Runespeaker

Chapter Three

With the city of Tirne now well out of sight behind him, Elevar pulled on the reins with his right hand, leading Regga off the road toward a lone tree which stood guard over a vast field of grass. Its leaves, orange and gold, formed a welcoming rug at its feet. It would protect him from the sun if nothing else, and that was, in itself, very much a worthy task for such a beautiful sentinel.

Pulling his two new books out of the bag he kept tied to his saddle, he climbed off Regga's back and sat down in the shade of the tree. He started with the Olem, flipping past several pages of materials with which he was already at least vaguely familiar until, at last, he came upon one he didn't know. It was called ghost diamond, and, at the time of the Olem's writing, no one had found a good vein of it in over a thousand years. The Olem having itself been written over a thousand years ago, that made it at least two millennia since the substance had last been mined. Certainly, though, it had not been missed in civilized society, for ghost diamond, evidently, was useful only for necromancy and demon-summoning. Elevar shuddered as he read a list of the runes most commonly associated with the material—runes so evil the writer of this volume had, arguably, acted irresponsibly by merely committing them to paper.

After reading the entry on ghost diamond, Elevar went through several more pages of obscure materials of which he had never heard before. Eventually, however, deciding it was time for a change of pace, he set the Olem aside and picked up his Sanguinaria. As soon as he opened it, a small slip of parchment fell out from the middle of the book. He picked it up.

The handwriting on the note was perhaps the most graceful Elevar had ever seen. It read simply:

Marenir,

Your work thus far has been greatly pleasing to me. I would, however, like for you to take up a new task. For our purposes, many more bodies will be sorely needed. Seek out the following mercenaries and send them to me.

What followed was a list of names, all of them unfamiliar to Elevar. He stared at the note for a long while, his eyebrows furrowed. Any user of a book such as the Sanguinaria was potentially a serious threat, so a blood magician who was seeking out mercenaries could hardly be good news.

Elevar was not and did not want to be a hero. He was a student, a man of learning, and nothing more than that. Still, if nothing else, he was now curious. And, besides, he was holding in his hand a piece of information which could possibly have held dire implications for many lives (at the moment, he couldn't even begin to guess how many). There was a very strong case to be made that failure to act would have constituted a grievous ethical transgression. He may not have wanted to be a hero, but even less than that did he want to be a villain.

He stood up, climbed into Regga's saddle, and returned to Tirne.

The city gates were guarded by the same two spearmen as had been there when Elevar had visited Tirne for the first time. As he approached, the two men looked at each other and stepped toward the middle of the entrance, leveling their spears toward him. Elevar stopped Regga's slow walk just a few feet from the two spear-tips.

"Did I say something wrong the first time?" Elevar asked.

"Shortly after you left here," said the guard on the right, "we received a complaint from the local bookseller about a spellmaker getting inside his head and cheating him out of an expensive item. Tell me that was a coincidence, spellmaker."

Elevar shrugged. "I know nothing of it. Please, let me pass. I've business to attend to—nothing shady, I promise."

Both guards took a few steps closer, until their spear-tips hung in the air only inches from the runespeaker's abdomen.