Silverwood's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Silverwood followed the compass into a gorge of jagged ice and black stone. Frozen ridges climbed on both sides. The needle pointed straight ahead, deeper into the shadowed cut. He walked fast, as Hale had told him. But a doubt slowed his steps. He knew how to steady runes. He did not know how to wake a heart-tree. If he reached the mountain, he would stand before the great tree and have no way to bloom it. A blue light dropped from a ledge above. Pyra landed on a spur of ice, her frost-pixie wings still humming. She was the one who had given him the compass at the market. He had not expected to see her again. "You're going the right way," she said. "But you're missing half the tool." "Half?" Silverwood held up the frost-edged compass rose. "It points true." "It points. It doesn't teach." Pyra flew close and tapped the compass casing. "The needle finds the mountain. But there's a second face. My grandmother carried both. One got sold apart from the other." She frowned at him. "You'd reach the tree with a map and no words." Silverwood's chest went tight. She had named his exact fear. "Then I need the second face." Pyra reached into her apron and drew out a flat silver plate. Layered symbols covered it, fine lines circling a central star. "A cipher. It reads the marks a heart-tree wears. Steadying runes hold cold in place. Waking runes call the bloom up. Different cuts. Different order." She turned the plate. Dials clicked under her small fingers. "I traded three seasons of frost-work for it. I never learned to run it. But you carve runes. You just carve the wrong ones." "Show me," Silverwood said. Pyra set the cipher plate against the compass. The two faces locked with a soft snap. Symbols on the plate lined up with marks on the compass ring. "See how the star turns? Match the outer mark to the inner. That gives you the waking cut for each rune on the tree." She spun the dial once. A pattern lit under the frost. "You steadied your grove by holding the cold. To wake the heart-tree, you cut these instead. The order runs sunwise, not against it." Silverwood traced the lit pattern with his eyes. He saw it now. The same knife. A different hand. The knowledge his teacher took was here, printed in metal. "I can read this," he said. "Then carry it." Pyra pressed the joined tool into his palm. "Waking a tree thaws every grove near it. You know that. Be sure before you cut." Silverwood closed his hand around the compass and cipher. His fear was gone. He no longer feared reaching the mountain powerless. Now a new weight sat in his chest. He held the power to bloom the tree, and blooming it would thaw the world he had sworn to guard.