Vidar saw no trace of Yallander or Ren, but the blood and gore all over the floor and across the translucent, bluish barrier between himself and the explosion told him everything he needed to know. He’d killed again. These deaths, however, would not burden his conscience. This, he knew, as he stumbled out of the building before the flames claimed him.
The rune from the padlock worked. He’d been almost certain it would, especially after crafting it, but it was a relief to know with certainty. Without it, he would be part of the mess inside that building, another certainty. Figuring out the finer details of how to work the rune was for another time. Now, he rendered it inactive. He needed to get away.
Stumbling through the snow, he briefly considered using this new technique, if you could call it that, of destroying sowilo runes to blow up the thieves’ guild chapter house, but decided against it. Without knowing who was in there, he couldn’t be certain he only reached the sort of people who would come after his friends. With Yallander and Ren both dead and missing, hopefully the guild’s claim over him would disappear with them.
It gnawed at him how he couldn’t be sure. Logically, the guild would approach him first again, rather than go straight to killing. If not for wanting him to pay for what he’d done, then to know what actually happened. Once the building burned down, no clues to their whereabouts would remain. In the end, certainty was impossible. Vidar would notify everyone he knew to sleep with one eye open for a while. How to deal with informing his family might prove the bigger hurdle.
Vidar stopped dead in his tracks. What if they were already gone? And what of Alvarn?
One thing leaving no room for doubt was the abrupt end to his lucrative teaching position, but the clatter of coins would have to wait. First, he needed to make sure everyone escaped the attack from the dragon.
His father’s house stood untouched, as did most of that entire neighborhood. From what Vidar saw, Andersburg suffered far more than his old part of town. Sneaking up to one of the windows, he heard a snippet of his mother speaking. Just the tone of her voice. The words themselves were unintelligible. The shrill tone spoke of a distraught temperament, but not catastrophically so. They were all alive, he surmised.
Slinking back a few streets over, he made sure no one was looking as he pulled out the padlock with the barrier rune. The symbol was intact enough for him to provide the rune with a modicum of essence. That done, Vidar slapped the symbol with the palm of his hand in an attempt to activate the rune without triggering it. To his astonishment, that thin barrier made a brief appearance.
“How is this possible?” Vidar asked the empty air. It did not answer.
He scanned his surroundings again before slapping the padlock a few more times. By the fifth slap, the essence ran out, and the barrier stopped appearing. Closing his eyes, he saw the empty circle. Essence drained, but he did not have to trigger it. That was how it’d stopped his advance when he found the padlock by the church. The revelation pointed to the priesthood not knowing what treasure they used to keep the wagon of bodies safe—and the hallways leading to that circle. Vidar shuddered, having successfully suppressed the memory of that room somewhat. The question of what those religious bastards were doing down there still remained, and he would need to get to the bottom of it at some point, but not now. Now, there were bigger questions to be answered.
This rune worked without triggering it. Did that make it intelligent, or just somehow infused with intention? With no way to answer that, Vidar wondered if triggering it manually, like he’d done back with Yallander, made any difference, or if it just served to slowly drain its essence. Another question without an answer. What he did know was how this discovery fundamentally transformed the uses of the rune. With this, you didn’t need to trigger it as a reaction to some incoming attack.
The rune would slumber until called upon by circumstance. A true miracle, and one he intended to use without pause.
Clambering up onto the roof of his father’s house, especially without making too much noise, in the fresh snow proved the challenge. Vidar wormed himself across the flat surface until he reached the spot he thought would be located right above his little sister’s bedroom.
Using nothing but his bare cold hands, he began removing snow until he hit stone. Shuddering, he brought out some of the supplies he’d stolen from the thieves’ guild to paint a barrier rune. Once satisfied, he encircled it and transferred a bit of essence from his left hand into the circle in his mind’s eye, slapping it once to make sure it would trigger on its own.
Vidar nodded to himself, satisfied. He didn’t know if it would stop dragon fire, but it had to be better than nothing. His father could burn for all he cared, but not his sister. He wouldn’t allow her to go like that. Even if the rune only worked for a moment, it gave them a better chance of escaping the confines of the house before it burned down all around them. Since it was constructed from stone, it would hold better than many others, but he’d seen other stone houses where the building materials had started to melt. He didn’t know fire could do that. The dragon’s flames must’ve been impossibly hot.
Before leaving, he took the opportunity to craft a few warmth runes on pieces of paper to give himself some much-needed warmth. Just as he was about to descend, the front door to his father’s house opened and the man himself exited. He was clothed from head to toe in what looked like fur.
“New coat,” Vidar grumbled to himself, too low for his voice to carry as he peeked over the edge of the roof. His father looked around with that dispassionate gaze of his, then disappeared up the street.
Vidar clambered down and disappeared in another direction. The barrier rune would offer some protection against a dragon, he hoped, or any other unlikely attack from above, but it would do little to stop a thief’s knife hand. It was all he could do for her at this time.
With his sister relatively safe and unharmed, he set out to find Alvarn, his friend and partner in crime. On his way over there he thought of the several pieces of paper with sowilo runes on them resting against his chest, arms, and hip. It was not the safest way of carrying them around, he now knew, after what he’d learned escaping the jail cell and then confronting Yallander.
The alternative was to go cold, and that was no alternative at all at this point. Vidar would need to find better, more permanent crafting materials soon. It wouldn’t do to go up in an explosion of his own making just because someone bumped into him and ripped the small pieces of paper. Metal would be best, carved grooves for lines that would withstand tampering. He’d also need some sort of weapon if he was going up against a dragon, the stupid fallen angels be blessed.
He hadn’t been boasting or talking out of rage. He did intend to see that flying beast gone from this world. Not because of what it had done to the town. While it was a vile and terrible act, it could not compare to destroying Vidar’s room and all his possessions in this world. Petty, perhaps. But he didn’t care. Didn’t care at all.
With the image of himself gloriously fighting and slaying a dragon, Vidar didn’t notice the obstacle in his way, and he stumbled as his foot caught. For once, he didn’t fall into the snow. He stopped and turned to see it was a person.
He, a relatively young man, sat on the ground with his back against a burned-out husk of a house. A layer of snow had formed over the thin blanket he’d draped over himself. The young man’s face was pale, his lips blue, and his stare glassy and empty.
Vidar hunched down. “You can’t stay out here in the cold.”
The man opened his mouth, but no words came. His empty stare didn’t change. Vidar looked around. Everyone, and there were quite a few people out and about by now, ignored the man under his blanket. Terror gripped their faces. Haunted looks of despair. They had their own problems to deal with.
A clump of people had gathered around a fire someone managed to start. Vidar saw a few women gathering snow in a metal bucket before bringing it over to the flames to melt it for drinking water.
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“I’m not sure how much help your neighbors can be,” Vidar said, turning back to the man. He still didn’t get any response. Those pale blue eyes unsettled him. This man wasn’t the only one displaced by last night’s events, but Vidar hadn’t stumbled over any other. Grumbling, he removed the warmth rune hidden by his hip and rejuvenated it a little more before hiding it under the man’s blanket. It would keep going for a few hours. But who knew if that would make any difference. It was something, at least.
Before leaving, Vidar brushed the snow off the blanket. He squeezed the man’s shoulder.
“Don’t rip that rune.”
As he was about to leave, he stopped himself and turned back. “Unless you want to leave this world.”
The man’s eyes flickered then. Vidar thought he might be coming to, but he didn’t stick around to see. There was nothing more he could do for him, anyway.
As he left Andersburg behind, the devastation lessened with fewer homes and places of business burned to the ground. With that, opportunities arose. Sure, it was of the utmost importance to learn of Alvarn’s fate after that horrid night, but some coin in his pocket was a close second. Without proper supplies to craft decent runes, all he was able to offer was rejuvenation. Thankfully, as it turned out, scribes to perform that service were few and far between.
Knocking on a few doors rendered immediate results, and the first people who let him into their home, a young man with the look of some sort of scholar and his very pregnant wife, didn’t care in the least if he carried the rune scribes’ guild’s writ or not.
“My wife should not be cold,” the man said, as if quoting someone he viewed as a medical authority. Vidar didn’t care much but did find a sense of satisfaction at the pregnant woman’s sigh of relief after he rejuvenated a sowilo rune in their bedroom, and the man whose name didn’t register with Vidar gave him a firm handshake after restoring function to a kenaz rune in his study.
That couple knew others, who in turn knew even more people of means with need of his services. Soon, he found himself spent of essence to the point it was a little difficult to move his arms or walk. They’d made him promise to return, indicating that the rune scribes’ guild chapter house was in disarray.
His pockets jangled with the silver and copper coins he’d made in the span of a few hours. Vidar took the time to enter one of the few shops still open to purchase a coin purse and a knife that came with a sheath, along with some stale bread from a nearby bakery who hadn’t been able to start up their ovens to make fresh product.
With food in his belly and some in a cloth bag for Siv, quite a bit of coin in his new coin purse, and a weapon, if a dinky one, things were looking up. Only then did he realize what it might’ve meant when his new customers spoke of the rune guild being in disarray.
He hurried his steps and was quite warm and sweaty when he reached Alvarn’s home, the tall, imposing stone building that housed the scribes. It stood untouched. Vidar breathed a sigh of relief, then approached a line of young men who were obviously student scribes. Alvarn was not among them.
“What is the holdup? Just let us go out there already,” one of them said to the group.
“Not very efficient to turn up at a burned-down house, is it?” another asked.
A third, scared-looking girl with mousy features and dark brown hair spoke in a low voice. “What if the dragon returns?”
“I’m looking for Alvarn,” Vidar told the first student to notice him, one of the older boys.
“Try the library,” came the reply.
They didn’t stop walking when he spoke to them.
“Where’s that?”
A young woman with hair like the dragon’s fire tied into a multitude of small braids sneered, her voice shrill and off-putting. “The fat merchant always has his nose in one book or another!”
Vidar put on his best unimpressed look. “Isn’t the point of students to learn?
“Where is the library?” he added, before any of the scribe runts could answer.
The one he’d initially addressed pointed to the chapter house. “Basement.”
“But you’re not getting in there, vagrant!” the redheaded woman said, her nose turned up and wrinkled, as if smelling something foul as the group walked off.
Vidar waited for them to leave, then lifted an arm to sniff. The girl wasn’t entirely wrong. Another reason to splurge on some new clothes once he found a new room that’d let him stay for cheap. Well, him and Siv, he supposed. Vidar groaned, thinking of how much pricier it would be to find a room with two beds and enough room for two. Hopefully, she’d take to learning rune crafting quickly, to contribute. That’d be nice. If he then expanded and brought on more people, profits would eventually soar.
The guild chapter house loomed above him, dark and ancient, as if daring him to build up business around illegal rune crafting. Those bastards posed a problem, but one for another day.
Horrible or no, the redhaired girl’s point of Vidar being denied entry turned out to be correct this time as well. No matter how much he banged on the door, no one came to answer. Defeated, he settled on Alvarn being fine for the time being, and he walked briskly along the left side, heading for the church to meet up with Siv.
Vidar’s eye caught something he hadn’t spotted before, a safety rail crafted from metal jutting out through the snow. It hid a set of stairs down, leading to a small gate below street level in the guild house’s foundation.
“Interesting,” he mused, looking up and down the street. People milled about, but he saw none of the telltale robes of rune scribes. No one spared him a second glance, even after he stepped down to the gate. It was locked. As he considered, and dismissed, the idea of using another exploding sowilo rune to gain entrance, that would without a doubt attract attention, the lock clicked as someone unlocked it from the other side.
It swung open, and a bunch of young rune scribes emerged in a single-file line. Some glanced at him where he was squished between the door and stairwell, but most ignored him or didn’t even notice his presence.
At least twenty of them walked past, none of them Alvarn, before the door began swinging shut. Vidar grabbed it and pulled. Someone cried out in surprise and when Vidar stepped out from behind the door, he saw an old man lying face-first in the snow, unmoving.
After making sure this old man was still breathing, he grabbed the key and reached up to hide it under the snow blanketing the street right beside the stairs. A few people glanced his way, probably having heard the old man.
Vidar waved to them. “Someone get some help for this man!”
That quickly made everyone turn their attention to their own affairs. So much for helping your fellow citizens.
Vidar stepped over the old man’s body and into the chapter house of the rune scribes’ guild. This had to be the basement, he figured, since it was below ground level. Unadorned hallways broke out into small rooms with tables and benches lit by kenaz runes overhead. It was warm enough that he opened his coat and rendered his own sowilo runes inactive. Paintings of all shapes and sizes depicting old men and women, probably prominent, dead rune scribes, hung on the walls, and he was surprised to see carpets on most floors.
He found a chamber with piles of books on a table and a couple of robes slung over a heavy-looking wooden chair in the corner. Thinking it would help him blend in, he grabbed one of the robes and put it on over his coat. It was much too big, so he removed it and went for the second. Too small. The third fit him perfectly.
His disguise was just in time, too. When he continued down the hallway, he met students. Robed as he was, they glanced in his direction, but no one greeted Vidar or stopped him to question his legitimacy. A stairwell appeared, and he had the option to go up or down. Vidar continued downward. He’d seen nothing like a library on this floor, which probably meant he hadn’t gone deep down enough yet.
Wondering if he was at the same depth as the underground water system yet, he stepped down into a small room that only served as a platform for the stairs. Beyond that first small room was the library. In Vidar’s imagination, it’d been a huge chamber with row after row of books reaching all the way to a ceiling impossibly far overhead, with hundreds of students hunched over ancient tomes. This was not that.
Not being all that tall and gangly, Vidar walked upright without issue, but quite a few of those down there with him walked with a stoop to not bump into the ceiling. There was lots and lots of shelving, to be sure, and students too, but it was a pitiful display in comparison to the imagined grandeur. The shelves followed the walls all around the chamber, but nearly two-thirds of them were just empty space.
Lengthwise, it must’ve been as large as the entire chapter house, but it was narrow to the point of feeling like you were in a somewhat widened corridor. Pillars spaced evenly apart all along the middle of the room didn’t help either, and students were required to squeeze past the haphazardly placed tables to get anywhere.
Alvarn sat at one of the tables not far from the entrance. Even with his craned neck and face hovering over the book in front of him, that mop of hair and the glasses threatening to slip off his nose were immediately recognizable.
“Alvarn!” Vidar shouted.
Alvarn looked up from his book, startled. The problem was, every other single person in the entire library did the same, and they did not look happy. Several of them shushed him as he waded through tables, shelves, and pillars to reach his friend, who stood with a smile. Then Alvarn glanced over Vidar’s shoulder and sat back down to start reading again without a word.
Vidar frowned and turned to look back over his shoulder.
The old man who’d passed out in the snow stood there, finger pointed right at Vidar, his robes wet and his other hand pressing a cloth to his bloody nose.
“Intruder!”
So much for a disguise.
Vidar smiled sheepishly as two large guards walked up to grab his arms. “I just wanted to stay somewhere warm,” he lied.
The two guards half carried him out of the library and up the stairs as the old man followed, hurling insults.
“Scoundrel! Miscreant! Thief!”
“Hey! I’m no thief,” Vidar complained.
“You stole the robe you’re wearing!”
He winced. The old man did have a point there. The guards walked him back to the entrance he’d snuck through and tossed him out without as much as a beating. All in all, it was probably the most pleasant manhandling Vidar had ever experienced.
