Elorien Wizardbane's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Elorien Wizardbane sat cold on the shelf. The curse was gone. For years it had wanted this freedom, and now it had it. But freedom was a shelf and silence. Aldren Starweaver stood across the room, gray-fingered and undead, and Elorien could do nothing to him. It could not move. It could not even speak now, because the sparks that carried its voice had leapt with the curse. The skull was only bone. It hated the bone more than it had ever hated its keepers. Aldren stared at his hand. "Fix it," he said. He turned to the shelf. "You did this. Undo it." The skull gave no answer. Its eyes were dark holes now. Aldren waited, then swung his cracked staff and knocked it to the floor. Bone struck ice-cold stone. A thin line split across the jaw, and the missing-tooth socket cracked wider. Edric Valyent crossed the room fast, gloves already up. "Stop." He put himself between Aldren and the skull. "Breaking it teaches you nothing. You need the cure, not the temper." The door of the tower opened. Isolde Wintermere came in with snow on her cloak and a scroll bound in gold ribbon. She was the reason the skull lived here at all. She had been sent to this crystal spire, and the skull sent with her, to keep it far from a man who wanted to use it. She looked at Aldren's gray hand. She looked at the skull on the floor. "I told you," she said. "Touch the bone, take the curse." "I don't need the lecture," Aldren said. "You needed it yesterday." She knelt and lifted the skull with the hem of her cloak, never once letting bare skin touch it. She set it back on the shelf. "It's empty now. The curse is in you. The bone can't hurt anyone." Elorien heard every word from inside the dark. It could not argue. It could not gloat. Empty. The word was true, and that was the worst part. For the first time in longer than it could count, no one feared it. They spoke over it like a broken chair. Edric turned Aldren's hand over. "The gray is spreading," he said. "Slow. You have time. Not much." "Then find the cure," Aldren said. "There may not be one." Edric let the words drop plain. "A curse that jumps by touch. If it can be pushed out of you, it goes somewhere. Into someone." The room went quiet. Isolde looked at the skull, then at the two undead-marked and living men, and understood the shape of the danger before either of them said it. On the shelf, the skull sat inert and silent. But inside the dark bone, something small and cold woke again. The curse could be moved. It had learned that once. It would learn to be heard again, and then it would choose where the curse went next.