Jeff's Arc

Chapter 3 of 8

The serpent carried them deeper, its iron scales cutting a wake through the black water. Jeff kept one hand on the steel across his back and the other on the rock wall. Then the channel split. Three flooded passages opened ahead, each running fast, each swallowing the serpent's light. The creature slowed. It looked back at Jeff, then dipped its head, as if the choice were his to make. "Which one?" Garrick asked. He clung to a ledge, the stolen map pressed under his arm. His former master had drawn it, but the ink stopped short of this fork. "The map doesn't go this far." Jeff studied the currents. One channel breathed warm air. The other two ran cold. "The furnace heats the water," he said. "Follow the warm current, we reach the fire. Follow the cold, we drown in a dead end." But all three currents pulled at his legs the same. Warm air pooled at the fork and told him nothing. He needed to know which channel carried it. Jeff reached into the pouch at his belt. His toad sat inside, jade-green and cold to the touch. He had carried the small creature since the tower, wrapped in a cloth against the ash. Now he lifted it out and set it on the water. The toad hated cold. It always fled toward heat, toward the forge coals, toward any warm stone. Jeff had learned that in his workshop over long winters. The toad kicked once, twice, then swam hard for the left channel. It did not hesitate. Jeff grabbed it before the current took it under. "That one," he said. "The toad knows warm from cold better than we do." Garrick stared. "You're betting our lives on a frog." "On heat," Jeff said. "The frog just reads it." He pushed off the ledge into the left channel. The serpent surged past him, taking the same passage, and Jeff let out a breath. The current warmed as they went. The walls grew slick with steam. Far ahead, a red glow bled through the dark. They came out into a wide cavern. The river spilled into a shallow pool, and above the pool hung a great stone hearth, cold and dead, its iron grate rusted. On its face someone had set an old decoration long ago, a red fish worked into golden petals, its colors dulled by soot. The deepest furnace. It waited, unlit, in silence. The serpent coiled at the pool's edge and would come no farther. Jeff climbed out onto the hot stone and dripped in the glow. He unwrapped the steel from his back and laid it near the grate. The fire was here. But the hearth was dead, and no coal or bellows waited to wake it. Jeff had reached the furnace no smith had survived. Now he had to light it.