The Pact, page 1
part #1 of The Dark Roads Series
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.
The Pact
Copyright © 2016 Brantwijn Serrah.
Second Edition 2018
Ebook ISBN: 978-1386366089
Written by Brantwijn Serrah
Edited by Celia Breslin
Cover design by Brantwijn Serrah
"Map of Geiral" and "Runic Primer" by Brantwijn Serrah
"Arcane Circle" design by Obsidian Dawn
and licensed for use
All quoted musical lyrics are the property of their respective artists
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
The Pact (The Dark Roads Saga, #1)
Also By Brantwijn Serrah
THE WORLD OF GEIRAL
RUNIC PRIMER
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
About the Author
The Pact
The Dark Roads Saga, Book 1
by Brantwijn Serrah
Also By Brantwijn Serrah
Short Stories
Right Where I Want You
Equinox
Hunting Grounds
Graveyard Games
Bad Dreams
The Holston Street Halloween Party
Novels
His Cemetery Doll
Books of Blood and Fire
Book 1: Lotus Petals
Book 2: Satin and Steel
Angel's Keeping (A Blood and Fire Novella)
Chronicles of the Four Courts
Book 1: Goblin Fires
Book 2: Elfin Nights
All Mad Here (A Four Courts Short)
The Dark Roads Saga
Book 1: The Pact
Book 2: Into Nostra
Book 3: Shadowlands
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For Ken, Brooke, Wes, Adam, and Kyle. The original River Rock posse.
THE WORLD OF GEIRAL
RUNIC PRIMER
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Dear Readers,
I was twenty-three when I picked up my first deck of rune cards at Mystic Sisters, our local new age bookstore. I’d never even heard of the Norse runes before. Then I saw it on the shelf: a thin box of oversized divination cards, featuring the figure of Odin himself. I was intrigued, and so I snatched up the last deck they had.
I love studying the runes, and the numerous and varied ways they are interpreted in Norse and pagan culture. Since that first set of cards, I’ve continued to pick up books on the history and ancient cultures, and several different sets of rune stones as well (which are really the more authentic medium for study). I’ve done the occasional draw for friends and family, and even turned to the runes for every scene in The Pact in which a random draw appears. Yes, each draw in this series is authentic, and yes, each time I abided by the results.
But one thing I will never say is that I’m an expert at runes. I’ve done quite a bit of research since I started writing this series, and I’ve discovered—as Jack Chamberlain so often reminds Serenity—that there are twenty-four runes, and an infinite number of possibilities. I don’t know if I’m of the right spiritual mettle to interpret those elements as my ancestors did, and anything I draw is only an earnest, but amateur, attempt.
I started writing this series shortly after I bought that first deck of cards, and incidentally, after I discovered tabletop role- playing for the first time. That first real role-play experience also played a great deal into this first book, and so I hope you, dear readers, will understand the context into which I integrated the runes. It’s important for me to establish that the representation of runic divination and magic in The Pact is purely fiction and fantasy. I don’t pretend to reflect authentic and historical uses of the cards and stones. Everything in these pages is meant to craft a supernatural adventure.
That being said, I’m grateful to have had the chance to study more about my own heritage through the years I’ve been researching this series, and the fantastic mythology surrounding the Norse culture and their history. I’ve greatly enjoyed that aspect of it. If my representation of runic magic, fictional though it may be, happens to spark a deeper interest in real-world Norse legend, I sincerely hope you’ll look deeper into the true origins of the runes. Honestly, the ancient stories and study are really great.
Happy trails, Wayfarers,
Brantwijn
PART ONE
SERENITY
Caught in the middle of a hundred and five...
The night was heavy and the air was alive,
But she couldn’t find how to push through.
~ Mike Oldfield
Moonlight Shadow
CHAPTER ONE
Serenity Walker woke from her sleep to the quiet snap and pop of burning logs. The crackling fire chased away the chill of the moonless desert night, and she welcomed it, smiling. No lonely drifter could refuse the satisfaction of a good campfire.
Turning over in her bedroll, she opened her eyes to see who'd come to visit.
The flames burned high, much higher and brighter than those of the small cooking fire she'd built several hours ago. The soothing glow warmed her skin like a mother's hand, but the brilliant dance held an exotic feel. Something otherworldly. Though the desert around her stretched bone-white and barren under the spray of stars, the smell of jungle lingered in the air like a prowling, primordial spirit. Her horse nickered from the edge of the camp, anxious, and shuffled farther away from the feral light.
Her visitor sat across from her, on the other side of the fire. Between the licks of flame, his face lay hidden from her. No surprise there, though. Darklings rarely showed their faces.
So you're awake then, fleshling?
His words echoed in her head. They came voiceless and timeless, a resonating whisper like a feline purr. D'aej, come out from his den in the back of her mind to speak with her in person. Or, as close to "in person" as a bound darkling like D'aej could manage. A visual trick of the senses, a ghostly projection. He might not be really be there—like this fire he'd created, only an illusion—but if she reached out to touch him, she would still feel the icy velvet of his black, featureless skin, the mellow shape of his noseless, mouthless muzzle.
She nodded an acknowledgment. The shadowy outline of her companion ducked and danced behind the flames, but his eyes—yellow, wily, cat-like—remained steady on her.
Old legends and wives' tales said to have a darkling visit your camp was an ill omen. Plants would wither, dogs would go mad, and milk would sour. Serenity, though, trafficked with enough darklings and otherworlders to expect the occasional appearance and never think anything of it. She lived in a world of ill omens.
D'aej, for that matter, wasn't just a darkling. He was a part of her, close as a Gemini twin. Having him in her camp was nothing new at all.
We've gone too long since resting these bones in a real bed, Serenity.
She sat up and stretched, relishing the false heat of his trick fire. The flames hid him from her, affording her only a glance of him here, a glance of him there, as he flickered in and out of sight.
"Why are you complaining?" she teased. "It's not as if it makes any difference to you."
Grim annoyance slithered across their psychic link.
The body is as much mine as it is yours, and I am growing weary of its aching joints.
"There's a town less than a day's ride from here," she said. "We'll be there soon enough. But we won't be staying long. We're on a hunt."
He didn't reply, but she sensed familiar seething distaste. After traveling the desert for almost nine days, with nothing but sand on the horizon, and no one but each other for company, D'aej lamented far more than the lack of creature comforts. But sometimes the hunt took turns like these, and the darkling should have learned to live with it by now.
With a grin, she sunk back into her bedroll and turned over, away from him, leaving him no one to banter with.
"We'll get to a town soon enough," she repeated. "Until then, you just keep your nose to the wind and keep us on the trail."
The man you are looking for is far ahead of us. It may be weeks before we catch up.
"All the more reason for us to be quick."
Time didn't matter. Serenity understood long walks and lonely roads. She and D'aej had walked across nearly the whole western half of the Geiral continent, from the lowland mining and farming towns, up the spine of the mountain ranges and even into the creeping shadow of the Rachalör, the demon country. They'd visited more taverns and gambling houses than they could name, and walked away from more cold trails and dead ends than most bounty hunters cared to put up with. They'd brought in more marks than those bounty hunters, too. A few more weeks—a bit more desert—would soon be forgotten.
"It's nothing new," she murmured. "Now let me sleep, or we'll get sick as well as sore. And I know how much you'd love adding that to your list of complaints."
Grim silence—his sour way of conceding—was the only reply.
***
Serenity dreamt of the Wolf's Den.
A small tavern, but the only tavern in Eclipse, a northern town sprung up in a thick pine forest of the mountain ranges. The town of Serenity's youth, and home to loggers, trappers, and a few humble farms. The Den stayed quiet most of the day, but livened up near sunset, when the dinner bells rang and the folk came in from their work. Then the bar, with its several tables scattered about for cardplayers and work crews, and its offering of spiced northern liquors and good, hearty cooking, came alive.
An enormous stone fireplace took up most of the wall opposite the entrance. There, one of Magda's girls kept the flames going all through the evening, longer as nights got steeper and colder. A set of stairs led up to the six small rooms above, where travelers could have their rest for the night, given the right coin. The rooms on the ground floor belonged to Magda, the Den's proprietress, and her girls—young ladies who found their way to her, needing work and a place to stay.
The Den always smelled of warm, roasting venison and Magda's best beer, of the sweat of hard wilderness men and their industrious women, the elusive perfume of the serving girls winding like ribbons among them. Magda herself, tall and wiry, kept a shrewd watch from her place at the bar. But all of that started when the customers came. In the now of Serenity's dream, the Den rested, looking forward to a later rush when it would be full to bursting, hardly a chair left empty.
Serenity sat at a table near the back of the room, a child of twelve, her serving towel across her lap and a small brown journal on the table before her. The pages were filled with scribbled symbols and jumbled notes, line after line of them, written in a child's uneven scrawl. As Serenity dealt out hand after hand of cards, carefully pondering the results, she added more to them and nibbled at her lip. The gamblers at the other tables dealt poker; Serenity cast the runes. The ancient language, discourse of Geiral's secretive arcane class, philosophers delving into the spiritual realms and mysteries of the otherworld. Diligent and tireless, Serenity dealt, studied, jotted down a note in her journal, shuffled, studied, dealt again. She'd finished her work among the serving tables, and Magda wouldn't need her again until six, when they served dinner. This gave her hours to indulge in her lessons. She cast again, studied, scribbled, shuffled, cast.
A warm hand came down on her shoulder.
"The darklings won't play today," she grumbled.
Jack—of course Jack, who else would it be?—offered her a gratifying chuckle. "Then it's good you're only throwing practice."
Jack Chamberlain served as Eclipse's homegrown lawman. Constant patron of the Den, he'd taught Serenity all she knew about runes. He was an expert when it came to arcane study and magic. He picked up her notes and read them over, hming and mm-hming as he did.
"Yes, definitely good," he said again. "The last thing you need is a real darkling throwing back at you with this sort of luck."
Serenity wrinkled her nose and swept the cards back into the deck. Two dozen gold-bordered fields of black shivered in her hands as she shuffled and cast again, muttering at the result.
"Tiewaz...rune of the champion. Spirituality. Discipline."
"Are you sure you drew that one against yourself?" Jack teased.
"Look at the next one."
He picked up the card. "Gebo. A great gift, a gift from the gods."
"But I drew it upside down. Merkstave position."
He chuckled again. "Like I said. Only practice."
Shot six times like a dog in the street...
Six times, doctor, dig 'em six feet.
She rapped her knuckles on the wood, chewing her lip, before sweeping up the cards and shuffling them.
"You didn't read the last ones," Jack said.
"Sure I did. They read of inauspicious timing, decisions made, withdrawal and isolation..."
"Are you sure?"
She glanced up at him. "They fell mostly upside down."
He returned her notes and ruffled her ash-blonde hair. "Well, keep trying, kiddo."
Six times, doctor, down in the street.
He left her then, crossing the room to the bar where Magda would pour him a frothy mug of warm ale. A weaver's trick would frost it for him the way he preferred, the rune isa cast on the glass to turn it crisp and cold. One of the simplest of spells.
Serenity gave her attention back to her cards. She shuffled. Split the deck. Shuffled again. Split again. Finally she drew a single card, pausing before flipping it over.
The world slowed around her, growing thick and malevolently certain. With eerie omniscience, the kind possessed only in dreams, Serenity looked up from her studies. She followed Jack with her eyes, taking him in with solemn calculation. A casual cowboy with holes in his jeans and a crooked, boyish smile on his face. Strong arm. Gentle voice. A charmer. A white hat.
Slowly, so slowly, he raised the glass of beer Magda handed him, tipping his head in an eternal nod, half turning to come back to the little girl—the little prodigy—waiting for him in the back.
Almost unaware of the motion of her hand, Serenity flipped the card she'd drawn. Even as she did, she knew it would be the end of him. It always was. The dull, distant sound of thunder echoed in the back of her mind, almost visible to her as it rippled outwards from her table and across the room with hateful promise. The low, husky laughter of a devilish phantom followed in its wake, a dark spirit sneaking through the shadows all around her.
Shot six times like a dog in the street...
Her lips formed the silent, terrible children's rhyme, words dancing in rhythm like a funeral march. And as she watched, hypnotized, a wet, red bloom flowered across the front of Jack's dusty chambray shirt.
He stumbled, falling forward, ever forward, his glass flying from his hand and spilling through the air. Still she turned the card, as Jack threw out his arms. He became a ghost, a faded picture, falling and falling, and the Wolf's Den fell with him, sifting away like sand, everything slipping away into darkness.
The sound of the card coming down on her lonely table made a solitary tick in the emptiness that remained. Then, for long, long moments, nothing. Silence deeper than silence.
I tried, Jack, a tiny voice—a child's voice—said in the back of her mind.
The shadows rippled. Someone, somewhere, started laughing, and the laughter somehow never spoiled the eerie quiet. She wasn't alone in this secret darkness. She sensed the desperado's grin, a glimmer of wicked love, a poisonous delight.
I tried.
"Thurisaz," she said out loud. Her voice doubled. It became the voice of a twelve-year-old novice studying her cards paired with the voice of a grown woman lost in the desert, filling up a gap of untold years. The snickers of a thousand demons scuttled through the shadows, the chorus of the darklings, the otherworlders, gleefully snickering and echoing through her mind.
"Thurisaz. The giant," she said. "Thurisaz, for pain, violence, thunder, rage."
And somewhere within her, deep within her, came the smug, purring sound of living darkness, prowling satisfied through her body.
Yes, it hissed. My thurisaz. The hammer and thorn.
My sweet, sweet Serenity.
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.
