Novel November Day 7 Excerpt

We are at just over 20,000 words!

 

Taybus smiled.  “What if the seventh rune was real?”

“It’s just a myth.”  Ryk protested.

“But what if it wasn’t?”  Taybus pulled a scroll from beneath the table and unfurled it in front of Ryk and Gryr.  “Worse, what if someone found it?”

The scroll held a charcoal rubbed image of a stone.  It was ordinary and unremarkable, but what was curious, was the words written in blood next to the stone.  The sporadic words loosely formed a cohesive thought, ‘By the seven it falls, there is no seventh, how there are no six, all fall to seven.’  The words made no sense to Gryr, he barely had a grasp on flicker, let alone ancient scrolls.

“No.”  Ryk was furious, he looked back to where he entered from.

“Go ahead, step onto those steps and I will guarantee you visit Valhalla by sunrise.”  Taybus was cold.  “Think before you react.”

“The shamans must know of this!  You…you…”  Ryk stepped backwards.

“You don’t think they know?  How do you protect someone from something so powerful?”  The large man didn’t move.

“You teach that it doesn’t exist.”  Gryr’s words were almost a hush.  His young brain tried to connect it all.  Not being born from the temple allowed the boy the ability to be free of religious blindness.  “If it was a possibility that the physical runes existed, it would be in everyone’s interest to keep them hidden…forgotten.  Has anyone ever found them?”

“No.”  Taybus still focused on Ryk.  “For all we know, they could not exist.”  He watched relief fill Ryk’s eyes.  “But the story you know of the blind shaman is incorrect.”

“Why would the temple not acknowledge they exist, especially a seventh rune?”  Ryk was calm enough now to entertain the idea Taybus presented.

“There are those out there that have the means to do great harm.  Imagine if they learned of the rune’s existence on this earth.  After the Flicker War, power was more valuable than ever.  Families began to plan births around the moon phases, flicker became a way to ascend poverty.  Six temples were created after the war, one for each rune, their purpose was to protect those blessed by the rune they shared, in case Jarl’s and Kings tried to oppress once more.  Although they don’t agree on much, they vowed to keep the idea of a seventh hidden, never to be sought after.”

“But-” Ryk was cut short.

“If no one acknowledges its existence, their will be no desire to search for it.”  Gryr cut his friend off.

Ryk choked on the emotions that battled within him, swallowing hard he looked one last time at the steps leading above.  “Fine.  What is the true story of the blind shaman?”

Taybus breathed in relief, he didn’t have to kill a boy that night.