Lyra Fernbrook's Arc

Chapter 4 of 18

Lyra ran the path home with the drake on her shoulder and the lyre thumping against her hip. Halfway there she stopped. Her cottage would not hold. Stone walls and crystal windows had not stopped the hound, and the next thing would be worse. She needed iron. She needed someone who could work it into wards before dark. There was only one forge close enough, and only one smith who still knew the old marks. She turned off the path and took the fork that climbed toward the ridge. The smithy stood alone under tall pines, a log building with carved eaves and axe-heads hung above the door. Blue light leaked from the shutters. Lyra had passed it many times and never gone in. The smith kept to himself. Villagers said he had lost someone in the silent years and had not spoken kindly to anyone since. She knocked. The door opened on a short, broad man with dark hair and green eyes behind wire spectacles. Old scars crossed his chest and arms. He looked at the drake on her shoulder, then at the wrapped lyre. "You're the healer's girl," he said. "Go home." "I can't," Lyra said. "Something is coming for my house tonight. The grove named it, and it named me back. I need iron marked with the old wards. I can pay." She held out her herb satchel. "Or I can trade. Whatever you need." He did not move from the doorway. He studied the drake. The flowers on its spine were shedding pollen onto his floor. "The grove speaks to you," he said. It was not a question. Lyra nodded. He looked past her at the darkening trees. Then he stepped aside. "Come in. Don't touch anything." Inside, a tall forge burned with pale blue flame over white coals. The smith took the lyre from her hands, unwrapped it, and set it on a bench. He ran a thumb along the vines carved into the wood. His jaw tightened. "I knew the woman who owned this," he said. "She was kind to me once." He turned to the fire and began pulling iron rods from a rack. "I can set four wards by midnight. Door, hearth, window, threshold. It will not kill what's coming. It will slow it enough for us to fight." "Us?" Lyra said. The smith did not look up. He laid the first rod in the blue flame and reached for his hammer. "You brought it to my door when you knocked," he said. "I'm in it now. Sit down. Tell me every note you played, in the order you played them. Leave nothing out." Lyra sat. The drake settled at her feet. Outside, the light was already going gray. She began to speak.