The Rising Stones (Ihale Book 1)

and quiet long enough he heard little noises, a soft chirruping somewhere that might have been an insect. He would have given anything to feel a good, strong wind. A small part of him wondered if he ever would again.
The thought was too loud in such a quiet place, so he got to his feet and tried to walk around, hugging his jacket close and stamping feeling back into his feet when he thought he was probably far enough away to not disturb anyone. The chirruping paused for a long moment before it resumed farther away.
He looked back at the barrier, a gem that outshone any bit of moss in the area. It was a little rough, he could feel weak patches when he concentrated, but Bel had been tired and the barrier was probably more of a formality, anyway, with how deep they were in the tunnels. The magic was bright, warm and familiar, the feel of it soothing despite its choppiness.
And rather far away, now that he thought about it. He'd walked farther than he'd meant to, nearly back to the intersection. Even from here he could see the two arrows Rhyss had marked on the tunnel wall, dark strips cut from the vegetation. One for the first, two for the second, she'd explained when he'd asked. He didn't think it really mattered which one was first, but she was the survival expert.
One of the pillars jutted out of the wall next to him, its cross beam lost in a tangle of roots and moss. The other side of the tunnel was choked with vegetation, but the pillar next to him was relatively free of plant life.
He touched it and swore it felt warm for just a moment.
The moss enshrouding the stone was easy to tear away. For a moment he hesitated, then ripped it all off. There was no flash of light this time.
A fanged deer skull stared up at him with one gaping socket.
He crouched down a little so he was eye level with it. It looked just like the carving on the pillar that Bel had pulled him away from. The skull was in profile, the antlers jutting up and around the pillar, framing spidery runes that he couldn't read. The soft blue light from the barrier was harsh in the recesses of the carving, turning shadows into knife points.
Runic magic hadn't been used since the new city had been built in the aftermath of the Great War. A few Ihalins studied it, according to his professor of magical script, but it was a dead and frankly uninteresting art. The runes no longer held sway over magic, but there was too much superstition surrounding them and how they were abused during the fighting. Heln had never really had much interest in them; they were just another fact he'd had to know for a test.
The skull was another matter, the sign of the lord of the forest, or the bone peddler as it was sometimes called. Even small children knew about it. A bogeyman, a creature that had once been a powerful force, but had faded into shadowy myth and legend around the time that the new Ihale City was built. When he was very small his mother used to tell him that the forest god would swallow him up and add him to its collection of bones if he didn't eat his vegetables.
Despite the silly, childish threats and the obscurity of legends, it was common knowledge that the forest god should be avoided. That its symbol marked places of death and destruction. Legend had it that hundreds of years ago when a plague carved a swath through the population of the city a deer skull was used over the doors of the houses of the infected.
Heln dropped his shields slightly, extending his senses. The pillar contained magic, but as far as he could tell it was just to keep the tunnel from collapsing, old magical signatures layered on top of each other until they were a looping scrawl that he couldn't trace.
Not that it would matter, even if he could figure them out. All of the casters had been dead for a long time.
The thought made him feel off balanced. It wasn't that he'd never sensed permanent scripts before; his light stick was considered a permanent script, but the old magic had always been overpowered by any recharges or renewals. Or a new script all together.
This was different. Even the final layer of magic was ancient, older than any other script he'd sensed. His fingers felt like they had a residue on them, like he had been tracing the letters in old books for too long. He rubbed them absently against his pants. It did little good. Even with the cleaning script they were physically dusty and grimy.
Heln had never thought about what happened to a script after the caster of it died. Now he couldn't stop wondering if Bel's shield would stay without her to take it down, or whether it would slowly run down when his magic wasn't there to feed it any more.
He could tell that the tunnel magic hadn't been recharged for years and he had no idea what kept the scripts feeling strong.
Heln shuddered and looked back at Bel's barrier, trying to look anywhere but the skull or the walls. The light stick was smooth and cold in his hand. He hadn't activated it in hours. Maybe days. He slid his thumb over the activation script. The crystal came to life with a gentle, yellow glow and the tube warmed almost instantly until it felt hot in his freezing fingers. Shadows leapt away from him and painted themselves in dark lines against the bare patches on the walls and ceiling. His father had charged it before the Festival. It felt like him, if a little muffled from being filtered through crystal and carved script.
The chirruping noise stopped.
The stillness in the air thickened. Heln's eyes were drawn back to the skull