Nora Varn's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

Nora climbed out of the crevasse as the ice sealed shut behind her. The collectors stood twenty feet back from the edge, watching her with faces she couldn't read. One of them held a coil of rope he hadn't bothered to throw down. She stood and brushed ice crystals from her knees. The temperature had shifted. She felt it in the way the ice sweated beneath her boots, heard it in the steady drip from the walls around them. The collectors' drill sat silent now, tilted at an angle where the platform had settled. One of them pointed at a crystal formation jutting from the chamber wall — a pillar of ice tall as a man, water streaming down its jagged edges. Below it, meltwater pooled and spread. The artifact was down there, in the flooded chamber beneath their feet. The warm front had arrived faster than any of them had planned for. Nora pulled the stone sundial from her pack and set it on the platform's edge. The gnomon cast a short shadow across the carved face. She traced the notches with one finger, calculating. Six hours of sunlight left. Maybe eight before the water rose high enough to submerge the artifact completely. After that, the chamber would fill and freeze again when the cold returned. Whatever was down there would be locked in ice for another decade. The collectors watched her work. One of them checked his own equipment, then looked at her. They all understood what the water meant. The race had changed. She walked to where the ice wall marked the edge of the excavation site. Meltwater ran down its surface in sheets, pooling at the base where the ground had already given way to liquid. The wall wouldn't hold much longer. When it collapsed, the flood would rush through and fill the chamber in minutes instead of hours. Nora knelt and pressed her hand against the ice. It spoke through vibration and temperature, through the pattern of cracks spreading across its face. She had maybe three hours before the wall failed. Three hours to find another way down, or to accept that the artifact would be lost. She stood and turned back to the collectors. They had the equipment. She had the knowledge of where to dig. Neither of them could win this alone.