Beyond the Pale (37 page)

Beltan pointed to another pole. “Or maybe a cripple, and different, like this one.” Despite decay, the corpse’s clubfoot was apparent.

They rode farther down the line of poles. Beneath one was a heap of half-burned books.

Falken sighed. “So reading books is a crime as well. What’s going on here?”

They found something of an answer on the last of the poles. The corpse bound to the top was so mangled as to appear hardly human. Another crude placard had been nailed below.

This be what happens to heretics and runespeakers
.

Travis gave Falken a fearful look. “I don’t understand. Why did they do this?”

It was Melia who answered him. “I think we’ve just learned another tenet of the Raven Cult. It seems that, to followers of the Raven, magic is heresy. As is reading books. Or being different.”

Beltan gripped the hilt of his sword. “Why hasn’t Queen Eminda put a stop to this? A few dozen knights sticking their swords in the right hearts, and this new cult would be a dead one.”

“Politics and religion aren’t a good mix,” Falken said. “Eminda may be keeping out of it for a reason. All fanatics need to become militant is a martyr. If Queen Eminda tried to put down the Raven Cult, she might end up with a dirty little rebellion on her hands.”

Beltan grunted but did not argue the point.

“Regardless,” Melia said, “from now on I think we had better avoid towns and villages altogether.”

She did not look at Travis, but he knew what her words really meant. He rubbed his right hand. The rune that had once shimmered on his palm was invisible now, but he could still feel it there, like a prickling beneath his skin. What would happen if it ever shone again and the Raven cultists were there to see it? Would he still be alive when they lashed him to the pole?

Why, Jack? Why did you do this to me? Didn’t you know what would happen
?

“Let’s get going,” Falken said.

They nudged their mounts, and the horses started into a brisk trot, eager to escape. After a minute, Travis looked back over his shoulder. Now a dark shape perched atop the pole that bore the dead runespeaker. He turned his gaze forward again, and tried to believe the shadow was not watching him with small black eyes.

Travis’s lessons in runecraft continued as the four travelers made their way ever south, toward Calavere and the Council of Kings. Each night, in whatever hidden hollow or Way Circle in which they camped, after they had eaten dinner, Falken and Travis would sit together. Travis would watch as the bard drew runes in the dirt with a stick, and would speak the name of each in turn, being careful to control his will so as not to invoke the power of any.

Soon Travis had memorized the shapes and names of over a dozen runes. There was
Krond
, which was fire, and
Gelth
, which stood for ice.
Sharn
was water,
Tal
the sky, and
Lir
, light. The names felt strange yet somehow comfortable against his tongue. However, he never repeated them in more than a whisper, and he kept his thoughts neutral when he did. He did not want a repeat of events at the manor house.

Then one golden afternoon in a
talathrin
where they had stopped, Falken handed Travis the stick.

“Here, you try.”

Travis hesitated. Was he ready for this? However, Falken did not withdraw the stick. Travis swallowed hard, then accepted the instrument. The bard smoothed the dirt between them.

“Show me the rune of fire, Travis.”

He thought a moment, then before he lost his nerve drew three quick lines in the dirt.

“Very good.”

Travis let out a sigh of relief.

“Although the angle on the second ascending is a bit shallow, and the prime descending should extend down a trifle farther.”

Travis’s sigh turned to one of dejection.

“Now, show me the rune of sky.”

Tal
. That one was easy enough. Travis drew a dot with a line above it. Falken studied it, then grunted. Travis took
that as a good sign, and he found his mood brightening. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad student after all.

“How about one more before Melia calls us to supper?” Falken said. “Show me the rune of light.”

With a grin, Travis drew a line with an angled stroke coming off it like a branch and a dot below.

Gloom descended over the Way Circle. The air turned to ice, and Travis could not breathe. A cry of pain came from the other side of the
talathrin
, followed by a single word shouted in fear.

“Melia!”

Travis clawed at his throat. His fingers were numb stumps. The gloom deepened, thickened, like a shroud of shadows. His mind grew as murky and muted as the gloom. A few more moments and he would be a shadow himself.

Something registered on his dimming senses: a grunt of effort, a struggling in front of him, then a scratching in the dirt. The gloom vanished, and coppery sunlight streamed into the Way Circle once more.

Travis drew in a ragged breath, filling his lungs with good air. The sparks before his eyes faded. Across the circle Beltan held Melia in his arms. The lady’s face was pale, and shadows clung to the hollows of her cheeks. However, it seemed she was well enough, for she pushed the knight away with gentle but firm hands and stood on her own. Falken still leaned on the hand he had used to scratch out the rune Travis had drawn in the dirt. The bard lifted his head and looked at Travis.

“You’re a mirror reader, aren’t you?”

Travis didn’t understand what had just happened—as usual—but this was not the time to hide things. “They call it dyslexia in my world.”

Falken swore and struggled to gain his feet. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

Travis almost laughed. The bard couldn’t know what he was asking. The laughter stopped short at the lump in his throat.

Melia approached. The lady seemed to have regained her strength, although Beltan hovered behind her. He cast a dark look at Travis.

Melia arched an eyebrow. “A mirror reader?”

“I should have seen it earlier,” Falken said. “The signs were there, but I didn’t realize it until now. I asked him to draw the rune of light. He did, only he put the ascending branch and the dot on the left side, not the right.”

“He drew it backward, you mean?”

The bard nodded. “And the rune of light backward is
Sinfath
—the rune of twilight.”

Melia sighed and lifted a hand to her temple. “Well, that explains my headache.
Sinfath
never has agreed with me.”

“As they say, like repels like.”

This comment won the bard a scathing look. “That isn’t funny, Falken. You know perfectly well all runic magic affects me.”

“It nearly affected all of us, although I’m not sure how. It’s almost as if he started to bind the rune. Except that’s impossible.”

Beltan scratched his throat. “What would have happened if he
had
bound it?”

Falken looked at the knight. “This Way Circle would have been forever darkened, a place of mist and shadow. And there would have been no escaping it.”

“I’m not sure I really wanted to know that.”

“You asked.” Falken shook his head. “But the art of runebinding has been dead and lost for centuries. It must have been something else that caused this.”

Melia paced a slow circle around Travis. “Perhaps.”

Travis held his chin up and stared forward, even though his instinct was to curl into a ball and try to disappear.

Melia spoke again, and although her voice was brisk, now there was a gentle light in her eyes. “Well, whatever happened, no harm was done, and that is something for which to be thankful. We can talk more about this later. Right now supper is nearly ready. I’ll put a pot on the fire while we wait for the stew. I think we’ll all feel better after a cup of
maddok.
”

Travis gave Melia a grateful look. She nodded, then led the way back to the campfire. The
maddok
was hot and good, and Travis’s spirits lifted. However, none of them could help shivering as the sun dipped below the horizon, and twilight—cool and purple—fell upon the Way Circle.

After that Travis’s lessons in runecraft focused not so
much on knowledge as on control. Yet while the lessons in runecraft occupied his evenings in camp, the long days atop the swaying back of his gelding were more tedious. The muscles of his legs were getting used to life in the saddle, but his back ached constantly, and the landscape did little to take his mind off the pain as the travelers progressed south. The plains stretched in dull brown waves to the west, and the tumbled slopes of the Fal Erenn rose to the east. Sometimes Travis wished they could ride into the mountains, or race across the wide plains, it didn’t matter which, just so they could leave behind this in-between land, and the old Tarrasian road which led over hills and through shallow vales with unswerving and maddening predictability.

He spent most of his time in the saddle trying to stay warm. There was little need for him to hold the reins—the gelding was content to follow after its companions—so he kept his hands tucked beneath his mistcloak. It only took him three falls into the muck before he learned how to hold on with his knees. Usually he rode by himself. Beltan was always spurring ahead or dropping back to keep an eye out for danger, and Falken and Melia kept their horses together a dozen paces ahead.

Their reticence rankled. Why was it no one would ever tell him what was really going on? Jack hadn’t explained anything that night at the Magician’s Attic. And neither had Brother Cy at the weird revival tent. What did they think he’d do if he knew the truth?

Maybe they’re afraid
.

He wasn’t sure where the thought came from. It wasn’t the voice that had spoken to him, the voice that had sounded so much like Jack’s. Maybe it was just instinct, but it seemed right. Melia and Falken were afraid of something. Jack had been, too. And the weird man in black? Travis had no idea what Brother Cy had thought. But even the preacher had been unwilling to touch the iron box Jack had given him.

For the first time in days, as they rode, Travis drew out the small box. He had forgotten how heavy it felt in the palm of his hand. With a finger he traced the intricate runes that covered the surface. He recognized a few of them now. The
largest of them, in the center of the lid, was the rune
Sinfath:
twilight.

Travis chewed his lip. Somehow, everything revolved around this box and the stone inside. Jack, Cy, Falken, Melia—everyone who knew anything about what was going on had been interested in the box, yet had been reluctant to touch it.

He started to lift the lid, then hesitated. He glanced up. The bard and Melia had ridden some distance ahead. They wouldn’t see, and he would only open it for a moment. He just wanted to see the stone again, maybe feel its smooth touch against his skin, just for a second or two.

Before he changed his mind he lifted the lid. A calm came over him. The mottled green stone glistened on its cushion of velvet. He closed his fingers over its surface. Guilt crept through his pleasure, and with great reluctance he placed the stone in the box and slipped it back inside his tunic.

However, several times over those next days, he took the stone out again. He did not mean to. He would just find himself letting his horse drop back, and before he knew it the stone was in his hand. It was easy to lose himself in its iridescent surface, and the leagues seemed to pass more quickly when he held it in his hand—although he always placed it back in its box and caught up to the others before they noticed he was lagging.

It was near evening on their eleventh day out of Kelcior—their fourth since the incident at the mad lord’s house—when Falken raised his black-gloved hand and brought the group to a halt.

From the back of his jet horse the bard gazed at two large stones that stood in the bracken beside the road. The stones were thrice as tall as they were wide, and the patterns carved into their wind-pitted surfaces were only faintly visible. Beyond them Travis caught a glimpse of what looked like a path winding up into the foothills of the Dawning Fells.

Melia flicked her braided hair over her shoulder. “I thought we had agreed we didn’t have time for this little detour of yours, Falken.”

“And I thought we had agreed to discuss it when we got here.”

“You’re getting old, Falken. Your memory is starting to go.”

The bard laughed. “Oh, you’re a fine one to talk about age, Melia.”

Her smooth visage darkened. “So how are we going to solve this?”

“I don’t know. How are we?”

Beltan cleared his throat. “Excuse me. I know it’s rather ironic, but … I actually have an idea.”

Melia and Falken turned toward the big knight. Both wore curious expressions.

Now that Beltan had gained their attention, he looked uncomfortable. “Why doesn’t Falken just go where he needs to go while the rest of us keep riding down the Queen’s Way?”

Falken crossed his arms. “Ditching me is not really a viable option, Beltan.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Melia said. “I rather like the notion.”

“You would.”

“Wait a second,” Beltan said. “That’s not the whole plan. The rest of us will ride at half our usual pace, and when Falken is finished doing whatever it is he needs to do, he can ride hard to catch up with us. That way Falken gets to take his detour, and we make some progress toward Calavere at the same time.”

Travis grinned at Beltan. For someone who claimed not to be much of a thinker, it was an awfully clever plan.

Falken and Melia studied each other, as if to predict what the other would say.

“The plan has its merits,” Melia said.

The bard snorted. “It
might
be acceptable.”

Beltan let out a breath of relief. “Why don’t you both think about it? It’s getting dark, and either way we won’t be able to do anything until morning.”

This the two were actually able to agree on, and they made camp beside the road.

That night it was Travis’s turn to take the first watch. Normally he might have minded, exhausted from the day’s long ride. However, for some reason he couldn’t name, he was restless. He sat on a rock a short way from the dying campfire, gazed into the night, and listened to the steady breathing of the others.