I reached out my hand. I could say I found the runes, but you might as well say the runes found me. I couldn’t see, but I could feel them. And as I ran my hand across the first one, it glowed in my inner eye.
And I heard a sound.
Like when the sword spoke to me, some kind of song. So I ran my hand along another rune.
A second note joined the first.
The music was frightening and intoxicating. I ran fingers along all the runes in reach, one after another, and they all began to glow.
Their notes joined the song, and I could almost make sense of it. Almost. There was something still missing.
I was too short, that was part of it. I couldn’t reach the top of the gate. The highest runes must have been eight feet off the ground, and I was only five and a half feet tall. Those ancients must have been pretty big.
Suddenly I felt myself rising up, and then I realized I was being carried.
Kalle had me by the knees.
Quick, Anders. The lightning and thunder are gone, but the other runes are beginning to lose their glow. Do what you have to do.
Sure, but what was that, exactly? I was losing my confidence and my focus. I listened to the song, and traced the remaining runes.
All of the runes began to glow again, intensely. Hearing their song, I finally understood. If only I had paid more attention to music when I was little, and to the lessons with the lyre my father had insisted on. Or even learned the pianoforte, like my mother had wanted. But there was something in the blood that responded, all the same.
I felt a stirring at my side.
I reached down and grabbed the sword.
Music flowed into me, and brought power with it, power of which I had little knowledge and less control. My body was a channel for blood magic far older than my great-grandfather...
So I did the only thing I could. If you can’t play an instrument, you have only one choice. I opened my mouth and sang, a song that ran through my hand, through the hilt and pommel of the sword, back through my bloodline and beyond, far beyond.
As I sang, the runes glowed brighter. I couldn’t quite understand what I was singing, what the notes meant. Everything was slippery, elusive. The gate was old, and it sang back to me. No one had passed through in over a thousand years, I understood that much.
Then I was walking. I looked back. Kalle and Kara were standing up, and they followed me. The song still flowed from my mouth. Kara looked at me with what I was afraid was fear, but she followed me, and Kalle after her.
There was a bright point in the middle of the gate, and that was where we had to walk. The gate was quite specific, it was not up to full capacity, we had to pass one by one, and even then it would be close.
Three people would be admitted, no more.
I stopped singing as I walked through the green light, but the song of the gate continued in me. I was in the gate, and then I was through. When I looked back again, there was Kara, and then Kalle, beside her, and the gate was silent.
But it still hummed with energy, and once again, with menace.
We would have to reactivate it to get through once again. Or find some other way out.
Chapter VIII
We stood on polished stone. Energy surrounded us. I could feel it flow up through the stone under my feet. The air itself crackled with it. With my inner eye I saw a rainbow of colored light, so much color that at first my vision was overwhelmed. My ears hummed with the song of the rock underneath and around us. My skin buzzed.
For a moment, we did nothing but stand.
Then we all sat down on the stone.
The gro
und was covered with cut stone in geometric patterns. It felt warm and full of positive force.
Kara smiled in wonder, touching her hand to the stones on which we sat. “These are energy stones. We Kriek have lost the magic of their creation, but we still use small fragments for all kinds of things. I have a small stone myself in my pouch, but it’s nothing compared to this. We’re surrounded by magical stone.”