“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 away, 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
.
“You believe order gives power and purpose,” the dragon said. “But you are mistaken. Order only limits, confines. In the chaos before this world existed, there was such freedom as you cannot possibly imagine. There were no limitations, no arbitrary rules to be obeyed. I would destroy this world, yes. I would return to the mayhem of before.”
“Then why fight against the rift?”
Sfithrisir’s wings spread out like smoky sails. “Because the rift discerns not between a world of stone and air and water and fire, or a world of formless mists! At the rift’s borders, all of being ends—order and chaos alike. It is the annihilation of all existence, not only for this world, but for all those worlds that draw near to it.”
A shard of understanding pierced Grace, freezing her heart and shattering her soul. She could comprehend destruction. A rock could be crushed to dust, a piece of wood burned to ash, a living organism sent back to the soil that gave it life. But in each case something—dust, ash, soil—remained. Travis had destroyed the world Eldh when he broke the First Rune, but even before he forged the world anew
something
had existed. He had told her about it: the gray, swirling mists of possibility.
But the rift was not like that. Inside it was neither light nor dark. It was a place without potential, without possibility. It was a vacuum, a field in which nothing existed, or could ever exist. In that moment, in the presence of Sfithrisir, Grace truly understood what the rift was. It was Pandora’s box emptied of everything it had contained.
It was the end of hope.
Grace clutched her stomach. She was going to be ill. No human mind should try to comprehend what hers just had. But already the crystalline moment of understanding was passing, her mortal faculties too feeble to hold on to it.
“It’s . . . it’s like the demon below Tarras, isn’t it?” she gasped. “The sorcerers had bound one of the
morndari
, and it wanted to consume everything in the city. It almost did.”
“Wrong again, mortal. The spirits, the beings which the sorcerers call Those Who Thirst, come from a place which is like this world reflected in a mirror. It is the opposite of this creation in all ways, a place not of
being
, but of
unbeing
. Yet all the same, it is something; it exists. The rift will eradicate the
morndari
just like everything else.”
Despair weighed upon Grace, pressing her down like a hundred blankets. The dragon’s words rang in her mind. The world would cease to be. And those worlds which drew near it.
Earth
, she said to herself.
He means Earth.
But the name hardly felt real, as if the world it signified was already gone, its lands, its cities, its people swallowed by the rift and replaced by nothing at all.
“How?” Grace said. “How can Travis and I do anything to stop it?”
“I am wise beyond all,” Sfithrisir said, letting out a soft hiss of steam. “Yet even I do not know the answer to that question.”
Sudden anger filled Grace. She clenched a fist and shook it at the dragon. “I don’t believe you. You’re supposed to know everything. Even Olrig had to steal the secret of the runes from you.”
Sfithrisir’s head bobbed in what seemed a shrug. “And can you truly steal knowledge, mortal? Is not the knowledge retained by the one it is stolen from even as the thief makes off with it?”
Grace’s anger faded. Somehow the dragon’s words made sense to her. Olrig stole the runes from the dragons, who had heard them spoken by the Worldsmith. But Olrig
was
the Worldsmith.
There have been countless Worldsmiths, Grace. Olrig or Sia
or whoever the last Worldsmith is wasn’t the first. The world before this one was destroyed, and afterward only the dragons remained. They’ve always been there, watching, listening,
hoarding knowledge. Then Olrig learned the runes of creation
from them, just like all the other Worldsmiths before him must
have, and used the runes to make Eldh.
Which meant, much as the dragons loathed creation, they were part of its cycle. And that was why Sfithrisir had come to her. If the rift continued to grow, Eldh would never be created again. Or destroyed again.
“You don’t know we can stop it,” Grace said, looking up at the dragon, meeting its smoldering eyes. “If there’s nothing in the rift, then your knowledge ends at its borders. There’s no way you could possibly know that Travis and I have the power to stop it.”
The dragon’s wedge-shaped head ceased its constant movement. “Perhaps your mind is not so limited after all. No, I cannot see into the rift, and so I know not how it can be defeated. All the same, much as I loathe this creation, I know it must be saved, and that you and Travis Wilder have the power to do so. The knowledge of it is woven into the very fabric of this world, and I have read it there. I do not know how to close the rift. But this one thing I do know: Only the Last Rune can save this world.”
“You mean the rune Eldh?”
“No,” the dragon hissed, eyes sparking. “Eldh was the first rune spoken at the forging of this world, and it was the last rune at the end of this world. But what will be spoken at the end of all being, of all worlds? Even I do not know the rune for that.”
The dragon uncoiled its long neck, stretching its head toward the sky, spreading its wings. Red light tinged the horizon. Dawn was coming. The dragon beat its wings. Its talons left the stones of the battlement.
“Wait!” Grace shouted over the roar of the wind, reaching a hand upward. “How can I find out what the Last Rune is?”
“Seek the one who destroyed this world.” Sfithrisir rose upward in a cloud of smoke. “He will come in search of it.”
The creature beat its gigantic wings, and Grace was knocked back by the blast. By the time she looked up, the dragon was a red spark in the gray sky. The spark winked out and was gone.
Footsteps sounded behind her, and Grace turned to see Sir Tarus along with the Spiders Aldeth and Samatha running toward her across the battlement.
“Your Majesty!” Tarus said breathlessly as they reached her. “Are you injured? By all the Seven, that was a sight I never dreamed I would see in my life. Are you well? Did it harm you?”
She was so dazed she could only shake her head.
Samatha gripped a bow, aiming an arrow at the sky, then swore. “It’s gone. I can’t see it anymore.”
“It’s not as if an arrow would have done you any good against a dragon,” Aldeth said with a snort.
Samatha lowered the bow and glared at him, the expression making her face even more weasel-like. “And how would you know? Have you ever met a dragon before?”
“No,” Aldeth said. He looked at Grace, his gray eyes solemn. “But Her Majesty has.”
Grace gazed up at the sky. It was getting lighter. The stars had faded, and she could no longer see the rift. Only it was still there. And it was growing.
“What is it, Your Majesty?” Tarus said, touching her arm. “Are you certain you are not harmed?”
“I’m fine, Sir Tarus. Let’s go downstairs. I need to talk to Melia and Falken at once.”
However, it was Aryn and Lirith she spoke to first.
Their voices came to her across the Weirding just as the sun crested the summits of the southern mountains. She was in her chamber, hastily donning a gown so she could go downstairs, when Aryn’s voice spoke to her as clearly as if the blue-eyed witch had been in the chamber.
Grace, can you hear me?
She gripped the back of a chair, gasping in surprise and delight.
Aryn, yes, it’s me. I can hear you just fine.
Happiness hummed across the threads of the Weirding, and love. But there was more. A sense of urgency, and something else. Before Grace could ask about it, another voice spoke— deeper, smokier.
Sister, it is so good to be with you again, even if only over the
web of the Weirding.
Despite all that had happened, Grace couldn’t help smiling. “Lirith,” she murmured aloud. Then, in her mind,
How is
Sareth? And little Taneth? And your al-Mama?
Very well, though given to fussing a bit.
Which one do you mean?
All three of them, I confess
, Lirith said, her laughter like chimes in Grace’s mind.
But I departed the south several weeks
ago. Taneth and I are in Calavere now, with Aryn and Teravian.
They’re both doing well, and Aryn looks beautiful.
No, I look large
, came Aryn’s reply.
I don’t think I’m ever going to have this baby. I’m just going to keep getting more enormous. Soon I won’t be able to fit in the castle at all, and Teravian
will have no choice but to erect a gigantic tent for me in a field.
Grace could imagine Lirith pressing dark, slender hands against Aryn’s belly.
Do not believe her, Grace. The baby is
healthy and will come very soon. And I can see in Teravian’s
eyes every time he looks at her that he has never found his
queen more lovely.
Grace didn’t doubt it. She sighed, wishing she could be there with the two witches and spend all day laughing and talking about such simple joys. Only . . .
What is it, Grace?
Aryn said.
Something is wrong, isn’t it?
Lirith was certain of it when she woke this morning.
Grace gripped the chair.
Have you had a vision, Lirith?
No, I haven’t. And that’s what’s so strange. I haven’t had a vision in months. Or at least . . .
At least what?
She could sense Lirith struggling for words.
I suppose I have
had visions. Or what feels like a vision of the Sight to me. The
same queer feeling comes over me, and my gaze goes distant, or
so Sareth tells me, and I have the usual headache when the spell
passes. Only it’s as if the magic is broken somehow. I never see
anything with the Sight anymore. Instead, I see nothing. Nothing at all.
A coldness came over Grace, and she sank into the chair.
Your magic isn’t broken, Lirith.
She told them everything, sending words, thoughts, and feelings over the Weirding, so that in moments they knew all that had happened. I think you did have a vision, Lirith. If Sfithrisir
is right, if the rift keeps growing, then that’s all there will be in
the future: nothing. Just as you saw.
She could feel both Aryn and Lirith recoil in horror. However, neither had seen the rift, nor had they heard of anyone who had. That gave Grace a small amount of hope. The rift must only be visible in the far north. That meant it was still small. And that meant there was still time to do something. At least, she had to believe that.