm. If he gets too cold, he could still slip into shock.

  She held up a hand, and she was somewhat surprised to see this had the effect of silencing the others. Her lessons in imperiousness with Ephesian seemed to be paying off. She handed Beltan the blanket the others had brought, and while she and the other women turned their backs, Beltan and Falken helped Sky out of the last shreds of his robe. When Grace turned around, the young man lay again on the chaise, tightly wrapped in the blanket. He was still shivering, but not so severely.

  “Drink this,” Grace said, handing him a cup of watered wine, and he complied. The alcohol would act as a mild sedative, and it would also help control any bacteria or amoebas in the water. The last thing he needed now was a secondary infection.

  After he handed her the empty cup, Sky motioned with his hands, and as always the meaning of the gestures was strangely clear.

  “You want your robe?” Grace said. “But I’m afraid there’s not much left to it.”

  How
ever, Sky gestured again, and she picked up the heap of rags from where it had fallen and handed it to him. He rummaged through the garment, then let it slip back to the floor. In his hand was a key. The key was large and looked to be forged of black iron. He held it out.

  You must take this, my lady. You must take it and go there.

  Falken rubbed his chin with his gloved hand. “But go where? What does that key open, Sky?”

  The young man shrugged, letting the blanket slip off his left shoulder. He pointed to the tattoo just above his heart—the tattoo of the dark tower.

  The bard let out an oath. “By all the Old Ones, it’s the Black Tower, isn’t it? That’s where you want us to go. The Tower of the Runebreakers.”

  Sky nodded. Aryn clamped her left hand to her mouth too late to stifle a gasp. Grace glanced at her. Why did Sky’s words disturb the young witch so? There was something about the Runebreakers—something the baroness knew and had not told Grace. But what?

  It would have to wait. Grace knelt beside the chaise and grasped Sky’s hand. “I don’t understand. I thought the Black Tower had been abandoned for centuries, that there were no more Runebreakers. Why should we go there?”

  He pressed the iron key into her fingers. To find what has been lost.

  Grace froze. Maybe, just maybe, she understood. Falken had told her the stories: how the Runebreakers had vanished from Falengarth long ago, and how the members of the other two runic orders—the Runebinders and Runespeakers—had turned against them, blaming the Runebreakers for bringing the fear and hatred of the people upon all wizards and workers of magic.

  But there is still one Runebreaker left, isn’t there, Grace?

  Beltan spoke the word before he could. “Travis. It’s Travis isn’t it? Somehow he’s there, along with the others, at the Black Tower. We have to go find them.” The big knight started for the door, as if he would leave on the journey that very moment.