Aldric Emberwise's Arc

Chapter 3 of 6

The warmth held all night, but Aldric wanted more than warmth. At dawn he stood before the carved stone. If the eyes gave heat for words, they could give other things. He needed light to work by, water to drink, food to share. A haven required more than a hot floor. He pressed his palm to the marks and asked for water. Nothing came. The eyes dimmed. The floor cooled under Mira's feet. "What did you do?" she said. She wrapped her arms tight. "It was warm. You broke it." Aldric tried again. He asked for light. He asked for bread. Each wrong word cooled the room another notch. Frost crept back along the walls. His one command worked. Every other request failed and cost him the heat he already had. He pulled the bone scrap from his pocket. Only one set of marks. Only one gift. He had thought the eyes obeyed anyone who asked. They obeyed one phrase, and he owned no others. Aldric found the scarred old trader at his stall, carving new marks into bone. Burn scars webbed both his hands. He grinned when he saw Aldric's face. "Back already," Hadrian Bole said. "The heat worked, then. What went wrong?" "It only does one thing," Aldric said. "Heat. I need water, light, more. Sell me the other words." Hadrian's grin faded. "I stole one secret from that place. One. The rest, I never learned." He set down his tool. "But the words aren't the trick, stranger. The stone answers a thing that carries them. There's a broken figure in the garden behind your building. Old myth-stone. Cracked. It was the mouth once. Speak to it, not the wall." Aldric ran back through the cold. Behind the building he found the statue. A crowned figure of pale stone, gold trim worn thin, deep cracks splitting its chest and arms. Its blank eyes glowed faint yellow, the same shade as his own. A girl in grey funeral wraps knelt at its feet, brushing grave dust from her toes. An iron token hung at her throat. "It hums when you speak," she said, not looking up. "I heard it from the road. I followed the sound out of a place I shouldn't have left." Her dark eyes fixed on him. "Wren Lask. I walked out of the death realm. This is the first thing that answered me." Aldric knelt beside her. He read the marks from the bone aloud, to the statue this time. The cracked figure brightened. Warmth flooded the building behind them, stronger than before. Then a low voice ground out from the stone. "One asked. One paid. Speak your need." Aldric's chest tightened. The eyes had not obeyed a phrase. They had obeyed a listener. He could ask for anything now. But the statue had counted his words, and Wren had followed its call. Something else was listening too.