RUNE
WHEN THEY ARRIVED AT the towering circle of stones, it was shortly after midnight.
Rune and Aurelia had stolen two horses from the city stables and cloaked them all in Rune’s Ghost Walker spell, hoping to make it impossible for Gideon to follow.
The look in his eyes when she left haunted her the whole way.
The eerie stone silhouettes loomed over Rune like giants, blacking out the stars. The air here smelled like magic. Deep and primal. It made Rune’s skin tingle. As if the Ancients had been here mere moments before. As if this was the doorway they’d used to exit the world.
Not that Rune believed such things.
But some people did. The Cult of the Ancients, for example— a group of religious fanatics—believed this summoning circle was once used to draw the Ancients forth, back when they could be summoned. According to them, the Ancients—or the Seven Sisters, as the cult sometimes referred to them—had been gone too long now, slumbering too deeply, to answer anyone’s call.
It was a nice story to tell children at bedtime. But if the Ancients were real, if they’d ever walked in this world they’d created, Rune would have seen proof of their existence by now.
No. If these old stones made her feel things, it was because regular witches had been casting their powerful spells here for centuries. What Rune sensed in this place was merely the echo of their magic, not the lingering presence of deities.
On a nearby hill sat the ruins of a once magnificent temple belonging to the Cult of the Ancients. The temple had been destroyed during the revolution, and its priestesses and acolytes killed or chased into hiding. From where she stood among the summoning stones, all Rune could see of the temple ruins was a half-crumbled wall.
Rune and Aurelia wasted no time. They cast the summoning spell beneath the moonlight while Meadow slept on a bed of moss. Rune had learned the spell while studying under Seraphine, but had never put it to use.
Rune opened her locket and took out the bit of Cressida’s hair, placing it in the circle’s center. Aurelia took her casting knife and made a small cut in her shoulder, adding to the silvery pattern of casting scars there. Using the blood she supplied, Rune drew the symbols.
“Now what?” Aurelia asked afterward, scanning the deep shadows surrounding them.
Rune looked skyward, to the stars shining overhead. “Now we wait.”
It could take up to twelve hours for the summoned to arrive. And since there was nothing left to do except wait, they slept.
