Elias Blackwood's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Elias Blackwood stood at the base of the sorceress's tower with a bundle of roses in his arms, and for the first time in his life his face was useless. The gate was iron, taller than three men, and locked. He had come to win the sorceress who turned away every suitor. The whole kingdom knew her name. The whole kingdom knew none had passed her gate. He pushed the iron bars. They did not move. He smiled at the bars, out of habit, because his smile had always worked. In the village, women left their shops to watch him pass. Men bought him ale to hear him laugh. A locked gate felt nothing. It had no eyes to admire his long dark hair, no ears for his smooth voice. Elias looked at the roses he carried. They were strange and beautiful, velvet purple and deep black, petals so dark they seemed to drink the light. He had picked them from a wild patch below the cliff that morning. He had meant to hand them to the sorceress with a bow. Now he held them like a fool at a door that would not open. He shook the gate harder. A hinge rattled. Up high, a shutter opened in the tower wall. A voice came down, cool and tired. "Leave the flowers and go," the voice said. "The last ten men brought gold. The ten before brought songs. The gate does not open for any of it." Elias opened his mouth to charm her. Then he stopped. Charm had carried him his whole life, and it had carried him exactly this far. He looked at the dark roses again. He had not bought them. He had climbed for them. "I did not buy these," he called up. "I found them growing on your cliff. Below the rocks, where no one goes. The same color as your tower's shadow." The shutter stayed open. For a long moment there was only wind. "No one climbs that cliff," the voice said at last. It had lost its tired edge. "Those roses grow nowhere else. My mother planted them before she died." Elias said nothing. He had no clever line for that. He set the bundle against the iron bars and stepped back. A lock turned somewhere deep in the gate. The iron swung inward, just wide enough for one man. Through the gap he saw a courtyard, and a stone stair curling up into dark. "You may come as far as the stair," the voice said. "No farther. Prove the climb was no accident. Bring me a living cutting from that patch, roots and all, by morning. Then we will talk." The gate was open. Elias had passed where ten men with gold had failed. But the cliff that grew those roses was sheer, and night was coming, and he would have to climb it again in the dark.