Elaria Silverstan's Arc

Chapter 21 of 22

The dimmed chamber pressed close around her. With the crystal in her glove, the walls had gone from forge-white to a dull blue, and now the blue was fading too. Elaria could still see Lia on the ice platform, but only as a pale shape. In minutes she would not see her at all. She had the crystal. She had no door. She had a sprite whose second death was already climbing toward her through the dark. Elaria set the warmth crystal in her pack and knelt by Lia. The sprite's wings had firmed on the cold block, but her eyes were slow. Elaria pulled the icicle pendant from her collar. It hung from its chain at an odd angle, tip lifted, as it always did near heat. Now it pointed sharp toward the far corner of the chamber, higher than her head. She turned in place. The tip followed one line only. Something up there was drawing warm air. Something up there was open. She crossed the floor with one hand out. Her boot struck stone, then wood. She felt along it and found a low arch built into the wall, its passage packed with snow and blocks of ice, timbers braced across the front. A door. She dug at the snow with both hands. The pack came away in wet clumps. Behind it the ice went on, and behind the ice more ice, and behind that a flat stone wall with no seam. The arch was a shell. Someone had built it to be found first, dug at first, believed in first. She sat back on her heels. Her hands burned with cold. The pendant still pointed past the false door, up and to the left. She followed the pendant's line to the corner and found the vent near the ceiling. A square of rusted grating, slats bent, a fringe of thin icicles along its lip. Warm air moved through it in a slow breath. Elaria could not reach it standing. She went back for Lia. On a shelf near the platform something small glowed steady through the gloom — a smooth stone laced with pale veins, no bigger than an egg, still burning after who knew how many years. A seeker before her had set it down and not come back for it. Elaria took the stone in her free hand and held it up. Its light spread across the wall. The grating showed clear, four screws at its corners, the lowest one already loose. She stacked her pack and the empty cradle frame beneath the vent and lifted Lia onto her shoulder in a fold of frostcloth. She climbed. Her knife turned the screws one by one. The grating dropped and rang on the floor. Cold air poured down over her face, thin and moving, coming from somewhere with sky in it. Elaria pushed the light stone into the shaft ahead of her and hauled herself up after it.