The Runes of Norien

by Auguste Corteau

To flee the biting wind that blew from the sea, they wandered away from the shore till they found a clump of dead trees, whose great trunks, though drooped as if in acceptance of defeat, formed a sort of shelter that made the cold bearable.

  Yonfi, after promising to Yodren that he would stay in sight and come running back if he saw anyone approach, was noisily chasing the nameless girl, who, despite the misshapenness that forced her to run with a hobbling gait, was surprisingly fast, darting across the familiar dunes and patches of marshland as if her life depended on it.

  If only we could share the boldness of their youth, Yodren mused, and they all nodded in agreement; they had decided to speak in thought, a thing achievable since the bond between them had grown to the point that, by sheer proximity to the Lurienite siblings they could all engage in one big cloud of understanding; furthermore, it was still cold enough to set their teeth chattering and render any attempt at normal speech pointless.

  And the silence also befitted the glumness they had all felt descend upon them after listening to the girl’s account, whose implications they were still trying to fathom.

  Do you think, Raddia said to Wixelor, that this stone she spoke of could be –

  One of the Runes? Yes, it seems quite likely that it was the Rune of Death.

  But does that mean it is already over? That this is – the end? Gallan asked, his mind’s voice faltering from conflicting emotions, angry disbelief foremost among them.

  Not necessarily. You see, for Erat Rin – if this where we’re at, and I believe it is – to still exist, even as a shadow of its former self, it means that the destruction wasn’t complete; which in turn probably means that the devastation was somehow counterbalanced by an equal force.

  The Rune of Life, Yondren said. But there’s supposedly a third one, right?

  Yes – the Rune of Fate and Chance; however, as my parents taught me early on, the will of the First God is so obscure as to make the greatest darkness appear blinding in comparison. There really is no telling what fate and chance may bring. Yet I wouldn’t be too quick to despair; after all, there have been enough fortunate omens to give hope that ill ones won’t prevail. The mere fact that we’re all here, together, is an utterly miraculous twist of destiny: Gallan and Raddia are the first children of Lurien to conquer the fear of touch and survive in a world they’d been raised to dread; and the same goes for me: not long ago, leaving the Eye was an impossibility I wouldn’t entertain for a moment; and then of course there’s Yonfi, whose illustrious fate I think gives ample proof –

  But Wixelor’s reasoning, which had just begun to thaw their icy core of fear and doubt, was suddenly disrupted by a bloodcurdling shriek. At once they all leapt to their feet, bracing themselves against a band of man-eating savages, but then the sceam was heard again, and this time it was followed a burst of joyful girlish laughter.

  And then Yonfi appeared at the top of a nearby dune, accompanied by a girl it took them a while to recognize as the miserable creature they had encountered on the beach. Even when she stood before them, still giggling and overflowing with happiness, they couldn’t believe her utter transformation. For she was now straight and sprightly as a young cypress tree, a good head taller than Yonfi, and her face, which had been mostly hidden by lank strands of hair draping it because of her crookedness, was one of exquisite beauty: heart-shaped, with rosy, radiant skin, a perky nose above a perfect set of ruby lips, and gorgeous, captivating eyes the colour of honey. And though she still wore the same drab, shapeless thing – which hadn’t begun life as a garment – beneath it now there swelled the plumpness of a body on the verge of womanhood.

  “I just grabbed her,” Yonfi said, aglow with pride, “and she changed!”

  The girl suddenly snatched him up, raised him high and gave his exposed belly loud, ticklish kisses that sent Yonfi into a yelping ecstasy; and then she put him down, kneeled so they were the same height and held him in a fierce hug of gratitude.

  Yonfi was still breathless from the abundance of female tenderness he so clearly relished, but he had more important news to impart. “Oh, and she showed me the sun!”

  They all stared at him. “She – showed you?” Yodren said.

  “Not the real sun! But she drew me a picture on the ground, and then she pointed at it and then at me. I think she believes we have come from the sun.”

  Hearing the word repeated, the girl nodded frantically, pointing at all of them and making swooping gestures, as if to say that they had fallen from the sky.

  Puzzled, Yodren asked her to draw the sun again for them, which she promptly did, using a stick to cavre a big circle where the soil was dryer; then she added lines that emanated from the circle, which they all took to be rays of light – all but Wixelor, who was staring at the crude design with an expression of profound dismay.

  “What’s wrong?” Raddia asked him. “Have you seen this picture before?”

  But Wixelor didn’t seem to have heard her; turning to Yodren instead, he said, “Can you ask her to describe what this sun looked like? Was it very bright?”

  “From what she’s heard,” Yodren said after the two of them spoke for a bit, “she says it was bright enough to warm the entire world – so bright, in fact, that half the year it could turn your skin red, and blind you if you looked at it for too long.”

  “Is any of this familiar to you?” Gallan said, wary of Wixelor’s obvious alarm.

  However, Wixelor was already pacing to and fro, his towering figure like a tree that had sprung back to life, while from his lips came an anxious, self-intended mutter. “...first a devastation here... then the Disaster... and now once more Erat Rin lies in ruin... but how could it travel so far away so fast? Unless the threshold works both ways...”

  And as he paced, they all took a step back and averted their eyes, for as Wixelor struggled through a dense web of worry, he fleetingly assumed the form of bad dreams, of private terrors none of them wished to face at so portentous a moment.

  Yet Yodren, even though he dreaded the Dreamer’s string of thought, which he, too, was starting to follow, felt compelled to ask. “What’s the matter? Tell us, please.”

  Wixelor stopped, drew in a deep breath, and keeping his eyes firmly fixed at his bare, gigantic feet, he said, “I’m afraid their sun may be your Seventh Moon.”

 

  We are defined by the world we live in as water by its vessel; it may slosh about, thinking itself fluid and free, but it cannot escape the confines of what holds it without spilling and becoming something else entirely: mud, steam, the blood of a thirsty beast.

  So when Yodren suddenly pictured Feerien marching towards inexorable doom while its people still rejoiced at the Scavengers’ defeat and the vanquishment of the Shy Death, oblivious to what awaited them once the six moons completed their annual cycle and their evil sibling rose, his heart, already heavy, plummeted into a bottomless pit of anguish. For once neglectful of keeping appearances so as not to scare his little brother, he crumbled to his knees, teetered forward till his face touched the ground, and let out a violent wail, banging his head and his fists on the soil in an agony of mourning.

  For a moment they all stood and gazed at him, feeling utterly helpless in the face of such harrowing grief – even more so since Yodren’s outburst had seized their own hearts in a grip of sympathy; for they, too, felt forever banished from their worlds.

  Trying to shoulder the duty of the hero everyone expected him to be, Yonfi took a step towards his brother who writhed and heaved and wailed till the sound became as raw as the cry of some great wounded beast, and awakwardly patted him on his head and back, saying in a voice that wavered close to tears, “Please don’t cry, brother. If it’s Papa you’re worried about, you can stop worrying, because by now he’s surely gone to meet Mama and Yofana in Mistress Raddia’s world, where no harm can come to them.”

  But this display of affection from the boy he was supposed to protect and soothe and keep a b
rave front for, sent Yodren into an even harsher fit of self-pity. Because the reason he wept wasn’t merely the loss of his family, which he had more or less come to terms with, but the loss of his own life, whose course had been decided when he was still a child, torn from the bosom of his loving home to become a pampered prisoner poring over ancient nonsense. And now the pain had unlocked the door which kept that child tucked away in the silence of memory, and it couldn’t stop weeping, as it did in the cold hard bed of his cell during those first, excruciating nights at the Scriptorium.

  And Yonfi’s words of comfort, a lie he himself had ruthlessly fed him, suddenly made Yodren conscious of an even greater offense he had unwittingly committed: that, in the years he had spent severed from his mother – whom as a boy he’d loved more than anything in the world, more than his own life, often thinking that he’d rather die young than have to suffer the unthinkable horror of her death – he had completely forgotten her face. It was this second death he wept for, which he, aloof and careless and unloving, had allowed to pass: the obliteration of his mother’s face from his heart.

  Seeing that Yonfi’s caresses and Raddia’s mental cooing had no effect on Yodren whatsoever, Gallan did something that surprised him as much as it did everyone else: he kneeled behind Yodren, locked his arms around him, and rocked him gently back and forth. Had Lorn done the same with him, when, as a child, he wallowed in the desolation Navva so often provoked with her carelessly cruel words? Or was it a need some part of him responded to without the least involvement of the mind, something as powerful as his urge to protect Raddia at any cost? Whatever the case, before long Yodren seemed to succumb to the lull of his embrace, and wiping the slime of misery off his face he fought for breath. And then, just as he was about to let go, Gallan’s lips accidentally brushed the nape of Yodren’s neck, and some of the gifted Scribe’s proficiency passed through him in a flash – and suddenly he was able to understand the thoughts that frothed and bubbled like milk foam on the surface of the girl’s mind and which, by the mediation of Yonfi, she was anxious to share with Yodren in order to lessen his sorrow.

  “The sun may not be gone, she says,” Gallan whispered his ear. “That’s why she thought we came from there – her people believe there’s a land which wasn’t destroyed by the Stone of Death, where the sun shines still. She calls it No Place.”