Elaria Silverstan's Arc

Chapter 18 of 22

The crystal road ran straight for a hundred paces, then split around a low pillar of pale stone. Elaria stopped at the fork and set the orb down. Two roads of clear crystal branched left and right, each traced with veins of frost that caught the light. The pillar between them was carved with two grooved lines that matched the split. No arrow. No word. She pulled the timer from her coat. A finger's width of snow remained in the top bulb. Elaria crouched and checked the cradle. The ice figure inside was still whole, but the snow at its edges had gone to slush. She had minutes, not an hour. She could not walk one road, find it wrong, and come back. She stood and looked at the pillar again. The warmth crystal gave off heat. That was its whole nature. If she could not read the road, she could read the air. She pulled off a glove and took a shard of clear ice from her pack. She cupped it in her palm and drew a thin thread of cold from her blood into the shard until it hung suspended above her skin, shaped like a small tapered stone. She fixed a length of thin chain to its top and let it swing free from her fingers. The shard turned once, slowed, then tipped. Its point drifted left, steady, and held. Elaria watched it for a count of ten. The pendant did not waver. She lifted the orb and stepped to the mouth of the left road. Warmer air moved against her face. Faint, but real. She looked back at the right road and felt nothing but the flat cold of the hall. She unhooked the cradle strap, tightened it against her ribs, and started down the left branch at a run. The pendant swung ahead of her chest, still pointing the way it had chosen. The road curved. The frost veins in the crystal grew thicker and began to glow faint pink along their edges. The pendant tugged harder on its chain. Elaria checked the timer once more and saw the last of the snow slip through. She did not stop. Somewhere ahead, close enough now that the air itself had changed, the warmth crystal was burning through the dark, and she had chosen the road that led to it.