The Rune of Eldrath.

CHAPTER 4: ESCAPE FROM THE CAPITAL

Kael had never been on a horse in his life and the horse seemed to have come to the same conclusion about him.

The animal moved in a way that made no sense to his body. Its shoulders rolled, its back shifted, and nothing about the rhythm matched anything he could anticipate. He kept both hands locked on the saddle horn and his teeth clamped together and he focused every part of his attention on staying in the seat.

"Lean forward," Garrick said from his left, keeping pace without any visible effort.

"I am leaning forward," Kael said.

"More than that."

Kael leaned further. The horse found a steadier rhythm and he stopped fighting it and started trying to move with it instead of against it and that helped more than anything else had so far.

Around them the city was breaking apart. Void creatures moved through the streets between the buildings, fast and low, hugging the walls. They had no color, not dark like shadows but like something with no surface for light to land on at all.

Where they touched people, the people stopped existing. No sound, no blood, no pause. One moment a soldier was standing and the next his armor was on the ground and there was nothing inside it. Market stalls burned with a black fire that spread sideways instead of upward. A group of civilians ran directly across their path and Garrick's horse went through the gap between them without slowing.

"Do not look at the creatures directly," Garrick said.

"I am a little occupied," Kael said.

"It pulls your attention and slows your reactions. Look through them."

They turned onto the north road. Ahead, a grain cart had overturned across the intersection and people were climbing over it in both directions. Garrick's horse jumped it clean. Kael's horse followed and Kael came up hard out of the saddle and came back down harder and his jaw snapped shut on his tongue.

"Are you alive?" Garrick said.

"Barely," Kael said.

The north gate was visible at the end of the straight road and the problem was also visible. The gap was already narrower than it should have been and two soldiers had planted themselves in the center of the remaining opening with pikes held horizontal between them.

"They are not going to move," Kael said.

"They will move," Garrick said.

"There is a pike pointed directly at my chest."

"There is always something pointed at you. That does not mean it connects." He looked over. "Stay behind me and when I go through do not slow down."

A Void creature dropped from a rooftop to their right and landed in the road directly ahead of them. It turned toward them. It had no eyes and no mouth but Kael felt it looking at him and the rune in his right palm went from warm to blazing in a single second.

His horse screamed and reared up. Kael grabbed the reins instead of the horn and pulled left and the horse came down sideways and stumbled and he stayed in the seat, barely.

The creature moved toward him. The gold light from the rune was bleeding through his sleeve now and his whole right arm burned, not painfully, just intensely hot all the way up to his shoulder.

Garrick swung his sword at the creature. The blade passed through it without effect. The creature did not even acknowledge him.

Its attention was completely on Kael.

Kael's right hand came up. He did not decide to do it. It simply rose, and the light came out of his palm in one short hard flash, a burst of gold that hit the creature in the center of its mass. The creature came apart. Not blood, not debris, just gone, the same way its victims had been gone, and the road was empty again.

Kael stared at his open hand. The light faded slowly back to its regular pulse.

Something laughed inside his skull. Not the steady voice that had spoken to him in the vault. Something lower. Colder. More pleased with itself than anything had a right to be.

Yes, it said. You see what you can do.

"That was not me," Kael said out loud.

Garrick looked at him sharply. "What?"

"The thing that just laughed. It was not me."

Garrick held his gaze for two full seconds. "We discuss that when we are outside the walls. Ride."

Kael pressed his heels in and the horse went and the gap in the north gate was directly ahead of them now and the two soldiers with pikes held their position until the last possible second.

Garrick came through first at full speed and they dove to either side and he was through. Kael came through right behind him with maybe a foot of clearance on each side and then the road opened up and the forest was a dark wall ahead of them and the city fell away behind them.

A crossbow bolt snapped past his ear from the wall above. Then a second one that clipped the top of his shoulder, not deeply, but enough that he felt it. He pressed flat against the horse's neck and kept going and after another minute the bolts stopped entirely and there was nothing but the sound of hooves and wind.

The gates slammed shut behind them.

Garrick slowed to a trot and Kael matched him, grateful for it. His hands were shaking on the reins. His shoulder stung where the bolt had grazed it. The rune was fading back to its quiet pulse.

They rode in silence until the city noise was fully gone.

"Your shoulder," Garrick said without looking over.

"It is shallow," Kael said.

"I will check it when we stop."

Kael looked at his right hand. The gold light was barely visible now, just the faint steady pulse under the skin.

"What I did back there," he said. "With the creature."

"You used the god's power," Garrick said.

"I did not choose to."

"I know." Garrick's voice was even. "It will not always ask. You need to understand that now and not later."

Kael thought about the laugh he had heard inside his own skull. Cold and satisfied, completely separate from anything that felt like him.

"What am I?" he said.

Garrick kept his eyes on the road ahead and did not slow down.

"A weapon the wrong people want," he said.