Aela Darkwood's Arc

Chapter 22 of 22

They left the familiar bound in the brush and moved on the cave. Torches burned on either side of the stone mouth. The wolf skeleton still stood inside the arch, watching nothing. Aela crouched behind a slab of rock ten paces off. Kalen and Lyra dropped in beside her. She could see the throat of the cave and no further. Anything past the first bend was black. "I don't know the inside," Aela said. "One turn and we could walk into a ward." Lyra pulled the cipher lens from her jacket and held it up to the cave mouth. She turned it slow. "Runes on the lintel. Two lines. Alarm and hold." "Can you read them from here?" "The alarm's already tripped. The hold triggers on the second step past the arch." Kalen wiped his hands on his jeans. Fresh blood still crusted the knuckles. "Then we don't take a second step. We call her out." "She won't come for words," Lyra said. "She'll come for her wolf." Aela looked at the crescent stone in her palm. She thought of the gray familiar lying blind in the leaves. "We tell her we have it. We make her cross her own line." She stood up before her nerve turned. "Morgan Moonshader." Her voice carried into the stone and came back thin. "Your wolf is bound. Come out and we talk." Silence. Then bare feet on rock. The witch came to the arch and stopped one step short of the second rune. She was small. Purple robe, dark hair, a staff with a lantern crystal at its head. She looked at Aela the way a farmer looks at a broken fence. "You are the one who ruined my knife," Morgan said. "I am." Morgan struck first. The staff came down and the crystal flashed. A line of white fire ripped across the ground toward Aela's feet. Aela threw herself sideways. The rock behind her cracked open. Lyra's palm lit. She pulled heat from the torches and threw it back as a wall. Kalen shifted mid-step, hit the ground on four legs, and came around the witch's flank. Aela drew her knife and closed the gap on the other side. Morgan swung the staff at Kalen and missed. Aela's blade came up under the witch's chin before the second swing landed. Lyra's hand closed around the staff and pulled it down. Morgan stopped. She looked at the blade at her throat and let the staff go. "Enough," she said. "Enough. I yield." Aela did not lower the knife. "Say it plain." "I'll put you back." Morgan's yellow eyes held steady. "The half-shape. The old body. I return you to what you were before Kalen came, and you three walk out of my woods alive. That is my offer." The cave breathed cold air past them. Aela's hand did not move on the hilt.