Aldric Thornwhisper's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

For a hundred years, Aldric Thornwhisper had hunted the man who left him for dead. The bandit had taken his family's sword, an elven blade older than the mountain. Now Aldric sat on the stone steps of his home, a cave carved into the cliff face, and admitted the truth. The trail was dead. He had no lead, no scent, no name. His long grey hair hung loose, and his thin moustache twitched as he cursed himself. His old goat pushed against his knee. The animal was as grey and stubborn as he was. It had climbed these cliffs beside him for thirty winters. "There's nothing left to follow," Aldric told it. "He could be dust by now. The blade could be at the bottom of a lake." The goat snorted and butted his chest. Something hard swung under Aldric's collar. He reached in and pulled out a locket on a worn chain. He had forgotten he wore it. His mother had pressed it into his hand the day she died, before the bandit ever came. Aldric turned it in his fingers. Gold, dented, covered in small carved marks. He had always thought them decoration. Now he looked closer. The marks were symbols of his bloodline. His father. His grandfather. The forge where the sword was made. His thumb caught a groove along the edge. The locket clicked open. Inside, no picture waited. Instead, a thin line of blue light rose from the metal. It bent in the air, then pointed east, away from the cliff, over the ridges he had searched a century ago. Aldric's breath caught. He remembered his mother's words, dismissed as an old woman's comfort. "This will always find what our family lost." The blade was made by his blood. The locket remembered his blood. It was not tracking a cold trail. It was tracking the sword itself. He stood too fast and his knees screamed. He did not care. He held the locket flat on his palm and turned in a slow circle. The blue light held steady, always pointing the same way. East. Far east, past the lands he knew. The goat stamped and shook its horns. "Yes," Aldric said. His voice cracked. "After all this time. We have a direction." He went inside and threw a blanket, a knife, and dried meat into a pack. The cave had sheltered him through a hundred lonely years. He would not sleep in it tonight. At the top of the steps he stopped. The light still pointed east, but it was faint. When he shook the locket it dimmed further. The magic was old and weak. It might guide him for a week. It might die in a day. Aldric closed his fist around it and started down the cliff path, the goat clopping behind him. The trail was warm again. Now he had to reach the end before the light went out.