by Mark Anthony
“They’re staying back,” Falken said.
Melia spoke through clenched teeth. “We must not let them get the Stone.”
“Maybe if we can hold them at bay long enough, they’ll leave.”
Melia did not answer the bard. She pressed her eyes shut, and the corona brightened a fraction around her small form. The wraithlings milled together in a tangle of willowy limbs and lidless eyes. Beltan raised his sword and stood behind and to the right of Melia, while Falken drew the knife from his belt and stood to Melia’s left. Travis started to follow after him.
“No, Travis. Keep behind us. You’re the holder of the Stone. It’s you they want.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but a sharp look from Falken rooted him in place. Sweat trickled down Melia’s brow, her hair clung to her cheeks. The wraithlings began to fan out to either side. Melia could not hold them from every direction. If the creatures circled around the chamber, all would be lost.
One of the beings moved within striking distance of Beltan. The knight lashed out with his sword, and metal clove flesh. A mouthless cry on the edge of hearing pierced the air, and the wraithling fell back. The creature clutched the wound on its arm, and white light welled through its thin fingers instead of blood. At the same moment Beltan cursed in pain, and his sword clattered to the floor. The blade was covered with frost. He grimaced and rubbed his hand, the flesh where he had gripped the sword blue as ice. The wraithlings stirred like lithe trees under a gale.
“I think you’ve made them mad,” Falken said.
Beltan groaned. He picked up his sword in stiff fingers. Falken raised his dagger. The wraithlings kept clear of the blades, yet at the same time continued to circle around to either side. Melia was trembling, and the corona had darkened to a flickering violet. Now the wraithlings had circled around a third of the chamber, now half.
Travis clutched the stiletto in a sweating hand. He could not watch the wraithlings advance. The light that emanated from their bodies was too painful to gaze upon. He turned his eyes instead to the circle of darkness at his feet. The Foundation Stone. He stood on the edge of the broken rune. His terror was tempered with a kind of sadness. So this was where all his drifting had finally led him: to death at the hands of glowing creatures on an alien world. If only the rune of founding were not broken they might have had a chance against the wraithlings.
Then bind it.
Travis stiffened at the sound of the voice. He knew there was no use in looking around for the speaker. The voice had come from within.
Jack?
For a frantic moment his mind was filled only with silence. Then—
You must bind it. Quickly, while there is time.
He shook his head in confusion. Bind what?
By Olrig’s hand, must you always be so dense, Travis! The broken rune, of course!
It was Jack. Only his old friend would swear an oath like that. But what did Jack mean? Travis sank to his knees and gazed at the sundered rune. How was he supposed to bind it?
You will know. But you must hurry!
And the voice was gone. Travis gazed at the black circle on the floor before him, then a terrible sound jerked him out of his trance.
“Melia—no!”
It was Beltan.
Out of the corner of his eye, Travis saw the corona that surrounded Melia flicker and wink out of existence. She slumped to the floor, and the wraithlings rushed in to caress her with pale hands. She shrieked, a sound of agony, and her back arched off the hard stone.
“Get away from her!” Beltan shouted.
He swung his sword in a whistling arc. The fey beings leaped back at the fury of the mortal man. Falken grabbed Melia and dragged her motionless form back toward Travis. Sword aloft, Beltan retreated after him. Tracing their shining paths on the air, the wraithlings followed.
Terrible as all this was, it seemed distant to Travis. He turned his gaze back to the broken rune. Bind it. He reached out a hand toward its surface. White light shone before him. The wraithlings had closed the circle. He looked up and found himself gazing into huge, lidless eyes.
For a moment the two gazed at each other, two worlds come face-to-face. Then a slender hand reached toward Travis. There was death in that touch. Fear propelled him to action. He slashed outward with the stiletto, the ruby flared crimson, and the tip sank easily into translucent flesh. Somehow Travis knew it was for just such a purpose that the knife had been forged long ago, in the smithies of ancient Malachor.
Again came the soundless wail. The wraithling fell back. Light streamed outward from the wound in its hand, only this time the light was tinged with crimson. Travis heard his companions scream behind him. The wraithlings were everywhere, there was no more time. He dropped the dagger, pressed his hand against the dark circle of stone, and shouted the word in his mind.
Orm!
In the space between two heartbeats everything went black. The glow of the wraithlings was extinguished, as was that of the runes that scattered the walls and ceiling of the chamber. Time and sound were suspended. Then two crossed lines appeared and shone in the dark like molten silver.
The blackness shattered.
Travis stared at the floor. The Foundation Stone was dark no longer. Instead it shone like the moon, its surface cool beneath the touch of his hand. All signs of the crack that had marred its surface were gone.
Each of the runes carved into the walls and ceiling of the chamber blazed with new blue-silver light. They began to spin like a sky of stars gone mad. The wraithlings flung their slender arms up and covered their huge eyes with willowy fingers.
The rune-stars spun faster yet, weaving a gauze of azure brilliance on the air. The wraithlings turned to flee but were caught in the gossamer net. Travis shut his eyes against the light and clutched at his companions, the only solid things in the room. There was a final cry: a chorus of mouthless voices merged into one chord of fear, agony, and—it almost seemed—release. Then, so sudden it was deafening, silence closed in.
Travis opened his eyes. The runes in the ceiling were motionless now and bathed the heart of the White Tower in a gentle radiance. The wraithlings were nowhere to be seen.
“They’re gone,” he murmured.
Falken struggled to his knees. “Yes,” he said, “they are.” The bard gazed at the Foundation Stone, now whole and smooth. Then he turned his faded eyes on Travis. “You did this, didn’t you?”
Travis could give only a jerky nod.
Falken opened his mouth to speak, but he was interrupted by Beltan’s anguished words.
“I can’t wake her up, Falken! She’s breathing, but only just barely.” The knight had risen also and now shook Melia’s shoulders, his grip gentle but fierce. “Wake up, Melia. Please!”
The bard moved toward them. “Let me see, Beltan. Maybe I can—”
A sound like thunder shook the air. Travis’s eyes snapped back to the Foundation Stone. Even as he watched a black line snaked across the Stone’s surface, cleaving it in two once more. The rune of founding dimmed. At the same moment a dark substance welled forth from the crack and spilled over the surface of the stone. Travis pulled his hand back. It came away stained with red.
“Blood,” he whispered. “It’s blood.”
Falken stared. “By the Seven, the blood of a Necromancer. So that was what they did. Oh, the fools! The poor, cursed fools!”
The floor jerked beneath them as a tremor shook the tower. The runes above flickered.
Falken looked up. “I don’t think the bones of this place can bear this a second time.”
As if to punctuate his words, a chunk of stone dropped from the ceiling and crashed to the floor a dozen paces away.
Beltan lifted Melia in his arms. “We’ve got to get out of here!”
The others did not argue. Falken helped Travis to his feet. Together they ran from the chamber as the glowing runes crashed down behind them.
55.
The four travelers huddled around a fir
e as night cast its cloak over the valley. A frigid wind hissed through dry grass. The remains of the White Tower were no more than a ghostly heap of stones in the distant gloom.
When they fled through the archway, light had streamed from the tower, and had poured through cracks in the stones to slice like thin knives into the fabric of night. Then the light had ceased, and the tower had slumped in on itself. With a terrible din it had collapsed into a great cairn of rubble, forging its own burial mound even as it died. No one would ever set foot within the White Tower of the Runebinders again. They had stumbled back to their campsite, and there had found one bit of good fortune: Their horses stood in a knot next to their slashed pickets, whickering softly.
Travis clutched his mistcloak around himself and surveyed the firelit faces of the others. Neither Falken nor Beltan seemed the worse for their ordeal, though Beltan’s sword hand was still cold and stiff. And although he felt drained and hollow, and his head buzzed, Travis noticed no other ill effects from his actions in the rune chamber. It was Melia who had been most devastatingly affected. They had wrapped her inside all the extra blankets and had placed her as close to the fire as they dared. She had awakened shortly after their return to camp, but shivers wracked her slight form, and her usually coppery skin was gray as ashes. She stared into the fire, a stricken expression upon her visage.
“It touched me,” she said, her voice a whisper of remembered horror. “It was so cold. So horribly cold.”
The others shot Falken looks of concern, but he did not see them. The bard’s gaze was upon Melia, his weathered face lined with care. Then he turned his eyes toward Travis and spoke in a soft voice.
“Would you bring me my pack, Travis?”
Travis nodded and did so.
Falken rummaged inside his pack and pulled out a handful of dried alasai leaves, taken from one of the Way Circles in which they had stayed. He crushed the leaves into a cup, filled it with hot water from a kettle over the fire, and let the fragrant herbs steep. Then he moved to Melia.
“Drink this, dear one,” he said and held the cup to her lips.
Melia took a hesitant sip from the cup, then drank the remainder. A hint of color touched her lips, and her shivering eased, though it did not end altogether. She blinked, and her amber eyes grew focused once more.
“Thank you, Falken. I’ll be all right now—I just need to rest.” Shadows still clung to her cheeks, and her voice remained quiet, but it was no longer full of the hopeless despair. She glanced at the tumbled remains of the tower, and shock registered in her expression. “What happened back there?”
“Travis bound the rune of founding,” Falken said. “The wraithlings were driven back by the tower’s magic.”
“He bound the rune? Are you certain?”
Falken gave a solemn nod.
“So the art of runebinding is not lost from the world after all.” Melia tightened her grip on the blankets they had wrapped her in. “That explains what happened in the talathrin, when Travis drew Sinfath backward.”
“Yes, it seems our little complication is not quite out of surprises yet.”
Travis flexed his right hand, and he could feel a slight tingle against his palm.
In quick sentences Falken explained to Melia the remainder of what had happened after the wraithlings had assailed her.
“It was blood, Melia,” he finished. “When the rune of founding broke again, it was blood that welled forth from the crack.”
She gazed at the distant heap of skeletal stones. “I think we know now why the White Tower fell long ago.”
Falken sighed with the night wind. “I always believed all the Pale King’s wizards were slain when their master was defeated. It seems that wasn’t so. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know how the Runebinders came to capture a Necromancer. Certainly the Dark One’s power would have been much weakened after the War of the Stones. Yet it seems the final victory was his.”
Travis edged closer to the fire. “I don’t understand, Falken. Why would they have killed a … a Necromancer at the founding of their tower?”
“Blood sorcery is a crude and primal magic,” Falken said. “But it is powerful as well. Long ago, barbarian kings drank the blood of their vanquished enemies, and mixed more blood into the mortar of their keeps, in the belief that the power of the dead ones would be transferred to the stone walls, strengthening them. I suppose the Runebinders believed the same.”
Though still weak, Melia’s voice shook with anger. “They were wrong. The arrogant fools.”
Falken gazed into the fire. “The evil of the Necromancer could not be bound by their magic, not truly. There was no way Travis’s binding could have done the same.”
Travis shivered. He could almost see the scene in his mind, the proud Runebinders in robes of ivory, gathered around the foundation of their new tower, a figure in black on his knees before them. Then the flash of a knife, and blood flowing crimson against the new white stones, not a blessing, but a curse.
“Who were the Necromancers, Falken?” Travis said.
“It was told they were once minor gods from the far south, that the Pale King gave them bodies of mortal flesh in exchange for serving him.”
Melia cast a sharp look at the bard. “It was hardly so simple as that.”
Falken shrugged. “What do I know of the affairs of gods?”
“Little enough, it seems.”
The bard ignored her comment. “It was the Necromancers who created the feydrim, the slaves of the Pale King, of which the wraithlings were the most beautiful, and the most terrible. The Pale Ones, the wraithlings, were made for just one purpose: to seek out the Imsari, the three Great Stones.” He looked at Travis. “It is said, to their eyes, the Stones leave trails of light that linger on the air, marking their passage. Only when a Stone is encased in iron does it leave no trace they can follow.”
Travis drew out the iron box—the box the beings in the light, the wraithlings, had destroyed the Magician’s Attic in an attempt to gain. Every time he had opened it he had left a trail for them to follow.
Melia extended still-trembling hands toward the fire. “It seems your guess about the nature of Travis’s Stone was correct, Falken.”
Beltan stared at the box in Travis’s hand. “You mean it’s really one of the Great Stones?”
“Yes,” Falken said. “And given that the rune inscribed on the lid of the box is Sinfath, I would guess this to be Sinfathisar, the Stone of Twilight, most subtle of the Imsari, yet still a thing of terrible power to one who knew the secret of wielding it.” His voice dropped to a grim whisper. “One, it seems, who searches for it even now.”
Falken reached into his pack, drew out another object, and unwrapped the covering cloth. It was the broken rune, the one Travis had touched in the ruins of Kelcior to alarming effect. The two halves of the ivory disk glowed in the firelight, and the sundered rune embedded in its surface gleamed silver. Krond. Fire.
“Ever since finding this in Shadowsdeep,” Falken said, “I have had my suspicions about it. However, I could not be certain those suspicions were founded, not until I studied the runestone in the tower. Now I have, and it has confirmed all my fears.”
Beltan made a nervous rumble in his throat. “And those are?”
“After the Pale King was defeated a thousand years ago, a great gate forged of iron was raised above Shadowsdeep. The gate covered the Gap of the Teeth, the only pass through the Ironfang Mountains, and the only way into and out of Imbrifale. The first Runelords bound the gate with powerful runes, and thus assured that the Pale King could never ride forth from his dominion again. Or for so long we believed, those of us who still remembered. But we were wrong.” Falken brushed the broken disk with a finger. “I know now that this is one of the three binding seals placed by the Runelords upon the door of Imbrifale. Now, somehow, it has been broken. The Rune Gate is weakening.”
Melia and Beltan stared at the bard. Travis shook his head, filled with an unnamed dread.
“But what does it mean?” he whispered.
“A Stone has come to light, wraithlings stalk the land, the Rune Gate itself falters. It can mean but one thing.” Shadows played across Falken’s face. “After a thousand years of imprisonment, the Pale King stirs once more.”
The night wind rose to a keening howl.
56.
By Grace’s tenth day in Calavere, the novelty of living in a castle had begun to wear off.
It was a sure sign one was growing accustomed to a place when one started to notice every small annoyance. There was the cold, to begin with. Everyone in the castle spoke of how winter had come early that year, and the cold was a constant, gnawing presence. It radiated from every stone of the castle, sliced like a knife through thin cracks in the walls, seeped into joints and bones until Grace ached with it. Even the heavy wool gowns she wore were no proof against the chill, and her hands especially were always cold.
The frigid temperature was worsened by the dampness of the air. The Dimduorn, the River Darkwine, was no more than a league from Calavere—a league, she had gathered, was something on the order of three miles—and nothing in the castle ever seemed completely dry. But both cold and damp she might have endured. It was the smells that got to her.
Everything in the castle smelled. Everything. The privies, the torches, the bedclothes, the food, the tapestries, the chamber pots, the candles, the corridors, and a vast majority of the people. All were foul, or pungent, or rancid, or some overpowering combination of the three. Two weeks ago she would never have believed it possible, but now she longed for the antiseptic odor of Denver Memorial Hospital. She had always hated that smell, but at least it had been the only one, designed by chemists to mask the scents of blood, vomit, and death. Here in Calavere there were times when she was tempted to take a hot poker from the fire and cauterize her nose just so she wouldn’t have to smell anything anymore.