Lyrian Ashenbark's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

Lyrian knelt on the warped planks and pulled the rolled parchment from her satchel. She had taken it from the archive on a hunch, and now she needed it to speak. Water stains blurred its ink. Cracked lines branched across it like veins, charting paths through a swamp she did not yet know. She pressed it flat against the wood and searched for any mark that matched this dock. There. A small notch on the parchment lined up with the post beside her, the one still wrapped in frayed rope where the watcher's boat had torn free. From that notch, a single inked channel curved north through the reeds. Every other route ended in dead water. Only one way out. Her hands shook as she rolled the map closed. She climbed down to the mud and found a weathered rowboat half-hidden under hanging moss. Its hull was cracked. Small holes pocked the bottom. Lyrian tore handfuls of damp moss from the bank and packed them into each gap until the seeping slowed. She dragged the boat into the shallows and swung herself in. The oars bit the water. She pointed the bow north, following the inked channel on the map, and the dock shrank behind her. The trail was not cold yet. She had a direction, a boat, and the cracked flute tucked against her ribs — and somewhere ahead, the one person who could read what her skin had been trying to say.