Sylvara Moonwhisper's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

Sylvara folded the cloak into her pouch and started down the mountain. The human face would wait. She could not leave for the villages yet. Diaran still sat inside her gate, beside her sleeping elder, speaking lies in a dead man's tongue. If she walked away now, she left her herd with a liar. She needed a guardian first. Something he could not deceive. Or defeat, should it come to that. She climbed instead toward the ice cave. Brambles crossed its frozen mouth, dark thorns against pale walls. Briar had spoken of a shrine inside, dedicated to the moon goddess who broke the garden's spell. She had used unicorn hair taken from the herd to do it, though Sylvara was unsure how. Still, surely that meant she understood the herd’s importance. Inside, the shrine glowed. A pale moon sat carved in crystal, ringed with ice-blue spikes. Silver light pooled on the floor. Then the light gathered and stood. A woman formed from it, slim and luminous, her hair falling like water. She did not smile. Nor did she speak. Sylvara bowed her head in respect. "I keep the rainbow herd below. Briar spoke your name. Lunaria." The light around Lunaria dimmed when she heard the sprite's name. "She tends my garden now." Her voice stayed flat. "What do you want." "A liar sits in my glade. He claims he can wake my elder. He cannot. I must leave to learn the truth of him and the book he bore, but I cannot leave my herd unwatched." Sylvara lifted her chin. "Lend me a guardian. Something his words cannot fool." Lunaria studied her for a long moment. "Mortals ask. Then they take." "I am not mortal. And I offer trade." Sylvara drew a strand of unicorn hair from her crown. It shone with soft light in her palm. "This binds love to the coldest heart. It is the last I can spare." The goddess looked at the strand but did not reach for it. "Keep it. I have no love left to bind.” She raised one hand toward the cave's far dark. "Something already guards cold places here." A shape moved in the shadow. Scales caught the shrine's light, silver and shifting like moonlit frost. A dragon stepped forward, lean and graceful, its eyes pale blue. It lowered its head to Sylvara and did not look away. "It cannot be lied to," Lunaria said. "It hears what a voice hides. Send it to your gate. It will know your liar's heart before he speaks a word." Sylvara's throat tightened. "Why give this freely?" "I am learning what I was before her." The goddess's light flickered once. "Giving was part of it." Before Sylvara could respond, the goddess was gone. The dragon turned toward the cave mouth, waiting. Sylvara followed it out into the cold. Her herd would be watched now. She could take the human face down to the villages and find what Diaran and the merchant had been up to, and what had truly be woken from under cold stone.