Storm's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

At dawn they climbed. The stone path cut through cloud and ended at a temple of weathered white stone. Carvings of sun and storm wrapped its columns. A dark doorway waited at the top of the steps. Storm stopped at the threshold. She had fought a sky warrior and frozen a beast on the ground. But she did not know what guarded a throne no one had claimed in a thousand years. One wrong step here could kill all four of them. The ground shook. A statue stepped out from the shadow of the doorway. It stood twice Storm's height, carved of gray stone, with eyes that burned pale blue. It moved without weight, as if wind pushed it forward. This was Zephyr, the guardian. He had tested everyone who came for the throne. In a thousand years only one had passed. "You climbed," Zephyr said. His voice was flat. "Now you are tested. One of you sits the throne. The rest leave." Raven stepped forward. Her white wings spread. "Then test me first," she said. "I've won every challenge my clan set. I'll win this." "No," Zephyr said. "The test is not a fight." He raised one stone hand toward Storm. "Tell me why you came." Storm's throat went dry. She had planned for teeth, for claws, for freezing the floor beneath a monster. She had not planned for a question. Raven looked at her. Marcus leaned on Lucy, his torn wing hanging, and said nothing. "For power," Storm said. "To command every wind and storm in the sky." Zephyr did not move. "One man wept here for three days," he said. "He said he was not enough. He walked back down. The one who passed came with nothing to prove." His blue eyes held her. "You want the throne to prove you are a goddess. The throne is not for want. Try again." Storm understood then. The trap was not stone or claw. It was the answer itself. The wrong reason would turn her away as it had turned away a thousand others. She thought of the compound. Of standing in the door while Marcus bled. Of freezing the ground to save a stranger instead of climbing toward her prize. "I stopped," Storm said. "On the way here. His sisters' brother was dying." She nodded at Marcus. "I had the path open. I turned around. I could have left them and climbed alone." She met the burning eyes. "I came because I can hold the storm back as well as call it. That is why I want it. Not to rule the sky. To keep it from falling on people who can't stand it." Zephyr was still a long moment. Wind moved through the columns. "That is why," he said. He stepped aside. Storm walked into the dark doorway. Raven, Lucy, and Marcus came behind her. The rule held: she could not reach the throne alone, and they climbed the last steps at her side. Inside, the throne sat under an open roof where clouds turned slow. She climbed the dais and sat. The sky answered. Rain fell and stopped at her thought. Wind curled around the columns and lay still when she wished it. She felt every storm across Tasudu at once, like threads in her hand. She did not pull them. She held them loose. Zephyr stood in the doorway, lit by the gray dawn. "The throne is claimed," he said. For the first time his flat voice carried something close to rest. "My task is done. I do not know what becomes of me now." "Stay," Storm said from the throne. "The temple shouldn't sit empty again. Guard it. Not against those who come. For them." Zephyr bowed his stone head and stepped back into the shadow, but he did not fade. Raven looked up at the throne. No one of her clan had ever climbed this high. She had chased a place her own blood would admit she earned. She had it now, standing beside the woman who claimed the sky. "First of our clan," she said to Lucy. Lucy grinned, her old grin back. Marcus flexed his broken wing and said nothing, but he dipped his head to Storm, the debt paid on the stone as he'd sworn. Storm sat where the Storm family had not sat in a thousand years. She had wanted the power to prove she was a goddess. She left the throne with more than that. She held the weather of the world in a loose hand, and she chose, each moment, to let the sky breathe. The temple had waited for her blood to return. It waited no longer.