Glimmer Havocbringer's Arc

Chapter 3 of 8

Glimmer would not touch another story until his sparks were caged. He said it out loud on the cold plain, with the tiny mammoth still trotting at the hunters' feet. Liora crossed her arms. Aurora watched him, gold against gray. "I need to hold the sparks in something," he said. "Then I can listen and leave nothing behind." He chose a target. Not a wide story. A single object, older than any tale he knew. Forty thousand years back, someone had carved a man with a lion's head from mammoth ivory. A thing that never walked the earth. The first lie made solid. If he could stand there and take in its story without a spark slipping, he would know he was safe. He sneezed them all back. Snow ringed a fire in a cave mouth. Around the flames sat a group of hunters, wrapped in hides. One held up the ivory figure. Half man, half lion. She spoke, and the others leaned close. This was the story of the thing that was invented, told in real time. Glimmer felt the pull to reach for it. He clenched his fists instead. "Give me your caches," he told Aurora. "You hide things where nothing escapes." Aurora tilted her head. "Cache nine sits inside a collapsing star. Four-second window. It took eleven years to fill." She held out one hand. Glitter pooled in her palm, then folded into a small gold shell. "This holds. Nothing leaks out. Nothing leaks in. Try it." Glimmer cupped the shell against his chest. He opened his mind to the story. The lion-man's tale poured in. As it did, a spark broke loose from his sleeve. It fell toward the fire. He snapped the shell open. The spark bent sideways and vanished inside. The gold sealed. The fire did not shiver. The carving stayed a carving. No new creature crawled from the dust. He held his breath and listened to the whole story. Three more sparks slipped. The shell drank each one. When the storyteller lowered the figure, Glimmer stepped back with the tale locked in his head and the cave unchanged. "It worked," he said. Liora looked at the fire, then at him. "It worked here." She did not smile. "You caught four sparks. How many caches does she have?" "Seventeen thousand," Aurora said. "And I move them myself. If you carry one, you hold a piece of my whole map." Glimmer felt the weight of the shell. He could collect now. Every first story, safely, one after another. But the shell was Aurora's, and Aurora trusted no one with the full picture of where her caches lived. He had solved the sparks. He had done it by carrying a thread that led straight into her hidden work. "Then you're coming with me," he said. "Every trip." Aurora's mouth went flat. "That was not the deal."