Void Sentinel Dale's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The drink was warm cider in a dented cup. Dale sat across from Pup in the back of the smithy, where a wall of dark stone caught the forge light. Blue gems glowed in the rock. Orange and pink flowers wound through the cracks. Pup watched Dale hold the cup and not drink it. "You wanted to know what I guard," Dale said. His tendrils moved when he spoke. "I did." Pup leaned back. "Start there." Dale set the cup down. He had rehearsed no words. He had never needed them. "There is a road under the road," he said. "The dead walk it. Some try to walk back. I stand where the two roads meet. I stop the ones who should not cross." Pup nodded slow. "A guard. Fine." He tapped the table. "But you keep dodging the real thing. What are you?" There it was. The question that could end this. Dale looked at his own gray-sand hands. He thought of every mortal who had looked through him. He thought of the plain word Pup had given him at the anvil. A man. If Dale said the true word now, the true word might take that back. So he chose not to say it. "I don't know," Dale said. "I was something before the post. I stopped asking. The tendrils came the day I took the job. I never learned if a man grew them or if they grew a man." Pup was quiet. On the wall, the gems threw blue light across his tiny head. "That's an honest not-knowing," Pup said. "I'll take it over a lie." Dale felt something loosen in his chest. He had risked the truth. He had not lost the name. Then Pup reached into his pack. He set an object on the table between them. It was a crown of black metal, curled and sharp, laced with gold. It caught no forge light. It ate it. "Since we're trading truths," Pup said, "here's mine. I pulled this off a dead king. Aldric Thornwood. Plump old man, purple robes, no fight left in him." His voice dropped. "He was on his floor. No mark on him. But his crown was gone, and I found this one shoved under his bed." Dale went still. The crown did not belong to the living world. He knew it the way he knew the dead road under his boots. "That's not a king's crown," Dale said. "No." Pup pushed it an inch toward him. "I figured a man who guards the door between here and there might know who left it." Dale looked at the black metal. Something had crossed his line. Something had reached a king and swapped his crown for this. And he had not been at his post to stop it. "I have to go back to the crossing," Dale said. He stood. "And you are coming with me."