Valerian Ashcroft's Arc

Chapter 6 of 11

Valerian returned to the Great Cedar at dawn with a fresh knife and steady hands, ready to bleed on the roots again. But the nightshade plants had turned brown overnight, their petals curled inward like dead fingers. He knelt beside one and touched it—the stem crumbled to ash under his palm. All forty-seven plants, gone. He pressed his bleeding hand against the cedar's trunk anyway, watching his blood run down the bark without sinking in. The wood stayed pale. The air stayed solid. The wolf fang hung cold and dead against his chest. Whatever pattern he'd found yesterday had closed, and his blood couldn't open it again. He walked deeper into the forest, searching for another sign, another pattern to follow. An hour later he found markings carved into an oak tree—symbols he didn't recognize arranged in careful rows. The Pathfinder's Tree Markings pointed in three different directions, each set of arrows contradicting the last. North. South. East. He traced them with his finger, trying to match their style to the runes he'd studied before. Nothing fit. These marks weren't old magic or boundary signs. Someone had carved them recently to mislead searchers, to send people like him spiraling in circles through the woods. He checked the next tree and found more contradictory directions. Then the next. A whole network of false paths spreading through this section of Needlefall like a trap designed specifically to waste his time. Valerian pressed his forehead against the bark and laughed—bitter, sharp, the sound of six months collapsing into ash and lies. The boundaries had closed. The nightshade had died. And now even the trees were lying to him about which way to go. He followed one set of arrows anyway, moving south through trees that all looked the same now. The marks led him to a clearing where a statue stood among fallen leaves. The Barbarian Princess Statue rose taller than him, carved from dark stone that reflected no light. Copper hair cascaded down her shoulders in frozen waves. Her stance showed strength—feet planted wide, chin raised, eyes focused on something beyond the forest. But the face was wrong. The sculptor had never seen Morrigan, had never counted her freckles or watched her eyes change shade. This was just stone shaped like a woman who might have been fierce once. Valerian walked around it twice, searching for some sign that she'd been here, that this statue marked something real. Nothing. The ground showed no tracks. The wolf fang stayed cold. Someone had carved this monument to sadness itself, placed it here to mark loss and longing without naming who was lost. He sat at the statue's base and pulled out the letter with shaking hands. Six months. Twenty-three men. Three days stolen by claw marks. And all he had left was false directions, dead plants, and a stone woman who looked nothing like her. He couldn't open the letter. Not like this. Not with failure thick in his throat and his hands covered in blood that the boundaries wouldn't accept anymore. Wind stirred the trees above him, and metal tubes hanging from a low branch began to move. The Harmony Wind Chime sang out—clear notes that should have soothed but only reminded him of what was broken. He stood and walked closer. The chime hung perfectly balanced, each tube catching the breeze in turn. Someone had made this thing to work, and it still worked. Meanwhile forty-seven nightshade plants lay dead, the cedar rejected his blood, and the boundaries stayed sealed no matter how much he bled or searched or counted. He reached up and stopped the chime with his hand, silencing it. The wolf fang stayed cold against his chest. Morrigan's letter stayed folded in his coat. And he stood in a clearing surrounded by lies—false directions, wrong faces, working things placed near monuments to failure. He released the chime and let it sing again. Then he turned back north toward the cedar, toward the dead plants, toward the one place that had opened for him once. If the boundaries closed, he'd find another way to force them open. He'd bled enough to know that pain opened doors. He just needed to find the right place to bleed next.