Champion Kevintor Neverloss's Arc

Chapter 18 of 42

Kevintor crossed the last field at dusk and climbed the rocks below the serpent bridge. He found a flat ledge under an overhang, out of the wind and out of sight of the valley. He set the lantern, unrolled the Threnody on a clean stone, and weighted the corners with two small rocks and his knife. He had read the first passages twice already. He needed the next. The scroll opened easy for half a hand's width, then stopped. A square of red silk had been sewn flat across the paper, trimmed in gold, its loose ribbons knotted shut over the seam. He worked a fingernail under the band and felt the shape beneath it. A plate of black iron, set into the scroll itself, shaped like a dragon's head with a keyhole in its mouth. The ribbons would not loosen. The plate would not lift. The writing under it showed through the silk in faint lines he could almost read and could not. He sat back. He had expected a puzzle of words. This was a lock. Someone had built it into the paper forty years ago and meant it to stay shut until the right hand opened it. He thought of the old man who had carried this scroll that long. He thought of the warning. He had assumed the warning was the scroll. The warning was the key. A bootstep scraped the rock below. Kevintor put his hand on the knife. Albert Shydoo climbed up over the ledge, breathing hard, and stopped when he saw the lantern. "I followed the cellar," he said. "I told you I would ask later. I am asking now." Then he saw Kevintor's face and the scroll under his hand and stopped again. "That is not the right time." Kevintor watched him. "You came up the same path I did. Why." Albert sat on his heels at the edge of the light. He set something on the stone between them: a pair of golden shinguards, scrolled and polished, too fine for a boy his age. "My old instructor sent these back to me last month with no letter. He lives up the ridge past the bridge. He is the one the drunk man named. The Silencing Draw is his. He will not teach me." He looked at the sewn silk on the scroll and then at Kevintor. "He taught the man whose seal is on your paper. They were students together. If anyone living can open that, it is him." Kevintor rolled the scroll closed around the locked plate and tied it. He picked up the shinguards. They were heavy and cold. "Take me to him," he said. Albert nodded once and stood. The bridge above them caught the last light on its carved scales. Kevintor could not read another word of the Threnody tonight. He knew where the key lived now, and he knew whose door he had to stand at in the morning.