A LEGACY OF LIGHT

RUNE

RUNE

For a long time, Rune stood in the empty square, staring at the blood on the cobblestones.

The recruits were gone, Tilla among them, and Rune's heart ached at their loss. The crowd of families and onlookers dispersed slowly, many among them teary, leaving the city square empty. Yet Rune remained standing here, staring at the blood, unable to calm his thrashing heart.

They cut off her head, he thought. Stars, they cut off her head right here, and we stood in the square and did nothing, and they almost killed Tilla too, and we only stared like sheep frozen before the wolves.

He clenched his fists. The blood seeped between the cobblestones and ran toward his boots. A priest had lifted Pery's head, chanted a prayer, and placed it into a bag for burial. But Rune could still imagine it--its mouth open in a silent scream, its eyes still wide with fear, blood dripping from its neck.

"I'm sorry, Pery," he whispered. "We should have helped you. We should have done something."

Thousands of people had watched the execution, and each had magic to shift into a dragon, to thrust claws, to roar fire. Only a hundred guards had surrounded the square.

We should have shifted! Rune thought. We could have saved her! We could have slain the soldiers, and...

He sighed.

And thousands more soldiers would have streamed here from the capital, he thought. They would have burned this city to the ground and slaughtered us all.

He turned and began walking home.

He normally took the wide main road, but today, Rune walked on narrow side streets, seeking solitude. His boots thumped against the cobblestones. Houses and shops rose at his sides, built of wattle and daub; oaken beams formed rough frames, and white clay filled the space between the timbers. Rot darkened these wooden frameworks, and holes dotted many roofs; since the port had closed a few years ago, few could afford to maintain their homes. Only Cadport's largest buildings--like the courthouse, the fort on the hill, and the prison--were built of brick. The Cadigus family now ruled those.

It wasn't always like this, Rune thought. He watched a thin little girl sit outside her home, hugging an equally thin dog. When I was a child, we'd run playing down these streets, laughing and banging wooden swords together.

It had been years since he'd heard children laughing; children today did not play, but scavenged and begged for food.

Rune fished through his pocket, found a copper coin, and tossed it toward the skinny girl. Her eyes lit up. She caught the coin and ran off.

"Buy something to eat!" Rune called after her, but she vanished around a corner, and he did not know if she heard.

As he kept walking, again rage filled Rune. He remembered standing at the docks with Tilla years ago; they'd been younger than that thin girl. They'd watch the ships from foreign lands approach, bearing sacks of grain, exotic fruits, strong dry wine, and many other treasures. The ships would leave days later, laden with Requiem's crafts: ropes Tilla's father wove, shoes Pery's family cobbled, ale Rune's father brewed, and many other goods.

Nobody in Cadport was hungry then, Rune thought. It wasn't even called Cadport in those years, of course; it had been Lynport, the jewel of the south.

But then... then the war broke out, the Regime's great war to purify the world of "lesser nations". Then the Cadigus family burned those distant lands. Then those ships sank, and the port closed, and Cadport began to rot.