Runebinder (The Runebinder Chronicles #1)(84)

Mara was at his side, one hand on his shoulder, the other holding a rattle of bone and rawhide. Her eyes were shadowed, expectant. He could only lie there, staring up at a sky that was uncannily clear, the stars above mirroring the cosmos in his mind.

“Welcome home,” she said. Then she stood.

Tenn couldn’t pay attention to the words she spoke next, only caught snippets of “thanks” and “gratitude.” He spun with ecstasy, weighted to the world that slipped and swam beneath him. Holding on to the memory of the vision was harder than holding fast to a dream. Like the fish, it slipped between his fingertips, shining and beckoning and impossible to grasp.

The rest of the Witches dispersed. He knew it, dimly. But he was too busy spinning in the vision. The runes. And the boy. And the need.

“What did you see?” Dreya asked. When had she knelt beside him?

“Runes,” he whispered. “For travel. They need Earth and Air to work, but they will take us...” He almost said to Jarrett but faltered. “They’ll take us to Leanna. To wherever we need to go.”

“That is all?” Dreya asked. She almost sounded disappointed.

He nodded. For some reason, he didn’t want to mention the boy. Not out of shame or fear, but because something about the vision felt intensely private. Not even he understood it, and voicing it to the world felt sacrilegious. Besides, he already had a guy to search for. Jarrett was out there. Waiting for him.

“Then we should be off soon,” Dreya said. “If you are strong enough.”

“I have to be,” Tenn said. He pushed himself to standing and did his best not to waver. “We leave tonight.”





CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

THEY WERE READY within the hour. There wasn’t much to pack—just extra rations and layers of clothing. Tenn sat by the fire for most of the preparations, staring into the flames and watching the runes flash over and over again in his mind. With every trace, he felt his understanding shift deeper, as though it were slowly sifting away layers of confusion. He knew the runes would transport them wherever they desired. He knew they needed Earth for grounding, Air for speed. And he knew they were a power the world hadn’t seen in hundreds of years, a language the gods had long ago stopped speaking. The weight of that knowledge settled on his shoulders with every crackle of the bonfire. Once more, he was entrusted with something he had no right to possess. What made him worthy of this knowledge? Why was he the one the spirits or gods were entrusting with their secrets?

And perhaps most important, would it be enough to save Jarrett?

One must be godlike...

At the moment, he felt terribly small.

“How does this work?” Dreya asked when they were ready. She had a small bag on her back, and wore a necklace with the symbol he’d seen above Rhiannon’s door, the seven-pointed star within a horned moon. He didn’t ask how she’d come across it.

Dreya’s was a question he barely had an answer to. Each of the dozen or so runes and symbols from the vision had a meaning. Each layered atop each other to create a sentence, a spell. In a way, he had whispers of meaning from each rune. But he didn’t know the individual powers, just as he didn’t fully grasp the individual meanings of the runes he used in the protection circles. He just knew they worked as a whole.

Until he had time to experiment, that would have to be enough.

Thankfully, his time in the vision, or whatever it was, gave him enough of a hunch on how to use the runes.

“I need you to channel Air into the runes. Each of you. It will only carry someone using the magic that fuels it. That’s it.”

They nodded.

“Ready?”

Another nod. That was enough for him.

He knelt and traced the runes into the cooler ashes by the fire, let the grit sift around his fingertip. There was a small voice in the back of his head screaming that he was getting it wrong, that he needed to give up now, that there was no way he was the one meant to channel this power. But with every rune, the voice grew weaker and the hum of power in his head grew stronger. Every scratch of his finger, and resolution grew. When the runes were completed, he looked up to the twins. They stared at the runes with...trepidation? It didn’t help his confidence.

He pressed his hand to the center of the runes and opened to Earth.

Magic swirled through him, blossomed from his fingertips and twined around the ash, billowing and fluttering like a butterfly, a fold in the fabric of the world.

“Now,” he said. The twins opened to Air.

The runes exploded in light and ash, funneled up and around the three of them in a cocoon of soot and wind and brilliance. The world shifted, swirled, sank. Power was everything.

Then the cocoon collapsed around them, and the trailers vanished to light and the sound of hoofbeats.

*

When the dust cleared, they were no longer in the Midwest.

Mountains rose on all sides, peaks silhouetted in dark blue and starlight. The moon was hidden, but the stars were bright enough to see by, glittering off snow that blanketed every rise and sweep. Light bloomed in the valley below them. Violent. Orange. Electric.

Leanna’s compound glowed and smoked in the night. The sight of it made Tenn’s head whirl. It looked so...out of place. The streetlamps, the swept streets, the houses with their plumes of smoke. Exactly like before the Resurrection, save for the wall that surrounded the city and the warren of ramshackle houses splayed about just within the perimeter.