Winter Flint's Arc

Chapter 14 of 18

The scrape came again. Winter pressed his palm to the cold stone beside the brace. Amber crouched near the wall, fingers tracing a seam in the rock he had not seen before. "Here," she said. "The mortar is wrong. Newer. Someone patched this." Durgan brought a hammer. Two strikes and the false stones fell inward. Behind them lay a small chamber, no taller than a child. Inside sat a carved figure — a pink scaled hatchling shaped from rose stone, wings folded, eyes wide. A guardpost marker. Above it, carvings ran floor to ceiling. Liri flew close and held a glow to the wall. She read aloud, slow and flat. "It cannot be killed. Only held. The forest is the cage. The roots are the bars. Break one, lose all." She paused. "The seal feeds on what grows above. That is why the rot moves. It is eating its own prison." Morgatha laughed once from her post. A short, dry sound. "So I freed nothing. I only fed it faster." She looked at Winter. "Does it matter? Gone is gone." Winter turned to the council. His voice was steady now. "We cannot kill it. We were never meant to. We rebuild the cage, or we lose the wood." The hill elder nodded once. The sprite elder nodded once. Durgan set his hammer down. "Then we plant," he said. "Tonight." Behind the braced door, the scraping stopped. Listening. Winter felt it listen. The council stood together, not unified yet, but pointed at the same work. He had his answer. Now he had to outlast the thing that had heard him say it.