Blaze Ashford's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Blaze stood where the drakecat had come from, deep in the drifts behind his cabin. The tunnels had to open somewhere here, low and sheltered. He drove his hands into the snow and dug. His coat flared, hissing as flakes struck it. Each hour of searching turned his fingers slow and his breath thin. The cold did not kill his fire, but it drained the man beneath it. He had circled this slope three times. No entrance. Only white, and more white. He dug until his arms shook. The snow fell faster now. Soon it would bury whatever opening lay beneath. His lion paced nearby, mane bright against the storm, but even that beast could not sniff out stone under so much snow. Blaze dropped to his knees. For the first time he feared he would freeze here, an arm's length from the way under the mountain, and never find it. Then a voice cut the wind. "You're digging in the wrong spot." Blaze turned. A man stood in the snow, boots planted, blue flames curling off both hands. The fire lit his French military jacket and threw no heat Blaze could feel, yet the man did not shiver. Blaze knew him. Ember. The one person he had hoped to keep out of this hunt. "Go home," Blaze said. "This is mine." "No." Ember walked closer. The blue flame on his palm brightened. "The entrance is downhill. Air moves there. Watch." He opened his hand wide. The blue fire stretched, thinned, and bent sideways in a slow draft. Blaze had felt no wind at that height. But the flame pointed, steady, toward a dip in the slope he had passed over twice. Blaze stumbled to the spot. He shoved both arms deep and his fingers struck wood. A frame. Buried planks, set into the mountain long ago. He tore the snow away. His coat roared and melted the last crust. A dark mouth opened in the hillside, breathing old, still air. "Found it," Ember said. He said nothing about the hours. He only stepped to Blaze's side and held his blue fire into the dark. The light reached down a stone throat that fell away under the mountain. Blaze's heart pounded. The way under the sorcerer's door lay open at last. He turned to tell Ember to leave, to stay in the warm and the safe. Ember was already climbing in. His boots found the first ledge. "I'm not waiting out here," he said. "And I'm not waiting for you to die alone." Blaze gripped the frame and swung after him. The storm shrank behind them. Ahead, the tunnel bent into black. The cold had not beaten him. But he had not come down here alone, and now Ember's life was tied to whatever waited in the dark.