Aries Mars's Arc

Chapter 11 of 11

Aries rode a half day from the castle walls with the tablet strapped to his back and the scepter across his saddle. The first name on the list still would not hold shape in his mind. The script beside each face shifted every time he looked. Letters he almost knew slid into letters he did not. By dusk he turned the horse toward the coast. If any place could read a language older than his own, it was the temple where his lover kept her tools. The psychic center rose above the tide line, its dome patched with colored glass. Pisces Rising met him at the door. She looked at the tablet under his arm and did not ask why he had come. She only stepped aside and led him past the entrance hall to her working room. She set the tablet on a low, carved table. An orb above it woke and threw pale light across the stone. Aries pointed to the first line of script. "I can't read it. I sit with it for hours and the letters change. Tell me who I'm supposed to find first." Pisces Rising ran a finger over the surface. "Yes and no," she said. "The script isn't fixed. It's like trying to read a river by the shape of one wave. The tablet answers who's near you. Not who's next." She looked up. "You have to follow your gut. The words will settle when you're close." "That isn't an answer," Aries said. His hand tightened on the scepter. "I came here for a name." "I know." She turned to a small fountain in the corner, its crystals shaped like question marks, and dipped her palm. Water climbed her wrist. She pressed her wet hand to a framed pane of dark glass on the wall. The pane cleared. Inside its swirl, faces began to move. A woman kneeling in a doorway. A man alone at a workbench. A child at the edge of a shore. None held still long enough to fix. "These are people who need help right now," she said. "Any of them could be first. You'll know when you find them. Travel. Watch. The tablet will do the rest." "How am I supposed to help them?" Aries said. His voice cracked lower than he meant. "I can't even help myself. I sit in silence and I still hear nothing that makes me a leader." Pisces Rising took his hand. Her fingers were cold and steady. "That's the part no one tells you," she said. "You don't fix them, and they don't fix you. You might activate each other. Like two stones striking. Neither is the spark alone." She let go. "Pick a road. Ride. Stop when something in you says stop." Aries lifted the tablet. The first face on it had already changed. He did not know the name yet, but he knew, now, that finding it meant leaving.