Thorgrim Frostborne's Arc

Chapter 8 of 11

The keeper's silence broke. Above the stairs, it screamed and raked at the forge's threshold. The warm light held it back, but only just. Thorgrim looked at the fire pits. The flames had sunk low. Coals glowed red where tall fire had stood an hour before. When the last light died, the keeper would step down and take him. "The fire's failing," he said. "We break the lock now, or we lose the chance." Elara pressed her cut palm to her chest. "Break it how? I don't know how to unmake my grandmother's work." Thorgrim set the glowing blade against the anvil. The anvil was the lock. The blade was the key, still half-formed. He remembered the vision. Blood turned the key. But a key snaps if you force it against a lock that won't yield. He needed the lock to hold hard while he drove the wrong thing into it. His hawk lay on the iron, feathers dull, one wing trailing frost. Its magic had recharged the crystal bush before. That frost was the forge's own magic. Thorgrim lifted the bird and set it against the crystal vines. "Give it your cold," he said. "Fill the bush." The hawk's eye opened. Frost poured from its wing into the tangled vines. The crystals brightened, blue and white, humming with stored magic. Thorgrim pressed the flat of the blade to the charged bush. The sword drank the cold and glowed hard. "When I strike," he told Elara, "the lock has to fight back. It feeds on resistance. So resist it. Push your will into the anvil. Make it hold." Her eyes went wide. "That will only make it stronger." "Yes. Strong enough to shatter the key against it." He raised the blade above his head. "Now." Elara slammed both palms onto the anvil. She spoke words in her people's tongue, low and fast. The iron rang and turned white with frost. The keeper howled above, sensing the door it wanted. Thorgrim drove the ice blade down onto the anvil with all his weight. The frozen edge met the frozen iron. Neither gave. The sword screamed its own name back at him. Cracks spread up the blade from the tip. He pushed harder. Cold bit through his bonded hand into the bone. The sword broke. It split from tip to hilt in a burst of white light and a sound like a river breaking. The two halves fell ringing to the stone. Above them, the keeper made one long cry. Then the clawing stopped. The threshold went still. No door had opened. The key was gone. Thorgrim stared at the broken hilt still bonded to his palm. Half a sword. His hawk folded its spent wing. Elara lifted her hands from the cold anvil, shaking. "It's trapped," she whispered. "You did it." But the frost curse in his hand had not stopped. It crawled past his wrist, spreading again, now that the bond was cut.