by Mark Anthony
“You want to know how I did it, don’t you?” Travis knew his tone was defensive, but he couldn’t help it. “You want to know how I set him on … how I started that fire.”
Falken nodded. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
Travis shut his eyes and saw the mad lord again, his hands curling like the claws of a black bird as he writhed in the flames. He opened his eyes and shook his head. “I don’t know, Falken. I don’t know how I did it.”
“I do.”
They turned toward Melia. She had been plaiting the blue-black wave of her hair. Now she gave it a final twist to bind it neatly at the nape of her neck. When she spoke again it was to Falken, not Travis.
“Just as we opened the door to our chamber, at Sebaris’s manor, I heard him speak it.”
“Speak what?”
“The rune of fire.”
Falken let out a low oath. “He spoke a rune? But how could that be? It takes apprentices in the Gray Tower a year before they can invoke the simplest of runes.”
Melia’s eyes glittered. “Unless one is a wild talent.”
“A wild talent? They’ve never been anything more than a legend—stories to make apprentices feel inadequate and study harder.”
“You saw the flames as well as I.”
The bard only grunted.
“Then there was the incident in Kelcior with the bound rune,” Melia said. “What else might explain both occurrences?”
Falken looked unhappy, but he did not disagree. “So what are we going to do with him?”
“I’m not entirely certain. But I think you had better teach him something about runes before he incinerates himself and the rest of us.”
Travis winced. Once again the bard and the lady were speaking about him as if he wasn’t even there. He let out an exasperated sound, and they turned their gazes toward him. He opened his mouth to protest, but one look at the set of their faces and he knew there was no use. He slumped his broad shoulders inside his baggy green tunic.
“So, when do I start my lessons?”
Falken’s expression edged into a wolfish grin. “Now seems as good a time as any.”
Despite the lateness of the year, the tall sunleaf trees that ringed the talathrin still bore the radial, yellow-green leaves for which they were named. Travis and Falken sat together beneath one of the ancient trees. The bard’s faded blue eyes bore into Travis.
“Before we can begin, there is one thing I must know, Travis. How did you learn the name of the rune of fire?”
“I didn’t learn it. At least, I didn’t know I had.” He took a deep breath, then in a rush explained how the voice had spoken the word in his mind when he touched the broken rune Falken had found in Shadowsdeep. What he didn’t say was that it was the same voice that told him to speak the rune at the manor, and that both times the voice had sounded exactly like Jack Graystone’s.
Falken rubbed his stubbled chin. “I am no expert on the craft of runes. My knowledge is not a tenth that of the master of the Gray Tower, and his not a tenth of what the Runelords mastered long ago. What the nature of the voice that spoke to you is, I don’t know. But over the years I’ve learned some small amount concerning runes, and I think I know enough to teach you how not to harm yourself or others should the voice speak again.”
The bard smoothed the dirt between them with his black-gloved hand. He drew a symbol with a finger:
“This is the rune of fire. Its name is Krond.”
Travis bent closer to peer at the three lines in the dirt. The symbol was the same as the one on the broken rune disk he had touched.
“When the name of a rune is spoken, its power is invoked,” Falken said. “By speaking Krond you called upon the power of fire. I believe you saw the result.”
Travis shuddered, then looked up as a thought struck him. “Wait a minute. How can you speak it now, Falken? The rune of fire, I mean. Why didn’t you invoke it when you said it just a second ago?”
“Good, Travis. You’re paying attention. Now shut up and listen.”
Travis did not interrupt the bard’s lesson again.
“If all it took to invoke a rune’s power was to mumble it,” Falken said, “there would be little need for the Gray Tower, and every peasant in the Dominions would be a runespeaker. But that is not the case, and even were the Runespeakers not out of fashion these days, they still would be rare enough. To call upon a rune’s power, one must will it to be invoked as it is spoken, and learning to focus one’s will properly takes years of practice.” He gave Travis an appraising look. “For most people, that is.”
Travis squirmed under the bard’s scrutiny but held his tongue.
“I have heard tales of apprentice runespeakers invoking runes beyond their reach under great duress,” the bard went on. “My guess is your fear last night was enough to invoke the rune Krond. That means it’s crucial you learn to control your will, Travis. The next time it might be yourself you set on fire, or Melia, or Beltan, or me.”
Travis hung his head. He had not thought of that. A cold knot tied itself in his stomach. I don’t want this power. I don’t want any power. But what he wanted seemed to matter as little in this world as it had in the last.
“Then teach me, Falken,” he said. “Teach me so I don’t ever hurt anyone again.”
Falken gave Travis a questioning look. Travis only stared forward. There was no point in explaining. Only one person would have understood. Alice. And she was much, much more than a world away.
The bard nodded. “Very well, Travis. I’ll teach you.”
The lesson continued for a time, until Melia called to them. Supper was ready.
“Where did they come from, Falken?” Travis said as they stood. “The runes, I mean.”
The two approached the campfire and sat beside Melia and Beltan, and Falken answered Travis’s question.
“Legend tells that the god Olrig One-Hand stole the secret of runes from the dragons long ago,” the bard said, “and he gave them as a gift to mankind.”
“Olrig? Is he a god of one of the mystery cults?”
“No,” Falken said, “there were gods long before those of the mystery cults.”
Melia dropped the spoon with which she had been stirring a pot. She shot Falken an annoyed look.
“Well, it’s true,” he said.
She sighed. “I know. It’s just not one of my favorite topics.”
After that Travis said nothing, except to tell Melia that the stew was delicious.
Over the next several days, as they journeyed south through Eredane, they came upon a dozen more towns and villages. All of them showed the same signs of decay and malaise as had Glennen’s Stand. And all showed evidence of the Raven Cult as well. Here and there the symbol of the raven’s wing was scratched on a stone wall, or carved into a wooden beam, or—once—painted in rust-red blood on the door of a darkened building.
It was a gray afternoon, two days after their flight from Sebaris’s manor, when they came upon the pikes.
Tall wooden poles had been driven into the ground along either side of the road, stretching like bony fingers toward the sky. But it was not the poles themselves that had made the four riders stop—that made them choke and clasp their hands to their mouths. It was what had been lashed to each.
Falken broke the terrible silence. “There must … there must be a score of them.”
“More,” Beltan said.
“By all the Seven, who would do such a thing?”
Sorrow shone in Melia’s eyes. “It is not by any of the seven mysteries that this act was done.”
Against his will, Travis gazed up at the nearest pole. It was little more than a skeleton that dangled there, held together with dried sinew, bound to the wooden shaft by the hands and feet. Dark, familiar lines were etched above the skull’s empty eye sockets: the sign of the Raven. They had marked this one so cruelly that the hot brand had burned through flesh to char the bone below. Travis hoped the victim had been dead by then, even t
hough he knew this was not the case, that death had come only days after, here atop the pole, while carrion birds, impatient for the feast, swooped down to feed before their time.
Each of the poles bore a similar burden. They rose above the road like a grisly forest, with tatters of cloth and flesh to flutter on the air for leaves. Look away, Travis. You’ve got to look away. But he couldn’t. A sight this horrible demanded a witness.
“There’s a sign nailed to this pole,” Beltan said.
They nudged their nervous horses closer. The words on the board were crudely drawn, as by one barely literate:
Here be a witch, and her eyes plucked out.
“Poor thing,” Melia whispered. “She probably never even heard of Sia. Most likely she was just a village wisewoman.”
Beltan pointed to another pole. “Or maybe a cripple, and different, like this one.” Despite decay, the corpse’s clubfoot was apparent.
They rode farther down the line of poles. Beneath one was a heap of half-burned books.
Falken sighed. “So reading books is a crime as well. What’s going on here?”
They found something of an answer on the last of the poles. The corpse bound to the top was so mangled as to appear hardly human. Another crude placard had been nailed below.
This be what happens to heretics and runespeakers.
Travis gave Falken a fearful look. “I don’t understand. Why did they do this?”
It was Melia who answered him. “I think we’ve just learned another tenet of the Raven Cult. It seems that, to followers of the Raven, magic is heresy. As is reading books. Or being different.”
Beltan gripped the hilt of his sword. “Why hasn’t Queen Eminda put a stop to this? A few dozen knights sticking their swords in the right hearts, and this new cult would be a dead one.”
“Politics and religion aren’t a good mix,” Falken said. “Eminda may be keeping out of it for a reason. All fanatics need to become militant is a martyr. If Queen Eminda tried to put down the Raven Cult, she might end up with a dirty little rebellion on her hands.”
Beltan grunted but did not argue the point.
“Regardless,” Melia said, “from now on I think we had better avoid towns and villages altogether.”
She did not look at Travis, but he knew what her words really meant. He rubbed his right hand. The rune that had once shimmered on his palm was invisible now, but he could still feel it there, like a prickling beneath his skin. What would happen if it ever shone again and the Raven cultists were there to see it? Would he still be alive when they lashed him to the pole?
Why, Jack? Why did you do this to me? Didn’t you know what would happen?
“Let’s get going,” Falken said.
They nudged their mounts, and the horses started into a brisk trot, eager to escape. After a minute, Travis looked back over his shoulder. Now a dark shape perched atop the pole that bore the dead runespeaker. He turned his gaze forward again, and tried to believe the shadow was not watching him with small black eyes.
51.
Travis’s lessons in runecraft continued as the four travelers made their way ever south, toward Calavere and the Council of Kings. Each night, in whatever hidden hollow or Way Circle in which they camped, after they had eaten dinner, Falken and Travis would sit together. Travis would watch as the bard drew runes in the dirt with a stick, and would speak the name of each in turn, being careful to control his will so as not to invoke the power of any.
Soon Travis had memorized the shapes and names of over a dozen runes. There was Krond, which was fire, and Gelth, which stood for ice. Sharn was water, Tal the sky, and Lir, light. The names felt strange yet somehow comfortable against his tongue. However, he never repeated them in more than a whisper, and he kept his thoughts neutral when he did. He did not want a repeat of events at the manor house.
Then one golden afternoon in a talathrin where they had stopped, Falken handed Travis the stick.
“Here, you try.”
Travis hesitated. Was he ready for this? However, Falken did not withdraw the stick. Travis swallowed hard, then accepted the instrument. The bard smoothed the dirt between them.
“Show me the rune of fire, Travis.”
He thought a moment, then before he lost his nerve drew three quick lines in the dirt.
“Very good.”
Travis let out a sigh of relief.
“Although the angle on the second ascending is a bit shallow, and the prime descending should extend down a trifle farther.”
Travis’s sigh turned to one of dejection.
“Now, show me the rune of sky.”
Tal. That one was easy enough. Travis drew a dot with a line above it. Falken studied it, then grunted. Travis took that as a good sign, and he found his mood brightening. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad student after all.
“How about one more before Melia calls us to supper?” Falken said. “Show me the rune of light.”
With a grin, Travis drew a line with an angled stroke coming off it like a branch and a dot below.
Gloom descended over the Way Circle. The air turned to ice, and Travis could not breathe. A cry of pain came from the other side of the talathrin, followed by a single word shouted in fear.
“Melia!”
Travis clawed at his throat. His fingers were numb stumps. The gloom deepened, thickened, like a shroud of shadows. His mind grew as murky and muted as the gloom. A few more moments and he would be a shadow himself.
Something registered on his dimming senses: a grunt of effort, a struggling in front of him, then a scratching in the dirt. The gloom vanished, and coppery sunlight streamed into the Way Circle once more.
Travis drew in a ragged breath, filling his lungs with good air. The sparks before his eyes faded. Across the circle Beltan held Melia in his arms. The lady’s face was pale, and shadows clung to the hollows of her cheeks. However, it seemed she was well enough, for she pushed the knight away with gentle but firm hands and stood on her own. Falken still leaned on the hand he had used to scratch out the rune Travis had drawn in the dirt. The bard lifted his head and looked at Travis.
“You’re a mirror reader, aren’t you?”
Travis didn’t understand what had just happened—as usual—but this was not the time to hide things. “They call it dyslexia in my world.”
Falken swore and struggled to gain his feet. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
Travis almost laughed. The bard couldn’t know what he was asking. The laughter stopped short at the lump in his throat.
Melia approached. The lady seemed to have regained her strength, although Beltan hovered behind her. He cast a dark look at Travis.
Melia arched an eyebrow. “A mirror reader?”
“I should have seen it earlier,” Falken said. “The signs were there, but I didn’t realize it until now. I asked him to draw the rune of light. He did, only he put the ascending branch and the dot on the left side, not the right.”
“He drew it backward, you mean?”
The bard nodded. “And the rune of light backward is Sinfath—the rune of twilight.”
Melia sighed and lifted a hand to her temple. “Well, that explains my headache. Sinfath never has agreed with me.”
“As they say, like repels like.”
This comment won the bard a scathing look. “That isn’t funny, Falken. You know perfectly well all runic magic affects me.”
“It nearly affected all of us, although I’m not sure how. It’s almost as if he started to bind the rune. Except that’s impossible.”
Beltan scratched his throat. “What would have happened if he had bound it?”
Falken looked at the knight. “This Way Circle would have been forever darkened, a place of mist and shadow. And there would have been no escaping it.”
“I’m not sure I really wanted to know that.”
“You asked.” Falken shook his head. “But the art of runebinding has been dead and lost for centuries. It must have been something e
lse that caused this.”
Melia paced a slow circle around Travis. “Perhaps.”
Travis held his chin up and stared forward, even though his instinct was to curl into a ball and try to disappear.
Melia spoke again, and although her voice was brisk, now there was a gentle light in her eyes. “Well, whatever happened, no harm was done, and that is something for which to be thankful. We can talk more about this later. Right now supper is nearly ready. I’ll put a pot on the fire while we wait for the stew. I think we’ll all feel better after a cup of maddok.”
Travis gave Melia a grateful look. She nodded, then led the way back to the campfire. The maddok was hot and good, and Travis’s spirits lifted. However, none of them could help shivering as the sun dipped below the horizon, and twilight—cool and purple—fell upon the Way Circle.
After that Travis’s lessons in runecraft focused not so much on knowledge as on control. Yet while the lessons in runecraft occupied his evenings in camp, the long days atop the swaying back of his gelding were more tedious. The muscles of his legs were getting used to life in the saddle, but his back ached constantly, and the landscape did little to take his mind off the pain as the travelers progressed south. The plains stretched in dull brown waves to the west, and the tumbled slopes of the Fal Erenn rose to the east. Sometimes Travis wished they could ride into the mountains, or race across the wide plains, it didn’t matter which, just so they could leave behind this in-between land, and the old Tarrasian road which led over hills and through shallow vales with unswerving and maddening predictability.
He spent most of his time in the saddle trying to stay warm. There was little need for him to hold the reins—the gelding was content to follow after its companions—so he kept his hands tucked beneath his mistcloak. It only took him three falls into the muck before he learned how to hold on with his knees. Usually he rode by himself. Beltan was always spurring ahead or dropping back to keep an eye out for danger, and Falken and Melia kept their horses together a dozen paces ahead.
Their reticence rankled. Why was it no one would ever tell him what was really going on? Jack hadn’t explained anything that night at the Magician’s Attic. And neither had Brother Cy at the weird revival tent. What did they think he’d do if he knew the truth?