The First Stone Read online

  It had been Travis’s idea to go to the Seekers as soon as they reached Earth. He reasoned the organization would find them sooner or later. Besides, it had been good to see Deirdre Falling Hawk, though there had been no sign of Hadrian Farr—nor had the last three years brought any news of him, at least as far as Beltan knew.

  Travis and Beltan had cooperated with the Seekers, submitting to interviews and writing lengthy reports about Eldh—its geography, peoples, languages, cultures, history, politics, and magic. In exchange, the Seekers had given them new identities, along with the papers to make them legal. They were now, officially, Travis Redstone and Arthur Beltan. The Seekers also granted them an amount of money that had no meaning for Beltan, but which according to Travis meant they would never want for anything for the rest of their lives.

  All the same, they had to do something. Beltan had wondered if Travis wanted to return to his hometown, to Castle City, to rebuild the tavern he had once owned there. However, when he mentioned this, Travis had asked how Beltan liked London.

  Beltan liked it very much. London was like nothing on Eldh. The ancient city of Tarras seemed a simple village in comparison. They had bought the flat in Mayfair, and had found jobs. Since then, they had spoken little with the Seekers, and it had been over a year since they had last seen Deirdre. Evidently, as far as the Seekers were concerned, Travis and Beltan’s case was closed, and that suited both of them just fine.

  Beltan picked up the remote and switched on the television: another one of those marvels he had begun to take for granted. There was an astonishing array of choices called channels on TV (many displaying sights as vulgar as they were fascinating), but of them all Beltan’s favorite was the Wonder Channel. He enjoyed learning about this world that was now his home. Over the last three years, he had read voraciously—now that he could read, thanks to Grace’s tutelage in the Library of Tarras— though one day, after noticing the way he squinted at a page, Travis had taken him to a doctor to get him a pair of reading spectacles. The spectacles helped, but sometimes, like tonight, Beltan’s eyes were too tired for a book.

  Television wasn’t as good as reading, but Beltan still liked it, and he pressed a button on the remote, changing to the Wonder Channel. A show called Archaeology Now! was just starting. He had seen this program before. It showed live footage of archaeologists working at various sites across the world, hoping to catch them at the very moment of a great discovery.

  Archaeologists, Beltan knew, were learned men and women who dug up and studied the remains of ancient cultures and civilizations. It intrigued him to know that, in its past, Earth had been more like Eldh, but the problem with this show was that archaeology was, by any estimation, tedious work, and usually involved scraping away at dirt with tiny little picks and brushes. The pert young woman who hosted the show did her best to make every chipped bead or broken piece of pottery that came out of the ground seem like a breakthrough discovery, but often her smile seemed more than a little strained.

  “Today, we’ll take you to the jungles of Belize,” her excited voice blared through the TV’s speakers, “where archaeologists are about to open the tomb of a Mayan princess that has remained hidden for over a thousand years. After that, we’re off to Australia, to uncover what could be the first signs of human habitation on that continent. And finally, we’ll venture into a cave to discover what incredible artifacts were revealed by a recent earthquake on the island of—”

  A knock sounded at the door of the flat. Beltan muted the sound on the television and stood. The knock came again, hard and impatient.

  “Coming,” Beltan grumbled, determined that this time he was not going to buy anything from whoever was on the other side of the door. He undid the lock and threw the door open.

  So his instincts had been right after all. Their peaceful time in London—the waiting—was over.

  She looked older than he remembered, her face honed by care, but she was still lithe and beautiful, wearing an aura of danger as well as sleek black leathers. In her arms she held a small girl with gray-gold eyes. The girl laughed and reached a chubby hand toward Beltan.

  “Please,” Vani said, her voice low and urgent. “Let us in.”

  5.

  Travis had always liked the simplest things best.

  After the Second War of the Stones—much to his horror— Grace had wanted to make him a baron of Malachor. There was a ruined castle in the west of the Winter Wood, she said, only three days’ ride from Gravenfist Keep. He could take five hundred men and twenty Embarran engineers with him. In a year, the castle would be in good working order. His men could bring their families from the south; they could hunt the forests and clear land for farming, and Travis could be their lord.

  “I’ll need smart and trustworthy barons if I’m going to have a chance of making this kingdom work again,” Grace had said with such characteristic matter-of-factness it made him laugh.

  However, to be a baron—to have a great hall and vassal lords and servants—was the last thing Travis wanted. A two-bedroom flat in London was more than enough castle for him, and he was content to share the duties of ruling it with Beltan. The sorts of things he had done today—watching ships pass beneath Tower Bridge, walking home through the energetic streets of the West End, cooking a dinner that Beltan wolfed down no matter how awful it was—those were all he desired. Maybe it was because of everything he had witnessed in his time on Eldh, but these days Travis didn’t need much to be happy.

  Only if that was so, why had he felt so gloomy today? Yes, he had lost his job at the bookstore and hadn’t found another to replace it. But money wasn’t a worry, and another job would come along. That wasn’t what was troubling him, and that wasn’t what had made him read her letter.

  The dishes were done. Travis pulled the sink plug, leaned on the counter, and stared as the dishwater swirled down the drain. It circled around and around before vanishing.

  Spirals are symbols of great power, spoke the echo of Jack Graystone’s voice in his mind. They attract magic, and trap it within them.

  There had been a vast spiral inside the White Tower of the Runebinders, Travis remembered. It had drawn them into its center, and there he had first come face-to-face with wraithlings. The pale beings had come to take the Stone of Twilight from him; they had reached out spindly hands, and in their touch was death. Only then, without even knowing how, Travis had bound the tower’s broken foundation stone. The tower’s magic had awakened; the wraithlings were destroyed.

  Looking back, Travis supposed that was the moment he became a wizard. However, that life was over. He wasn’t a wizard anymore. The Great Stones were a world away, on Eldh; he had given them to Master Larad for safekeeping. True, there was magic here on Earth, but it was a faint shadow of what it was on Eldh. Travis hadn’t even attempted a spell since the day he and Beltan came to Earth.

  Yet if he wasn’t a wizard anymore, why did it feel like he was the thing trapped in the spiral?

  Until it happened, Travis had never believed he could be so happy as he had been these last three years in London. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t someplace just because that was where he had ended up, but rather because he had chosen to be there. To be here, with Beltan. Yet he couldn’t leave the past behind, not completely. Jack’s voice still spoke in his mind from time to time, along with the voices of all the Runelords who had gone before him. Travis would never truly escape the spiral of power that had drawn him in, that had taken him to Eldh.

  Nor were the voices the only reminders of what he had been, for sometimes his right hand ached to hold the Great Stones again, and if he looked in those moments, he would see a silvery symbol glimmer on his palm: three crossed lines. It would vanish after a few seconds, but it was always there, just beneath the surface. Waiting.

  Once a thing is made, it cannot be unmade without breaking it. That was what Olrig—the Old God who was also the Worldsmith and Sia and the hag Grisla—had said to Master Larad, when Larad asked
to be a Runelord no longer. The same was true for Travis. He could not change what he was.

  Only what was he, exactly?

  First Jack had made him into a Runelord. Then the fires of the Great Stone Krondisar had burned him to nothing before making him anew. And there was one more transformation that had changed him. . . .

  A compulsion came over Travis, so swift and strong that a small paring knife was in his hand before he realized what he was doing. He longed to see blood, to see if here on Earth they would come if he called. He pressed the knife against the skin of his left forearm . . .

  A noise broke the spell; he jerked the knife away. It had left a white mark in his flesh, but it had not drawn blood. He swallowed the sickness in his throat, then forced himself to set down the knife.

  Out in the living room, the blare of the television ceased. A moment later came the sound of the door opening. He thought he heard a low voice saying something. Then the door shut. Beltan must have told whoever it was to go away.

  Travis picked up a damp plate and a dish towel to give his trembling hands something to do, then headed into the living room. “Who was at the door, Beltan? I didn’t hear you—”

  The plate slipped from his wet fingers. It seemed to make no sound as it struck the floor, shattering into a dozen white shards.

  “You look well, Travis,” Vani said. Beltan stood just behind her, but Travis couldn’t look at him. He stared at the T’gol.

  She wore supple leathers as she always had, and her gold eyes were just as piercing. However, her black hair was longer than he remembered, frosted by a streak of white that started at the peak of her brow. Though her bearing was as proud as always, there was a weight to her shoulders and a shadow on her expression he had never seen before.

  “You look tired,” he said.

  She nodded. “We have journeyed far to get here.”

  It wasn’t until she spoke those words that he realized she held a child in her arms: a girl with dark hair, clad in an ash gray dress. She seemed too large to be three years old—Travis would have guessed her to be five—but there was no doubting who she was. The resemblance to each of them was plain to see: her sharp cheekbones, his high forehead. Travis looked at Beltan. The blond man’s eyes were locked on the girl.

  “Please set me down, Mother,” the girl said in a voice that was precise and articulate despite a marked lisp.

  She slipped from Vani’s arms, padded across the floor, and crouched beside the broken plate. She arranged the pieces, fitting them together with motions that seemed too skilled for such tiny hands.

  The girl looked up at Travis. “Make it whole.”

  He was too startled to do anything but kneel beside her and place a hand on the broken plate.

  “Eru,” he said, trying to gather all the force of his will into the word.

  He heard a chorus of voices echo the word in his mind. Only the chorus became a dissonant chord. The familiar whoosh of magic in his ears ceased, and he felt a wrenching sensation deep inside. He lifted his hand. The shards of the plate had fused together into a melted gray blob.

  The girl frowned. “It didn’t work right.”

  “No, it didn’t.” Travis held a hand to his throbbing head. Both Vani and Beltan glanced at him, her expression curious, his concerned.

  The girl moved to Beltan, took one of his big hands, and curled her own hand inside it. “Hello, Father.”

  Beltan’s expression transformed into one of wonder, and his hand closed reflexively—gently—around the girl’s. She turned, her eyes on Travis now. They were gray, like her dress, but flecked with gold.

  “Hello, Father,” she said again.

  Travis couldn’t speak. For so long he had wondered if she was fair-haired or dark, if she had all her fingers and toes; he had tried to picture what she would look like, the image in his mind changing a little with each passing month. Now she was here, so much like he had imagined, and utterly different, and he had no idea what to say to her.

  Beltan knelt, laid a hand on her shoulder, and gave her a solemn look. “What is your name, child?”

  Her look was as serious as his. “My name is Nim.”

  Again the voices spoke in Travis’s mind, echoing the name. Only it wasn’t just a name, it was a rune.

  “Nim,” Travis murmured. “Hope.” He moved toward Vani. “Did you name her that?”

  The girl—Nim—laughed, all traces of seriousness gone. “Don’t be silly, Father,” she said. “You did.”

  “I told her she was my greatest hope,” the T’gol said to Travis, “and that it was you who told me the ancient word for hope was Nim.”

  Travis tried to clear the lump from his throat. “You spoke about me—about us—often?”

  Vani nodded. “As soon as she could speak—which was quite early—she always wanted to know everything I could tell her about you both. She can be quite . . . persistent.”

  “You’re very brave, and your father was a king,” Nim said, pointing at Beltan, then she pointed at Travis. “And you’re a great wizard.”

  Travis glanced down at the melted plate, and his stomach churned.

  “Nim,” Vani said, kneeling beside the girl, touching her arms, “why don’t you go play in the bedroom for a while?”

  The girl heaved a dramatic sigh for the obvious benefit of Travis and Beltan. “That means she wants to say things to you that I’m not supposed to hear.”

  “Yes,” Vani said, gold eyes flashing, “it does.” She turned Nim around and gave her a gentle but firm push toward the hallway. Nim made a show of dragging her small black shoes on the floor, then vanished into the bedroom. The door shut behind her.

  “So now what?” Travis said, his voice going hard.

  Both Vani and Beltan stared at him.

  Travis had always imagined that, if this moment somehow ever came, he would feel immeasurable joy. And for a moment he had. It was good to know Nim’s name, to know she was whole and healthy and beautiful. Only that moment was over, and now anger oozed from Travis, hot and thick, like blood from a reopened wound.

  “You can’t do this, Vani.”

  “Do what?”

  “What you’re doing.” He clenched his hands into fists and advanced on the T’gol. “Don’t you understand? We’ve been happy here. For three years, we’ve been just fine without you.”

  “Travis . . .” Beltan started to say, laying a hand on his shoulder, but Travis shook it off.

  “We didn’t have a choice,” he said, moving in until his face was inches from hers. “And you know why? Because you left us.”

  “I had my reasons,” she said, her voice cool. “Did you not read the letter I left for you at Gravenfist Keep?”

  Travis let out a bitter laugh. He had read it all right, over and over, and each time it made less sense than the last. “It doesn’t matter why you did it. You went, and you took something away that we can never get back, not even now that you’ve brought Nim here. That was the choice you made, and I don’t know what you’re doing in London, or how you even got to Earth, but you can’t just walk through that door like nothing ever happened. You don’t have that right. You gave it away the night you left us without even bothering to say good-bye.”

  As he spoke, his voice had risen, and her body had grown rigid, her eyes sparking. She was T’gol; she could reach up and snap his neck with her bare hands before he could blink. In fact, she looked as if she wanted to do it right then. Beltan started to reach for her, but she shut her eyes and turned away, crossing her arms over her stomach.

  “I know,” she said. And again, the words soft and broken, “I know.”

  Travis wanted to harden his heart, to refuse to hear the sorrow, the regret, the anguish in her voice. Only wasn’t that what he had given up so much to fight against? Those whose hearts were made of cold iron rather than weak, mortal flesh?

  The anger drained from him like the dishwater in the sink, leaving him empty and shaking. He felt Beltan’s strong arms wrap arou
nd him, and he leaned his head on the blond man’s shoulder.

  “Maybe you’d better tell us why you’ve come,” Beltan said, the words gruff, and Vani nodded.

  6.

  Ten minutes later, they sat around the kitchen table, drinking mugs of coffee Beltan had brewed. Nim was in the living room now, lying on her stomach on the floor, drawing with a pencil and some paper Beltan had found in the desk. Before heading into the kitchen, Travis had paused for a moment, watching her. The pencil seemed far too large for her fingers, but she moved it across the paper with deliberate motions, sticking out her tongue as she concentrated.

  “She seems older than three winters,” Beltan said. “She looks like five, and speaks as if she is older than that.”

  Vani wrapped her hands around her mug. “She’s always been that way. She was born after only seven moons, as if she was anxious to be out and learning about the world.” She smiled, and the expression smoothed away some of the lines from her face. “She was only six moons old when she first spoke, and then not simply a single world. I will never forget it. I was cradling her in my arms, and she said, ‘Set me down, Mother.’ I did, and she walked over to a pebble and picked it up. I’ve never seen a child speak or walk so early.”

  “I heard her,” Travis said. “When she was still in your womb, Vani. It was in Imbrifale, after you and Beltan had passed through the Void, when I spoke the rune of fire to warm you. To warm her. I heard her voice in my mind. It was so small, I thought I was just imagining it, but . . .”

  “You weren’t imagining. What did she say to you?”