Thorgrim Frostborne's Arc

Chapter 2 of 11

By dawn the fever in Thorgrim's arm had cooled, but the sword would not go quiet. It hummed against his palm, low and steady, a sound he felt in his teeth. Faint marks ran along the blue crystal. He held it up to the weak light and traced them with his thumb. They were letters, or something older. He could not read a single one. Without them, he had no way to learn where the blade came from, or what power slept inside it. He needed those markings read. Only one person still nearby knew the old cold magic. He found Elara at the fire outside her tangle of crystal vines. The exiled witch sat with her knees drawn up, watching the horizon where the keeper would come. She did not turn when his shadow fell across her. "You should be running," she said. "Not standing there with that thing." "I can't run until I know what it is." Thorgrim knelt and laid the sword between them. "There are words on the blade. You taught me to command it. Teach me to read it." Her blue eyes moved to the crystal. Something crossed her face, quick and afraid. She reached out, then pulled her hand back. "I know this script," she said quietly. "My people carved it. Before they threw me out." She leaned closer. Her lips moved over the marks, slow, careful. Then she stopped. "What?" Thorgrim said. "What does it say?" "It's a name." She sat back hard. "Not the smith's name. The blade's. Every cursed thing my people made, they named after what it took from the world." She looked at him. "This one is named for a river. A river that froze solid in a single night, with a whole village still on it." The hum in the sword climbed. Thorgrim felt it answer to the sound of the word, like a dog to its master's voice. "There's more," Elara said. She pointed to a cluster of marks near the hilt. "These aren't words. They're a map mark. My people used them to point back to the forge that made a blade." Her finger stopped on a small carved shape. "A stone hall. Wind-worn. In the high passes." Thorgrim's breath caught. He knew that hall. He had sheltered in its cold rooms a hundred times. He had never once guessed what lay beneath it. "That's where I've been living," he said. "That's my home." Elara stood and stepped back from the fire. The fear had not left her face. "Then whatever forged this waited for you your whole life," she said. "And now you've woken it, and the keeper both. You have your answer, barbarian." She looked at the dark passes. "You'll have to walk back into your own house to find the rest. And you won't be the only one going there."