The moons were rising, the Lesser Moon chasing the Greater across the clear summer sky. It was a warm, dusty night, but the moonlight felt cold; the two brothers casting disinterested eyes down onto the village below. The Watchman knew that it was the last moonrise he would ever see. The knowledge seemed to both dull and sharpen his senses at the same time. He could pick out the homely, animal smells of the village behind him in every breath, and yet the moonlit paddy seemed to shimmer before his eyes, like a dreamscape. The wooden boards of the causeway creaked under his feet, disturbing a water snake that thrashed away through the waterlogged paddy field. The Watchman’s hand went to the leather pouch around his neck, and the small rune-etched stones within clicked together as he thumbed them.
The keeper of the runes flees from me. That’s no good omen.
But he was the Watchman - for forty years he had stood guard over this village, and if he did not stand now to give his kinsmen a chance to escape he would have been unworthy of the name. They trusted him, even if they never called him by his real name anymore. For a mage, letting a potential enemy know your true name was suicide.
The Watchman exhaled grimly. A true name was about the only thing that would avail him here, he suspected. The cities of the Valley had always warred, but when the Immortal and the Leveler had risen to power it had made the rest of the rune wars look like cheap firework shows. And after the two of them had seemingly had it out on the slopes of the western mountains, there was no-one left powerful enough to challenge the Leveler in a rune duel.
The Immortal. The Watchman almost let out a wry chuckle. A poorly-chosen name, it would seem. Few in the Enlightened city would miss that megalomaniacal bastard, but he had been the last real check on the Leveler’s expansion south. He looked up, and saw that a soft mist had sprung up among the rice stalks, blurring out the causeway ahead of him. No ordinary mist, the Watchman knew. A spell of concealment.
She was here.
A column of dark shadows hazed out of the mist, their footsteps softened into silence by the spell. A lone woman walked several paces in front of the others. She was swathed in a woollen cloak, blurring her outline against the shadows, but the moons reflected from her face, ghostlike. A streak of pastel-blue chalk ran horizontally across her pale eyes, soft against her pallid skin. It looked more like war paint than makeup.
“You don’t have to die here.” Her voice was warlike too; a hard-edged contralto.
The Watchman tried to moisten his lips, and found that his tongue was dry. His heart was thumping against his ribs, a caged rat twisting and gnawing to escape. He used the sound to focus his will, and as he felt the familiar burn of magic through his hands and forearms, he felt his courage returning. Sparks flickered around his fingertips, and the burnt-metal smell of ozone began to rise in the air around him.
“If you want to pass through this village, Leveler, then you’ll have to match runes with me.”
The Leveler gave the tiniest shake of her head. “I don’t need runes to fight you, Cavan son of Ava.”
The Watchman’s breath left him at the same time as the magic, the sparks around his hands snuffing out as their power was leeched out of him in a glare of white light. It glittered across the water and flashed against the mist surounding the Leveler’s men, and then it faded. The Watchman felt as if his physical strength had gone along with it, and his knees thumped hard against the wooden causeway as he fell, only a splayed hand stopping him from collapsing prone.
She knew my name. “How…?” he rasped.
He managed to raise his head, and saw the Leveler casually gesture with a pale arm. One of the shadows behind her glided forward, pulling an elderly woman with them by her hair.
The Watchman felt his heart drag downwards through his chest. “Neve.” he whispered.
“I’m sorry, Cavan…” the elderly woman sobbed, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m sorry…”
“My men caught your people trying to escape across the River.” the Leveler rumbled softly. “There’s no more reason for you to fight, Watchman. Stand instead, and live.”
The Watchman summoned enough defiance to spit on the gnarled planks below him. “As your thrall? I know how you work, slaver.”
One of the cloaked figures behind the Leveler took a furious step forward. “You dare…!”
The Leveler cut him off with a delicately raised hand. “You’re making a mistake. We humans are fragile things. Our bodies aren’t made to channel the raw power of magic. But what if we could change our bodies?”
The Watchmen gave a harsh, breathy laugh. “Like the fucking Mer?” He spat again to show his contempt for the infidel race of shapeshifters. “Even they know that the Greater Moonstone is a myth.”
A smile twitched at the corners of the Leveler’s mouth. “Is it?”
At first the Watchman thought it was his own swimming vision, but then he realised that the other mage was growing taller, her woollen cloak fanning upwards and outwards like a pair of shadowy wings. The shadow rose up, looming, closing out the Watchman’s vision until all that was left was black.