Elowyn's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

The sealed chamber held three people who would not look at each other. Elowyn spread blank parchment across the stone table. She knew a flaw lived inside the council's spells. She had felt its edge for three years. But she had never seen the spells themselves, never watched their lines take shape. Without that, she could draw nothing. Five days remained before the council judged her, and her maps were empty. "I need to see one of their wards work," she said. "The flaw won't show until the magic moves." Theron set down his rune pen. "We can't walk up to a council spell." "No," Aldric said. He pulled a water-stained atlas from his satchel. He opened it to a margin crowded with his own small script. "But I copied a ward once. Four years ago. From a colleague who left and never came back." He did not say the colleague's name. He did not say more. Elowyn stepped closer. "You kept it?" "I keep everything." He flattened the page. The notes meant nothing to her, lines and angles with no life in them. Theron leaned over the atlas. His tired face sharpened. "These are council marks. If we feed them power, they'll run like the real thing." He looked at Aldric, then away, the tension still between them. "Then do it," Elowyn said. Aldric traced the marks onto fresh parchment. Theron fed them a thread of magic from his pen. The lines lit pale blue. A small shape pulled itself up from the page. A fox, built from light and dew, its oversized ears twitching. It was no true beast, only the ward wearing a body. Its tail bloomed into soft color as it sniffed the air. Elowyn raised her staff. The crystal brightened. She watched the fox circle the table, tracing where the spell carried its guard. The light flowed clean along its spine and legs. Then it reached the base of the glowing tail. There the pattern thinned. A gap opened and closed, opened and closed, too fast for an eye but not for her crystal. "There," she breathed. "The seam. It breaks when the ward turns to watch behind itself." She snatched the pen from Theron and drew. For the first time the flaw had a shape on paper. Then a second seam, near the ears. Then a third. Her hand moved fast. The empty map filled with lines. The fox flickered and dissolved into mist. The parchment went dark. But Elowyn held three clear marks now, the start of a real map. Aldric closed the atlas. "That copy was partial," he said. "The full wards have ten seams. Maybe more. We only saw a fragment." Elowyn's hand stopped. She had broken the first wall. She could map them now. But her sample showed one spell out of many, and five days could not hold them all. She needed the rest, and the only way to them ran through the elder who could kill her.