It was Worley.
“The captain has asked for you, sir. If you please, one of m’birds has brought a note from your, ah…from, from the king.”
Fahr sighed and pushed off the rail.
“Good night, Blue. Dream sweet.”
“When the moons meet,” I returned, and he disappeared in the dark.
I cast my eyes to the fore, where the night sky was turning a sickly yellow. I knew it wasn’t the dawn but the Silence. I looked at the figurehead, the haunted, carved face that led theTouchstonewherever she went.
The chimeric leans into wylde magik, he had said.
I removed my gloves, tucked them into my sash, and laid one hand on the rail.
“Touchstone,”I said. “Help me.”
Child.
I drew a deep breath and surrendered.
The web of rune ran like currents through my body, from mytoes to my fingertips, from my belly to my brain. Rune and pattern connected and alive. Moons and stars, suns and erthe, and the chimeric that bound them all.
Fauns have practiced wylde magik for centuries, Echo had said.
I removed my hand and took the stance.
“Auctorus Circulaia,”I said aloud and made the patterns. The rune shield sprang to life, pulsing with chimeric, stretching with life.
Tears of the moons, said theTouchstone.Weaver of suns. Child of the north, come home.
Instinctively, I crooked the left fourth finger, and my shield pushed outward, tentative at first, heaving and contracting and sparkling like stars. Suddenly, it burst free, a crackling orb of connected lines.
I bent the right fourth, and I had two orbs now, circling each other like the suns.
Forge and Ember, Brother Suns of Oversea. Two suns. Two names.
ButRhi’Ahrhad three.
I needed moons.
I kicked off my boots and flexed my toes, drawing magik from her boards as I had done on those very first days. I felt the planks of theTouchstonereach for me. I closed my eyes, and her life flowed through me, wylde and deep and as old as the world. I flattened my palms together, slid them swiftly apart.
Child, look.
I opened my eyes. Three orbs hovered before me. Orbs of glittering, spinning runes. I had done it.
Auctorus Circulaia.
Home.
Now, could I use it?
I remembered the section on the hull still broken by cannonshot, so I leaned over and laid my hands against the bulwark. I was a runechaser, wylde and filled to the brim with power.
“Auctorus praesidium in ligus,”I said.
“Create to protect and bind.” I had no idea if it would work. It was all instinct. Plucking the Worldrune like music, raw and real and, this time, all mine.
