Oswin Merrick's Arc

Chapter 4 of 9

Past the hollow, the trail ended at a wall of grey stone. The relic sat behind it, half-visible through a gap too narrow for a man. Oswin dug his fingers into the seam and pulled. The slab didn't shift. He braced his boots and heaved until his arms shook. Nothing moved but the sweat on his back. His hands alone would never open this. He needed a tool, and he had none. The parrot squawked and lifted off his shoulder. It flew back toward the hollow's rim and circled there. Oswin followed. Below a leaning root, a man sat working over a folding kit of tools. Broad shoulders. A leather apron scarred with burns. Old cuts marked his forearms. He held a chisel and a short iron bar, turning them in the light like he was deciding which to trust. "You're far from any road," Oswin said. The man looked up. "Roads bore me. I go where the good stone is." He was Garret Ironhand, a wandering blacksmith. Oswin had never met him, but the tools said enough. "You've got that stuck look. Man against a rock he can't beat." "A slab. Behind it, the thing I've walked three years to reach." Oswin's voice cracked on the words. "I can't move it." Garret packed his kit and stood. "Then you brought the wrong hands." He glanced at Oswin's jacket, at the maps inked across every panel. "You draw those?" "All of them." "A man who makes his own maps doesn't quit at one wall." He hefted the iron bar. "Show me." Oswin led him up the trail. Garret ran a thumb along the seam, tapped the slab, and grunted. "Not solid. Set into a groove." He wedged the bar deep into the crack. "You push where I say. Not before." Oswin set his shoulder to the stone. Garret drove the bar down. The slab groaned. "Now," Garret said. Oswin shoved. The stone gave an inch, then slid, grinding sideways off its groove. It toppled into the moss with a heavy thud. The gap stood open. Oswin stepped through. On a low shelf of rock lay the relic he'd chased across every map he'd drawn. A disc of tarnished metal, marked with lines he half-recognized. He reached for it. Then he saw the surface. The lines weren't decoration. They were a map, cut into the metal, and they ran off the disc's edge to a place he didn't know. The relic he'd hunted for three years pointed somewhere further still. "That the treasure?" Garret asked from the gap. Oswin lifted the disc. It was cold and heavier than it looked. "It's a direction," he said. He turned it in his hands and found no landmark he could name. He had the relic now. He had no idea where it wanted him to go.