Zach Brenner's Arc

Chapter 41 of 86

The airship rose out of the swamp mist at dawn. Zach stood at the rail while Talon steered north. They had a plan to beat Malachar to the fire. But no one knew where that fire burned. Geneva called it the center of the world. That was not a place on any map. Zach could aim his sword now. He still had no target. He found Lyra below deck, bent over her map. Her finger pressed the parchment. "I feel him," she said. "Malachar. One heartbeat, moving fast." Her purple eyes stayed narrow. "But the fire gives me nothing. Stone carries heartbeats to me. Fire does not." Zach knelt beside her. "Then we can't find it." "We find it through him," Lyra said. "He knows the way. If I hold his beacon, he leads us straight to the door." Raven leaned in the hatchway, arms crossed. Her cat ears flicked. "Following him is how we always end up behind," she said. "He breaks a seal. We arrive after. He opens a door. We arrive after." "Not this time," Talon called from the wheel. He had come down the ladder without a sound, katanas still on his back. "He crawls on the ground. We fly. He picks his way past every marsh and gorge. We cut the line straight over them." Zach looked at Raven's brother. Weeks ago Raven had believed him dead five years. Now Talon read the land like a hunter reads snow. "How far ahead can we get?" "Depends where his line points," Talon said. "Lyra. Give me his heading." Lyra shut her eyes. She spread her hand flat and went still. "North and east," she said. "He's climbing. Toward the high country past the river." Her eyes opened. "He slows. He's stopping." Ayla stepped forward, staff in hand, crystal glowing pale. "Stopping where a man does not stop," she said quietly. "Bare rock. No shelter." "A cave," Talon said. "A mouth in the mountain. That's a way down." He climbed back to the wheel and turned the ship hard. The fins swung. "The center isn't beneath the whole world. It's beneath that peak. He's showing us the door right now." Zach felt the deck tilt as they banked. For the first time the fire had a place. Not a legend. A mountain he could see if he squinted north. "Then we don't chase him down," he said. "We land above and get inside first." Lyra pressed her hand to the map again and nodded. "He's underground now. His beacon fades. But I marked the mouth." She tapped one spot. "Right there." Zach drew the sword an inch. White light woke in the steel. He had wondered for forty days where to aim it. Now he knew. "Take us to that peak," he told Talon. "We reach the fire before the crystal falls." The airship climbed toward the northern mountains, and the last mystery in Malachar's path had a location at last.