The Gates of Winter - Mark Anthony [260]
“A wordless song no longer sung. A memory of a time long lost except in the minds of forgotten gods. A dream.” Trifkin shrugged small shoulders. “Even we don't know who we are, and the world could not tell us, for when it came into being, we were already here. Just as we are here at its end.”
Travis felt so heavy. The Stones seemed to weigh him down, as if they had grown larger. However, they still fit snugly in his right hand.
“Does it have to end?”
The tall trees swayed, as if a wind stirred their tops, though the balmy air of the forest was still.
Trifkin sighed. “It has already ended. More times than there are trees, the world has been made and unmade and made anew. Always there is a Worldsmith. And always there is a Worldbreaker. Just as night follows day. You cannot change that. You can only choose what the world will be.”
The trees danced in slow circles. Travis felt the first stirring of a cold wind. Always before, facing into the wind had brought a sense of limitless possibility to him. However, now it brought . . . fear. A low rumble shook the air, like the sound of thunder. The gold light dimmed.
Travis's hand sweated around the Imsari. “What do I do?”
“You know what you must do. Go to the Dawning Stone.”
“But I don't know where it is.”
Despite the sorrow in his eyes, Trifkin clapped his small hands and laughed. “Why, it's right beneath your boots.”
This was too much for Travis. “What?” he croaked.
Trifkin hopped down from the log. “Think, mortal man. You already know the answer. What happened at the making of the world?”
It was hard, but Travis thought back to the stories the runespeakers had told him. “The Worldsmith spoke the First Rune, the rune Eldh, and the world came into being. Then he bound the First Rune into the Dawning Stone, so that the world would know permanence and endure.”
“Yes,” Trifkin said. “Permanence.” He knelt and pressed his hands against the ground, digging his fingers into the soil.
For a moment Travis stared, not comprehending. Then it struck him like a bolt of lightning. All this time he had been picturing the Dawning Stone as a piece of rock with a rune in it, like one of the creations of the Runebinders of old. But that was ludicrous. The Worldsmith was far more than a mere mortal wizard, and Eldh far more than a simple disk of stone.
“The world,” Travis said softly. “The whole world Eldh is the Dawning Stone.”
Trifkin held up his dirty hands and smiled.
Travis staggered. “That doesn't make sense. Falken said the Dawning Stone was hidden in the Twilight Realm.”
Trifkin cocked his head. “And have you not found it here?”
Travis knelt and pressed his left hand to the ground. He felt it—the force of the rune Eldh, binding the world, holding it and everything on it together.
And so the First Rune shall also be the Last Rune, spoke Jack's voice in his mind, for when it breaks, the world shall end, and in that instant all things will cease to be.
The gold light dimmed. Dusk stole among the trees, as if carried on the wind.
“Night comes,” Trifkin said.
Then the little man was gone, and Travis was alone.
No, not alone. He could feel it drawing closer. A shadow—a thing forged of fury and hate, its heart consumed by a dragon and replaced by cold, hard iron.
Mohg, Lord of Nightfall.
The forest was dark now; the only light came from the Imsari. Travis laid them on the ground.
“I don't know what to do,” he said simply.
Yes you do, Travis, Jack's voice spoke in his mind. You are the Runebreaker. There is but one thing you can do.
“No, Jack.” He clasped his hands together. “I don't want to destroy the world. I want to save it.”
By the Lost Hand of Olrig, don't be so dim! Haven't you figured it out by now? Worldmaker and Worldbreaker—they're the same thing. You can't be one without being the other. Mohg knows that—that's why he wants to break the First Rune. Not to destroy the world, but to remake it in his own image.
The trees rocked wildly under the force of the wind. Their trunks cracked and splintered as they fell over. One tree came