Page 133 of Untempered
It didn’t make sense, and I couldn’t change that. So I built the fire until the moss low on the stone was curling and smoldering, falling away in messy, smoking chunks.
To the side, a bird erupted from a nearby tree, squawking. Chay’s shield came up in front of me, and I had my bow drawn. But nothing stirred. On the edge of the clearing, the horses hadn’t even looked up from the grass they were cropping.
Slowly, I lowered my bow. Slower still did Chay drop his shield. I was sad when he didn’t crouch behind me protectively again, which made no sense whatsoever.
“Should we feel something?”
I was confident we would, if it worked. “Fire cleanses,” I said.
Nothing.
“Ceiyemmyah pbettraawaken,” I tried. “Fire cleanses.”
Before me, it cleansed the moss off the stone. No more or less.
“Ceiyemmyah pbettracleanse Mysctheras with this fire.”
“Mysctheras?” Chay asked from behind me.
“La’Angi before Barloc,” I replied, straightening. My body protested, and my joints stuck as I went. I ached, and my head had started to feel the buzz of bees.
He didn’t ask more questions, and I was grateful for that. I stood, wrapped tightly in my cloak, and stared at the fire that should’ve triggered the protective spell set deep into the monolith, but wasn’t.
Fire cleanses. Thomas had said it like a mantra. It wasn’t unfair to assume it would trigger the spell, was it?
Feeling it all slipping away, I started pulling moss off more aggressively. Itwasblackened. I was on the right path. I had to be. I took the arrow in my hand and, using the steel tip, scraped some of the char off. It flaked away, a thick layer. And there wasmorebeneath it.
It had burned. Hot and long.
“Mayhap we need more fire,” I said, feeling sick. But I knew that couldn’t be right. There wouldn’t have been time to assemble a bonfire before a giant wave swallowed the city unless they’d kept it built and ready.
Chay set off to the nearby stand of trees, throwing his shield over his back. I kept working on the moss. IfIwere an old-time person in charge of a magical monolith, I would’ve engraved instructions on the thing itself.
Chay dragged over wood, and I built the fire slowly around the base of it until I reached where I’d rubbed up against it on the far side.
I’d bled. I’d bled on the stone. And those arrows had stopped.
I’d assumed it had just been the mage’s air magic. They’d called a halt, hadn’t they? It made sense, if they could control the air, they could control arrows.
My hand shaking, I took the arrowhead and pressed it to my palm. My blood came slowly, thick and black.Please, work.I squeezed my eyes closed and pressed my hand to the stone.
Nothing.
“Fire cleanses,” I said, but when I got no response, I wasn’t surprised.
I looked up to see Chay hauling a big branch in each hand. He was paler than he should’ve been, given how long he’d been at it and how much he was hauling.
What I could see of the surface was pockmarked and showed signs of flaking, as if some giant hand had shorn off slivers of it. It offered no solutions. I’d run through every single idea I’d had, and a few fresh ones.
Chay dropped the branches and came to stand beside me, hands on his hips, as we both stared at it.
“Wonder if time did what Barloc couldn’t,” he said softly.
“I think I hate him.”
Chay considered it. “That’s fair. We won’t make it back tonight, you know.”
I pushed away the ache in my bones, ignoring the hard stab of hopelessness that made tears prick at my eyes. “Then we’d better keep trying.”
