The Rune of Eldrath.

CHAPTER 2: THE VOICE IN THE PALM

The voice was still talking when the soldiers came through the door.

That was the first thing Kael registered as the five palace guards spread out across the bottom of the stairs. Not their weapons, not the torchlight, not the fact that they had stormed a sealed vault at midnight with his name clearly already in their mouths.

The voice behind his thoughts was still going, calm and level, like it had been there his entire life and had simply chosen tonight to start speaking.

Move, it said, left corridor. Now.

"I am not taking orders from whatever you are," Kael said under his breath.

The lead soldier stepped forward. He was broad across the chest and his hand was already resting on his sword hilt. "Kael Voss. You are to come with us. Lord Regent's orders."

"I work for the Head Archivist," Kael said. He kept his right hand behind his back. The rune was burning hotter now, a dry steady heat pushing up from his palm into his wrist. "Archive grounds fall under the Archivist's jurisdiction. Palace guard has no authority here after dark."

"We do tonight." The soldier nodded to two of the men flanking him. They started moving to either side of the work table.

"What does the Lord Regent want with a scribe?" Kael said, and he kept his voice level because that was the only thing he had to work with right now.

"That is not information I am carrying," the soldier said. "Come quietly and nothing happens to you."

"If nothing was going to happen to me you would have knocked on the front door at a reasonable hour." Kael took one step back toward the rear shelves. "You broke into a sealed vault with five armed men. That is not how you collect a scribe."

The soldier's eyes narrowed. "Last time I ask nicely."

Kael grabbed the lamp off the table and threw it sideways at the nearest shelf. Old parchment caught instantly. The entire left row of documents went up in a single orange sheet of flame and every soldier in the room turned toward it. Kael went the other way, through the narrow gap at the back of the shelves, up the secondary stairs, and out through the maintenance corridor on the third floor before the first shout reached him.

He came out into the main Archive hall moving fast. It was quiet. Too quiet. The Archive ran two night attendants on the ground floor every single night without exception. Both desks were empty. He did not stop to think about what that meant because he already knew. He walked toward the front entrance with his right hand tucked under his arm and his jaw tight.

The voice spoke again as he reached the front doors.

The rune will heat when danger is close, it said. That is how you will know before they reach you.

"Is that supposed to be helpful?" Kael said.

It is information. What you do with it is your business.

He pushed through the front doors of the Archive and stopped on the steps outside.

The city was loud in the wrong way. Alarm bells rang from the palace district, two of the heavy iron ones that only sounded for fire or invasion.

Soldiers ran across the road below him in full armor, moving toward the east towers. A woman screamed from a window above the bakery across the street. Three horses galloped past with empty saddles.

"What is happening out here," Kael said quietly.

A man in a merchant's coat grabbed his arm as he passed. "Don't go east. The sky is splitting open above the palace towers. I saw it with my own eyes. Things are coming through. Black things that move too fast."

"What kind of things?" Kael said.

The man stared at him. "The wrong kind." He let go and kept running.

Kael came down the Archive steps and walked east. He could not explain why his feet went that direction. The rune in his closed fist pulsed steady and warm, like it was answering the alarm bells one by one.

He turned onto King's Road and stopped walking.

The sky above the palace had a tear in it. There was no better word for it. A long diagonal split ran across the clouds and the edges of the tear were black, the kind of black that had no depth to it, the kind that meant the absence of everything. Light bent away from it in a way that made his eyes want to look at something else. The clouds around it moved inward rather than drifting, pulling toward the opening from all sides.

As he stood there watching, something came through the tear. Several somethings. They moved wrong, too sharp and too fast, and where they passed over the soldiers standing on the palace wall the soldiers simply stopped existing.

"That is the Void," Kael said.

Yes, the voice said. And you are the only living thing that can stand against it.

"I am a scribe," Kael said. His voice came out smaller this time.

A soldier ten feet to his left dropped to his knees and then fell forward and the armor was empty before it hit the ground. Kael took two steps back without meaning to. The tear in the sky was wider than it had been twenty seconds ago. More creatures poured through. The alarm bells all rang at once and the screaming from the palace district became one single continuous sound that filled the whole street.

The rune blazed suddenly, so hot and bright that Kael opened his fist just to look at it, and the gold light spilled out across the road in front of him.

Something grabbed his arm from behind and squeezed hard enough that he felt the grip through his sleeve.

"Found you," a deep voice said, flat and completely calm.