Thorgrim Frostborne's Arc

Chapter 3 of 11

Thorgrim reached the stone hall by dusk. Wind had beaten its walls smooth for years. Icicles hung from the arch above his door. He knew every crack in it. He had never once dug beneath its floor. Now he had to, and fast. Behind him, across the white slope, the keeper came. He could not see it yet. He could feel it, a cold that pressed harder than the wind. His hawk landed on the arch. Its feathers were brushed with frost, its eyes sharp. The bird had followed him the whole climb. It watched the slope now and did not settle. That told Thorgrim enough. The thing hunting him was close. Elara came up behind him, breath ragged. She had not turned back. "You feel it too," she said. "It won't stop at the door. It wants the blade returned to the tomb." She looked at the hall as if it might bite her. "My people built the forge under there. I never thought I'd stand on it." Thorgrim pushed inside. The main room was bare stone. He dropped to his knees and shoved his hands across the floor, hunting a seam. The sword hummed at his hip. As he passed one flat slab, the hum climbed. He struck the stone with his palm. It rang hollow. "Here," he said. "Help me." They pried at the slab's edge. It would not give. Outside, the hawk shrieked once. The cold at Thorgrim's back sharpened to a blade. He looked over his shoulder. A shape filled the doorway, tall, wrapped in old frost, moving slow and sure. Elara went pale. "No time. You can't fight it. It'll drain you." Thorgrim did not reach for a fight. He drew the sword and spoke the name Elara had read from the blade, the name of the river that froze a village. The crystal blazed blue. The hum became a roar. He drove the point down into the seam of the slab. The stone cracked. Cold light poured up through the break. The blade knew this place. It pulled his arm down, splitting the slab wide, and a stair opened into the dark below. Warm air rose from it, the first warm air he had felt in years. The keeper crossed the threshold. Elara grabbed his cloak. "Down. Now." Thorgrim jumped through the broken floor. Elara came after. The stair carried them into the forge, and the keeper's cold could not follow past the light of the pit below. It stopped at the edge and did not descend. Thorgrim stood at the bottom, chest heaving. Around him, cold fires still burned in stone pits, though no one had tended them for lifetimes. Tools lay ready on the benches. The forge had been kept lit, waiting. The keeper paced above them, trapped at the stair's mouth. He had reached the place that made his sword. But now he could not leave until he learned how to face what guarded the door.