Eleri Lanfear's Arc

Chapter 4 of 8

Dawn came gray over the valley. Eleri climbed the slope toward the tear, the chronicle's words fixed in her head. Rhydian walked at her side. Behind them stumbled Vandoriel, the sorceress who had frozen half Jory's army and killed his best men. Her wrists were still locked in the ornate shackles. She said nothing now. The rift pulled harder with each step, dragging at Eleri's chest. They stopped below the broken ring of stone and light. The tear spun above them, rimmed with old runic carvings, its center cracked and shimmering. Loose rock slid toward it. Eleri planted her feet and felt the child inside her like a second fire. Vandoriel had been right. The power rose in her, hotter than ever. Eleri turned to the sorceress. "You pull it shut. I hold it still. Rhydian speaks the binding." She unlocked one shackle, then the other. The cuffs fell to the dirt. Vandoriel rubbed her raw wrists. Her pale eyes went to the rift, then back to Eleri. "You free me first. Bold." "I keep my word," Eleri said. "Cast." Vandoriel raised her freed hands. Frost gathered at her fingers. She spoke, and the air cracked with cold. The edges of the tear began to draw inward, like a wound closing. The pull doubled. Eleri's boots skidded forward in the loose stone. "Hold it," Vandoriel said through her teeth. "Hold, or it takes us both." Eleri lifted her own hands. She spoke the words she had memorized in secret, nights alone over the stolen book. The rift fought her. It yanked at her arms, at the life she carried. For one breath she thought it would win. Then the fire in her flared. The child burned hotter than the tear. The light steadied under her grip. Rhydian stepped between them. He raised his voice above the howl of wind and spoke the binding, clear and plain, each word in its place. The runes on the stone ring flared white. The tear shrank. The spinning slowed. With a sound like ice breaking on a river, the rift collapsed into itself and vanished. The stone ring went dark and still. The wind died. Loose rocks settled. The sky above the valley was only sky. Eleri's arms dropped. Her legs shook. Rhydian caught her and held her up. "You did it," he said. "It's done." Vandoriel lowered her hands. She looked at the empty ring, then at the fallen shackles in the dirt. She bent, picked them up, and let them drop again. "The promise held," she said. "The king will not get me back." "No," Eleri said. "He won't." She had sworn it at Moanroe's Ford. Now the debt was paid. Vandoriel pulled her hood up. She turned toward the far hills and started walking, free and unwatched. Eleri watched her go, and understood what she had set loose upon the world.