The Gates of Winter (23 page)

26.

Travis, Jay, and Marty reached the homeless shelter just in time to get the last few scoops of half-burnt oatmeal and reconstituted eggs. They ate it ravenously, even Travis. He had to eat to stay warm, and to have the energy to do what he intended to do.

Except that thought brought a wave of nausea with it, and he wished he hadn't drunk so much of the bitter, black coffee they served at the shelter. Something Professor Sparkman had said in the park that morning was important, Travis was sure of it, but his head throbbed, making it impossible to think. It had to do with matter and energy, and the missing mass in an atom. . . .

“That tasted like crap,” Jay said, pushing back his paper plate, which he had wiped clean of every speck of food.

“What are we going to do today?” Marty said.

Jay let out a belch. “We need money. I think it's time for a little can collecting. What do you say, Travis?”

He stood up. “I can't. I've got to . . . there's something I need to do.”

Jay gave him a suspicious look. “It's not something voices are telling you to do, is it?”

Despite the buzzing in his head, Travis grinned. “No, I came up with this all on my own. How about if I meet you guys later back at the park?”

“Just so long as we don't have to talk to Sparkman again,” Jay said. “Let's meet there before dark. The shelter still has a waiting list a mile long, so maybe we can find another place tonight where you can do your little hot cement gimmick.”

Marty gave an enthusiastic nod. “I liked that.”

Travis promised them he would. The two men waved good-bye, then headed out the door. Travis stared at his empty plate, then dumped it in the trash and ventured out.

He spent the day wandering the gray streets of downtown, trying to gather courage enough to go through with his plan.

And just what is this plan that requires so much courage?
came Jack's inquisitive voice.
I've never been able to fathom you, Travis, but I have to say, your current behavior is more confounding than usual.

Travis started to tell Jack to be quiet, but he forgot the words as something caught his eye: a red piece of paper taped to a newspaper box. He moved to the box and tore off the paper. On it was the photocopied picture of a man. He was handsome, smiling in his tuxedo jacket—a wedding photo. There was a name and address below the picture, but it was the word above, printed in large type, that Travis read over and over.
Missing.

The wind snatched the paper from his hand, and it fluttered away. He squatted, peering at the headline through the scuffed window of the newspaper box, but the lead story was about how the crime rate had gone down 32 percent since Denver began its contract with Duratek Corporation.

They control everything in this city, Travis. That has to include the newspapers. You won't read any news stories about the abductions.

Yet Anna Ferraro had done a story about the disappearances on TV. Maybe Duratek didn't control everything.

Not yet, anyway. Travis stood, shivering in his parka. He had no idea why Duratek was abducting people, but it was hardly out of character. What was the life of a homeless person to them if they could gain from it?

Except it wasn't just the homeless who were vanishing now. The man on the flier had been happy, loved. Someone missed him. Travis didn't know what that meant. He turned his back on the newspaper box and trudged on.

At last, as the late-afternoon sun angled toward the mountains, he found himself in Confluence Park. It was here, at the point Cherry Creek flowed into the Platte, where gold was first found in 1858. Maybe Travis would find what he was looking for here as well. He headed down a bike path and found a shadowed nook beneath the Speer Boulevard bridge. On the other side of the river rose the spires of the Steel Cathedral, and they looked sharp enough to cut the sky.

He glanced down. The iron box rested in his hands. He didn't remember pulling it out.

Was this really the right thing to do? Maybe not, but it seemed to be the only option. He didn't know where in the world Duratek's gate was hidden, and even if he did, there was no way to get out of Denver and go there. Yet there was still something he could do for Eldh. He could destroy any chance Mohg had of breaking the First Rune.

He could destroy Krondisar and Sinfathisar.

I knew you were scheming something,
Jack said, his words thrumming angrily in Travis's mind.
And I must say, this is most rash indeed. I wish you had brought this foolish idea up earlier. For you see—

Travis envisioned
Sirith
, the rune of silence, and Jack's voice was cut short. He had known Jack would object to his plan, but Travis couldn't let anything stop him.

He opened the box, took out the Stones, and held them in his right hand, feeling the hum of power against his skin. It would be so easy. He was a runelord—all he had to do was invoke their power and he could do anything he imagined. The wall between the worlds would fall down like a curtain, and he would see his friends standing before him, smiling, arms outstretched . . .

No. That was precisely why it was so dangerous to use the Stones. Because it
was
easy.

I won't become like Mohg. I won't.

Travis sensed Jack's muffled protest, but he ignored it. Tightening his fingers around the Stones, he spoke the one word that could save him.

“Reth.”

Power condensed out of thin air, striking him, racing along bone and flesh, as if his body was a lightning rod. He went rigid, unable to blink, to breathe, as the magic coursed through him—down his arm, into his hand, crackling around the two Stones like the vengeful blue fires of heaven.

The flames burned themselves out. Sweating, trembling, Travis slumped against a cement column and looked down. He expected to see a charred stump, but his hand was whole, unmarked save for the thin white scar on its back. Stiffly, he turned his hand over and unclenched his fingers.

The Stones glistened on his palm, smooth and perfect. Krondisar seemed small and dull in the gloom beneath the bridge, while Sinfathisar shone with soft gray-green light. For a time he simply stared. At last a laugh rose within him, only when it reached his lips it emerged as a sob. Nothing had happened. The Stones weren't so much as scratched.

“Maybe it's because I'm on Earth,” he said. A passing bicyclist glanced at him, then pedaled hard down the path. “Rune magic is weak here. That has to be it.”

You're wrong, Travis.

Travis tried to shut out Jack's angry voice. “Magic doesn't work right in Denver. It's dangerous, but I'll have to risk going back to Eldh to destroy the Stones.”

But you can't destroy them. That's what I was trying to tell you, only you were too hardheaded to listen.

“I won't believe that. There's got to be a way.”

There isn't. The Stones cannot be destroyed.

Travis felt his own anger rising. “And how would you know?”

Because we already tried long ago to destroy them.

Travis's anger sublimated into a soft breath, white on the cold air, and melted away. “What?”

It was in the years following the War of the Stones,
Jack spoke in his mind.
In the first days of Malachor. After Ulther wrested them from the Pale King, the Great Stones were given to the Runelords.

“For safekeeping,” Travis managed to croak.

No, not for safekeeping. With the Stones, the Pale King might have gained dominion over all of Eldh, and his master, Mohg, would have used them to break the First Rune. It was decided that it was best for the world if the Stones were no more, so the first mission of the Runelords—the very purpose for which the order came into being—was to destroy the Great Stones so that they could never again be used for evil.

Travis couldn't believe what he was hearing. The Great Stones made the wonders of runic magic possible. Would the Runelords really have given that power up so readily?

There was some dissent,
Jack's voice said in answer to these thoughts.
A few said that rather than destroy the Stones, we should use them for good. Kelephon was chief among them. I imagine even then he was scheming a way to gain the Stones for himself. However, though he was the most powerful among us, even he dared not stand against the will of King Ulther and Empress Elsara. For years we labored, exerting all our skill and effort in an attempt to destroy the Great Stones. But no matter how many of us came together, no matter what runes we chanted or sundered, we could do no harm to the Stones.

In the end, the only way we were able to damage the Stones was by seeking out blood sorcerers in the far south. Three came back with us to Malachor, enticed by gold, and working together they were able to remove a single grain from Gelthisar. However, in the process, all three were slain. And when the grain they had removed came in contact with Gelthisar, it bound itself to the Stone, becoming one with it again.

Travis squeezed his fingers around the Stones. So that was how Dakarreth had managed to remove two grains from Krondisar. The Necromancer's magic—like the magic of all the New Gods—was of the south, and born ultimately of blood sorcery.

Do you see it's no use, Travis? The Stones are greater than any of us. There is nothing you can do to destroy them.

Could that really be true? Travis remembered a story he had read long ago, about terrible rings of power that only a dragon's breath could destroy.

No, Travis—the dragons ever loathed to come near the Great Stones. The Gordrim are older than the world, but the Imsari are older yet. The dragons have no power over them. And it's a good thing. You heard what the scholar you spoke with this morning said. Breaking apart things is dangerous, and there is nothing more primal, more powerful than the Imsari. What if you really were somehow to break them?

A jolt of fear coursed through Travis. What had Professor Sparkman said? Something about how a chain reaction, if nothing stopped it, could go on forever. . . .

Travis swallowed the sickness in his throat, then put the Stones back into their iron box and shoved it into his pocket. He started trudging down the bike path.

What are you going to do now, Travis?

“I don't know, Jack.” He felt tired and hollow. “I can't destroy the Stones, and I can't take them back to Eldh. And if I try to leave Denver to find the gate they've created, Duratek will catch me.”

By Durnach's Hammer, what are you talking about, Travis? Didn't you hear the voices on the contraption your scholar friend was listening to this morning?

Travis shook his head. What was Jack talking about? The voices on Sparkman's receiver hadn't said anything that could help him, though they had belonged to Duratek agents—he was sure of that. No one else on Earth would make a communications code out of Eldhish words—

He stopped in his tracks.

Eldhish words. He had set the silver half-coin down, then had listened to them speak something in a mixture of English and Eldhish. He wracked his brain, trying to remember.

They said they were heading to the
taldaka
location,
Jack said.
And they also made mention of a
senlath
.

The silver half-coin, in his pocket now, worked its magic, translating the Eldhish words.
Senlath
meant priest. And
taldaka
was . . .

“Gate,” Travis murmured. “They were talking about the gate. It's not somewhere else in the world. It's here in Denver.”

Which meant there was a way to stop Duratek after all.

Hope rekindled in Travis, bringing with it new energy. He started moving once more, jogging along the river path. “I have to go see Sparkman again, Jack. I have to listen to his receiver and monitor their transmissions. If I do, maybe I can learn exactly where in Denver they've hidden the gate.”

Very well, Travis. But do be careful. Night is coming soon, and it's not safe to be out alone in this city.

“It's all right, Jack. I'll be meeting up with . . .” What were Jay and Marty? He had only met them last night, so they couldn't be friends, could they? “. . . with some guys I know. We'll stick together.”

This seemed to satisfy the voice in Travis's mind, and it stayed quiet as he headed back downtown and caught the free shuttle up Sixteenth Street. Dusk was falling by the time he reached Civic Center Park. Columns glowed in the half-light, like the bones of a ruined Greek temple. He searched around and saw two figures—one tall, one short—near the center of the park. Travis hurried over to them.

“Dammit!” Jay jumped around. “You shouldn't sneak up on a guy like that. Especially not when people have been disappearing. I practically shot out of my skin.”

“Sorry,” Travis mumbled. He always forgot others didn't see so well in gloom as he did.

“So,” Jay said, “did you get your thing done today, whatever the hell it was?”

“Not exactly.” Travis looked around. “Where's Professor Sparkman?”

Jay shoved his hands in his pockets. “I don't give a rat's ass where that nut job is. Maybe the voices told him to whack his head off this time. Anyway, it's going to be a cold night, so let's get a move on before all the good spots are taken.”

Travis gazed around the shadowed park, but he saw no sign of a wheelchair.

“We can come find him tomorrow,” Marty said in his slow voice. “He'll be here once the sun is up.”

They headed back to the viaduct by the river where they had spent the previous night but found it already taken—though the new occupants were having no better luck starting a fire than Jay and Marty had. Travis started to move forward, to help, but Jay grabbed his arm.

“You don't know those guys, Travis. They could pull something on you.”

“You mean like a knife?” Travis said, giving the little man a pointed look.

Marty shook his head. “I told you it was a bad joke.”

“Both of you maggots shut up,” Jay said, and he stamped back up the embankment.