Nym's Arc

Chapter 12 of 41

Nym pressed her hands to the nearest stone. The runes there curled the same way they curled beneath her own skin. "She could have touched this stone three hundred years ago," Nym said. Her breath fogged in the cold. She traced one mark with her thumb and waited to feel something. She felt only stone. Magnus, the rune reader who had known her mother, stepped up beside her. His golden gown caught the last of her firelight. He set his fingers on the carvings and moved his lips as he read. He had spent his whole life learning marks like these. Nym watched his face and hoped. "This one tells of a seal," he said. "Something sealed away." His finger slid to the next line and stopped. He frowned. He moved to another stone and read again, slower now. "What does it seal?" Nym asked. Magnus did not answer at once. He walked the ring, touching stone after stone. Then he lowered his hand. "Some of these I've never seen before," he said. "I can learn them. But it could take months. Maybe a year." Nym's fire dimmed in her palm. "A year." "The marks are older than the ones I was taught," he said. "I am sorry, Nym. I cannot read what I do not know." Nym sank to her knees in the wet grass. The stones rose black around her. "I have come so far," she said. "I crossed the forest. I found the tower. I found you. And now I'm here, and I can't do anything." The black cat crossed the ring and sat before her. It watched her with its green eyes. Then it turned its head toward the center stone, the one carved with a circle inside a circle. It did not move again. Nym followed its gaze. She rose and walked to that stone. Magnus had already read the outer marks. But her ring bore the same double circle. She lifted her hand and pressed the ring against the carving. The rune flared. Not gold like Magnus's gown, but blue, the same blue as her fire. Light ran down the stone and leapt from carving to carving around the whole ring. The old marks Magnus could not read now glowed. And as they glowed, they moved. They rearranged themselves into shapes he knew. Magnus stumbled back. "They answer to your blood," he said. His voice shook. He rushed to the center stone and read fast now, the words tumbling out. "Here lies the seal of the maker. What was Made can be unmade. What was Made can be woken." Nym stared at the shifting light. "Woken," she said. Magnus turned to her, pale. "The stones do not mark a grave," he said. "They mark a door. Your mother was not buried here, Nym. She was sealed here."