Cherriese's Arc

Chapter 10 of 13

Cherriese stayed by the carved figure until the fire burned low. The five exiles slept inside the healing tent. Two were still out there. She walked the valley once and counted her guardians. Two held the arch. Two held the watch post on the ridge. The rest were children, wounded, or strangers she had not yet measured. No one was left to send at first light. She had promised a search and had no one to lead it. She walked back to the cleared ground near the inner spring. She knelt and pressed both palms flat to the soil. She spoke the second set of words her mother had taught her, the ones for calling across distance. The ground under her hands grew hot. A ring of light cut into the earth, ten paces wide. Sharp crystal pushed up through the dirt at the edge of the ring, jagged shards in pink and green that locked the circle in place. The shards hummed when she stood. The circle would pull any exile who had spoken her name and still carried the wish to come. She could not leave the circle open to the sky. Iron-dust patrols watched ridgelines for light. She woke three of the valley people and put them to work before the moon set. They hauled stone from the slope below the obelisk. She drew the shape on the ground with her wand: a tall arched door, a broad floor of fitted stone, walls high enough to hide the shards. By dawn the walls stood waist-high. By midday a roof of pale stone closed over the circle. She set the doors open and named it the greeting hall. Anyone who arrived inside it would step onto the floor and find a guardian waiting. She spoke the calling word at noon. The shards brightened. The air inside the hall thickened. A small shape dropped onto the stone floor first, not a fairy but a dragon no bigger than her forearm, blue and green, wings still trembling from the pull. It looked at her and folded its wings. Then a woman fell to her knees on the stone, coughing, one of the two missing names. Then a man with a child against his chest, the last name from her husband's list. Three more came after them, exiles she had not known were close enough to hear. Six in all. She steadied each one and pointed them toward the healing tent. The dragon followed her at the heel. She walked out of the hall and looked at the empty ground where her guardians had stood the night before. The trenches they had dug for the arch defense were still open, crystal soil glinting in the broken walls, the wooden braces leaning where the guardians had left them. She had no one to fill the trenches now. The valley held more exiles than it could defend. She had bought their lives and owed the cost by morning.