Blood of Mystery (58 page)

But how much of a chance? Once time started to move again, how long did he have before the sorcerer finished his spell and killed Jack? A second? Less? Travis had to find a way to get the sorcerer’s attention, to draw it away from Jack. But what could do that?

Yes, of course.

Travis positioned himself next to Jack where the sorcerer would be sure to see him. He reached into his pocket, then lifted his hand, opening his fingers. The scarab crawled across his palm on slender gold legs. Even if the sorcerer had not intended to gain the jewel, he would not be able to resist its allure, not with it right here before him.

Now, Travis. Speak the rune of time.

Only what was it? He didn’t know that rune.

Yes, you do. Jack was right—the knowledge is already in
you. You just have to listen.

He heard the voices speaking in chorus: all of the runelords who had gone before Jack. As they spoke, he saw it burning against his brain as if outlined in blue fire: two triangles, one inverted above the other.

“Tel,”
Travis said.

And time flowed like a river undammed.

The sorcerer completed his step, coming to a halt before Jack. His black robe settled into place around him. Jack let out a strangled sound as he fell back onto the floor. The sorcerer’s splayed fingers began to close into a fist.

Fear evaporated under the heat of anger. “Get away from him,” Travis said in a hard voice.

The sorcerer’s head snapped up. The serene expression of the gold mask didn’t change, yet all the same Travis could sense confusion. There was no way the Scirathi could have known Jack’s rune had stopped time. To the sorcerer, it would seem as if Travis had appeared out of thin air.

The scarab crept onto Travis’s fingertips, and the sorcerer’s mask tilted, his hand lowered. Yes, he had seen it.

Jack drew in a gasping breath. He rolled over, then crawled toward the corner of the room. “Travis!” he called hoarsely. “The mask...”

Jack’s words were lost in a fit of coughing, but Travis understood. The mask was the key to the sorcerer’s power; he had learned that much in Denver. The Scirathi glanced at Jack and hesitated. Travis could feel him making a decision. Then the sorcerer turned his gold visage toward Travis

Travis knew he had only a second. He opened his mouth to speak
Kel
, the rune of gold, knowing he could use it to fling the mask from the sorcerer’s face.

He was too slow. The sorcerer raised a hand, and Travis’s heart lurched in his chest. A pounding drummed in his head, and sparks swam in front of his eyes. He staggered.

The rune, Travis. Speak the rune. Now.

But he had no breath with which to make a sound. He could feel his heart slowing, each beat a labor more terrible than the last. He couldn’t take his eyes off the smiling gold face before him.

Jack was shouting something. Something about blood. Or was it the chorus of voices in his mind that was speaking? It didn’t matter. Travis couldn’t hear anything over the noise in his ears.
Thud.
An eternity seemed to pass between each beat.
Thud.

The scarab, Travis. You don’t need to speak, just use the
blood. It’s your only hope.

The thunder of his heart was fading; he could hear the words now. But how could he use the scarab? It was so hard to think; he felt his mind shrinking inward.

Travis forced his eyes from the gold mask of the sorcerer. He gazed at his hand. The scarab was dipping its slender legs into a smear of blood on his palm. It seemed excited by the fluid and began moving quickly. Maybe he didn’t have to know what to do; maybe the scarab did. Maybe that was its mystery.

Thud.

Movement was agony; all the same Travis turned over his hand. The scarab scuttled from his palm to the back of his hand. A line of blood still oozed from the cut just below his knuckles. The gold spider followed it eagerly until it reached the open wound.

Thud...

The sorcerer closed his fist, and the thudding of Travis’s heart ceased. His vision dimmed, and he watched as if through a veil as the scarab extended a pair of gold chelicerae toward the wound on the back of his hand. Like a tiny ruby, a single drop of crimson fluid appeared between the spider’s chelicerae.

The sorcerer hissed, and the invisible hand that gripped Travis’s heart let go. He reeled back as the organ shuddered painfully into motion again. With a cry, the Scirathi snaked out a hand and snatched the scarab from him. In a single motion, the sorcerer tilted his head back, poised the jewel above the mouth slit of his mask, and crushed it.

Nothing came out.

Travis lifted his hand and stared. There had been one drop of blood left in the scarab; he had seen it. Where had the drop of blood gone?

Gold fire surged through his veins, and he knew the answer.

Travis’s spine arched. He threw back his head and screamed. When the fires of Krondisar consumed him, he had known a pain more terrible than any he had ever endured in his life. However, this was worse than pain. He could feel it as a chain reaction in his blood. As one cell changed, it caused those next to it to undergo the same metamorphosis. It was like a cancer, only faster than wildfire, and it blazed through arms, his chest, his legs. Then the fire burned up into his brain. The world became a cauldron of molten gold. He fell to his knees, his hands twisted into claws before him.

The fire ceased. There was no fuel left to burn; the change was complete. Slowly, Travis unclenched his hands. Faint but visible, gold sparks swam just beneath his skin. Then they were gone.

What’s happened to you, Travis?

But he knew. He had seen Xemeth undergo the same transformation in the Etherion. Only Xemeth’s change had not been accompanied by agony; it had been nearly instantaneous. Then again, Xemeth had consumed three drops of the blood of Orú, and there was only one in Travis’s veins.

“Now, Travis!” Jack shouted. “Stop him before he completes his spell!”

Travis jerked his head up. The sorcerer had retreated and cast down the crumpled remains of the empty scarab. He drew out a small knife and made a gash across his left arm. Dark blood oozed out. A chant emanated from behind the gold mask. The stream of blood on the Scirathi’s arm vanished, as if evaporating. A spasm passed through him, but he kept mumbling dissonant words.

Now Travis saw it, forming on the air like a blob of shadow. The shadow twisted in upon itself, gaining strength and substance as it drank the sorcerer’s blood. With a cry, the sorcerer thrust his hand out, and the shadow struck like a viper, uncoiling itself, heading straight toward Travis’s throat.

A fierce smile sliced across Travis’s face. If it was blood the shadow wanted, then he would give it some—blood far more powerful than the sorcerer’s could ever be. He held up his wounded hand.

The shadow halted in mid-strike. It rippled, slithering through the air, and coiled itself around Travis’s arm. A sick sensation filled him as he felt the shadow suckling at his wound. It pulsed along its length, growing larger, sleeker, and far stronger than it had been.

“Yes, that’s it,” Travis whispered. “Drink.”

The sorcerer froze, staring with empty gold eyes——then turned to flee the room.

With a flick of his hand, Travis sent the shadow to do its task. The viper shot out and struck the sorcerer in the back like a black spear. Something gold went flying and clattered to the floor. The Scirathi screamed, arms flung wide, back arching, as the shadow passed through him. Then it was gone.

The sorcerer fell to the floor. There was no hole in his black robe where the shadow had struck him. All the same, he did not move.

“Well,” said a hoarse but shockingly cheerful voice, “that was a remarkable display.”

Jack crawled across the floor, retrieved something, then used the bureau to pull himself to his feet. His face was ashen, his blue eyes were bright.

“Jack,” Travis croaked. Every joint and muscle in his body ached, as if he was recovering from a severe fever. “Jack, are you all right?”

“I was going to ask the same of you. You look as white as a sheet. I’m quite well now, thank you. Though if I hadn’t managed to stop things with the rune of time, I wouldn’t have been well at all. My heart felt ready to leap right out of my chest. That’s quite a spell this fellow was able to cast.”

Jack raised the object in his hands. It was the sorcerer’s gold mask. He spun it around, then started to lift it. “I wonder if I might be able to—”

“Don’t even try,” Travis said.

Jack sighed, then tossed the mask back to the floor. “I suppose you’re right. One brand of wizardry is quite enough for me.” He raised an eyebrow. “Although I don’t think you’ll be able to say the same anymore.”

Travis lifted his hand. The wound was closed now; only a faint white scar remained. All traces of blood were gone. Fear filled him. But there was another sensation as well, one even more disturbing. It was exhilaration.

Travis moved across the room to the crumpled black heap. With his boot, he flipped it over. A ruin of a face stared up at him, so covered with scar tissue it was barely recognizable as human. Only the eyes revealed that this had once been a man; they stared upward in empty supplication. Travis knelt, reached into the sorcerer’s robe, and pulled out the gate artifact. He rose.

Jack stood next to him. “I suppose this means you’ll be going soon.” His voice was sad but resigned.

Travis smiled at his old friend. “Don’t worry, Jack. I’ll see you again.”

“No, I’ll see you again. In a century or so. But not the other way around, I fear.”

Travis reached up and slipped off his wire-rimmed spectacles. He held them out. Both of the lenses were cracked; in all the chaos, he hadn’t noticed. “I think I’d better give these to you. For safekeeping.”

Jack took the spectacles, folded them up, and slipped them into the pocket of his waistcoat. “I’ll give them to you when I see you again.”

Travis shivered. How could you say good-bye to someone knowing you would never see him alive again? But sometimes you had to. “Thanks, Jack.” He gripped Jack’s right hand between both of his own and squeezed. “For everything.”

Jack’s smile was slightly befuddled, yet full of cheer all the same. “By the love of Isis and Osiris, of course, my boy. You’re quite welcome. Now, don’t you think we should go find the others and see how they’re doing? I imagine they’ve all had quite a fright. We should fetch them and have a cup of tea before you go.”

PART FIVE

THE BLACK TOWER

64.

Travis had always heard it said that time was like a river: a great flood flowing inexorably to its destination and atop whose currents one could only drift. But to Travis, time was more like a hall with many rooms—chambers in which one dwelled for a while, either short or long, before opening the door and stepping through to see what was next.

They passed through many such doors and rooms—many such times—on the road to the Black Tower.

There was their time in Castle City, their last few hours there. It seemed odd that they should have to hurry. After all, if Jack was right about what they would find at the Tower of the Runebreakers, then they had all the time in the world. There was no reason they couldn’t stay at the boardinghouse with Maudie and Tanner, at least for a little while. No reason except the dark circles beneath Sareth’s eyes, the shadows in the hollows of his cheeks, the rasping cadence of his breathing.

“We have to go now,” Lirith said, pulling Travis into the dining room, her face drawn, exhausted. The others were gathered in the parlor where Sareth lay unconscious on the sofa. “I can’t hold on to his thread much longer.”

“But traveling through the Void again—won’t it make him worse?”

She shook her head. “The damage has already been done. On Eldh, I believe I can bind his thread. But not here.”

It didn’t take long to get ready. They gathered their scant possessions, and Travis set the gate artifact in the center of the parlor floor. The onyx tetrahedron absorbed the light, but Travis knew what it really wanted. Blood.

“What is all this?” Maudie said, her voice edging into panic. “What’s going on?”

Tanner gripped her hand. “I’ll try to explain it later, Maude.”

“I believe I can help you in that regard,” Jack said.

Maudie shook her head; she was calmer now. “No, I think I understand.” She looked at Travis, Lirith, and Durge. “You’re going somewhere, aren’t you?”

Travis nodded. “To another world.”

Her green eyes were startled for only a moment. Then she pressed her hand to her chest. “I suppose I’ll be traveling soon, too. To another world.”

They made their farewells swiftly, as if that somehow made the pain less. Travis shook Tanner’s hand. What could he possibly say to express what he felt? He settled for saying, “Thank you, Sheriff, for everything.”

“You’re welcome, Mr. Wilder. But Miss Lily is right. It’s Mr. Tanner now.” He cast a glance at Maudie, who was giving Lirith a fierce hug. “I sent to the governor for a new sheriff over a week ago. When he comes in a few days, I’ll turn in my badge.”

“But what will you do?”

Tanner shrugged. “Mr. Manypenny’s always said he has a job waiting for me, so I suppose I’ll take him up on that. And I need some time to follow Miss Lily’s instructions and get myself off the laudanum. But mostly, I want to spend it with Maude. The time she has left.”

Travis glanced at Maudie. She was hugging Durge now, holding on as if for dear life, but the stoic knight didn’t resist. “I’m glad,” Travis said.

It was midnight. Durge and Travis laid Sareth on the carpet next to the gate, and Lirith knelt beside him. Travis removed the triangular top of the artifact, exposing the reservoir within. Travis took the Malachorian stiletto and made a small cut on his left arm. A red line of blood flowed, dripping into the artifact, filling the reservoir.

Travis replaced the onyx triangle atop the artifact. For a second he feared nothing would happen. After all, only a single drop of blood from the god-king Orú had entered his veins. Then the gate crackled into being: a dark oval rimmed by blue fire. The last thing Travis heard was Jack’s voice saying, “By Jove, what a grand adventure this will be!”

And it was like a door opening and shutting, taking them from one room to the next.

After that came their time in Tarras. It was a slow, quiet time, warmed by a gentle southern sun, redolent with the scents of spices, oranges, and the sea. A healing time.

For a month, they rented a small white house in the bustling fourth circle of Tarras. It had been both Durge’s and Lirith’s idea to come to the city. Durge had reasoned Tarras would have changed less in a hundred years compared to the Dominions, and thus the four had a better chance of reaching their destination intact if they visualized the ancient city when they stepped through the gate. Lirith’s reason was different but no less compelling: In Tarras, of all places, she knew she could find the herbs and medicines she needed.

The first three days were the worst. Sareth drifted in and out of consciousness, his body shaking and drenched with sweat, as Lirith worked over him without rest. She sent Durge and Travis on many errands to fetch herbs, spices, and oils. Her medicines had an effect, reducing his fever and the severity of his spasms. All the same, it seemed her work would be for nothing. The shadows in his cheeks deepened; dark lines snaked up from the stump of his leg, spreading across his body.

Then, on the third night, as a full moon rose over the sea, a knock came at the door. Durge opened it, and three women in green robes drifted in. Travis knew at once they were witches. Hadn’t Lirith once said she had found a coven in Tarras? But they were strange and secret, not like the witches of the north. All the same, they were there.

The three women said nothing. Or at least, nothing that Travis or Durge could hear. However, Lirith stood quickly, her dark eyes locked on the witches. The three women joined hands with Lirith, forming a circle around Sareth. They shut their eyes, and it seemed nothing happened as, for an hour, they stood without moving.

Then Sareth sat up, his eyes open and clear.

Without spoken words, the three women in green turned and moved through the door, into the night. Lirith was on her knees, her arms around Sareth, sobbing.

“Beshala,”
he said softly, resting his head on hers. “I’m here,
beshala
. I’ll never leave you again.”

She pulled away, gazing at him with frightened eyes. “And won’t you, Sareth?”

“No,” he said. And again, “No.”

A gasp escaped her. The moment was too private, too sharp with fresh pain. Travis and Durge retreated into the other room, shutting the door behind them.

After that, Sareth’s strength returned a little more each day. In a week he was making music on a reed flute he had fashioned for himself. In two weeks he was moving about the house on the new wooden leg Durge had carved for him, and in three he took his first steps outside. Color returned to his coppery cheeks. He laughed often, especially when Lirith was in view.

Their love was clear, in his smile, in her eyes. All the same, Travis sensed something holding them back from one another. Their touches were tender, but tentative, fleeting. Travis didn’t know the reason, and nor was it his place to ask.

Sareth was not the only one who recovered as the weeks went past. All of them had been weak and exhausted after their ordeal in Castle City. However, the wound in Durge’s side healed under Lirith’s ministrations, and Lirith herself seemed to bloom like a flower under the warm Tarrasian sun.

Travis’s own wounds, received in the gunfight, had been healed when he turned the spell of blood magic against the sorcerer—although he couldn’t stop using his tongue to probe the empty socket of his missing molar. As for the cut he had made on his arm, it had closed after passing through the gate. Sometimes he ran a finger over the pale scar. How many more would mark his body in the coming years? Would he one day be forced to use a mask to hide the ruin of his face?

Troubling as those thoughts were, he didn’t dwell on them. The fact was, despite the alien blood running in his veins, he felt good. Not powerful or strange or terrible. Just good. The voices of the runelords in his mind were quiet, and even Tanner’s knowledge of gunfighting—which Lirith had granted him—had faded away as the spell unraveled. He was Travis: nothing more and nothing less.

Their only real worry was money. There was the rent to pay, and food, and soon they would need to buy horses and supplies for a long journey. They had some gold dollars from Castle City they were able to spend. Lirith made simples and potions and sold them to the neighbors, and both Durge and Travis hired themselves out for day labor. In the end, however, Travis was forced to sell some of his things. He couldn’t bear to part with the Malachorian stiletto. However, he sold the mistcloak Falken had given him to a merchant, and he sold Jack’s handwritten book to a curious scholar at the University of Tarras.

“My research is specialized in pagan mythology of the north,” the scholar said, eyes eager. “It’s quite fascinating in its crudeness and barbarism, wouldn’t you agree?”

Travis only gave a tight smile. He hated selling the book. That last night in Castle City, Jack had told him to keep it as a memento, and it was the only copy Jack had made. However, the scholar had offered a huge sum of gold for it, and he had promised to donate the book to the university library when he was finished with it, which made Travis feel a bit better.

Finally, when the moon was full again, it was time to pass through another door; it was time to journey north.

Traveling was easy at first. They followed the Queen’s Way north, staying at the clean, if austere, Tarrasian hostels that were spaced precisely a day’s ride apart. Things grew rougher when they reached Gendarra and the other Free Cities, and rougher yet as they traveled into the Dominions.

“Calavan and the other Dominions are going to get considerably more civilized over the next century or so, aren’t they?” Travis said, as they rode past the umpteenth band of ragged peasants laboring outside a cluster of daub-and-wattle huts.

“Fortunately,” Durge said, his nose wrinkling at the stench.

“Of course, some Dominions will always remain a step ahead of others,” Lirith said brightly.

Durge cast her a sharp look, and Sareth laughed. “Be careful,
beshala
. You meant to number Embarr among the more civilized Dominions, didn’t you?”

“But of course,” she said.

In the Dominions there were no hostels, and inns were few and far between. Occasionally they stayed in the manor of some local lord, but increasingly they found themselves camping out. Travis didn’t mind. It was late summer, and while the days were gold and warm, the nights were cool and bright with stars. He would watch them wheel slowly in the heavens until sleep came.

Days passed, and weeks, as they rode across the rolling terrain of Calavan and Brelegond. Then, on the first day of Revendath, in a year none of them could number, they reached the edge of the Dominions. To the north was the rocky line of the Fal Sinfath, the Gloaming Fells. Travis knew the Black Tower lay at the western tip of that range.

“We’ll be riding through wild and empty lands from now on,” Durge said. “I believe we should hire guides who know this corner of the world.”

However, they were in a dirty village on the far western marches of Brelegond, and the only scouts they found for hire were two sons of a freeman farmer. They were stocky men with rough hands and dull eyes. Travis didn’t miss the look the father gave the sons when he accepted a handful of gold from Durge and told the two young men to guide the travelers where they wished.

The brothers did seem to know the wilderness well. They led the riders through dense forests and over moors, avoiding bogs and deep gorges, always picking out a navigable path, always keeping the mountains to the right.

The murder attempt came on the fifth night. By the stars it was well after midnight when Travis woke to see a shadow above him. Moonlight glinted off the pale edge of a knife.

Speak a rune, Travis,
he told himself. But did he dare? What would it be like to work rune magic with the blood of sorcery running in his veins?

“Step away from him,” Durge rumbled.

The young man scrambled to his feet. Durge stood five paces away, legs apart, his greatsword—which he had kept concealed in a blanket these last days—naked in his hands, all four feet of its blade gleaming in the silver light. The knight’s eyes were merciless pits of shadow.

“Now begone with you, lest you suffer my wrath.”

The farmer’s son stared as if he had seen some fabled monster emerge from the depths of the woods. He dropped his knife and ran, his wail rising in the air. His brother, who had been bending over Sareth, did the same. After a minute, their cries faded into silence.

“Do you think they’ll come back?” Sareth asked.

Durge snorted as he sheathed his sword. “Would you?”

“Now that you mention it,” Sareth said, “no.”

Just to be safe, they kept watch all night, but they saw no trace of their two scouts. At last dawn drew near.

“I don’t blame you for chasing away our guides, Durge,” Lirith said as she stirred the coals of the campfire and nestled the
maddok
pot among them. “But do you think we’ll be able to find our way?”

Just then the sun lifted above the low downs that were the last remnants of the Fal Sinfath, and Travis saw the black finger of stone jutting into the sky.

“We already have,” he said.

Another door, another room. Their journey was over. A new time had begun.

Unlike the Gray Tower of the Runespeakers, the Black Tower was not carved from the hill it stood on. Rather, it was built of a stone that seemed alien to this region. It was nothing like the gray rock of the Fal Erenn, but was greenish black and had an oily feel to it. The spire rose over a hundred feet to a horned summit, its walls without windows.

A single door was set into the base of the tower. Though made of iron, the door was untouched by rust. To Travis’s surprise, there were no runes carved on the door. It was featureless, save for a small keyhole in the center.

“I suppose we’ve journeyed all this way for nothing,” Durge said. “Unless Lord Graystone happened to give you a key?”

Travis shook his head. But it didn’t matter; somehow he didn’t think he’d need one, that this place would know him. He pressed his hand against the door.

There was a deep, grinding sound. The door swung open. A puff of dry air struck their faces.