Forging the Runes (37 page)

"Let go. I get the point."

No, you don't. Even if this is something one of your faith should see at once: the sacrifice of a willing innocent.

Yes, Osmod would gain Power from her life—but her death, her spilled blood, rather than forming a gateway, would be the surest, strongest bar to the Darkness, banning It from Reality.

That didn't make what was happening easier to witness. Cadwal, swearing steadily under his breath, turned away, but Ardagh, teeth clenched, grimly watched Osmod pull the unresisting Leofrun to him. Ironic, terribly ironic, that he must wait for Osmod to regain Power before he could use Power to destroy the man. But the Sidhe were well acquainted with irony in all its many forms. He watched Osmod slay and feed and totally miss Leofrun's tranquil, triumphant smile. The sorcerer let his victim's body slide to the ground, his eyes misty with satiation, and Ardagh
felt
the new Power surging up within the man. . . .

Now.

The prince took a bold step forward, crying, "Murderer!" With beautiful timing, the clouds parted and a ray of moonlight caught Ardagh in a blaze of silver, so suddenly and dramatically that Osmod recoiled with a startled hiss.

But the sorcerer was only off balance for an instant. "Foolish of you," he snapped, "foolish to return," and tore open what could only be his rune pouch. Magic blazed up about him, and Ardagh snatched out a handful of his own makeshift runes, trying not to remember just how makeshift they were, forcing himself to believe that yes, they had Power,
he
had Power, that yes, this would work. More difficult to believe that this was it, no grand gestures, no dramatic words:

As quickly as this, their battle had begun.

Casting the Runes
Chapter 37

"What is this?" Ealdorman Eadwig thundered. "What in
hell
is going on?"

His voice just barely topped the storm of shouting that was the Witan, confused and alarmed, trying to understand what had just happened.

"What were we saying?"

"What were we thinking?"

"War? Yes, but—"

"We can't—"

"Not now—"

"What—"

"Will you all be quiet!" Eadwig shouted. "
I said: Will you all be quiet!
"

That startled them into momentary silence—and now they could all hear a savage new roar outside the hall. Something slammed against one wall with enough force to make them all start. A voice muttered nervously, "Grendel," and not a few hands moved in pious signs.

"It's not Grendel, you idiot!" Eadwig snapped. "It's the wind, just that. While we've been nattering away in here, the weather must have changed."

"But how long
have
we been in here?" Cuthred wondered.

"Long enough to miss dinner," someone muttered. "And for what?" asked another voice. "Damned if I know what we've been discussing."

"Same here."

"And here."

An awkward silence fell, leaving one lone voice in the act of concluding, sounding twice as loud in the quiet, " . . . and feels as though we were bewitched."

Silence fell for another tense moment. And then Eadwig gave a harsh bark of a laugh. "That's ridiculous. Who was going to enchant us? King Egbert?"

That started a few nervous laughs. Eadwig snorted. "Enough of this. Won't be the first time we got ensnared in arguing and forgot the hour, yes, and without anything demonic about it."

Wrong choice of words: A few more hands moved in nervous signs at that. "Come," Eadwig said in disgust, "let us—you, yes, and you, what are you doing? Get those doors open!"

"Uh, we're trying, my lord," the guards told him. "The wind—"

"Nonsense." The ealdorman impatiently gestured one of the guards aside and set his own shoulder against a door. Damnation! The wind really was strong! "That is," he said, panting, "one truly hellish storm. Truly hellish."

In the next moment, he realized that was the worst thing he could have said. A stampede of ealdormen rushed forward, pushing at the doors, pushing at each other, nearly trampling each other as they fought in ever-increasing panic to escape the hall that had suddenly become a prison.

"Leofrun!" Egbert groaned and sank to his bed. "Leofrun! Where are you, woman?"

That ridiculous episode in the Great Hall had left him with a pounding head. Leofrun, for all her failings, had a gentle hand and a way of massaging away pain.

Yes, but where was she? Swearing under his breath, Egbert got to his feet. No use bellowing like an ox. Moving to the doorway, he snagged a passing servant. "You. Find the Lady Leofrun. Have her brought to me."

Damned foolishness in the Great Hall, the lot of them yelling at each other about . . . about what, exactly? War, yes, but . . . ha, no wonder nothing had been resolved, because now that he thought about it with a clear—if aching—head, Egbert could plainly see that there hadn't been any logic to any of the arguments.

What
was
that all about? Almost as though we'd been bewitched, every one of us.

A sudden roar brought him starkly alert, for that first startled moment thinking
demons,
then relaxing with a wan laugh. Wind. Nothing more terrible than wind. God help him, he was getting as fanciful as a woman. As Leofrun.

Where
was
Leofrun? Egbert moved impatiently to the doorway again, just in time to meet a group—a gaggle, he thought unkindly—of nervously chattering ladies. Leofrun's ladies, Egbert recognized, and held up a brusque hand for silence. He'd long ago given up threats of punishment; Leofrun could, for all her slow wit, be sly as any fox in escaping her ladies when she wished. "What now?" he asked. "Where has she gotten to this time?"

Some snivelling, some nervous, humorless titters. "She—she's not anywhere in the hall, King Egbert," they managed at last.

"Are you sure?" Leofrun sometimes played at hiding. Like a child, Egbert thought, just like a child.
And what,
his mind asked, unbidden,
does that make you?
"Have you looked in all the corners?"

"We looked everywhere," one woman said miserably. "The Lady Leofrun is out there. Outside. Somewhere."

"In that storm?" Swearing, Egbert called for his heaviest cloak. This time he was going to retrieve the woman himself. And this time, Egbert promised himself, Leofrun, like an erring child, would truly learn how to repent.

Ae, yes! In this first wild blaze of Power against Power, Ardagh knew with a surge of emotion that was almost joy that this time he and Osmod could strike at each other. This time their magics could kill.

Would kill,
he corrected with blunt Sidhe honesty. Only one of them would see the new day.

But how fine it felt, how wondrously fine, to be testing his strength not with some mundane sword but with Power! Even though it was nowhere near the glory he had known in his homeland, even though this weak, hybrid magic squirmed and twisted in his mind, struggling to tear itself apart—ae, it was so very
right
to meet his foe like this!

Oh yes. A Sidhe trying to use a magic foreign to him and a human trying to use his limited Power in combat when he's surely never had to fight a sorcerous duel before: That should,
the prince thought wryly,
make the odds somewhere about even.

He'd heard some of the ridiculous tales the humans enjoyed, of magical duels full of wonders and flashes of fire. There would be little here for any watching human to see (watching Cadwal, yes, but the others, Witan and king—where were they?). The sudden crash of Power against Power created a savage whirling of wind all about Ardagh and Osmod, a sorcerous gale strong as a wall cutting them off from Reality, sealing them in its heart, in a circle of more than natural stillness surrounded by all that shrieking savagery.

Let it rage,
Ardagh thought.
It keeps us safe from interference.
He turned his will to shutting out the storm and all its fury from his mind, blocking it, blocking, till he could see only the runes, hear only them whispering their names to him, till he could
feel
only the meaning they held—

No, no, the
meanings!
Ae yes, all at once the whole swarm of them came swirling into his mind, wild as the storm, an endless tangle of possibilities that, were this not in the midst of combat, would have fascinated him. But he couldn't afford confusion just now! Yes, and was the human overwhelmed by this every time he cast a rune-spell? How could he deal with the endless range of meanings? Some were literal, some figurative, some even so symbolic he couldn't read them—how could Osmod endure?

How? Because, curse it, the human was only that: human. Osmod would see only what he wanted, the shallowest, most obvious of interpretations. And if he could do it . . . Ardagh forced himself away from the web of endless possibilities, narrowed his thinking as best he could to pick only
one
thread of meaning from the snarl, follow only that
one
meaning out of many, and—

Heat! Terrible, angry heat surged over him—ha, Osmod really was seeing only the obvious, for this was surely Thurs he cast: Thurs or Thorn, as these folk called it, Thorn or even Thurisaz, easy names for the very heart of cosmic destruction, the rune of fire, demonic fire, the Powerful force of chaos.

You idiot!
Ardagh raged.
You'd use the lightning to spark your candle-—you really do want to end this duel quickly.

Oh yes, Thurs could end it quickly—for both of them, and probably most of the royal enclosure. But there were other sides to Thurs, just as for the other runes, and Ardagh hastily expanded his mental focus, welcoming the swarm of meanings, hunting for Thurs in all its aspects. Powers, this wasn't an easy way of magic, so cursedly complex, wasteful of Power. He was dimly aware of his body's panting, but he could still find: yes, here was something, Thurs as the wild creative force of sex, of life, and Ardagh grinned as the killing fire turned to a much more pleasant heat.

Too pleasant. This had all taken only a few seconds of real time, but with a great wrenching of will, Ardagh pulled his mind from sudden hot, joyous thoughts of Sorcha, controlling himself as no human could, very well aware that Osmod was about to strike again. And very well aware, too, that there had to be a counterbalance for the fire that was Thurs.

Yes! He struck back at Osmod with Is, Isa, ice and self-protection in one, cooling the fire, the sorcery, cooling the will, Osmod's will, dazing the human, befogging his senses. Yes, ah yes, and now, if only he could find—

No. The force of Is hadn't held long enough; he simply didn't have the experience for that. Osmod might not have a Sidhe's Power, but he was certainly more skilled in the use of runes. Stunned, confused though he was, he could still strike back with another all too Powerful rune:

Hagall,
the prince realized,
Haegl or whatever they call it here:
Hail in all its essence of destructive force.
Powers, he does mean to destroy us both!

But the rune must have other sides, just like the others, and if he could only find them . . . find them quickly, because every second warding off something as fierce as Hagall was draining his strength to the point of danger. . . .

Yes! With a great psychic effort, Ardagh twisted the rune's meaning about from negative to positive, menace to protection against that very menace, not even trying to tap into the greater sense of cosmic shielding.

But before the prince could find a rune for counterbalanced attack, Osmod struck again, frantic with haste. This time, to Ardagh's shock, it was with a rune he didn't recognize, one that clearly wasn't used by the Lochlannach though his Sidhe senses caught the Saxon name, Daeg, and his Sidhe senses knew this was being cast in its most terrible aspect, the force of sheer, horrifying change.

Osmod, you madman! You'll destroy us both, and the city with us!

There had to be a safer side to this, but he didn't know the rune, he didn't know how to deal with it. Desperately prodding his wearying mind for a weapon, Ardagh seized upon the only rune he could find that was even remotely related: Ar, Ger, jera, he couldn't remember which was the Lochlannach name, which the Saxon, but it was the rune symbolic of the changing of the year, the normal, sane changing, relentless and hopeful. Nothing of wild chaos here—

—and Daeg slid harmlessly away, its magic blunted, leaving the prince staggering and breathless with relief and the sudden uneasy return to balance.

Whatever made me think I could win a duel like this? Foreign, so damnably foreign I don't know how to take the offensive.

Instead, he was letting Osmod, merely human Osmod, drive him figuratively back and back, helpless to do more than just defend.

Oh, you great dolt!
Ardagh snapped at himself in a sudden blaze of fury.
Of course you can't win a duel
like this,
never
like this!
You're letting Osmod set the rules, and you're actually playing by them. Think, curse you!

Ae,
yes. "You're weary, aren't you?" the prince called out suddenly over the roar of the wind, and
felt
the wall of Osmod's concentration shiver slightly. "Of course you're weary." Ardagh fought to hide the tired quiver in his own voice. "This is such a magic-weak Realm. We both know that. So very magic-weak. No wonder you tried to end our duel quickly. You knew you must end it before you just . . . fell over from exhaustion!"

Ha, that stung! "I am strong enough," Osmod snapped. "And you are a fool to try besting me."

"Oh, I was," Ardagh agreed smoothly. "I was a fool to think I could win a game you controlled. But it doesn't matter now. You never could wield much Power, could you?"

"What nonsense are you—"

"Of course you couldn't."
Keep him off balance; don't give him a chance to think of the runes or he'll have us fighting into mutual collapse.
"That's why you had to steal life force. For Power. Oh, and of course to appease your masters." He smiled at Osmod's quick, hastily suppressed start. "Yes, I know about the Darkness."
Which is why I can't kill you with a blade. I cannot risk your blood opening a gateway.
"You've been very clever at it, killing in the midst of all these folk with none suspecting."

"Oh please. You can't expect me to confess to that."

"Have I said anything about confessions? Tell me, Osmod, how many lives has it been? What, can't you remember?"
No, you really can't, can you? And that bothers you not at all.
"Come, how many lives
have
you stolen?"

"Not as many as I shall." For a heart-stopping moment, the Darkness itself swirled about Osmod, for a moment Darkness burned coldly from his eyes. "Pretty words, Prince Ardagh. But I will not be lulled by them!"

Power surged up about him again, but to Ardagh's immense relief, the Darkness faded, unable to find an opening. And this wasn't quite as strong a blaze of magic as before. "I was right," the prince exclaimed. "You really don't have much Power left. Not even with the blood-force you stole from Leofrun."