Zach Brenner's Arc

Chapter 18 of 86

Zach held the parchment to Lyra's dying flame. Dark red marks covered the page. He turned it over and found only more marks. "Read it to me," he said again. "Every word. If I chase the wrong place, Malachar wins." Lyra took it back. Her purple eyes moved across the lines. Then she stopped. Her lips pressed thin. "I can read the letters," she said. "But this isn't a common script. It's sorcerer's cant. The letters spell a place, but I need the key to know which place." "Then guess," Zach said. Blood ran down his arm and dripped on the stone. "Guessing sends us north when he went south." Lyra shook her head. "We can't afford it." Raven limped closer. She looked over Lyra's shoulder. "You're an elf mage. You know these marks better than we do." Lyra traced one symbol with her finger. "This one repeats. In cant, a repeated mark names a river. And this pair before it—" She frowned. "Dead. It says the dead river." She looked up. "But that flows behind us, toward Hazelfen. Malachar isn't going deeper into this tower. He left it." Zach's chest tightened. "He's going home. Back toward the kingdom." "Toward the old ground past the dead river," Lyra said. "That's where he means to raise the great sorcerer. The name he wrote—" She read the last marks slowly. "It's Darkthorne's name. He's raising Maximus Darkthorne himself." The chamber felt colder. Zach knew that name. The sword had crossed worlds to put him against Darkthorne. His only road home ran through the sorcerer's defeat. And now a servant meant to wake him. "You're sure?" Zach asked. Lyra held his eyes. "The cant is clear. I'd stake my life on it. We go back down, out through the tunnels, and cross the dead river again. Malachar has a head start, but he travels slow with what he carries." Zach stood. Pain flared in his side. He looked at Raven, then Lyra. "We can't cross the dead river like this. I'm bleeding out. You can barely walk. Lyra's spent." He wiped his face. "We need to rest and heal our wounds first. If we hit those three-eyed things half dead, we don't reach him at all." Raven nodded. "There's a city between here and the river. Tyr Alys. We passed through it before." She hesitated. "My cousin lives there. Ayla. A white mage. She can close these wounds faster than any inn poultice." "Then we find Ayla," Zach said. He folded the parchment and pushed it into his pocket. The marks no longer meant nothing. They pointed one clear way. "We heal. We gather what strength we can. Then we cross the river and stop him before he raises that thing." Lyra let her flame die. In the dark, Zach felt the trail hold firm in his hand. He knew where Malachar had gone. Now he only had to get there alive.