Winter Flint's Arc

Chapter 2 of 18

Before either could speak, footsteps hammered across the clearing. A messenger stumbled past the leaf-filled cairn that marked the eastern path, gasping for breath. Her tunic was torn. Bark dust covered her arms. "The eastern grove," she said between gulps of air. "It collapsed. Overnight. Everything." Winter felt the ground shift beneath him. Not literally, but close enough. The eastern grove had stood for eight hundred years. He'd walked its roots as a child. Now it was gone, and he hadn't been there to see it happen. The gnome representative turned to the sprite elder. She nodded once. Winter pulled his satchel over his shoulder and started moving before either of them could change their minds. A council was no longer something he had to convince them to want. It was something they needed to survive. That made it easier and harder at the same time. The path east took them past the old treehouse fort that sprites used as a watch station. Winter had expected it to be empty. Instead, three sprites waited on the lowest platform, their wings dark with soot. One pointed toward where the grove had been. Winter stopped at the base of the tree. "How many?" he asked. The sprite looked down at him. "All of them," she said. "Twenty families. They're at the charred bridge now. Nowhere else to go." Winter's chest tightened. Twenty families meant twenty voices that would demand action. Twenty reasons the other clans would refuse to meet, claiming the sprites had brought this on themselves through carelessness or greed. He'd wanted proof that would force cooperation. This was proof that would scatter them further. He turned back to the gnome and the sprite elder who'd followed him. "We go to the bridge," Winter said. "We see what's left. Then we call every clan whether they want to come or not." The sprite elder's wings flicked once. "They'll say we're trying to use this for territory." Winter nodded. "They will. But if we don't call them now, there won't be territory left to argue over." The gnome representative pulled a horn from his belt, the kind used for gathering councils in the old days. Winter hadn't seen one in fifty years. The gnome looked at it, then at Winter. "You'd better be right about this." Winter took the horn. He wasn't right. He was just less wrong than doing nothing. That would have to be enough.