Estrella Wayland's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The stairs ran down beneath the castle longer than Estrella had guessed. She held the iron key in one fist and a torch in the other. At the bottom she found no vault. She found only bare stone walls and dust, three corridors that forked and crossed and led nowhere. She walked them all. Each ended in blank rock. The key grew heavy in her hand. She could not even begin learning until she found the door it opened. She stopped and pressed her palm to the cold wall. "Where is it?" she whispered. The question echoed and died. She had no map and no one to ask. Then she remembered the one person who could see what she could not. She reached out with her mind, telepath to telepath, and called her father. He came faster than she expected. His golden wings nearly brushed both walls of the narrow stair. King Ash Wayland looked at the three dead corridors, then at his daughter's dirty hands. "I can't find it," she said. "I've walked every one." "You walked past it." He did not soften it. He closed his eyes. She felt his clairvoyance open like a cold window. He raised one hand, and stone ground against stone. A seam split the wall where she had leaned. "She hid the entrance with her own voice," he said. "Only one who shares her gift can open it now." "How?" "Speak to the door. Not to a person. To the stone." His jaw tightened. "I cannot teach you the Voice. But I can tell you it has no mind to break. Try it where it cannot harm anyone." Estrella faced the seam. She drew a breath and let the Voice rise, the same power that had nearly killed the gardener. "Open," she said. The word carried weight she could not see. The wall shuddered. The seam widened. A low door swung inward on silent hinges. Behind it lay a small room. A table stood at the center, draped in a purple runner, a candelabra rising from it unlit. Her father touched a candle and flame caught across all five. The light showed a chest against the far wall, dark wood carved with deep swirls, a silver plate around its keyhole. Estrella knelt and fit the iron key. It turned. The lid lifted. Inside lay stacks of journals in her mother's hand, leather worn soft at the corners. She lifted the top one. The first page held a single line: Day one. I made the maid forget her own name, and I wept. Ash stood very still behind her. He did not reach for the books. "I will leave you to her," he said, and climbed back toward the light. Estrella sat alone with the candles and the open chest. She had the key, the vault, and her mother's words at last. But the first page already warned her. Learning this power meant breaking minds while she learned. She turned to day two, and began to read.