Elaria Silverstan's Arc

Chapter 20 of 22

The gold light hit Elaria like a wall. She stopped just past the sealed shards and shut her eyes against the glare. The chamber ahead was bright as a forge, walls of jagged ice throwing the light back at itself until every surface burned white. She could not see the floor. She could not see the far end. Somewhere in that furnace of light sat the warmth crystal, and she had brought a melting sprite to find it. Lia sagged in the cradle. Her shoulders had gone soft, her wings drooping against the frostcloth. Elaria dropped to one knee and drew cold from her blood into her palms, shaping a smooth block of ice edged with packed snow. She set the platform down just inside the chamber, where the light was thinnest, and lifted Lia onto it. The sprite's skin firmed against the cold surface. Her breath steadied. "Stay," Elaria said. "I will not be long." She stood and faced the light again. Squinting only turned the glare to knives. She could search this chamber blind for an hour and still miss the crystal by a hand's width, and Lia did not have an hour. Elaria unslung her pack and dug through it. Her fingers found the antler frame. She drew out the amber lens, its glass veiled in a thin skin of dark ice, and held it up. Through the lens the chamber changed. The white glare dulled to a soft honey wash. The walls resolved into ridged ice, blue at the seams. The floor showed itself, tiled with frost. At the far end of the chamber, on a low pedestal she had not been able to see before, sat a faceted stone the size of her fist. It gave off no glow of its own. The chamber's gold light bent around it and poured out from behind, which was why the room burned. The crystal was the source. The lens showed her exactly where. She walked to it. Ten paces. Twenty. Her boots left dark prints on the frost. She kept the lens to her eye and counted the distance, one hand out for balance. When she reached the pedestal she lowered the lens and the light struck her full in the face again, but now she knew where to put her hand. Her glove closed on the stone. It was warm through the leather. She lifted it, and the chamber's glare dimmed at once, as if a lamp had been shuttered. Elaria turned. In the softer light she could see Lia on the ice platform, small and blue and still whole. She could also see what she had not seen before: the walls behind her had no door. The shards had sealed. The chamber held one entrance and one exit, and both were the same, and both were closed. She had the crystal in her hand. She had nowhere to take it.