Aldrin's Arc

Chapter 3 of 9

Boots hammered the stairs below. Aldrin ran the other way, the flower in one fist and Cedric's borrowed book in the other. Cedric caught his sleeve at the corridor's end. "Not the front. The archive stair." He pulled Aldrin through a narrow door and down into cold stone. "Every master signs the restricted archive to enter," Cedric said. "If your killer studied the Severing Rite, his name is in the ledger. That narrows the men who could cast it." The archive smelled of old wax. A single lamp burned. Cedric found the ledger and ran his finger down the entries. Names. Dates. Aldrin watched the stair behind them. Then a voice cut the dark. "The book you want is gone." An old mage stepped from the shelves. Forest green robes. A gold pin at his breast, the kind earned through years of exams and the approval of senior masters. He leaned on a plain staff and studied Aldrin without fear. Cedric went still. Aldrin knew the face. A teacher of temporal binding. Ivan Silverwind. "You're the boy they expelled," Ivan said. "For a murder." "I didn't kill him." Aldrin lifted the flower. Its light spilled over the shelves. "This bound the mark to his body. The Severing Rite. Only a master casts it." Ivan's eyes moved to the bloom. Something shifted in his face. He stepped closer and looked at the mark inside the light. "Three circles. One broken." He spoke low. "The rite comes from a text in this archive. It was stolen. Three men held keys. I narrowed it to one." Aldrin's chest tightened. "Who?" Ivan reached into his robe and drew a folded page. He laid it on the shelf between them. On it, a single name and a wax seal. "I chased the thief here to take back what he stole. He is a master. He taught in these halls. And he wanted your teacher's silence." Ivan tapped the page. "There is your killer." Aldrin read the name. His hands went cold. He had eaten at that man's table. The man who first placed the hidden book in his master's hands. Boots reached the archive door. Cedric shoved the ledger back and killed the lamp. "They're here." Ivan did not move. "Take the page. I will hold the stair." He raised his staff, and a slow ring of light turned above his head, the mark of temporal binding. "Why help me?" Aldrin said. "Because a thief made the college a weapon." Ivan's jaw set. "Go." Aldrin folded the page against his chest. He had chased a shadow for three days. Now he held a name. Cedric pulled him toward a low window as the door burst inward behind them. Outside, black ravens scattered off the sill into the night. Aldrin climbed through after them, the flower dark now in his fist, the killer's name pressed to his heart. He knew who to hunt. He did not yet know how to prove it before the man buried the truth for good.