The First Stone

by Mark Anthony

  However, as much as she cared for all her friends, it was to Travis her thoughts most often turned.

  I want so badly to talk to you, Travis, Grace thought, gazing into her goblet of wine and wishing she had the power to see a vision in it as Lirith sometimes could, wishing she could get a glimpse of him. I think you’d understand what I’m feeling better than I do.

  Only what was she feeling? It was so strange. There was a sorrow, yes. But there was something else: a tinge of nervous expectation. But what exactly was she expecting to happen?

  For them to not need you anymore.

  It was the dry doctor’s voice that spoke in her mind, making its diagnosis. The thought startled her, but not so much for its suddenness as for how true it felt.

  You did your part, Grace, you gave Malachor a second chance to be. But its people don’t need a queen, not anymore. They’ve built this kingdom themselves. Why can’t they rule it themselves?

  Yes, it made sense. If Travis could create a world, then depart from it, why couldn’t she do the same with a kingdom? She pressed a hand to her chest, feeling the rapid beating of her heart.

  “Are you all right, Your Majesty?” spoke a sharp-edged voice.

  Grace looked up from her wine to see Master Larad standing above her. He was clad in a twilight blue robe. His eyes glittered in a face that was made a fractured mosaic by a webwork of fine white scars.

  She sighed. “Why does everyone keep asking me that tonight?”

  He shrugged but said nothing. Larad never offered an answer unless he had a strong opinion.

  “Did you speak to Alfin, the young man from Brelegond?” she said in hopes of changing the subject.

  “Yes, for a few moments.” Larad’s expression soured. “Before Sir Tarus whisked him away. More confirmation will be needed, but I believe Alfin has significant talent.”

  Grace smiled. “So, is everything well in your new tower?”

  She had ordered a tower to be raised on the south side of the keep for the use of Larad and the Runelords, and construction had just recently been completed. The tower included a chamber on its highest floor built to house the three Imsari, for it was the mission of the new Runelords to guard the Great Stones. The tower also housed a runestone: a relic covered with writings of the Runelords of old, and which the new Runelords were actively studying. The runestone had been discovered beneath the keep last year, when the Embarran engineers performed an excavation in order to make some repairs to the foundations.

  “It’s not my tower, Your Majesty,” Larad said, glowering. “It is yours. The Runelords dwell here at your pleasure.”

  “No,” Grace said softly, tightening her right hand into a fist. “No, it’s not up to me. This is your home.”

  Larad gave her a speculative look, but he did not respond to this statement. Instead he said, “I am sorry to disturb you during a time of merriment, Your Majesty, but I have made a discovery that I did not believe could wait.”

  Actually, Grace suspected Larad was not sorry at all to disturb her with important news, and that was one reason she appreciated him. “What is it?”

  “There’s something wrong with the runes.”

  “You mean there’s something wrong with a specific rune you’re trying to understand?”

  He sat at the high table beside her, his dark eyes intent. “No, Your Majesty, I mean with all runes. I began to suspect something was amiss about a month ago. Some of my fellow Runelords were beginning to have difficulty speaking runes they had previously mastered. They would speak a runespell just as they had before, but only a feeble energy would result, or no energy at all. I sent a missive to the Gray Tower, hoping for advice from All-master Oragien, and last week I received his reply. It seems the same troubles have been plaguing the rune-speakers there. Since then, I have performed many experiments, but only today were my misgivings proven beyond doubt.”

  “How?” Grace said, her throat tight.

  Larad held out his hand. On it was a triangular lump of black stone. One side was rough, the other three smooth and incised with runes. “This is a piece of the runestone, the one that was discovered beneath the keep.”

  Shock coursed through Grace. “Why did you do it? Why did you speak the rune of breaking on the runestone?”

  “I didn’t, Your Majesty,” Larad said with a rueful look. “This morning, one of the apprentices discovered this piece lying next to the runestone. It broke off on its own. And once I examined the runestone carefully, I saw many fine cracks that had not been there before.”

  “But you can bind it again,” Grace said, glad the music drifting down from the gallery masked the rising pitch of her voice. “You can speak the rune of binding and fix it.”

  “So I thought, until I tried.” Larad tightened his hand around the broken stone. “Despite all my efforts, I could not bind this piece back to the runestone.”

  That was impossible. Larad was a Runelord—a real Runelord, like Travis Wilder. Speaking the rune of binding should not have been beyond him. Only it was.

  Grace recalled her earlier conversation with Lursa. “You should talk to the witches. They’ve been having difficulty weaving a new spell. Maybe it’s not just rune magic that’s being affected.”

  Larad raised an eyebrow. “If so, that is dark news indeed. I will speak to the witches. Perhaps they have sensed something I have not.”

  And I’ll speak to some witches as well, Grace added to herself, resolved to ask Aryn and Lirith about it the next time they contacted her.

  Larad begged his leave, and once the Runelord was gone Grace was no longer in the mood for revelry. She bid Melia and Falken and Kel good night, putting on a cheerful face. Even if Master Larad was right—and Grace had no doubt he was— there was no use spoiling the revel for everyone else until they knew more.

  She left the great hall, ascended a spiral staircase, and started down the corridor that led to her chamber. The passage was dim, illuminated by only a scant collection of oil lamps, and as she rounded a corner she did not see the servingwoman until she collided with her. The old woman let out a grunt, and something fell to the floor.

  “I’m sorry,” Grace said, stumbling back. “I didn’t see you there.”

  The other wore a shapeless gray dress and oversized bonnet. She bowed low and muttered fervently, no doubt making an apology, though Grace couldn’t understand a word of it.

  “It’s all right,” Grace said. “Really, it was my fault.”

  However, the old woman kept ducking her head.

  So much for the whole not terrifying the servants thing, Grace thought with a sigh. She glanced down and saw that the object the old woman had dropped had rolled to a stop next to her feet. It was a ball of yarn. Grace bent to pick it up.

  “Oh!” she said.

  Carefully, she pulled the needle from the tip of her finger. It had been sticking out of the ball of yarn, but she hadn’t seen it in the dim light.

  “Well, I suppose that evens the score,” she said with a wry smile.

  Grace stuck the needle back into the ball of yarn, then held the ball out. The old woman accepted it in a wrinkled hand. She muttered something unintelligible—still not looking up —then shuffled away down the corridor, her ashen dress blending with the gloom. Grace shrugged, sucked on her bleeding finger, and headed to her chamber.

  Two men-at-arms stood outside the door. Though it irked her they were always stationed there, they were one of the concessions she had made to Sir Tarus. The men-at-arms saluted as she approached. Grace gave them a self-conscious nod in return— she still had no idea how she was supposed to greet them, if at all—then slipped into her room and pressed the door shut behind her, sighing at the blissful silence. Maybe the men-at-arms weren’t such a bad idea after all. They could keep King Kel from barging in at odd hours and asking her to dance.

  Bone-tired, she shucked off her woolen dress and shrugged on a nightgown, wincing as she did. Though the pain in her right arm never entirely went awa
y, most of the time it was a dull, bearable ache. Tonight, however, despite all the wine she had drunk, it throbbed fiercely.

  She held her arm to her chest, gazing at the lone candle burning on the sideboard. Its flame blazed hotly, just like his eyes had, burning into her as he raised his scepter, ready to smite her down. Only at the last moment the sky had broken, and as he looked up she had thrust the sword Fellring through a chink in his armor, up into his chest, cleaving the Pale King’s enchanted iron heart in two.

  Fellring had shattered in the act, and Grace’s sword arm had been numb and lifeless for days afterward. Only slowly, over the course of many months, had she regained the use of it, and she knew it would never be the same again. But none of them were; the battles they had fought had changed them forever, and maybe it was all right to have some scars. That way they would never forget what they had done.

  Grace blew out the candle and climbed into bed.

  It wasn’t long before a dream took her, and an hour later she sat up, staring into the dark, her hair tangled with sweat. She clutched the bedclothes, willing her breathing to slow.

  It was only a dream, Grace, she told herself, but it was hard to hear her own thoughts over the pounding in her ears.

  It had been a wedding. The dream was so vivid, she could almost see them still: a king dressed all in white, and a queen clad in black. A radiance emanated from him, and he was handsome beyond all other men; a halo of light adorned his tawny head like a crown. She was like night to his day: dark of hair and eye and skin, a mysterious beauty wearing a gown woven of the stuff of shadows. They gazed at one another with a look of love. He took her dusky fingers in his pale hand as the priest—a commanding figure all in gray—spoke the rites of marriage.

  Only before the priest could finish the words, a figure strode forward, a gigantic warrior. The people who had gathered to witness the marriage fled screaming, and the priest ran after them. The couple turned to face their foe. The warrior was neither light nor dark, solid nor transparent. He could be seen only by his jagged outlines, for where he was there was nothing at all, and he held a sword forged of nothingness in his hand.

  You are the end of everything, the white king said.

  The black queen shook her head. No, she said, her dark eyes full of sorrow. He is the beginning of nothing.

  The warrior swung his empty sword, and both their heads, light and dark, fell to the ground, their bodies tumbling after.

  That was when Grace woke. She climbed from the bed, lit the candle with a coal from the fire, and threw a shawl about her; despite the balmy night she was shivering.

  Grace didn’t usually place much stock in dreams, but once she had had dreams about Travis Wilder that had come true, and this dream had been unusually vivid, like those had been. Only what did it mean? She didn’t recognize the light king or the dark queen, though in a way they made her think of Durge’s alchemical books. She had paged through some of them when she packed up the knight’s possessions a few months after he died. The books had been written in a kind of code and were rife with metaphorical tales about fiery men marrying watery ladies, resulting in the birth of new child elements with fantastical properties, such as the power to turn lead to gold, or to cause a man to live forever.

  However, the king and queen in her dream hadn’t created something new. They had been slain. Slain by . . . nothing. Grace had no idea what it meant, if it meant anything at all. Which it almost certainly didn’t, she reminded herself. Dreams were simply the brain’s janitors, cleaning out the day’s synaptic garbage.

  All the same, she knew rest would be impossible for the remainder of the night, and she felt trapped in the stuffy chamber. She needed to get out, to breathe some fresh air.

  She padded to the door, weaving a quick spell about herself, so that the men-at-arms outside would detect her passing as no more than a fleeting shadow. It was a simple spell, but at first the threads of the Weirding seemed to slip through her fingers and tangle themselves in knots.

  You’re just half-asleep, Grace, that’s all.

  She concentrated, and after some effort the spell was complete. It unraveled after less than a minute, but by then she was already ascending a spiral staircase and was well out of sight of the men-at-arms. Getting back into the chamber was going to be tricky, but she could worry about that later.

  Pushing through a door, Grace stepped onto the battlements atop the keep. The night was clear and moonless. A zephyr caught her hair, brushing it back from her face, and she breathed deeply, feeling the sweat and fear of her dream evaporate.

  Grace approached the south side of the battlement and cast her gaze upward. The stars were brighter and far closer-seeming than those of Earth, as if Eldh’s heavens were not so very distant. She searched for a single point of crimson among the thousands of cool silver, hoping to glimpse Tira’s star. It wasn’t the same as hugging the small, silent, flame-haired girl who had become a goddess, but seeing her star always made Grace feel a little closer to her.

  However, there was no sign of Tira’s star near the peaks of the mountains. Maybe the hour was later than Grace thought. She craned her neck, raising her gaze higher into the sky.

  It felt as if an invisible anesthesia mask had been pressed to her face, filling her lungs with cold, paralyzing her. The wind snatched her shawl from her shoulders, and it fluttered away like a wraith in the gloom. In the center of the sky was a dark hole where no stars shone. The hole was larger than Eldh’s large moon, its edges jagged like the warrior in her dream.

  Only that was impossible. A circle of stars couldn’t simply vanish. Something was simply covering them up—a cloud perhaps. She blinked; and then she did see something in the dark rift: a fiery spark. Was it Tira’s star?

  No. The spark grew brighter, closer, descending toward Grace. A new wind struck her face, hot and acrid, knocking her back a step. Vast, membranous wings unfurled like shadows, and the one spark resolved into two: a pair of blazing eyes. Even as Grace realized what it was, the dragon swooped down, alighting atop the battlement, its talons digging into solid stone as the keep groaned beneath its weight.

  Grace knew she had to flee. She should run down the stairs and sound an alarm. Only then the dragon moved its sinuous neck, turning its wedge-shaped head toward her, and she could not move. So close was the thing that she could feel its dusty breath on her face as it spoke, and in that moment she realized she had met this creature once before.

  “The end of all things draws nigh, Grace Beckett,” the dragon Sfithrisir hissed. “And you and Travis Wilder must stop it.”

  11.

  The dragon folded its wings against its sleek body; the stones of the keep shuddered under its weight. Four years ago, when they first encountered Sfithrisir in a high valley in the Fal Erenn, Grace had thought the dragon looked like an enormous, sooty swan. Now it seemed more like a vulture to her. Its featherless hide absorbed the starlight, and its eyes glowed like coals. The small, saurian head wove slowly at the end of a ropelike neck, and a constant hiss of steam escaped the bony hook of its beak.

  Fear and smoke choked her. For some reason the reek made her think of the smell of burning books. Grace fought for breath and to keep her wits. She had to have both if she was going to survive.

  “Answer . . . answer me this, and an answer you shall have,” she said in a trembling voice, speaking the ancient greeting she had learned from Falken, and the proper way to address a dragon. “One secret for one secret in trade. Why have you—?”

  “Mist and misery!” the dragon snorted, the words emanating from deep in its gullet. “There is no time for foolish rituals concocted by mortals whose bones have long ago turned to dust. I did not come here to barter with you for secrets, Blademender. The age for such petty games is over. Did you not hear what I spoke? The end of all things comes. Have you not seen the rift in the sky? Surely it has grown large enough that even your mortal eyes can see it now. And it will keep growing. Now it conceals the stars, but soon it
will swallow them, and worlds as well. It will not cease until it has consumed everything there is to consume, until all that remains is nothing.”

  Grace gritted her teeth and did her best to look the dragon in the eyes, though matching the weaving of its head made her queasy. Sfithrisir wasn’t lying about the rift; dragons could only speak truth—though that truth was always twisted to their own ends.

  “I don’t understand, Sfithrisir,” she said, sticking to the truth as closely as she could, but formulating it carefully, like a dragon herself. “I thought the destruction of the world was what your kind craved.” The dragons had existed long before the Worldsmith created Eldh, dwelling in the gray mists before time.

  “The end of the world, yes! How I loathe this wretched creation.” His talons raked the stones, cracking them. “It is a prison, binding us and everything in it. Blast the Worldsmith for making it.”

  Despite her fear, Grace managed a grim laugh. “Travis Wilder is the Worldsmith now.”

  “Do you think I do not know that, mortal?” The dragon ruffled its wings. “I am Sfithrisir, He Who Is Seen And Not Seen. In all of time, no one’s hoard of secrets has been greater than mine. I know what Travis Wilder has done. Runebreaker he was. He destroyed the world just as I knew he would. Only then he betrayed us by making it anew. That I had not foreseen, and if I could, I would burn him to ashes for it.”

  Grace held a hand to her forehead. “If you’re so mad at Travis for forging the world again, shouldn’t you be happy about the rift in the sky?”

  “You know nothing, mortal. Do you think this material thing you see before you is all that I am?”

  The dragon sidled closer and the air about it rippled, distorting everything around it like images seen through crystal. It felt as if Grace’s own body was stretching and contracting in impossible dimensions. The sensation was not painful, but wrenching and deeply wrong.