Void's Arc

Chapter 5 of 7

Three nights after the shipwreck, Void woke with his hand aching. The iron shard fused to his palm had gone cold enough to burn. It weighed more than it had at dusk. He could not tell if the hunger inside was starving or growing. He had no way to measure the leash. He only knew it was tightening on something, and he could not tell which side. Holli was gone north on her own work. Void walked until the trees thinned and the ground turned to black stone. A dark castle rose from the frost ahead, its spires bitten with ice. He had heard the obsidian guardian kept to a hollow beneath it. He did not want to ask for help. He went anyway. Gotim was waiting at the gate. Void had seen him once before, from a distance, standing over the ash of a wraith. Small, hooded, horns curling from a face too still to read. Braided cords coiled around him like patient snakes. His yellow eyes fixed on the shard before they fixed on Void. "You brought it to me," Gotim said. "Sit." Void sat on the frozen step. Gotim took his hand without asking. The cords uncoiled and pressed against the iron. Cold moved up Void's arm, then stopped at the shoulder, held there. "How long do I have," Void said. "You are asking the wrong question." "Then tell me the right one." Gotim did not answer for a while. He turned the shard in Void's palm. The hunger inside pushed against the metal. Void felt it press, then ease, then press again, slower now. "The iron is not failing," Gotim said. "You are feeding it fear. Fear has weight. That is what you felt tonight." "Then it will hold." "It will hold as long as you do not decide." Void looked up. "Decide what." "Whether you want the hunger gone, or only quiet." Gotim's voice did not rise. "A leash answers a quiet man. A cure answers a certain one. You have been neither." Void started to speak. Gotim pressed one cord flat against the shard. The metal warmed under it. The weight in Void's hand eased. He could feel the hunger settle, not smaller, but held level, like water in a bowl set down. "I have steadied it," Gotim said. "Not healed it. You have time now. Not much. Enough to choose." "How much." "Until the thaw. After that, the iron will not matter." Void closed his hand. The shard was still cold, but it no longer pulled. He could count the days now. That was worse than not knowing, and better. "Why help me," Void said. Gotim stood. The cords drew back into his coat. "Because a hungry thing loose in the thaw is my problem too," he said. "Go. Come back when you have chosen." Void walked down from the castle with a deadline in his palm.