Raven Blackwood's Arc

Chapter 3 of 11

The wind came harder now. Raven held the lantern close, but the flame bent low inside the glass. Each gust pressed it thinner. She cupped her gloved hand around the vents and kept walking. The light shrank anyway. In another minute it would die, and the dark would hide the ice again. She stopped where the road narrowed. The flame guttered to a blue thread. She could not see her own boots. One step forward, she knew, could end on the ice that nearly took her into the river. She crouched low and waited, trapped between the flame and the water. Then a second light bloomed ahead. It did not flicker. It glowed steady and green-gold, warm against the rain. A round door opened in the slope. A small house sat dug into the hill, its roof thick with moss, its yard full of pale flowers bent under the storm. A woman stood in the doorway with a steady lamp raised high. She was tall, with white hair soaked flat down her back. Her eyes caught the lamplight, a pale violet. She wore worn leather and tall boots, the gear of someone who walked hard country. She looked at Raven crouched in the mud and did not seem surprised. "You're on the ice road at night," the woman said. "In a storm. With a lantern." She shook her head. "Come in before the river takes you." Raven climbed toward the door. Her dying flame bent one last time and went out. The dark swallowed the road behind her. Only the green door's glow remained. She stepped inside. The room was warm and dry. A fire burned low in a round hearth. The woman set her lamp down and studied Raven's wet bow and the cloth bundle against her chest. "Sylvara," the woman said. "I keep this hollow. Few come this way, and fewer in winter." She crossed her arms. "What's worth dying for out there?" "A book," Raven said. "In the ruins past the peaks. I've hunted it for years." Sylvara's brows lifted. She did not laugh. She looked at Raven's soaked clothes, then at the door. "The low road is freezing shut. You felt it already. The ice on that bank is only the start." "Then I keep moving," Raven said. "Before it closes." "Not tonight." Sylvara handed her a dry cloth. "Your lantern is finished. Wet wick, bent frame. It won't hold a flame in that wind again." She nodded at the fire. "Dry out. I know the river better than any map you carry. In the morning I'll tell you if there's still a path, and I'll show you where the ice runs deepest." Raven gripped the cloth. The lantern had failed. But she had reached shelter, and she had found someone who knew the frozen road ahead. She sat by the fire and set the dead lantern down. Outside, the river crept toward solid ice.