Sylvara Moonwhisper's Arc

Chapter 4 of 6

Sylvara climbed the mountain at first light. She carried Diaran's journal under her arm. She left him at the glade, with the elder and the herd that distrusted him. The dead man's book was her only proof, and only a stranger could read it now. By noon she reached a frozen garden high on the slope. Pink and red blossoms hung trapped beneath clear ice, caught in an unnatural sleep. A small sprite knelt among the stone basins. Brambles and snow tangled in her hair. She pressed one bare hand against the ice, coaxing a single bud. She did not look up. "You're trampling the moss," she said. "Step left." Sylvara stepped left. "I'm the keeper of the unicorn glade below. I need help reading something." "I'm busy." The sprite, Briar, turned back to her bud. "The cold season ends soon. The flowers wake once a year. I don't." Sylvara knelt beside her. She did not reach for the ice. She watched Briar's fingers work and said nothing for a long while. When Briar's hand began to shake from the cold, Sylvara cupped her own hands around it, warming it. "You've worked all morning," Sylvara said. "Rest the hand. The bud will keep." Briar studied her. Something in her face eased. "You didn't grab the ice. People always grab." She sat back. "What do you need read?" Sylvara opened the journal to the shaking pages. "A man gave this to a merchant, or the merchant wrote it. I think the merchant passed through here. He dealt in old things. Do you know his hand? Do you know these words?" Briar leaned close. She turned pages slowly. She stopped at the steady writing, then at the crawling, broken lines. Her mouth tightened. "I knew him," she said. "He sold me a frost-lily seed that wouldn't sprout. He came every winter. Then one spring he didn't." "Can you read it?" "Some." Briar traced the steady lines. "This part is a list. Prices. Names of buyers." Her finger moved to the broken hand. She read, slow and flat. "This part is different. It's not a rite. It's a warning. He wrote: do not say the words again. The thing I woke does not sleep. It only waits." Sylvara's breath caught. "There's no ritual? No way to wake the elder written here?" "No." Briar closed the book. "Just a dead man telling himself to stop. The man who holds this lied to you." Sylvara stood. Her hands were steady, but cold ran through her. Diaran had read smooth and sure from a book that held no rite. He had spoken a lie in a tongue she couldn't check. He sat now beside her sleeping elder, inside her gate. "Thank you," Sylvara said. She took the journal and started down the mountain. She did not run. She walked fast, and she did not look back at the frozen garden behind her.