Azria Evermoore's Arc

Chapter 3 of 7

Dawn found the cave still. Azria folded the old letter and tucked it inside the sealed book. She knew the place it named now. But the road there ran through open country, and open country meant undead. Ash had killed one corpse and led her to safety. That didn't mean he'd walk beside her into worse. She watched him lace his boots and made herself say it. "We split here, or we don't. I need to know which." Ash looked up. His white hair caught the gray light. "You think I'll bolt." "You appeared from nowhere. You knew the maker's work. You gave me a book and a direction." She kept her voice flat. "Men who know that much usually want something. So tell me, or go." He stood. For a moment he said nothing. Then he pulled his jacket open. A thin cord hung at his throat, and on it a chip of obsidian, dull and small. "He made mine too," Ash said. "Twenty years back. I've been looking for him longer than you have." Azria stared at the stone. Her own necklace warmed, faint, answering his. She hadn't expected proof. "Then why help me at all?" "Because yours still hums," he said. "Mine went quiet years ago. I can't find the dead anymore. You can. I need what you carry." He met her eyes. "That's the trade. You get me to him. I keep the corpses off your back until we're there." It wasn't warmth. It wasn't friendship. But it was a reason she could hold in her hand. A man chasing the same door didn't run from it. Azria pushed the sealed book under her arm and stepped toward the narrow gap. "Then we go together," she said. "But if you lie to me, I'll leave you for the ones you can't feel." Ash almost smiled. "Fair." They squeezed out through the mossy slit one at a time. The morning was cold and wet. Azria studied the letter's directions once more, then set off. Ash fell into step behind her. She listened for his boots and heard them, steady, keeping pace. They walked half the day before the land changed. Broken fence posts gave way to leaning stones. Then a wall of dark, pitted rock rose ahead. Set into it stood an iron gate, rusted and green with vines, its bars twisted around a skull carved in the stonework. Beyond it, rows of graves climbed the slope. Azria stopped. Her necklace stirred, low and steady, not a shriek but a warning. The letter had named this place. The maker's road ran straight through a graveyard. A heavy shape moved among the stones. An old man, tall and broad, gray beard to his chest, dragging a shovel. He saw them at the gate and did not smile. "Living folk," he called, tired. "You've come to the wrong ground. Nothing here stays buried for long."