Killian Allenwood's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

By the second day north, the wolf was pulling ahead. Killian had followed it out of pine into scrub, out of scrub into broken stone. The land climbed. The tracks thinned. The wolf did not slow for him, and he could not run forever with a full quiver and no sleep. On the third morning he lost the trail in a shale slide. He crouched and searched the loose rock for a print. Nothing. He cast wide, north and east, and found only wind. His hands were shaking again. Seven years of work sat in his pocket as a folded name and a cold iron token, and the only thing tying them together was a black shape moving faster than he could. He climbed the ridge for a wider view. That was when he saw the raven. It sat on a dead branch a bowshot off, red eyes on him, one wing still held wrong from the wolf's strike. It had followed him north, or waited for him. Either way it knew where he was going. He drew an arrow. The raven watched him draw. Then it lifted off, slow, favoring the bad wing, and flew north along the ridgeline. He understood the trade at once. Kill the bird and lose his guide. Follow the bird and be led by the thing sent to track him. He lowered the bow and followed. The raven flew in short hops, always in sight, always north. It rested on stones. It waited when he fell behind. By dusk it brought him out of the shale onto a flat of moss and split rock, and there he stopped. A tower stood in the clearing. Stone, cracked to the base, wrapped in vine and moss. Runes cut deep into its face still held color, faint blue and violet, catching the last light. At the tower's foot, half-swallowed by the moss, sat a cluster of purple crystal grown up through the stone like a wound. The wolf lay beside the crystal. Yellow eyes on him. Waiting, as it had waited at his fire. The raven landed on a broken stone at the tower's base. It did not fly again. It folded its bad wing and watched him with the wolf. Killian stood at the edge of the clearing with an arrow on the string and understood what he had walked into. The wolf had not been leading him to a person. It had been leading him to a place. And the raven had been herding him here too. Whoever wanted him watched, and whoever wanted him found, wanted the same thing. He stepped into the clearing. He kept the arrow nocked. He read the first rune on the tower and felt the splinter under his nail twist. The mark stamped on his token was cut into the stone above his head, deeper than any other, older than seven years. He had not been brought to a lead. He had been brought home.