She smiled, which was probably more than I deserved. “It’s okay. I’ll get you some dinner.”
As soon as she was gone, Namid stepped closer to my bed. “Tell me about the crafting these women did.”
And so I began yet another soliloquy. I started by describing the spell Patty and Witcombe used against me at Witcombe’s house, but I skimmed over those details. “The more important spell was the one they didn’t cast,” I said. “The one they intended to use against you. They used blood again, and they had me mark myself with what I think were runes.”
His waters grew turbid. “What kind of runes?”
I described each one in the order in which Patty had me draw them: the odd P, the line with the slash through it, and the simple vertical.
“That is the order they were in?”
“Yes. Left to right. Do you know what they mean?”
“I am familiar with each on its own. The first is wynn, which is often a fortuitous symbol. It can mean ‘joy’ or ‘welcome,’ or can imply a granting of wishes. I believe, though, that in this case ‘welcome’ is the intended meaning. It is meant to serve as a lure, a means of entrapment. And I know this because it is followed by nyd, which is a rune of constraint, of need, and is, which is a rune of impedence and control.”
“So the runes don’t spell out a word?” I said, my voice low.
“Not as you think of words, no. It is common for modern mystes and those who pretend to be crafters to treat runic patterns as one might an alphabet. But runes are more. Each is imbued with meaning and power, and they can be used in different ways by different runecrafters. This particular use of runes, in a triad, is one with which I am familiar. They are placed in this way so that each will fulfill a certain role in the casting. In this case, the first rune invites.” As Namid said this, he made the shape of the first rune in the air with his finger, leaving a trace of silvery blue light before him. “The second establishes purpose.” He drew the second rune as he had the first, so that both now hovered between us. “And the third binds.” He drew the single vertical beside the other two. When this one was complete, the three letters changed color, darkening from silver to smoke grey and then to black, before vanishing completely.
“So they would have trapped you?” I asked.
“If you had summoned me as they instructed, and the casting was completed with those runes drawn in blood, then yes, I would have been imprisoned in whatever vessel they chose for me.”
My stomach did a slow, unnerving somersault. “Vessel,” I repeated. “What do you mean?”
“Just what I have said, Ohanko. The two women sought to imprison me, and would have needed a vessel to do so.”
“Crap.” I breathed the word. “I know how they killed your fellow runemyste in Northern Virginia. I know how they were going to kill you.”
Namid didn’t appear surprised; no doubt he had reasoned it out for himself. He knew a lot more about this stuff than I did. But he said, “Tell me.”
“I was to be the vessel. The runes were drawn on me. I’m guessing that you would have been trapped inside me. And when they killed me, they would have taken both our lives.”
“I fear that you are right, although I do not believe that they would have killed us. That final act they would have left to the necromancer who is instructing them in the ways of dark magic.”
Something in the way he said this . . . “Why do I get the feeling that you know who this necromancer is?”
“I know nothing for certain,” he said, an admission of a sort. “But yes, I have an idea of who this might be. Germanic runes and those of Old English are similar; these three are identical in the two traditions. But I believe this casting belongs to a Celt. A woman.”
“A female druid?”
“A priestess. What some today would call a witch, though the term is crude at best.”
“Tell me about her.”
“I shall, but not this night. You have need of sleep, and I must speak with my kind. I will tell you more tomorrow.”
I felt my cheeks color, and I took a sip of water from the carafe my nurse had left for me, hoping to mask my discomfort. I had assumed that Namid would stay here while I slept. I was in danger still; we both knew it. And I couldn’t defend myself and rest at the same time.
The runemyste, though, knew me pretty well. “I can communicate with other runemystes and remain by your side. You have nothing to fear from the dark ones tonight.”
“Thank you,” I said, embarrassed but also relieved. As soon as I lay back against my pillows and closed my eyes, I felt sleep tug at my mind. I hadn’t realized how exhausted I was. “At least tell me her name,” I said, my voice already sounding thick with slumber.
“What did you say?”
I forced my eyes open. “The priestess. What was her name?”
He said the name twice, and still he had to spell it out for me before I caught it. Saorla of Brewood, she was called. He pronounced her name as SARE-la.
“Now sleep,” the myste rumbled, reminding me of a tumbling river. “We will speak of her at greater length in the morning.”
As it happened, I didn’t have to wait that long to learn more about her. I couldn’t have been asleep for more than a few moments when I found myself in a dream that felt nothing like those I usually have. At first I thought it must be the painkillers, and the after effects of the anesthesia. But even allowing for all the crap in my bloodstream, this vision felt different.
It was utterly bizarre, and yet it struck me as more real, more visceral than any dream I’d ever had.
I was alone on an open grassy plain. It is a moor, a voice in my head corrected. A woman’s voice. The woman’s voice: low, gravelly, accented with what I now knew to be an Irish lilt. It was the voice I’d heard in Solana’s after the explosion. I turned a quick circle, searching for her, but I saw no one. The grasses bowed and danced in a swirling wind, and far in the distance to the west, the setting sun reflected off a broad expanse of open water. Nearer, in the opposite direction, low hills cast rounded shadows across the moor.
“Where are you?” I called, my voice swallowed by the rush of wind and the vast landscape.
A fire burned in a small ring of stone a few paces from where I stood. I hadn’t noticed it until that moment. Or perhaps it hadn’t been there. A cooking spit stood over the ring with what might have been a skinned rabbit roasting in the flames.
“Perhaps you are hungry. Supper will be ready shortly.”
“This is a dream. I can’t eat in a dream.”
“You can in this one. You can drink as well. Would you like wine?”
Two ceramic goblets rested on the ground beside the fire, a bottle made of translucent glass between them. I was sure they hadn’t been there a moment before.
“Show yourself,” I said, turning once more. “Let me see you.”
And she did, appearing as suddenly as had the food and drink. She stood with her back to the hills, the dying sunlight illuminating her face.
She wore a simple green dress of coarse cotton, and a gray shawl hung about her shoulders, anchored against the wind by a slender but powerful hand. I couldn’t have guessed her age. Her brown hair was streaked with silver, and it danced around her face, whipped to a frenzy by the gale. Her eyes, a clear, pale blue, seemed both ancient and youthful. There was wisdom there, and wit, and a hard, uncompromising intelligence. Her face was oval and very pretty-“winsome,” I thought, though I didn’t know why. I don’t think I had ever used the word before. But that’s what she was, despite the tiny lines around her mouth, at the corners of her eyes, on her brow.
I wanted to ask her name, though I thought I knew it, and I would have liked to know why she had brought me here.