Renni Ashfire's Arc

Chapter 7 of 12

The door did not give. Renni pressed harder, then stopped and turned. Behind her, the satyr had climbed the golden steps after all. It stood three stairs below her, small and white, its dark eyes fixed on her boots. It would not move. She looked past it down the staircase. The steps were old stone wrapped in gold, and bones had been pressed into the rails over long years, one for each life given here. At the foot of the stairs stood a wooden post scored deep with claw marks, the dirt around it dark with dried blood. That was where the trail ended. That was where the beast had stopped bleeding and gone inside. Renni came down a step. The satyr bleated and stamped. Across the lowest stair it had dragged a thick tangle of weeds and torn branches, woven tight as a fence. A barrier. A warning, made by small hands while she stood at the door deciding. "Move," she said. Her voice was quiet. The satyr did not move. She looked at the engraved blade in her fist, at the gems set into its cross, at the gold under her boots. Stolen steel on stolen ground. The blood at the post was already dark and dry. Cold. Inside, the beast had been healed by now. She had stood too long at the threshold. She could cut the satyr down. One step, one stroke. The blade would do it. Renni looked at the small white face and saw the hunter she had buried, the careful one, the one who had taught her to check twice. Carelessness was disrespect to the dead. So was this. She sheathed the blade. She stepped over the woven barrier, down past the satyr, down the long gold stairs to the claw-marked post. There she knelt and pressed her palm to the cold blood. Not tonight. She would not take this fight on sacred ground, with a healed beast and a child at her back. She rose, turned her face to the trees, and walked away from the shrine while the satyr watched her go.