The Pact - Dark Roads, Book One

The Pact - Chapter Two

(You are reading a sample of Brantwijn Serrah's full-length novel, The Pact. If you like what you read, you can find the full novel at www.brantwijn.com/the-pact.)

CHAPTER TWO

In the morning, before setting out, Serenity consulted her cards. She did this every morning, not in divination or horoscope, but in simple, deep-thought meditation. Morning exercise, preparing mind and spirit for the journey of the day.

Few knew the skill of casting runes, and even fewer tolerated it. To the general populace of Geiral, it reeked of dark magic, black magic, practiced by only the meanest of witches and sorcerers in blasphemous pagan rings. The art of rune-weaving was the art of touching the otherworld, traversing the natural into the supernatural, and doing business with the spirits of the unknown.

Back home in Eclipse, weavers like Serenity faced little trouble. Before the logging men and trappers came along, the first colony grew up around a school of the arcane, a school filled with scholars studying the ways of rune-weaving. So in Eclipse the weavers were, from the very beginning, neighbors and friends. The students lived their lives as peacefully as any of the townspeople. No grand displays of magic or power there, no flirting with spells and curses in public. The weavers observed a clear level of etiquette toward those not of the study, and in return, the people of Eclipse never batted an eye. Truth be told, Serenity always suspected they might feel secretly proud, living in the shadow of a weaver's school. Power meant protection, and sometimes it didn't matter if such protection came from men taming the unknown darkness.

Outside Eclipse, though, in the Geiral heartlands and the more populated cities, on well-traveled roads and closer country, rune-weaving and curses found little welcome. No, outside havens like the school back home, rune-weaving was absolutely feared.

Serenity dealt out the pack, arranging the cards in order, before collecting them and shuffling them out of it again. Had anyone crossed her path now, to see her spreading out her runic cards and gathering them back up, they might take it for something innocent. They might think her an entertainer, preparing to tell the fortunes for a bit of coin. But they might see her for what she was: a student of the arcane, a woman capable of true magic.

Men of the church called it harlotry and devilry, and their followers obeyed with eager ears. Soldiers and city slickers found it barbaric, and worried over what might happen if wild magic got loose among their careful, ordered lives. Even those with no particular religious preferences or municipal attachment shied away from men who could twist the signs. They warded weavers away as spooks and villains, lost souls of the poisoned Rachalör, the blighted country crouching on Geiral from the farthest northern wastes. Men feared what might come out of that inhuman place, and what they feared, they wanted gone. Because at its very heart, rune-weaving meant opening your mind to the spirits of the otherworld, and making a deal with them.

Deals with the devil never went over well.

So you had to be careful where you threw the cards or who might notice you when you twisted a curse. Enough demons already ran loose in the world. A weaver didn't need people itching to burn another.

Especially one like you, D'aej reminded, who carries a demon within her own skin.

Serenity completed the third repetition of her card-shuffling ritual, returned the deck to its pouch, and slipped it into her knapsack. She took out her journal next, and scribbled down a few thoughts for later review.

Serenity grew up among the rune-weavers and their quiet quest for greater knowledge. She'd lived in the Wolf's Den since she'd been three days old, adopted by the town and its people when the impoverished clan of her fathers was forced to leave her behind. The Den already provided a home for other girls, and Magda gave them room and board, and a pittance for their labor. She took care of them too, and never set them to whoring. Serving Magda's tables, Serenity met scores of travelers and heard their stories: tales from the train towns of the far west and the coast where the family of Jacqueline Spade, rail baroness, held court over the dawn of industrial breakthrough and trade; to the golden eastern heartlands, farms, and fields lying in the shadow of the mysterious midnight country called Nostra, where the most secretive and exotic practitioners of deep magic dwelled and where the sun never showed its face; all the way to the bright southern lands of the tribal people, their vibrant forests and riverbanks peppered with their stone keeps and colorful pavilions, alive with the chanting choruses of their extraordinary songs. More importantly, she saw dozens of men playing rune cards, weavers who visited the school and spent their time studying ancient tomes and texts over their dinners. Most of them loved to show her a trick or two, turn a red ribbon into a coin for her or produce a flower for her hair out of nothing.