Beyond the Pale (36 page)

“Truly?”

“No. Yes. I mean, everyone seems to think King Boreas has some hidden reason for calling the council. I suppose that’s something. But it doesn’t really tell me where anyone stands. After all, they had no choice but to come to the council. Logren said that to refuse would be an act of—”

Then it hit her. She looked at Durge.

“—an act of war,” he said.

She nodded. The thought was so disturbing she almost didn’t want to think it. What if Boreas had hoped one of the other Dominions
wouldn’t
come to the council?

Durge stroked his drooping mustaches. “I can’t say I know much about being a spy. However, I suppose the first rule is to be suspicious of everyone. That includes me, of course.” Now he frowned. “Which means, I suppose, that you really shouldn’t listen to my advice.”

Grace shook her head. “No, it’s good. Your advice, I mean. You’re right—if I’ve learned one thing tonight, it’s that I can’t trust anybody.”
Even King Boreas
, she added to herself.

“You mean I was a help to you, my lady?”

She touched his hand. “Yes, you were.”

After this the feast began to wind down, and Grace found herself yawning. The sounds of conversation turned to a low drone in her ears, and the smell of smoke made her mind dull and hazy. She sipped her wine and stared absently at a heap of evergreen boughs in a corner.

The heap of evergreen boughs stared back.

Grace sat up straight in her chair. There, among the tangled branches—a pair of nut-brown eyes gazed straight at her. Something moved and shook the branches. She caught a glimpse of a round, bearded face and small hands. However, that was not the strangest thing. For face, hands, and beard alike had all been as green as the boughs of fir themselves.

Grace turned and grabbed Durge’s arm. “Look!” she whispered. “Over in the corner!”

But even as she turned back she knew it was gone. The heap of branches was still.

“I see nothing, my lady.”

She shook her head. “I’m certain it was there. A small man, with brown eyes and green skin.…”

Even as she said it she realized how absurd it must sound.

“Perhaps it was simply the wine,” Durge said.

Grace sighed and gripped her stomach. “Maybe it was the subtleties.”

Either way she decided to call it a night. She bade Durge good-bye, gave her farewells to the king, and found a page who was willing to take her back to her chamber.

And all that night she dreamt of subtleties shaped like small green men.

The day after the fire at the mad lord’s house, Travis received his first lesson in runecraft.

They left the glow of the burning manor far behind and rode all the remainder of that night. Shortly after dawn, weary from the night’s ordeal, Falken decided they should stop to rest, but then Beltan rode back from scouting ahead. The big knight had seen a robed procession of men and women approaching on the Queen’s Way. The others exchanged frightened looks. Perhaps the Raven cultists were on the road by chance. But perhaps not—for Travis had told the others of the hot brand Sebaris had tried to use to mark his forehead. The four travelers hid in a tangled thicket beside the road and watched the cultists pass. Some carried staves decorated with black feathers, and all wore the sign of the Raven traced in ashes on their foreheads.

When the way was clear they emerged from cover, then rode south all the rest of that morning and well into the afternoon. At last they came upon a
talathrin
hidden in a hollow beside the road. The cool scent of
alasai
was a balm to their fire-scorched lungs.

“The Raven priests will not trouble us here,” Melia said.

Travis was not sure if she meant this was because of the innate goodness of the Way Circle, or because of something the amber-eyed lady had arranged herself. Either way, when they dismounted and entered the tangled circle of trees, his fear receded.

They made camp and ate a small meal in silence. They had just finished stowing away the cooking gear when Falken spoke the words Travis had been dreading all day.

“I think it’s time we had a talk, Travis.”

Travis didn’t need to look up to know Melia’s gaze was turned in his direction. Beltan sat a short way off. The knight sharpened his sword with a stone, a task that appeared to absorb him, but from the way his head was cocked it was clear he was listening.

“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 though 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.”