Kyhl's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Kyhl had crossed three kingdoms to fill the blank spaces on his map, and now he could not even find his way out of one town. He stood in the pub of the roadside inn, his scholar's robes damp from the road, his black hair tangled. He spread the weathered map on a sticky table. Its far edges showed nothing but pale, empty parchment. Beyond Blackbriar, the world was a mystery he meant to record. But first he had to leave, and every street he had tried tonight looped him back to this same door. He traced a finger over the blank west edge. No roads. No rivers. No hills marked. If he walked out now, he would wander until his food ran out. A scholar who died lost would learn nothing more. The innkeeper set down a bowl of stew. Kyhl asked her the way north. She frowned and said the roads out of town all twisted, and strangers lost them by dark. Then she nodded toward the window. "Old folks say the traveler's statue points true. Go touch it before you go." Kyhl doubted stone could help a lost man. But he had no better plan. He rolled his map, paid for the stew, and stepped into the cold. The statue stood in a small square, taller than any man. It showed the god of safe travels in carved robes, one hand raised in blessing, the other holding a lantern. A compass star marked its chest. Rain had darkened the pale stone. Kyhl studied the raised hand. It pointed past the rooftops, toward a gap he had not tried. He pressed his palm to the statue's base, the way the innkeeper meant. Nothing happened. He almost laughed at himself. Then his map, tucked under his arm, grew warm. He unrolled it fast. Ink was spreading across the blank western edge. Thin lines crawled outward like frost, drawing a road, a river fork, a ridge of hills. The parchment filled itself with the land ahead. Kyhl held it up to the statue's raised hand and saw the drawn road match the direction the stone finger showed. His heart pounded. The map was not blank at all. It answered the blessing of this place, and it would keep drawing the world as he walked it. Kyhl memorized the first miles by the statue's light. The road ran west through the hills, then split at the river. He had his path out of Blackbriar at last. He rolled the map and pulled his hood against the rain. But the fresh ink stopped at the river fork. Past the water, the map went blank again, and one drawn word sat beside the crossing in a hand not his own: turn back. Kyhl read it twice. Someone, or something, had marked that river before him. He had his way out now. He did not yet know what waited at the water.