Glaciana Frostcall's Arc

Chapter 8 of 10

The pink light through the window did not fade. Glaciana went to the arched pane and looked out. The wyrm circled low over the ice shelf, wings cutting slow arcs. Its rider sat straight in the saddle — the woman in the heart-covered gown who had come once already to pry Kristian loose. She would not land. She wanted him to walk out. Any step Kristian took past the castle wall put him inside her reach, and Glaciana's voice would not carry that far. Kristian came to stand behind her. "She is still there." "She will wait as long as it takes," Glaciana said. "She knows you want an answer. She knows the answer is out there, past me." "Then I have to go." "No." She turned. "If you cross the wall to test yourself, she takes you before you finish the test. That is her plan. It has been her plan since she arrived." Kristian looked at his hands. "Then I have no way to know." Glaciana thought. The rider needed him outside. The rider could not enter — the clearing song had closed the castle to her. So the ground between the walls and the shelf belonged to the rider. Glaciana could not fight her there. She could only take that ground away. She led Kristian back to the hall. She stopped at the tallest arch, where the crystal walls threw sound back doubled. "Stay here," she said. "Do not follow me to the door." "What are you going to do?" "Send her off. For good, if I can." She walked alone to the outer step. The wyrm banked when it saw her. The rider smiled down, pink gown bright against the grey sky, one gloved hand resting on the saddle horn as if she owned the air. Glaciana did not speak. She sang. The clearing song came up clean this time, no tremor. The crystal spires caught it and lifted it. It rolled out across the shelf, past the wyrm, past the water. It was not a song to charm. It was a song to push. The wyrm shrieked and pitched sideways. The rider fought the reins. Her mouth opened — Glaciana saw it, not heard it. The song drowned the sound. The wyrm turned and beat hard for open sky. It shrank to a pink smear and then to nothing. Glaciana held the note until her throat burned, then let it fall. She went back inside. Kristian was standing under the arch where she had left him. "Gone," she said. "She cannot circle a castle she cannot hear over." "And my answer?" "You still need it." She took his hand. "But you will find it here. Not in her saddle. I bought us the room to look." He closed his fingers around hers. Outside, the sky was empty for the first time in days.