Ember's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

They left the village at dawn. The sealed blight slept under Elara's ward, but the ward would not hold forever. Ember walked ahead, dragging her gray ankle. Elara followed with the spare rune staff across her back. Ember knew where she wanted to go. She did not know if anyone there still lived. "There's a tower," Ember said. "Rune-keepers kept it. One of them taught me banishing, long ago. If anyone knows how to end a blight, it's him." Elara said nothing. She watched Ember's limp and matched her slow pace. They reached the tower by midday. It stood weathered and gray, bands of old runes circling the stone. The door hung open. Inside, dust lay thick on every step. Ember climbed. Her hands shook on the rail. Elara climbed behind, silent. The top room was cold. Shelves had collapsed. Carvings covered the walls, but half were cracked and dead. No one lived here. No one had lived here in years. Ember stood in the ruin. She said the name of the old keeper into the empty room. No one answered. She pressed her palm to a cracked wall. The runes under her hand were banishing marks. She remembered watching them worked. She could not read them now. Too much was broken. "He's gone," Ember said. "They're all gone." Elara crossed to the wall. She knelt by the lowest band, where the carving was whole. She traced a line with one finger. Her jaw tightened the way it had in the square. "This is a banishing mark," she said. "I've seen part of it. My master had a fragment. He never let me copy it." Ember turned. "You know this craft?" "A piece." Elara did not look up. "Not enough. He kept the rest for himself." She stopped herself, then went on. "He keeps everything. The rank. The marks. All of it." Ember watched the girl read the broken wall. The old keeper was dead. The teacher Ember had counted on was dust. But the one knee-deep in the ruin, tracing the lines, was not. "I can't learn this from him," Ember said. "My eyes, my hands. They're done. But you can." Elara finally looked back. "The rest of the mark is in my master's keeping. Behind his door. He'll never give it to an apprentice." "Then we don't ask him," Ember said. Elara stood slowly. She pulled the spare staff from her back and set its tip against the carved line, measuring the shape she knew against the one she didn't. "If I take it," she said, "I can't go back to the order. Ever." "No," Ember said. "You can't." Elara looked at the broken wall a long moment. Then she copied the whole fragment onto her forearm with the point of her knife, shallow, no blood. The dead keeper could not teach them. Her living master held the rest. Now they had to reach it before her ward wore thin.