Nym's Arc

Chapter 14 of 41

The white light burned brighter than any fire Nym had ever made. It poured from her hands and eyes into the sealed door. The stone slab cracked down the middle. Then it split wide, and the door swung open. A tall shape of pure light stood in the gap. It shone so hard that Magnus threw his arm across his face and stumbled back into the ring of standing stones. Nym drifted down. Her boots touched the wet ground. The glow faded from her hands. She swayed, and her knees gave out. She fell hard onto the grass. Magnus rushed to her side. He gripped her shoulders and held her up. His voice shook. "The key was your sorrow," he said. "The stones needed to know you truly wanted your blood to live again. That is blood magic. Not a cut. A wish." Nym pushed herself off the ground. She stared at the open door and the light spilling out of it. "Where is she?" she asked. Behind that light was her mother. Drasila. The woman sealed away for three hundred years. The reason Nym existed when history said she could not. Magnus stepped toward the door. He reached his hand into the light. His fingers stopped in the air, as if he pressed against glass. He could not pass through. He tried again and grunted. The light held him out. Nym stepped up beside him. She reached her own hand into the doorway. The white light pushed back against her palm. She leaned her whole body forward. Her feet slid on the mud. The door would not let her in. She dropped her arm and breathed hard. "I opened it," she said. "Why can't I go through?" Magnus had no answer. He shook his head at the shining door. Then the light swelled. It flared out from the doorway and washed over the whole clearing. Nym shut her eyes against it. Magnus grabbed her arm. When the brightness dimmed, the door stood dark and empty behind them. A woman lay on the grass in the center of the ring. Her dark hair had come loose, with one streak of white along one side. Rune marks marked the backs of her hands. Her purple robes were dirty at the hem. She did not move. The last of the light drained away to nothing. The clearing went gray and quiet. Nym could not breathe. She had seen those marks before. They matched the ones that glowed beneath her own skin. She let go of Magnus and ran to the still woman. She dropped to her knees in the mud. She reached out, then stopped, her hand hanging over the woman's pale face. "Mother?" Nym said. The woman's chest rose. Once. Her eyes opened. Pale blue eyes stared up at the gray sky, then turned and found Nym's face. Her cracked lips parted. "You came," Drasila whispered.