from his heavy brow, and his brown eyes fluttered open. For a moment she saw fear in them, then they focused on her, and his lips parted in a grin. He mouthed the words
Lady Grace
, and she glimpsed the stump that was all that remained of his tongue.
He lifted bloodied hands, moving them in a gesture that communicated with uncanny eloquence.
Good morrow, my
lady. I hope you’ll forgive my appearance.
Grace didn’t know if he meant his sudden arrival, or the state of his robes. Nor did it matter. This was utterly impossible. But maybe that was all right; maybe sometimes the impossible did happen.
She flung her arms around Sky’s thick shoulders and laughed.
5.
If he didn’t look too hard, Travis Wilder could almost believe he was finally, impossibly home.
Panting for breath, he paused at one of the numberless switchbacks the trail made as it snaked its way up the eastern escarpment of Castle Peak. He wiped sweat and grit from his stubbly bald head with a handkerchief and adjusted the lumpy canvas pack slung over his sore shoulder. A thousand feet below, the valley trapped the last rays of late-afternoon sun like flecks of color in a Fifty-Niner’s gold pan. The thin sigmoid of Granite Creek flashed in the light, sleek and silver as a trout, but purple shadows already made pine-thick islands of the moraines at the foot of Signal Ridge.
He knew he should ignore the fire in his lungs and keep moving. Night came early to the mountains, and it wouldn’t be long before he was no longer sweating. Even in July, frost was no stranger at ten thousand feet once dusk fell, and they didn’t want to spend a second night like the first. For what seemed an eternity the four of them had huddled together on the dirt floor of the abandoned miner’s cabin, silent and shivering, while wind sliced through the chinks in the logs.
You could have used a rune, Travis.
He touched the hard lump in his shirt pocket.
Sinfathisar let you speak runes the last
time you were on Earth. Just because this is a di ferent century
doesn’t matter. You could have spoken
Krond
and lit a fire.
Lirith was blue this morning, and there was ice on Durge’s
mustache. And Sareth...
However, the idea of trying to speak the rune of fire had been more terrifying than the possibility of freezing to death. When he used magic, things had a tendency to get burned and broken. And sometimes those things were people. He didn’t know if he was really the one Lirith and the Witches called Runebreaker, but he knew they were right to fear his power. He did.
You need to get back. Sareth didn’t look good when you left.
He’s probably coming down with altitude sickness, and the others won’t know what that is. He needs to drink a lot of fluids,
but the water up here isn’t safe until you boil it, and that’s not
going to happen until you get there with the matches.
His boots of Eldhish leather stayed stuck to the trail. If he half shut his eyes, the valley didn’t look much different than the last time he had gazed out over it. The stegosaurus-backed silhouette of the mountains hadn’t changed, and the high plain at their feet was speckled with the same dusty green sage. However, when he opened his eyes fully, his preternatural vision quickly picked out everything that was wrong.
Below and to his right, the southern flanks of Castle Peak were populated with cabins and rough-milled mine shacks that, in his memory, were no more than weathered gray splinters. Heaps of tailings, red and umber, oozed down the mountainside like the discharge from fresh wounds. A heavy mist of pulverized rock drifted on the air, and the sound of the last powder blast still echoed off the peaks like late thunder.
Across the valley, a thin line of steam rose from a train just pulling into what must be a temporary depot. Travis could make out the pale line of the railroad grade that reached toward town. Just ten more miles of narrow-gauge track to lay, and the engines would be pulling
Lady Grace
, and she glimpsed the stump that was all that remained of his tongue.
He lifted bloodied hands, moving them in a gesture that communicated with uncanny eloquence.
Good morrow, my
lady. I hope you’ll forgive my appearance.
Grace didn’t know if he meant his sudden arrival, or the state of his robes. Nor did it matter. This was utterly impossible. But maybe that was all right; maybe sometimes the impossible did happen.
She flung her arms around Sky’s thick shoulders and laughed.
5.
If he didn’t look too hard, Travis Wilder could almost believe he was finally, impossibly home.
Panting for breath, he paused at one of the numberless switchbacks the trail made as it snaked its way up the eastern escarpment of Castle Peak. He wiped sweat and grit from his stubbly bald head with a handkerchief and adjusted the lumpy canvas pack slung over his sore shoulder. A thousand feet below, the valley trapped the last rays of late-afternoon sun like flecks of color in a Fifty-Niner’s gold pan. The thin sigmoid of Granite Creek flashed in the light, sleek and silver as a trout, but purple shadows already made pine-thick islands of the moraines at the foot of Signal Ridge.
He knew he should ignore the fire in his lungs and keep moving. Night came early to the mountains, and it wouldn’t be long before he was no longer sweating. Even in July, frost was no stranger at ten thousand feet once dusk fell, and they didn’t want to spend a second night like the first. For what seemed an eternity the four of them had huddled together on the dirt floor of the abandoned miner’s cabin, silent and shivering, while wind sliced through the chinks in the logs.
You could have used a rune, Travis.
He touched the hard lump in his shirt pocket.
Sinfathisar let you speak runes the last
time you were on Earth. Just because this is a di ferent century
doesn’t matter. You could have spoken
Krond
and lit a fire.
Lirith was blue this morning, and there was ice on Durge’s
mustache. And Sareth...
However, the idea of trying to speak the rune of fire had been more terrifying than the possibility of freezing to death. When he used magic, things had a tendency to get burned and broken. And sometimes those things were people. He didn’t know if he was really the one Lirith and the Witches called Runebreaker, but he knew they were right to fear his power. He did.
You need to get back. Sareth didn’t look good when you left.
He’s probably coming down with altitude sickness, and the others won’t know what that is. He needs to drink a lot of fluids,
but the water up here isn’t safe until you boil it, and that’s not
going to happen until you get there with the matches.
His boots of Eldhish leather stayed stuck to the trail. If he half shut his eyes, the valley didn’t look much different than the last time he had gazed out over it. The stegosaurus-backed silhouette of the mountains hadn’t changed, and the high plain at their feet was speckled with the same dusty green sage. However, when he opened his eyes fully, his preternatural vision quickly picked out everything that was wrong.
Below and to his right, the southern flanks of Castle Peak were populated with cabins and rough-milled mine shacks that, in his memory, were no more than weathered gray splinters. Heaps of tailings, red and umber, oozed down the mountainside like the discharge from fresh wounds. A heavy mist of pulverized rock drifted on the air, and the sound of the last powder blast still echoed off the peaks like late thunder.
Across the valley, a thin line of steam rose from a train just pulling into what must be a temporary depot. Travis could make out the pale line of the railroad grade that reached toward town. Just ten more miles of narrow-gauge track to lay, and the engines would be pulling
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