Aldric Starweaver's Arc

Chapter 4 of 10

The box would open only across the valley. Aldric knew that now. But the keep sat far off, past open ground, and his tower was a heap of broken stone. He had no roof, no worktable, no walls to plan behind. He stood in the wreck at dawn and understood the crossing came first. Reach the keep, breach the second box, free the shard. Everything started with the walk he could not stage. "We leave today," Aldric said. "Before the light fails." Faelan looked across the valley and read the wind. "Open the whole way. No trees past the stream." Sylvra squinted at the far ridge, judging distance. "Half a day at speed. Longer with him." They meant Aldric. He knew it. Boots crunched behind them. Galahad came up the slope, the knight who had killed the dragon that buried this tower. Red plume, dented armor, sword already drawn from habit. He had freed Aldric from the beast, and Aldric still owed him more than he could pay. Galahad stopped at the rubble and frowned. "You mean to cross in daylight," Galahad said. "With no place to fall back to." He kicked a fallen beam. "Your tower's gone. If the crossing turns bad, there's nowhere to run." "There's the cabin," Aldric said. "Too far the wrong way." Galahad sheathed the sword. "We stage from the stream. The willows there give cover. Rock at the bank. We rest, we watch the open ground, then we run it at dusk when nothing sees us cross." Aldric had thought only of the ruin at his back. He had not thought forward, to the water and the trees between here and the keep. "You've scouted it." "While you fought the iron." Galahad almost smiled. "I don't dig. I look." They packed what the rubble gave them. Aldric wrapped the sealed box in cloth and carried it himself. The twins moved ahead, bows strung. Galahad walked at Aldric's shoulder, matching his slow pace without a word of complaint. They reached the stream by afternoon. A cluster of willows leaned over the bank, and flat stone ran along the water. Galahad set them behind the trailing branches. "Here. We wait for the light to drop." Aldric set the box on the flat rock and sat. For the first time since his tower fell, he had walls of a kind, green and living, and stone under him, and a plan that was not his own but held. The open valley stretched ahead. Beyond it, the keep waited with the second box. "We watch, then we cross," Galahad said. "After that, the keep is your problem." Sylvra rose suddenly and pointed across the water. Something moved on the far ridge, near the keep's broken wall. Not wind. It walked with purpose. Faelan drew an arrow and went still. "That's my creature," Faelan said. "It found the keep first."