Gandalf Grey's Arc

Chapter 6 of 8

The stone tower held the mark's light through the night, but the sky was greying now. Gandalf peered through the broken door. Open ground stretched ahead, flat and bare. No walls waited out there. If dawn caught them in the reeds, the mark would blaze bright, and the wolf would come running. He had no idea where the next shelter stood. "We're blind," he muttered to Sable. "I don't know this country. One wrong step and we're in the open when the sun comes up." He turned his staff in his hands. The faded ribbon on it did nothing here. Sable pulled the stolen map from her satchel and unfolded it against the wall. Her ink-stained finger traced a line. "There's a second map under this one," she whispered. "The scribe masters hid it beneath the first. It marks stone the way the archive marked it." She tilted the page toward the door's grey light. Faint shapes showed beneath the visible ink. She had proven the surer guide before, and Gandalf leaned close to look. "You can read it?" he asked. "A little." She squinted through her round spectacles. "The reeds match my own map. Same channels. And here—" her nail stopped on a small square, "—an old watchtower. Not far. If we go straight from the door, we reach it before the sun clears the reeds." Gandalf measured the greying sky. Little time. If she was wrong, they died in the open. But she had never been wrong yet. "Then we run," he said. "Now." He shoved the timber aside. They stumbled out and ran. Sable clutched the map, calling turns. "Left of the dead cattails. Straight past the water." Gandalf's legs burned. Behind them the mark on Sable's arm shone against the dark reeds, a line of glowing script no cloth could smother. A howl broke across the flat ground. The wolf had caught the light. Its dark shape cut through the reeds behind them, fast and low. Gandalf did not look back. "Faster," he gasped. The watchtower rose ahead, crumbling stone ringed with cracked walls. They reached the broken doorway as the wolf closed the gap. Gandalf shoved Sable inside and dove after her. He hauled a fallen beam across the gap. Outside, the beast slammed the wall and snarled. Then the stone swallowed the mark's glow. The wolf circled, whined, and paced. Its steps faded. Sable slid down the cold wall, breathing hard. The map lay open in her lap, the hidden lines faint beneath the ink. "There's another mark past this one," she said. "Two nights on. But the second map fades here. I can't read what lies between." Gandalf stared at the blank stretch on the page. The shelters chained forward, stone to stone. But somewhere ahead the map went dark, and they would be walking into it blind.