Sterling Forge's Arc

Chapter 24 of 31

Sterling stepped through the seam with the blade in his hand. Cold hit him first. Then the sound of Linny crying. She stood in the small clearing where the stone door had brought them out. Snow to her knees. Her pack at her feet. The chipmunk on her shoulder pressed flat against her neck. She wiped her face when she saw him and tried to make it not a sob. "You came out fast," she said. Then her eyes went to his empty hip, to his hands, to the wrapped shape he carried. Her face changed. "Where's the sword?" He held out what he carried. Not steel. A flat board wrapped in his shirt. She took it before she understood. She pulled the shirt back and saw her own half-finished painting, the tree, the streams of light caught mid-rise. "No," she said. "I traded." "No. Forge. No." She shoved the painting back at his chest. "Go back. Take it back. Give her the painting and take the sword." "The door's gone." She turned in the snow. The hillside behind them was smooth. No seam. No stone. Only a faint warm square in the rock where light still bled through the surface, dim as a banked coal. "Then knock," she said. "Beg. That was ten years. That was your dream." "It wasn't." She stopped. "The sword wasn't the biggest one," he said. "You were. I just didn't have the nerve to say it before you left the first time." She looked at him a long moment. Then she stepped through the snow and kissed him. Not the quick one from the cavern. This one held. Her hat fell back. Her hand was in his hair. He dropped the painting into the snow because he had to hold her with both arms. Something moved in the trees behind them. They broke apart. The chipmunk had gone rigid on her shoulder, ears flat. Sterling turned. The frostwood cluster on the slope stood still, but the stillness was wrong. Something paced behind the trunks. Then another shape, opposite side. Circling. The light was going. He had not noticed. The sky above the ridge was already the color of old iron. He took stock without moving his head. One knife. A hammer. Half a water skin. No food that mattered. No coat but the one on his back and the shirt now wet in the snow at his feet. Days of walking between them and any hearth they knew. And the door behind them cooling by the minute. "Forge," Linny whispered. She had the ruined blade out. Her hand was steady. He bent, picked the painting from the snow, and pushed it inside his coat against his chest. He drew the knife. "Back to the stone," he said. "Keep it at our spine." They moved together. The circling narrowed. Whatever it was, it was not waiting for full dark.