Gandalf Grey's Arc

Chapter 8 of 8

By dawn the map showed the road clear, and that was the trouble. Gandalf traced the new lines with a stiff finger. The path ran straight across open ground. No stone wall waited on it. No wall meant nothing to hide Sable's mark when the sun came up. The wolf would see the glow for miles. "We've got the road and no roof," he muttered. "A blind man could see us coming." Sable pressed her sleeve down over her wrist. The mark burned through the cloth anyway, pulling north. "Then we don't cross it lit," she said. She dropped to her knees in the mud and pulled a fistful of dark reeds. Rot-tinted stalks, thick and stinking. She crushed them between her palms until juice ran down her arms. "Crushed marsh reed. It hides the glow and the scent both. I've done it before." Gandalf helped her tear more. They smeared the paste over her wrist, her satchel, their boots. The glow dimmed under the green. "How long?" he asked. "Till morning. No longer." Sable smeared the last across the map's edge. "So we walk now, in the dark, and we don't stop." They went out onto the open road. The reeds fell behind. The wolf's cry came once, far off, then nothing. Gandalf's chest loosened. The paste was holding. Then a voice cut across the flat ground, bright and quick. "You read the fine print. I always liked that about you." A young woman stood in their path. Gold hoops caught the last of the moon. She held a rolled contract against her chest like a clipboard, and she was smiling far too wide. Sable stopped dead. Gandalf did not know the face, but he knew the fear that crossed Sable's own. "Therisia," Sable said. "You owe me two days. I claimed them." "You wrote my debt onto a royal map." Therisia unrolled her contract with a snap. "So I'll read you what claiming it costs." She spoke fast, the words tumbling. "A debt taken by force binds the taker to the ground it names. You can't leave this road until the debt clears in full. And it clears when you reach the shrine. Not before." Gandalf gripped his staff. "You've trapped her on the road at daybreak." "I've held her to her own writing." Therisia rolled the contract shut. "Walk fast, scribe. The reed only lasts till morning." She stepped off the road and was gone into the dark. Sable stared north. Her jaw set hard. "She's right. I can't turn off. I'm bound to it now." She started walking, faster than before. "So we run. We reach the shrine before the paste dies, or the wolf finds me lit on open ground." Gandalf followed. The road held them like a rope. The mark under the green pulled north, brighter with every step, and the sky in the east had begun to gray.