Roran Vottier's Arc

Chapter 7 of 10

They reached the shrine by midday. Roran pushed open the low stone door and stepped inside. The fire pit sat at the center, ringed with old ash. He knelt and touched it. Cold. Dead for longer than either of them had been alive. The dead sword needed this flame to wake. Without it, the ritual could not even begin. "How do we light it?" Roran asked. He struck flint over dry moss. A spark caught, flared, and died in the pit. The moss burned to nothing. The stone would not hold the fire. Kaia crouched beside him and pressed her palm to the cold pit. Her face went tight. "This isn't ordinary fire," she said. "My family didn't kindle it. They fed it from something older." She stood and walked the shrine's walls, tracing carvings with her fingers. "There's a source. A first flame. The shrine only borrows from it." Roran remembered the wolf's warning from that morning, the low growl aimed east. The wraith was drawing closer. They had no time to hunt a legend. The wolf paced at the door. Then it turned and trotted into the trees. Roran followed on instinct. Kaia came behind. The animal led them through the brush to a clearing neither had seen. A ring of tall stones stood there, worn and gray, carved with faint marks that seemed to hum in the air. Kaia stopped dead. "Druid work," she whispered. She stepped between two stones. Blue-white light crawled along the cracks under her boots. She knelt at a flat center stone and read the words carved there, speaking them slow, her voice shaping sounds Roran did not know. The ground answered. The center stone split and sank, folding open like a mouth. Stairs led down into the earth. Roran went first, sword ready. Kaia followed with the wolf. The stairs ended in a round chamber. At its heart burned a fire that gave no smoke. It rose from bare rock, gold and white, steady as a heartbeat. Heat pushed against Roran's face. He had found the source. The eternal flame that fed the shrine. "That's it," Kaia breathed. "We carry it back. A brand, a torch, anything." Roran looked around. No wood. No pitch. Then his eyes fell on the dead sword in his hand. He stepped to the fire and lowered the golden blade into it. The flame took the steel. Light ran up the blade like water climbing a wall. The gold woke and glowed, warm and fierce, brighter than before. The sword was lit. Roran lifted it, burning, and the chamber filled with its light. But heat rolled off the blade in waves, and he felt it fight his grip. The fire would not stay forever. Above them, far off through the earth, the wolf's ears turned east and it began to growl. The wraith had found the shrine. Now Roran had to reach it before the blade went cold again.