Page 114 of The Iron Dagger
She showed her mother how to grip her wrist, and she braced herself on a stone nearby as her mother pulled with all her strength. It took a couple of tries, leaving Hara panting and her eyes streaming from pain, but then she felt some relief as the ball of the joint was tucked back into its cradle. Swelling had already begun, and she could barely lift her arm, but at least the worst of the pain was gone.
Hara looked up and found that they were at the bottom of the glacier pit. The sky above was swirling gray, and Hara gave a start when she realized what lay before her.
A giant slab of sorbite rested in a steep angle against the wall.
It looked like a doorway to another world. Glacier water trickled over the face of the enormous deposit, obscuring the view of Hara’s beach within. The only thing that shattered the illusion was the hole that marred the center. It bubbled and crackled, ugly as a festering wound. As she watched, the sizzling edges continued to spread.
She felt her mother’s gentle touch on her arm, and Hara turned around. A small group of people were clustered on the sand. Many were wearing the long dark robes of court sorcerers, some more bedraggled than others. There was a sound behind her, and two more people landed sprawling on the sand. Hara’s mother and another sorcerer went to help them.
Here and there, small white sticks stuck out of the sand at odd angles. Only when Hara noticed a skull with empty eye sockets did she realize they were skeletons. She swallowed, remembering the fae woman telling them that the fae used the stone as a way to dispose of their dead.
“Something has corrupted the stone,” said a middle-aged man with a shadow of scruff around his strong jaw. He was tall, with blunt, handsome features.
“I think it was that,” said a younger woman, who pointed at the iron dagger half submerged in the sand. “ I can feel it from here.”
Hara went to it and picked it up. It seemed undamaged, and she brushed the sand from its blade before sheathing it at her waist. There was a light gasp from the woman.
“You can touch it?”
“I have earth magic,” said Hara evasively.
“You are the one who tore the stone,” said the man. Hara nodded, and the faces around the cave turned to her with wonder.
Hara needed to plan.
Now that the stone was slowly disintegrating, more and more people would be emerging from it, either by taking the leap or having no choice as the gaping hole consumed their world.
The haunting roar they had heard at the lip of the crater was the rush of water. Hara squinted into the darkness and saw a black river flowing past under a shelf of ice. The water coursing down the face of the stone flowed into it, and from there it would be carried down the mountain and into the city.
But when the stone was gone and every sorcerer trapped within was set free, the magic would disappear. Hara did not want to imagine the consequences this would have. She thought she would have time to think of a way to avoid Corvus and Falk’s wrath as they slowly freed the sorcerers one by one. That would have taken months, if not years. She had not counted on destroying the stone outright and freeing them all in one fell swoop.
But those troubles could wait. First, they needed to find a way out of the glacier. Gideon was up there somewhere, waiting for her to emerge.
She glanced around at all the sorcerers. Most were probably too shaken by their ordeal to be of any help.
“Mother, Gideon is nearby. Perhaps with the help of the fae he could get us out with ropes.” She said. Hara grimaced as she tried to imagine making the climb up the icy walls of the pit with her injured arm.
“Ropes?” said the man with the strong jaw. “Are we not sorcerers?”
Hara turned to him. “What is your name?”
“Roger Brightbellow,” he said, rolling up his sleeves. “I can melt this. Can anyone help mitigate the collapse?”
“Yes,” said the small woman who had sensed the iron dagger. “I’ll catch anything that falls.”
“Good. Come with me,” he said, striding to the solid ice wall where the river disappeared underneath. He rubbed his palms together and then his fingertips, and sparks flew from them. Then he stood back several paces from the wall and threw his hands out.
A stream of liquid fire blasted from his hands, and the glacier began to creak as the heat lashed against the icy surface.
Hara’s breath stilled. She had never seen such magic.
Water flowed freely as the ice wall began to melt, and a couple other witches with fire magic went to help him. When the wall finally could not support itself, a loudcracksounded, and the fire mages halted their assault. The cracks spread and crackled for what seemed like several minutes, and then the first chunks of ice began to fall from the top. The other sorcerers let out panicked screams, scrambling to take cover as the wall began to collapse.
The small woman stepped forward. Before the first boulder of ice hit the ground, she brought up her arms and slowed its progress, gently directing it to the side. Each piece that fell slowed, hovered, and was set aside gracefully. When it was obvious that the woman’s weightless power was well up to catching any debris that would rain down, Roger steppedforward and resumed his blast of molten fire. In no time, they had begun to blaze a tunnel through the ice, and Hara glanced behind her.
The sorbite was only a smoking ring of delicate stone now, and at any moment, it would collapse. Her mother came to stand by her side.
“There is no one left inside,” she said. “They are all accounted for.”
