The Path of Destruction (Rune Breaker) (5 page)

Ru drew himself up and stared right back at her. “And when she puts that spear in your back? When she ruins my chance to kill Immurai the Masked? What then will you say?”

Slowly, stretching each muscle involved in turn, Taylin stood. Though he hovered above the floor, she still towered over him, and when she stretched her wings out to their fullness, she well and truly dwarfed him. “As I have always said, and as you have to know by now thanks to the link, I will never try to be your 'master'.”

Normally when she said the word, it was filled with disgust and shame, but this time, it was as adamant as all the other words that came with it.

“And I will not give you orders that the link will force upon you. But I will not let you hurt my friends. Not physically, not emotionally. Brin saved Layaka, cared for her like a sister. I believe her because maybe I've stayed away from everyone since Daire, but I've seen how badly Layaka's betrayal hurt her.

“You don't care, but the rest of us do. It doesn't matter if she was all a lie or not, Layaka was a real person to us and Partha destroyed her. And then Issacor...” Her jaw set and her wings snapped in close around her. It took a long moment for her to steady herself. “I'm not going to lose someone else because you have no faith in people.”

Ru let go of the blocks on the link to let her feel his annoyance, frustration and anger at the whole thing. Snarling, he reached out to an array in a nearby wall and unleashed a torrent of
vin
and
ere-a
into it. The stone there disintegrated into an arch and continued to transmute into dust in the space beyond. Within seconds, a new room was created: a blank box of stone walls.

With a belligerent glance in Taylin's direction, he headed toward it. “And I will not lose my chance to ensure Immurai dies screaming because you're foolish enough to put your trust in them.”

“It isn't foolish.”

“Of course it is.” He threw up his arms as he entered the new room and the floor became polished, black marble. “Perhaps she isn't in league with the Threefold Moon, but like all people, she has an agenda to carry out. Bonds of friendship or love are just manipulations to get you to aid in that agenda.”

Taylin followed him and stood blocking the arch. “'Like all people'? That's demonstrably mad. Kaiel and Raiteria—“

“Arunsteadeles is here for the stories and experience he needs to become a loreman. Raiteria is here because Immurai took her only son. I am here because I owe Immurai agonies unkind.” At the mention of that, the link boiled with naked vengeance and half-formed memories that made Taylin dizzy.

Ru held out a hand, palm up, clenched it closed and pulled it toward him. One wall, its array charged with
ere-a
, erupted forth with a stone counter that jutted out into the room, stopping just short of clipping him.

“These are agendas I trust, because our goal is the same. But I don't know Brin's; she could turn on us and ruin this venture in an instant.” He placed both hands down flat on the top of counter and exhaled slowly, willing small teases of
ere-a
and
ferif
into the surface. He was no longer using the native arrays in the house, but his own transmutations to put his memory into the stone.

Fractal lines of silver shot through the gray stone, which became smooth by the same manipulations. In his time, it was called thunderstruck marble, though the base stone wasn't actual marble at all. Those without magic thought it occurred naturally, while those with it made a livable profit 'importing' it.

“She won't ruin anything.” Taylin said vehemently, though she couldn't restrain her curiosity enough to keep her from watching the entire process that was creating a room before her eyes with a sense of wonder. “Brin is my friend. And Kaiel's. And Rai's. We wouldn't abandon her and she wouldn't abandon us.”

“And you'll go on believing that until it happens.” Ru said coolly. The link betrayed the bitterness behind those words.

Taylin's expression softened when she felt it and she came to stand opposite him across the counter. “Ru... you can't think of people like that. Her dying doesn't mean that she abandoned you, and it doesn't mean...” She trailed off because she was struck full on by a wave of confusion.

Ru paused in his work on the counter and looked up at her. “Who is this 'her' you're talking about?”

Blinking in her confusion, she looked back at him with the same expression. “The... I'm sorry, I shouldn't bring up things I saw when I... saw your memories, but this is important. I don't think Gloryfall would want you feeling this way because of her death.”

A harsh snort was Ru's reply and he went back to work, leaving unreadable emotions swirling in the link.

Not understanding that reaction, or the emotions, Taylin drew her wings even closer and cocked her head. “What was that about?”

Ru didn't look up this time. His fingers traced out some silver patterns of his own design and his eyes tracked them carefully. He dampened his end of the link, but didn't lock it off completely. “Miss Taylin, if you have had a vision of Gloryfall's demise, you did not pull it from my head. She passed while I was sealed; likely very old and very powerful.”

Frustration, as usual, ruled the link, but a slightly different flavor than before. It was joined by bitterness, malice, and a feeling Taylin had only just felt herself in the past few days, one she couldn't put a name to. But she hardly noticed for her own thoughts.

“But I was there. The bed. The blood. I felt how much that hurt, Ru.” Just the memory of it made her stomach knot.

Now the link closed off entirely again and Ru moved from in front of her to where the counter sprouted from the wall, still refusing to look at her. “It wasn't...” He pressed a hand firmly down on the counter and once more tapped into the arrays. A section of the counter sank into the surface, leaving an oval indentation in the surface.

“...Gloryfall.” He finally finished. “You are remembering the death of Gand.”

Taylin followed him, though she still kept the counter between them. She wasn't worried that he might hurt her, but they both seemed to feel less tense with space between them. “Gand? The man who saved you?”

“The man who saved me many times.” Ru's voice lost its gravely edge, but remained low as he carefully extruded an elegant, curved spike from the wall to extend over the indentation and began pressing spellworking patterns around its circumference. “The man who raised me, taught me to channel my gifts into more than sparks—into true spellworking. All of us.”

He stopped what he was doing. “He had sixty-eight students there in the end. The Reaping Brotherhood, bound by oaths to Gand to sow the seeds of good will between we who innately controlled magic and the mundane folk, and reap a bright future for all beings.”

Taylin stared at him, silent. Never would she have believed that the man before her had ever stood for making anyone's future 'bright'. The idea of the Rune Breaker being tasked with spreading good will felt laughable. Gand sounded like someone Issacor or herself might ally themselves with, not Ru.

Something must have drawn Ru's attention in the link because he shot her an odd look before returning his gaze to his paused act of creation.

Instead of commenting on whatever he sensed, he spoke on. “He lived exactly as he told us to and spent the day before his death among the people, converting every iota of his power into
vitae
to heal their children, treat their wounded, and ease the suffering of those beyond the reach of magic while the priests of Vitalius let them rot.

“And that's exactly why he had nothing left to place a warding that night, not even an alarm around his bedchamber. Why when two of the townsfolk, whom he wished so much to coexist with, put a dagger in his throat and another in his heart, he couldn't heal—couldn't even call for help.”

His left hand balled into a fist that began to hum with power. “There were forty of us there that night, under his roof at the sanctuary. Not all of us knew
vitae
patterns, but there were enough. By the time he was found however, he was beyond magic.”

“He sounds like he was a great man.” Taylin said quietly.

As suddenly as all that poured out of him, he was suddenly back to himself, voice and all. “Did you not listen to what I said? He thought that we could have peace with those people and even after he drained himself completely to improve their selfish lives, they couldn't even be bothered keeping him around to use him, so great was their hatred. They murdered him in his bed and then in less than a week the church of Vitalius held a festival celebrating his death while we, his children, were left alone and without direction. His good intentions came to nothing but his corpse moldering in the earth.”

Taylin drew in a breath and scowled at him. “He was trying to do something noble!”

“Noble men die for their foolishness. It's the same foolishness and nobility that's blinding you to this problem with Brin. And one would think you would know better after what's happened.” Ru said. He went to start his work anew, but was struck in the link by a wave of white hot rage that didn't register on Taylin's face.

He looked up and studied her expression. There was hurt there, though thankfully not enough to trigger retribution from the link, and sadness, but nothing to betray the pure, animal fury that was clawing its way around in the link like a living thing.

Taylin studied him right back and spoke slowly and deliberately. “You mean with what happened to Issacor. You think...” She scoffed airily. “What he did probably saved Signa and Growluff's lives and kept Rale from being taken. He protected them when we couldn't. He died... and there's nothing I can do to repay him.”

Ru was still searching for some sign that what he sensed in the link was actually going on in her head by the time she finished speaking, and still he found nothing. “Is that all?” He blurted.

“What do you mean 'is that all'? Isn't that enough?”

“Aren't you angry?” He pressed.

Adjusting her wings unconsciously, she leaned against the wall and muttered. “Unhappy. But then I'm always unhappy with you. You can't leave things alone. Everything and everyone has to be worse than what you see.” She took a deep breath. “I'd rather not think of how you see me, seeing as it's fact that I'm already keeping you enslaved.”

Ru laughed, low and dismissive while returning to inscribing the patterns he'd already started. The tip of the spike split into two under his attentions, which curved out and around in opposite directions before ending up facing one another with a thumb's width between them.

“I meant at him. For dying and leaving you.”

“Us.” Taylin corrected. “And no, of course not.”

“It's never 'us' when you rage at the dead.” Ru replied. “Always yourself. When Gand was murdered, it was left to his first and most skilled: we three who had to fill the place he had in the Brotherhood, in the minds of the students, and in each other. Many nights, I wished he would rise from the dead so I could visit punishments on him for that.”

“I would never want to do that to Issacor.” Taylin murmured and Ru's eyes narrowed at what he felt in the link.

One more circle around the top of the protrusion, marked with the symbols for
akua
and
flaer
, and Ru was finished with his spellwork. “Heh.”

“What?”

“May the link not see this as an effort to bring you pain, because I've no time to waste writhing in retribution, Miss Taylin, but you have no idea how fortunate you are that he died before you could learn what that feeling,” he touched his temple to indicate the link, “leads to.”

Bewildered and this time truly angered by his words, Taylin pushed off the wall and was moments from leaping across the counter at him. “Ru. Stop. Now.” There were the beginnings of scales blistering up along her arms and her eyes shifted subtly.

Despite the danger, Ru only leaned back. “Only a warning, Miss Taylin. You never encountered it before, but I have and the link makes me sense it. You cared greatly for him.”

“I care for everyone in our group.” Taylin stammered. Ru gave her a flat look and she sighed. “Caring for isn't the same as agreeing with or being friends with.”

Apparently satisfied with this clarification, Ru folded his arms. “But it was deeper with the blade disciple. I've touched your memories too, you recall, and I know you've had those close to you die before. This was different. If Arunsteadeles or Brin died back there, you wouldn't have secluded yourself as you have.”

Taylin shivered at other memories and pressed her lips into a firm line. “If it were true, that wouldn't mean I am better off with him dead.”

Ru took his eyes off her to admire his handiwork. “Miss Taylin, have you ever wondered how I became the Rune Breaker? How I was bound like this: a spell even I can't understand or overpower?”

Just happy to be off the subject of Issacor, Taylin took the bait. “I never asked because I thought it was private.”

“Heh. Allow me to inform you: for twenty-one years following Gand's death, we three led the Brotherhood. Gloryfall was at my side and I gave her
nations
as tokens of my esteem. I cared for her more than my empire, more than the power at my command, and as far as I knew, she cared for me in equal parts. Until one day, the one day where the link refuses even the most powerful spells to make clear to me, I recall her staring down at me, tears in her eyes as the most complex array I have ever seen was drawn in the stone around me and the sky above.

“She told me that she was 'sorry', Miss Taylin,” He reached into the air before him and made a gripping motion. The air crackled and wavered as a ghostly chain manifested in air, leading from a densely drawn and populated magic circle in the center of Ru's forehead and wrapping around to connect to the base of Taylin's skull. “just as she gave me the last 'gift' she would ever give me.”

The memory welled and broke past Ru's defenses and Taylin's as well. As she had that night many days before, Taylin found herself in a strange place and not herself.

She was kneeling on hard stone, which vibrated like a constant earthquake as gold light etched symbols and circles into the earth and more of the same took form in burnt orange above. Kneeling in front of her was Gloryfall. She was a woman now, and at her most radiant, save for her freely flowing tears and an expression moments from being wracked by sobs.