So fast. They killed so unbelievably fast.
Echo rushed to the dead men, and my mother turned to us.
“There are no longerRhi’Ahron the Cloudgate.”
She smiled and slid the bone pins home again.
Chaser, come home.
I frowned. That wasn’t theTouchstone’s voice, and I turned back to the platform, the vast, flat semicircle of stone between the jungle and the sea. I took a step toward it, and my runescars lit up like sparks from a fuse.
“I’d say we’ve found the chimeric mine,” said Dev, and my heart sank into my boots.
As I got closer, I could see that the chimeric that floated across the platform came from holes that had been drilled. Theybubbled and hissed like acid pools, and they called to me like the beat of an ancient heart.
My runescars ached, and I broke out in sweat as my body tried to cool the heat rising in my veins. Scraps of old, tanned leather were embedded into the sides of the holes, pressed along the edges like dried wax. I reached down, ran my fingers along the ridges. Blackened and crisp, twisted and gray. Not leather, I realized. Not wax.
Bark.
I ran my fingers along the surface next. Not stone. Wood.
I staggered back, my heart hammering in my chest.
This entire platform was all that was left of the RuneTree.
If I had a thousand thousand years, I could never count the rings. Surely, her branches held the stars. Surely, her roots girded the erthe. But she was gone now. There were no whispers. There was no voice. There was nothing left of her save the bark against my boots and the plateau of dead wood, blackened and split. Nothing save the husk of something that had once been beautiful. I sank to my knees, overcome with sorrows.
Wells had been drilled into her heartwood, tapping the chimeric that had once been her blood, and it broke my heart as surely as a rabbit under my mother’s blade. This ancient tree was dead, felled by theRhi’Ahryears ago to wage an endless war, and it was only the lingering, fading echo of a powerful spirit that had given theTouchstoneher life. Kirianae of the House WoodRaven, Guardian of the Cloudgate, Goddess ofLindurithain. She was theTouchstone, as well as theNil’hellynand theAndomiehrand suns knew how many others. She was all of them, and, in some ways, now me.
I touched the pendant around my neck. The House WoodRaven was here.
“Welcome to the Cloudgate,” came a voice, as Kier Gavriel Thanavar stepped out of the trees.
He was covered in blood, his gold-shot eyes fixed and intense, ignoring the others as he strode across the sand. In his hand was a head, and he dropped it without care, like an apple core, to the ground. I swallowed as he stopped beside me, chest heaving, jaw tight, and I could feel the runes pour off him in waves, deeper, more powerful than ever before.
“There are no moreRhi’Ahron the island,” he said. It was the roll of distant thunder.
But he was different. His skin glowed in the early morning light, the threads of gold pulsing like my runescars, and I knew it was the chimeric burning him from within.
The truth struck me, sudden and merciless. The gold in his eyes had never been a trick of the light. He was more than a Priestlord. He’d always been more.
He was a Dreadmage.
Born of the old magik, bound to the chimeric, and—Forge help me—the keeper of my heart.
He bent on one knee beside me and touched trembling, chimeric-laced fingers to the bark of the Tree.
“Kirianae, forgive me,” he said, and he lowered his head.“Mey’mehr.”
Mother.
My breath left my chest in a shuddering rush, and I laid a hand on his shoulder, not fighting the tears that fell now. She had loved him for ten years, had saved him and raised him and taught him her ways. The goddess and the little boy she took as her own.
“I cannot hear her,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.
I looked to the bay, where theTouchstonelay beached.
Touchstone?I asked, hoping against hope that I’d hear something. A warmth, a growl, a murmur of her sails. There was nothing, no echo, no sound, save the distant thrum of the Dreadwall a way off the shore. The island was holding its breath.
