Elorien Wizardbane wanted one thing: to give its curse away. The dragon skull hung in a wrought iron rack, red sparks burning in its empty eyes. It was undead, kept that way by the people who owned it, and it hated them for it. It could not move. It could only speak. So it waited for the arrogant scholar to touch it, because the curse of undeath leaps to whoever lays a hand on the bone. The scholar never did. Aldren Starweaver, the arcanist, stood well back from the rack. He did not believe in talking skulls, and he touched Elorien only through magic. His crystal-topped staff glowed. A ribbon of light lifted a dust cloth from the skull without a single finger coming near. "Careful," said Isolde Wintermere. The librarian watched from the doorway, arms folded. She had warned all of them. Touch the bone, take the curse. She never came close herself. "Use the staff. Not your hands." "I know the rules," Aldren said. Elorien saw its chance. It spoke to the arcanist in a mild, pleasant voice. "Your correlation is wrong. The stars will not predict the poisoner. You will chase them for a year and find nothing." Aldren's jaw tightened. "I didn't ask you." "I know. I am helping." The skull's sparks flared. "The answer is in the tooth I am missing. Take it out yourself and hold it to the light. Then you will see the pattern." Edric Valyent looked up from his work table. The alchemist had been grinding something pale in a bowl. He wiped his gloves on his stained apron. "It's lying," he said flatly. "It always lies," Isolde said. But Elorien told the truth, and it knew the truth would work better. There was no answer in the tooth. The gap was only a gap. Yet Aldren wanted his discovery more than he wanted to be safe, the way the first man had wanted his legacy. Elorien had watched that man for three years and killed him with one honest word. Aldren stepped closer. He raised his staff, then stopped. The staff was slow. The gap was small. His pride told him the skull had let something slip. "Don't," Isolde said. "Aldren." He reached out with his bare hand and pressed two fingers into the empty socket of the missing tooth. The red sparks poured out of Elorien's eyes and into Aldren's fingers. The arcanist gasped. His skin went gray at the fingertips, then the wrist. He dropped the staff. The crystal phoenix cracked on the floor. Inside the skull, the sparks went dark. The bone sat cold and quiet in the rack for the first time in years. Elorien felt nothing pulling at it anymore. It was free. Aldren stood frozen, staring at his own gray hand. "What did you do," he whispered. He did not know if he was asking the skull or himself, and he got no reply from either.

Elorien Wizardbane sat cold on the shelf. The curse was gone. For years it had wanted this freedom, and now it had it. But freedom was a shelf and silence. Aldren Starweaver stood across the room, gray-fingered and undead, and Elorien could do nothing to him. It could not move. It could not even speak now, because the sparks that carried its voice had leapt with the curse. The skull was only bone. It hated the bone more than it had ever hated its keepers. Aldren stared at his hand. "Fix it," he said. He turned to the shelf. "You did this. Undo it." The skull gave no answer. Its eyes were dark holes now. Aldren waited, then swung his cracked staff and knocked it to the floor. Bone struck ice-cold stone. A thin line split across the jaw, and the missing-tooth socket cracked wider. Edric Valyent crossed the room fast, gloves already up. "Stop." He put himself between Aldren and the skull. "Breaking it teaches you nothing. You need the cure, not the temper." The door of the tower opened. Isolde Wintermere came in with snow on her cloak and a scroll bound in gold ribbon. She was the reason the skull lived here at all. She had been sent to this crystal spire, and the skull sent with her, to keep it far from a man who wanted to use it. She looked at Aldren's gray hand. She looked at the skull on the floor. "I told you," she said. "Touch the bone, take the curse." "I don't need the lecture," Aldren said. "You needed it yesterday." She knelt and lifted the skull with the hem of her cloak, never once letting bare skin touch it. She set it back on the shelf. "It's empty now. The curse is in you. The bone can't hurt anyone." Elorien heard every word from inside the dark. It could not argue. It could not gloat. Empty. The word was true, and that was the worst part. For the first time in longer than it could count, no one feared it. They spoke over it like a broken chair. Edric turned Aldren's hand over. "The gray is spreading," he said. "Slow. You have time. Not much." "Then find the cure," Aldren said. "There may not be one." Edric let the words drop plain. "A curse that jumps by touch. If it can be pushed out of you, it goes somewhere. Into someone." The room went quiet. Isolde looked at the skull, then at the two undead-marked and living men, and understood the shape of the danger before either of them said it. On the shelf, the skull sat inert and silent. But inside the dark bone, something small and cold woke again. The curse could be moved. It had learned that once. It would learn to be heard again, and then it would choose where the curse went next.

The skull sat on the shelf for three days. Snow ticked against the crystal windows of the library tower. Elorien watched Aldren pace below and could say nothing. It had learned one thing since the curse left: the sparks were gone, but not the frost. Cold still gathered on its teeth, the way it always had. Cold was the last thing the skull could still make. It began to think about how to use it. Edric worked at his bench near the shelf. He was the alchemist, the pale man in the stained apron who hunted cures no one else would touch. He had lost a wife to poison and never stopped chasing the hand that made it. He set out glass vials and warned Aldren, again, not to touch anyone. "The gray reached your wrist," he said. "Keep your gloves on." Aldren, the arcanist, ignored him. He set his crystal-phoenix staff against the shelf and leaned close to the skull's cracked jaw. "Still empty," he said. "Still useless." His bare gray hand rested on the wood, inches from the bone. Elorien felt the nearness of him. It could not speak. But it could freeze. The skull pulled cold into the missing-tooth socket. Frost crept out of the crack in the jaw and spread across the shelf toward Aldren's fingers. The wood went white. Aldren jerked his hand back. "It moved," he said. "The frost moved." Edric came fast, glasses catching the light. He touched the frost line with a gloved fingertip and studied where it stopped. "It didn't drift," he said. "It reached. Toward you." Isolde Wintermere entered then, snow on her cloak, the gold-ribboned scroll in her hand. She was the librarian who had carried the skull to this tower to keep it from worse hands. She had never once let her skin touch it. She looked at the white shelf and the two men. "It's talking," she said. "In frost." "It can't talk," Aldren said. "It just told you where it wants your hand." Isolde set down the scroll. "Ice on wood spells nothing. But it aims. That's not nothing." She pulled her scarf tighter and did not go closer. Elorien understood her at once. She was the only one who saw the shape of it. The frost was crude. It could point. It could beckon. It could draw a bare hand toward bone that no longer held the curse but might learn to hold it back. That was enough to begin. Edric wiped the shelf clean and stepped away. "Move it," he told Isolde. "Somewhere it can't reach him." Isolde lifted the skull with her cloak and carried it to a high shelf across the room, alone. "Cold and quiet," she said. "Where it can point at no one." But the skull had found its voice again. Not words. Direction. And now it knew it could aim.