The Rune of Eldrath.

CHAPTER 6: LESSONS IN SURVIVAL

The man teaching him to fight could snap his spine with one hand and they both knew it.

Kael knew it every morning when Garrick woke him before dawn by kicking the bottom of his boot. He knew it every time Garrick corrected his grip by squeezing his wrist hard enough to leave marks. He knew it when Garrick threw him to the ground for the ninth time in one session, stood over him with his arms crossed, and said nothing.

"Get up," Garrick said.

Kael got up. His knees were muddy and his right shoulder ached but he got up because not getting up was not something Garrick accepted as an outcome.

"You are leading with your shoulder again," Garrick said. "Every single time. Before your foot moves your shoulder has already told me where you are going."

"I am aware of that," Kael said.

"Then stop doing it."

"I am trying to stop doing it."

"Trying is not stopping." Garrick held the practice sword out. "Again."

They had been in the northern forest for three weeks. They moved camp every two days, never lit a fire large enough to be seen from the road, and ate whatever Garrick could trap or find. Kael had lost weight he did not have to lose. He had also gained calluses on both palms, a cut above his left eye from a branch Garrick deliberately did not warn him about, and a working knowledge of how to set a trip line and read boot prints in soft ground.

The sword work was slower.

"Hold it like a tool," Garrick said, stepping back into position. "Not like a pen. You hold a pen like it might escape. A sword is not going anywhere."

"I have held a pen every single day for fourteen years," Kael said. "You cannot just tell me to hold things differently and expect my hands to agree."

"Your hands will do what you train them to do," Garrick said. "That is the entire point of training." He raised his practice blade. "Come at me. Straight. Do not think about the shoulder."

Kael came at him and thought about his shoulder every step of the way and Garrick stepped left and used his own momentum to put him on the ground.

Kael lay on his back and stared at the tree canopy above him.

"The shoulder," Garrick said from above him.

"I know," Kael said.

"Say it back to me."

"I led with my shoulder."

"Every time," Garrick said. "Not most times. Every time. A soldier who reads you once will kill you on the second exchange." He stepped back. "Get up."

By the end of the second week Kael could hold a defensive position for almost a full minute before Garrick broke through it. By the end of the third week he had landed two actual hits on Garrick. Both times it happened because he stopped thinking and let his body move, and Garrick had nodded once after each of them, which was the closest thing to approval he offered.

"That second one was real," Garrick said after the second hit.

"I know," Kael said.

"Do you know why."

"I stopped thinking about what I was going to do and just did it."

Garrick looked at him. "Remember that feeling. Find it on purpose next time instead of waiting for it to show up accidentally."

The rune changed around the tenth day. It had always pulsed steady and warm, a background presence Kael was beginning to accept as normal. Then it started reacting to things outside him. It grew hotter when they crossed ground near a collapsed village three miles from the main road. It pulsed faster when Garrick found fresh tracks that turned out to belong to Malachar's scouts. It was directional too. Not just intensity but direction, a pressure in his palm pushing toward something specific.

He told Garrick on the fifteenth morning.

Garrick listened without interrupting. Then he said, "East?"

"East," Kael said. "Consistently east. Stronger some days than others but always east."

"Caer Veyl is east," Garrick said. "The drowned city. The first relic is in the reliquary below the old temple." He looked at him. "The rune and the relics are linked. The pull will get stronger the closer we get."

"What happens when we get there?"

"The rune will be loud," Garrick said.

"How loud."

Garrick picked up his cup and drank from it and did not answer immediately. "Loud enough that you will need to hold your ground against it. The god wants the relics. Every relic you claim feeds it. It will push harder each time."

"You could have mentioned this before," Kael said.

"I am mentioning it now," Garrick said. "You were not ready to hear it two weeks ago. You had enough to focus on."

"You decided that for me."

"Yes," Garrick said simply.

The rune grew hotter every day after that. By the twentieth day it was warm enough at rest that Kael kept his right hand away from anything dry or flammable out of caution. During training, when Garrick pushed him to access the power in small controlled bursts, the heat ran all the way to his elbow and his vision picked up a faint gold edge for minutes afterward.

On the twenty-third day they were mid-session when the rune went from warm to blazing with no warning at all.

Kael dropped the practice sword. His right hand pulled to his chest on its own and his knees buckled and he hit the ground before Garrick reached him. The heat was not pain but it was complete, filling his entire right side, and the gold light pushed through his sleeve so brightly that Garrick's shadow fell sharp and clear on the ground at midday.

"Kael." Garrick was beside him with a hand on his shoulder. "Tell me what you feel."

"Something opened," Kael said through his teeth. "East. Something opened and the rune felt it the moment it happened. It is still reacting."

Garrick stood up slowly. He turned east and stood there looking at the trees for a long moment. His jaw tightened.

"A rift just opened," he said quietly.