Aldric Thornmoor's Arc

Chapter 8 of 16

Aldric caught Wanda's sleeve before she reached the trees. The woman with burned hands was already gone toward the north gate house. Running after her on foot meant arriving winded and bleeding, with a councilor waiting behind a bolted door. Aldric pointed back at the pool, where the mermaid still watched them from the black water. Wanda understood. She turned and followed him. Lyra rose higher when they knelt at the edge. Aldric wrote fast on his stub: WE CANT CATCH HER. HELP US MOVE FAST. Wanda held up her charred palms. "He knows our faces. We have one night." Lyra studied them. Her scales caught what little light the pool held. "Star magic runs faster than legs," she said. "I can give you some of mine. It burns through quick. One push. Wherever you're going, you arrive tired." Aldric nodded. Wanda nodded. Lyra reached from the water with both hands. She pressed one palm to Aldric's chest and one to Wanda's. A cold spread under Aldric's ribs, then a heat, then something between. He saw a ringed planet turning behind his eyes, purple and pink, a small star map wheeling inside it. When Lyra pulled her hands back, faint light clung to Aldric's skin and to Wanda's charred fingers. "Go by the low path," Lyra said. "Past the dark bush and the blue mushrooms. The road is watched." They went. Aldric's legs moved without his asking. The woods thinned. He passed a bush so black it drank the moonlight, cosmic dust curling in its leaves. Past it, a cluster of mushrooms threw blue light onto the frost. Wanda kept pace beside him, her breath steady, her ringlets pushed back by the speed. They came out behind a shuttered building with dark windows. A painted sign hung above the door, white and blue and purple, a bakery closed for the night. The north gate house stood beyond it, one window lit on the upper floor. Wanda stopped in the bakery's shadow. "That's his room. Second floor." Aldric wrote: HOW LONG DOES THIS LAST. Wanda flexed her hands. The star light was already fading from her knuckles. "Not long." Aldric looked at the lit window. The woman with burned hands would already be inside, telling the councilor everything. He wrote one word and showed it to Wanda: NOW. Wanda smiled without warmth. She stepped out of the shadow. Fire bloomed in her palm, brighter than before, fed by what Lyra had given her. Aldric followed. His voice was still gone. His broach was still at the bottom of a well. But he was at the councilor's door on the same night the warning had reached it, and that was more than he had held an hour ago. The lit window went dark. Someone inside had seen the flame.