Free The Wayfarer King by K.C. May

about what antique treasures Tyr might have been hoarding. He lighted the candle and descended the rickety ladder. With each step, the dry, old rungs creaked and groaned, threatening to crack under his weight. Finally at the bottom, and glad of the solid ground beneath his feet, he held the candle in front of him to look around, waving his free arm to tear away the cobwebs tickling his face.
    The cellar was empty except for three warped shelves against one wall, stacked with bricks as supports. Various sizes of dust-covered glass jars filled with powders and roots were neatly arranged on the top two shelves. On the bottom was an odd assortment of wooden sticks and feathers tied to them, a jar holding a handful of gems, and a stack of loose papers containing faded drawings and notes. A small leather pouch with a drawstring closure sat on the middle shelf behind a jar of something black and crusty. When he lifted it, it jingled with coin. Nilmarion gold coins, Brodas discovered. At least thirty of them, worth a great deal of money. Well, well, you sly devil.
    Hot wax dripped onto his hand. He sucked in his breath, flinching hard enough to nearly drop the candle. Hell’s bones! He drizzled the excess wax onto the dirt floor. That was when he noticed a stone, round and flat, on the ground. Some kind of symbol was carved into its surface. He picked it up, blew the dirt off, and examined it more closely. Could this be one of the Runes of Carthis? His heart began to thump. Its shape somewhat resembled those he’d seen in the Rune Tablet that Gavin Kinshield now had in his possession, but this was not one he’d ever seen before. The symbol resembled two squares, one over the other, and beside it a headless stick figure standing beneath a crooked letter T. There was only one rune mentioned in Sevae’s journal: the Rune of Summoning. Could this be it? The very rune Sevae had used two centuries ago to pit the beyonder champion Ritol against King Arek?
    Like everyone else, Brodas had grown up hearing stories about Ritol still trapped in the palace. Many believed that Ritol’s presence was the cause for the continued beyonder invasion. After reading the journal, Brodas had come to dismiss those stories as tales parents told their children to frighten them into good behavior. There was no question that Ronor Kinshield had locked the beyonder prince in the palace shortly before it killed King Arek. Even had Sevae not dismissed it, Ritol would have automatically returned to its own realm on the death of its summoner.
    Brodas studied the symbol, letting his mind play. He supposed that in some abstract way it could be construed as a man shaded by a tree or umbrella opening a box. Perhaps the shaded man represented the summoner being protected from whatever powers were in the box. His heart was racing now, as certainty fueled his excitement. If this was what he thought it was, he had the power to bring forth this very champion, exactly what he needed to take the throne by force. Let Gavin Kinshield see how well he fared against that.
    Brodas dropped the rune into his coin pouch, held the candle between his teeth and carefully climbed the ladder. All he needed to do now was learn to perform the summoning. After closing the cellar’s door, he dripped wax on the table and set the candle’s base into it to hold it upright. Then he retrieved Sevae’s journal and began to scan for mentions of the rune.

    The rune itself was not as difficult to obtain as one might imagine, when one understands the royal family as I do. Though the king’s cousin was of diminished wit, he had the body of a young man and the raging lust to go with it. He would do anything, I discovered, for a peek at his budding sister in the nude. With a small bit of mandrake root in her nighttime tea, I used her to great effect. Her brother, it seems, made quite the thief, and his mental defect put him above suspicion when the king noticed the rune missing. Though I now have it