Aldric Thornwood's Arc

Chapter 6 of 10

The guards opened the door without a word. Aldric stepped into the warm hall and stopped. His mother stood at the far end, calm, waiting. In her open palm rested a bone pendant carved with a frost-rune — the twin of the one hidden under his shirt. She did not raise her voice. She only said he could give her his, or take hers, but not both. The pendant against his skin burned cold. The hours he had counted were already spent. Aldric looked past her to the great stone hearth, the fire steady under the heavy beams. He walked the length of the hall and stopped an arm's reach from her. He drew his pendant out and held it up, then closed his fist around it. He did not give it. He took hers from her palm instead. Her fingers did not curl to stop him. She only smiled, small and tired, and said the name now belonged to him to carry, and so did the cost. Aldric slipped both pendants into his coat. He had two halves now, and a mother who had let him take them. He turned and walked back toward the door, knowing she had already chosen what came next. Before he reached the door, she spoke again. She lifted a slim glass screen from the table beside her. Its bright face showed a map, a single moving dot, and a name he did not yet know but felt in his chest. She told him she had always known where the other half lived. She told him the dot would stop moving the moment he stepped outside. Aldric's hand closed hard on the two pendants in his coat. He pulled the door open and walked out into the cold, the clock against him now, the name finally his to chase. On the front step he drew both pendants out together. In the pale morning light he saw what he had missed inside — each bone disc was banded by a thin silver ring, hammered and notched, twin marks made by the same hand. One maker. One pair. One promise his parents had broken. He pushed the pendants deep into his coat and started to run. Behind him the warm hall closed. Ahead, somewhere, a dot was still moving, and he had only as long as his own boots could carry him before it stopped.