Rune Magic
BEN 
After a breakfast of porridge and berry jam, Ben and Gwil followed Tegid outside. He led them through the little wood around his house and up onto the hill behind, with the thunderous rumble of waves breaking on the shore accompanying them all the way.
World’s End library stood at the top of the hill, next to the edge of a cliff that plunged a hundred meters or so to the waves below. Like Tegid’s house, it was a low, round stone building with a thatched dome for a roof. As they climbed toward it, Ben was buffeted by the sea wind. When they drew near, a scattering of jackdaws took off from the roof to soar on the breeze.
At the entrance, Tegid turned to face them, his eyes sparkling.
“Ready?” he asked. And then he opened the door to World’s End.
Ben was so excited as he stepped inside that his nails were digging into the palms of his hands, but he was immediately disappointed with what he saw. The library consisted of only one room, with two circular rows of shelves, one nestled inside the other like a tree’s rings. There were certainly plenty of books on the shelves, but not a remarkable number.
Was this really the great library of the druids and salamanders? After everything Gwil and Meralyn had told him, Ben had expected piles of scrolls, folios, and precious old books.
Tegid watched Ben’s reaction with a broad smile. “Still not impressed?” he asked. “Then watch this.”
He walked to the middle of the room. Dead in the center of the shelf rings was an empty white circle. Tegid stopped at the edge of the circle, and stepped on a rune that had been burnt into the floor. He had barely touched the rune with his foot when a gritty scraping sound filled the room. The white circle sank down and split into two halves, which slid apart to leave a perfectly round hole in the floor. Tegid beckoned Ben over. Ben went to his side and peered cautiously into the hole. Floor after floor stretched out below them. Dozens and dozens of levels of shelves filled with books. They were standing on the top floor of a tower that stretched down into the ground! Light shone dimly into the tower at each level, as if sunlight were streaming in at the sides.
“Welcome to World’s End,” Tegid said, clearly in good spirits. “Let’s see what we can find.”
The salamander had not been exaggerating. World’s End was a miraculous place. The outer wall of the upside-down library tower seemed to protrude from the cliff face, and on the second floor down, a huge curved window let in plenty of light. There was no glass in it; instead, runes carved into the walls created an invisible shield, protecting the tower against wind, rain, and cold. It looked as if you could step right out of the tower into the sky.
Tegid set to trawling through the library’s shelves right away, but Ben stood awestruck, tracing the rune shapes on the wall with his finger.
“Most of us can use runes,” said Gwil, standing at Ben’s side with his hands clasped behind his back. “Fairies, humans, shape-shifters… But making the runes powerful—that takes a lot of practice. You don’t only have to see the word the runes are spelling in your mind’s eye—you have to see the meaning and purpose too.”
“The meaning?” Ben repeated.
Gwil reached out and touched one of the runes. “Let’s say you scratch runes into a young tree and speak the rune word grow. If it’s done correctly, the rune speaker should see an image of a sprouting sapling in their mind. They are not only imagining the tree growing; they can sense it too. If they aren’t careful, the sapling might only grow a few leaves… or a whole forest might shoot up instead.” Gwil smiled. “Everyone knows some rune magic, but some have a special gift for it. Take Rose, for example—she’s got a talent for combat and defense runes.”
Ben looked up at the lintel of the window, which was entirely covered in runes. “How about you? Can you write runes?”
“Yes,” Gwil said. “But I don’t really have a talent for magic.”
“Hooray!” Tegid’s voice came from behind the shelves.
Gwil and Ben exchanged a smile and went over to a worktable by the window.
Tegid emerged carrying a pile of books. “Here you go,” he said, enthusiastically plonking the pile down on the table. “These should keep us busy, for starters. And look what else I’ve found.” He reached inside his cardigan and pulled out a slim red notebook with a worn linen binding.
“This was Rose and Bramble’s notebook,” Tegid explained. “It’s one of the rune books they practiced spells and magic with.”
Ben was itching to get his hands on the notebook. Tegid noticed his impatience and pushed the book across the table to him.
Ben accepted it gratefully. “Is the rune spell to banish the Gray King in here?”
“No,” Tegid replied immediately. “One of the humans stitched that on a cloth.”
“A cloth?” Ben asked.
“A charm cloth. She and the others took it to the Pale Tower. Rose must have awakened the runes in the tower to banish the Gray King.”
“Do you know which rune spell they used?” Gwil asked.
Tegid plucked a book from the pile and tapped its cover. “Taliesin’s Evening Blessing.”
“Could the thing with the charm cloth work a second time?” Ben asked.
“It could,” Tegid said, “but it’s too dangerous for you two to try it.”
“I know,” Ben agreed. “But if we bring Rose back here, she can do it, can’t she?”
Tegid rested his chin on his folded hands. “Maybe. But that’s just it, isn’t it? If we bring Rose back here.”
Ben lowered his gaze and felt along the edge of the red notebook with his thumb. Yes. If.
Tegid briefly placed his hand on Ben’s. “Don’t be disheartened!” he said. “We’ll find a way to snatch her from the fog’s claws. These few books are just a start, and if we don’t find what we need here, we’ll keep on searching. There’s an answer to everything buried somewhere in this tower.”
“Buried?” Gwil asked, worried.
Tegid beamed at him. “Indeed. We may have to go deeper than I’ve ever been so far to find it.”
He didn’t sound remotely worried at the prospect.
That afternoon, the salamanders went back to Tegid’s house for some tea and a bite to eat. Ben stayed at the desk at the window all by himself. They had pored through three piles of books by now, with no luck.
Ben leafed through Rose and Bramble’s notebook. They had copied paragraphs from books about runes and elemental magic, both making notes in the margins commenting on each other’s writings. There was even a sketch of a standing stone covered in runes.
Ben flicked ahead until he got to a page that had a number of runes and their respective translations listed in three neat lines. That morning he had made sure to bring Portia’s travel diary with him, so he could take notes in it himself. He took it out of his pocket now, snapped off the rubber band keeping it shut, and, using the pen clipped to the front, began sketching one of the runes. Ben liked its shape: one vertical line, and two diagonal lines that jutted out of its side like branches. For some reason, the runes reminded him of the forest on his bedroom wall, where the Wild Things hid. So many times, he had imagined stepping through the painted trees to another world. And that’s where he was right now, wasn’t he? In another world.
Ben kept browsing, copying combinations of runes at random without giving it much thought. Rose’s and Bramble’s translations were in Welsh, and he understood most of them. With every rune he copied, his desire to say them out loud increased. He felt silly, but excited at the same time. Ben placed a finger on the last line of runes he had drawn, wet his lips with the tip of his tongue, and then spoke the rune’s name.
“Darganfydda.” Find.
Ben held his breath for one tense moment, but nothing happened. Disappointed, he breathed out, shaking his head. What had he expected? A tingling in his fingers? For the runes on the page to glow blue, like the ones on Rose’s staff?
Ben sighed and returned to Portia’s notebook. He was about to sketch a small pile of books when something fluttered into his field of vision from the right. He lifted his head to see a moon-moth tumbling toward him. It landed on the open diary, right on the drawing of the rune he had just read aloud.
Ben didn’t dare to take his hand off the page. He didn’t even dare to breathe. As he watched, the moon-moth began to glow a deep blue. Its antennae quivered; then it took flight again and fluttered to the middle of the room. It stopped above the stairs leading down, deeper into the tower, hovering in place as if waiting for something. Or someone.
Ben stared, frozen for a few moments, then jumped to his feet and followed the moth as it began to descend the tower staircase. The light coming through the window faded as he went further and further down. The moon-moth flew ahead of him like a particularly keen guiding star. Or perhaps a will-o’-the-wisp, set to lead him astray? At that moment, however, his curiosity was stronger than his fear. Where had the moth come from? Had he summoned it? And what did it want to show him? Trying to solve the puzzle was irresistible. Finally Ben understood why Portia had followed a fox into the wilderness.
With every step, Ben descended further, and the deeper he got, the gloomier his surroundings became. The scent of old leather grew stronger, and Ben noticed that the air wasn’t musty or damp. No dust, low humidity: the perfect conditions for a library. His dad would have loved this place.
Ben imagined what it would have been like to tell him about the library, and how he would have set out for World’s End right away. As always, he felt a twinge of pain when it struck him that he would never talk to his dad again.
He was still lost in thought when they reached a new level and the moon-moth finally came to a halt. Ben stopped too. It was utterly silent and still down here. He could make out the vague shape of shelves nearby, which ran off and disappeared into darkness.
It wasn’t cold, but Ben’s forearms were covered in goose bumps. The moth didn’t stay still for long and soon fluttered off up one of the aisles that ran between the shelves like the spokes of a wheel. Ben glanced back one last time at the stairs, and then followed it.
As they left one wall of shelves after another behind, Ben felt increasingly ill at ease. How far was the moth leading him? And was it his imagination, or did the tower seem much wider down here than the entrance room on the top? Up there, Ben had seen only two rings of shelves, but down here he had already passed through four of them. He was just thinking of turning back when the moth seemed to reach its destination. In the middle of the aisle, a few feet away from Ben, stood a desk. On it lay a single book. The moth was dancing above it like a tiny star. With his heart pounding, Ben approached the table.
The book’s binding was so ancient that the leather looked black. It was scuffed from the touch of many hands—or perhaps the hands had belonged to just one person, who had taken the book from the shelf time and time again. Ben placed his own hand on the cover and felt a gust of air behind his back. He spun around with his heart in his mouth. It had felt as if someone was running up the aisle behind him, but there was no one there. He was alone.
Reluctantly he turned back to the book and opened it. A loose slip of paper fell out from between the pages, and Ben picked it up. There were only two words on it: Codex Reditus. They meant nothing to him. Cautiously he began to turn the pages. The scuffed binding was misleading; the book was old, but not ancient. The pages were made of thick cream-colored paper covered in handwritten text—yet another notebook, apparently. One page seemed to have a date written in the corner, but the ink was so smeared that Ben couldn’t decipher it. The writing was crammed tightly on the pages, as if the author had been trying to save space. Here and there the lines of text were interrupted by pictures of strangely contorted faces.
The author probably just hadn’t been very good at drawing faces, but still those uncannily long heads and black misshapen eyes sent shivers down Ben’s spine. As he leafed through the book, Ben found ripped-out pages from other books that the author had collected and added to their own notes. One showed a woodcut of a man sitting on a rock, holding a lute. He was surrounded by animals, who appeared to be crying. Another page was decorated with a colorful image that reminded Ben of illuminated Bibles from the Middle Ages. There were no praying monks or angels here, though. Instead there was a slim man, his head downcast and shoulders hunched, walking toward the left margin of the page. Ben shivered. Another figure, a humanlike creature wearing a robe, was following the man. Or was the creature chasing him? Ben gulped, turned another page, and then caught his breath. He recognized the black door in this drawing. The paper was grooved, as if the artist had scratched the page violently with a quill, many times over. The door looked like a gaping black maw, like an abyss leading through the book to who knows where. As he stared at the page, the moth fluttered over to Ben and landed at the edge of the page. Ben’s hands were trembling.
Underneath the black door was just one word. Annwn.