Alice Wanderlynn's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

Alice walked north out of Thornwick before dawn, the folded note in her sleeve and her hand loose on her sword. By midmorning the trees thinned and the clearing opened. The tower stood at its center, black stone streaked with moss, cracked from base to crown. Runes glowed on its face in two colors, pink and pale blue. She pulled the note out and held it up beside the wall. The marks on the paper matched the marks on the stone. Same slants. Same broken crosses. She could see they were the same alphabet. She could not read a single one. She turned the paper. She turned it again. Nothing gave. At the base of the tower sat a low fountain wrapped in moss and vine. Water still ran from its upper bowl. Geodes were set into the stone sides, purple and orange and green, and each geode had a rune cut above it. Alice crouched. She whispered one of the shapes from her note. The water in the bowl went still. Nothing else happened. She tried another. The fountain hummed under her palm, and a thin voice moved through the spray, too soft to catch. "Don't touch it again." Alice stood and drew her sword in one motion. A man stepped out from behind the tower. Dark hair under a green hood. A bow across his back. He held both hands where she could see them. "You're the one asking questions in town," he said. "I've been asking longer." "Name." "Killian." He nodded at the note in her other hand. "That's a lure. The runes on the paper aren't instructions. They're a call sign. Read them out loud at the door and something inside answers. Not something you want to meet." Alice kept the sword between them. "How do you know." "My family died seven years ago. The mark on that tower was carved at the site." He said it flat, the way someone reads a receipt. "I've watched three people come here with notes like yours. None walked out." She studied his face. He did not blink. His hands stayed open. "I need what's inside," she said. "A music box's workings. Thornwick needs them." "Then we don't use the note." He stepped to the fountain and pointed at a rune above a green geode, then a rune on the tower door. Same shape. "They repeat. The fountain teaches the alphabet. Match the door runes to these, and you'll know which stones on the door are safe to press. The note skips that step on purpose." Alice lowered the sword an inch. She looked at the paper in her hand, then tore it in half and let both pieces fall in the grass. "Show me," she said. Killian crouched at the fountain. Alice crouched beside him. The trap was still ahead of her, but the door was no longer a wall she could not read.