Dom Thornwood's Arc

Chapter 9 of 14

Dom did not move for a long time after the road closed. The arch went cold under his hand. Its stones cracked along the carved moths, and the glowing seams dimmed to ash. Pale blue flowers pushed up through the moss at its base, opening where the stag's hooves had last pressed. He knelt and touched one. It hummed, faint as a held breath. Something was still inside the stone, listening. He spoke aloud, because hiding want had not saved him. "I'm still here. Open again." The arch did not answer in words. A thin line of frost drew itself across the keystone and formed a shape he knew — a beast's long skull, horned, with a jaw of teeth. He had seen that skull before, painted in Renni's journal. The thing she had killed. The thing the guild had buried in a carved wooden box. He understood the price. The arch wanted bone. Not any bone — the skull of the beast Renni Ashfire had put down inside the shrine. Pay the toll, and the stone might wake. Refuse, and stand here until the moss grew over his boots. He walked back through the dark to the place where the guild had laid her trophy. The carved coffin sat under a low roof of branches, its lid heavy with old wax seals. Dom broke the seals with the flat of his blade. Inside, the skull stared up at him, yellowed, cracked along one socket where her blade had gone in. He lifted it out. It was heavier than he expected. It felt like carrying someone else's debt. He carried it back up the ridge before dawn and set it in the ring of pale flowers at the foot of the arch. He stepped back. The stone shuddered. The cracks along its face filled with slow blue light, and the carved moths lifted their wings a finger's width from the rock. A voice that was not a voice spoke through the bones of his jaw. *One more. Bring a rider who has not been chosen, and the road will open once.* Dom picked up his father's compass from the grass. His hand was shaking, but his face was calm. The arch had answered. The price was paid, and a worse one was already waiting — he was the unchosen rider it meant, and he would have to find a way to be enough.