Eirlys Frostwhisper's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Eirlys stayed on her knees above the sigil. She had found the throne's roof, but she could not open it. Her grandmother had never taught her the death-rite. The old woman had died with the words still in her mouth. To touch the throne without the proper rite would curse the last of her blood, and Eirlys was the last. She pulled her hand back from the ice. A sound moved behind her — not footsteps, but a soft beat, like cloth shaken out. Eirlys turned with the knife up. A butterfly elf stood in the archway. She was small, barely to Eirlys's shoulder, with pale hair and wings the color of shallow water. She held a lantern in both hands and watched the knife without flinching. Behind her, two long shapes coiled in the dark hall — dragons the size of horses, wings folded, eyes bright as coins. They did not move. They were waiting on the elf. "You came under our swarm," the butterfly elf said. "So you are hers." Her voice was even. "I am Sylphina. I kept the hall while she was gone." Eirlys lowered the knife an inch. "My grandmother." "She left me the rite," Sylphina said. "In case the blood came back." Eirlys's throat closed. She had walked eleven days in circles for this. "Then say it." Sylphina shook her head. "I cannot say it for you. I can teach you the shape. You must speak it yourself, with your own hand on the sigil. If you speak it wrong, the ice takes you." "How wrong is wrong?" "Any word out of order." Eirlys looked down at the black ice. She thought of six days of food and a door she could not defend forever. She set the knife on the floor. Sylphina knelt beside her and spoke the rite in a low voice, one phrase at a time. The words were snow elf, older than the exile. Eirlys repeated each phrase back until Sylphina nodded. They went through it three times. On the fourth, Sylphina stopped correcting her. "Now," Sylphina said. "Hand flat. Do not stop in the middle." Eirlys pressed her palm to the sigil. She spoke the rite through without breathing between the lines. The ice under her hand went warm. A seam opened around the sigil in a slow circle, wide as a well, and cold air rose from below with the smell of old stone. Eirlys pulled her hand back whole. She was not cursed. The way down was open. Sylphina stood and stepped back. The two dragons in the hall raised their heads at once. "They know the seal is broken," she said. "So does everything else that was sleeping in these walls. You have until the swarm wakes." Eirlys picked up her knife and looked into the opened dark.