A glyph [https://i.imgur.com/ZLENX3y.png]

Fresh snow had covered the body.

Andra dug with her gloved hands and her knife. Her breath hung in the still morning air. As the body slowly emerged, the blood-scent which had drawn her grew stronger. She dug until her gloves scraped the stiff folds of a parka.

She cleared the face. It was not her sister, but a young man, his ice-crusted eyes staring. There were no other bodies. He was alone. For six days, she had tracked her sister south. Three days ago her tracks had joined with another. Now one was dead, and it was not her sister.

The digging had warmed her, and she felt sweat clammy beneath her clothes. She stood and walked a wide circle, scanning the fresh snow, then returned to look at the body again.

She cleared more snow.

The dead man was lasker, and like her, his clothing was sealskin. Blood had frozen on the front of his parka, centred on a black hole. He smelled of blood and burning. She had seen death many times, but never a wound like this. Unease stirred in her gut. She pressed her face close to the corpse and sniffed, drawing air deep into her nose.

Though the scent was faint, she was certain now. Her sister had been with him.

So her sister, travelling south, had met this man. From the style of parka and his face tattoos, he came from the Sea Eagle Clan. Her sister had joined him. Perhaps she had hoped to find a new family: as if she could forget what she had done, as if she could walk away, and live, and be happy.

Acid stung the back of Andra’s throat. She stood and breathed deeply until the anger stilled, and she could return to considering the man and his death.

His parka was decorated with beads and he wore a bear-tooth amulet round his neck, underneath the outer garment. She turned the body over, and found his spear. Only one spear, so he had not intended to hunt or fish, and he had been travelling south before he had met with Cara. Most likely, he had carried furs to trade with the humans — but if so, that pack was gone.

He had been killed then, not by any beast she knew, nor by other lasker. If lasker had killed him, they would have taken the flesh-and-blood price, and his knife, if nothing else. But all his gear had been left with him, as if it were of no value. If he had not been killed by an animal or by lasker, that left only humans. There must have been more than one. Humans were slow and cowardly — they only attacked lasker with the advantage of numbers. They had killed him with a weapon new to her, something that struck without warning, bringing death like lightning. He had no opportunity to strike his murderers or dodge the fatal blow.

But then, what of her sister? The humans hadn’t killed her, so either she had fled, or the humans had taken her with them. The night’s snow had covered the scene and hidden the tracks that would tell the full story. If her sister had fled alone, there was little chance of picking up her trail, but the humans had trampled a wide, deep path, which the fresh snow had covered but not obliterated. They had approached from the south and returned the same way.

The south was no place for lasker. Andra had never been there, rarely even seen a human, and what she had seen she didn’t like.

The north wind smelled clean. It would be no dishonour to abandon her hunt and return home. Home to the life she knew, to simple choices and familiar things. Home to face grief and bitterness, alone among kin who were no kin.

The dead man stared at the sky, his startled expression frozen in death, and she thought how young he was — not many summers older than Cara — and then she remembered that other body in the snow, so tiny and so frail, and her anger stirred.

She crouched beside the dead man and took his knife, which was human-made steel with a handle carved of whale ivory. The blade had been sharpened over many years until it was thin and curved like the dying moon. It felt good in her hand — a fine weapon for a hunter.

She wasn’t hungry. Even the heavy smell of blood was no temptation, and she bore no responsibility to this stranger. Still, she felt the need to show respect, so she sliced his face and tasted his blood. It was sweet, cold and metallic, death and life.

If she found the humans who killed him, if she had the chance, perhaps she would avenge him. For now, there was nothing more she could do. His clan might find him, or scavenging animals would do him honour.

Her path lay to the south.

Si Glyph [https://i.imgur.com/mHhTdaF.png]

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Simon crouched to examine the cavern floor. The cold-lamp shed its light over red granite underfoot and overhead, flat planes of rock stretching into the black distance. Pale lines of quartz threaded the rock, but of the seam of crystalline tin ore he sought, there was no sign at all.

He drew his battered leather tool case from his pocket, and selected a stylus. The tool was an old one, his first. The engraved initials had worn faint, but the hardened steel point was sharp as ever.

The forces he required were those of seeking, of moving wide and fast, of information returned, and metal, specifically tin, was what he sought. The required glyphs lined up in his mind, ordered and neat. As he scratched the sigil into the rock, each glyph flowed from his stylus in smooth curves, one combining harmoniously with the next in a balanced whole.

With the sigil complete, he sat back on his heels. Pain pulsed in his bad leg. He ignored the ache and focused on the sigil, on the fierce concentration necessary to jam the complex form into the back of his mind. The Summoning built and grew, a subtle pressure like a forewarning of summer thunder.

And then, with that curiously hard to describe mental flick, he released it into the world.

‘Adept, you’re wanted.’

Simon glared at the intrusive voice.

The young miner brushed back a fringe of over-long dirty blond hair. ‘Afsen wants you.’

Already, Simon’s mind echoed with distance, vibrated with crystal and planes of force. To drag his attention back to the smallness of human scale, and the slovenly young man grinning at him, was an effort. ‘Now? What for?’

‘Wants you to see summat.’

The young fool’s name was Cal, Simon recalled. ‘To see what?’

Cal chuckled. ‘Reckon you better see for yourself.’

It was Afsen who had insisted on him searching for tin, and now, as usual, he expected Simon to drop everything and come running on a whim. With half a mountain inside his head, he was inclined to refuse, but his concentration was already shattered. Besides, it was just possible Afsen needed his expertise. He better had.

‘All right. I’ll come.’ Simon struggled to his feet, wincing. His bad leg had stiffened just in the few minutes of crouching. He picked up the cold-lamp, and scuffed out the scratched sigil with his hob-nailed boot: mere habit, really—no one was likely to see it—but it didn’t do to leave such things lying around.

Cal bounced ahead, sure-footed on the jagged rock, and Simon trudged after him.

The ceiling lowered from twenty feet, to ten, to six. The Summoning spoke of distance and time beyond human imagination. The fissure they stood in was a mere breath of air between sheets of granite, stable for an eon. Walking required concentration, to focus on moving feet instead of miles.

Cal paused for him to catch up. He gestured to the darkness beyond the light of the cold-lamp. ‘One of the men said he heard a noise, the other day, like a beast, moving around. Some real big animal.’

Simon stopped beside him. ‘There’s no animals down here. What would they eat?’

‘I dunno. Someone said, that’s all.’

‘Well, you shouldn’t repeat stupid rumours.’

Cal shrugged and set off again. ‘This way. Mind your head.’

The Summoning was fading now, spread and lost in the vastness of the earth, leaving Simon fragile and small. It was all too easy to imagine monsters breathing in the darkness, claws scraping on rock, but it was only the echo of their own breathing, their own shuffling footfalls multiplied and returned to them four-fold, sounding like someone following.

Simon glanced behind. The candle glow of a miner’s lamp bobbed toward them. The echo had tricked him after all: someone was following. ‘Who’s there?’

‘Father?’

‘Lorie? What are you doing here?’

Caught in the stark white glare of the cold-lamp, she looked frailer than a girl of sixteen should, thin and pale. She blinked and shielded her eyes. Sam stood beside her, tense and sullen, clutching the miner’s lamp to his chest. Sweat plastered his dark hair to his forehead.

‘What are you doing here?’ Simon said. ‘You shouldn’t be in the mine. Haven’t I’ve told you enough times? It’s dangerous and the air is bad for your lungs.’

Lorie looked pointedly at Sam.

‘It’s my fault,’ Sam said. ‘Nana sent me to find you. She didn’t trust me to tell the truth on my own, so Lorie said she’d come too.’

‘I wanted to see the cave anyway,’ Lorie said.

Simon glared at his son. ‘Sam? What have you done now?’

‘He fell through the chapel roof,’ Lorie said.

‘Only a bit,’ Sam added. ‘It was an accident. I din’t mean to.’

‘Didn’t mean to,’ Simon corrected reflexively. ‘But what in Light’s name were you doing on the chapel roof?’

Sam hung his head. ‘Nothing.’

‘What’s the damage?’

‘It’s not as bad as it sounds,’ Lorie said. ‘The priest was upset, and Nana smashed a jar of pickles. Then she said Sam had a demon in him, and she’d nail him to the floor if she had her way.’

‘I might let her,’ Simon said. ‘I don’t know what do with you any more. You’re fourteen, Sam, nearly a man, and you can’t go a day without getting into trouble. Light knows what will become of you if you go on this way. You’ll end up working in the mine for the rest of your life—’ He stopped himself saying: ‘like Cal here.’

Sam shrugged. ‘Fine. Can I go now?’

‘No. Since I can’t trust you out of my sight, you can stay where I can keep an eye on you.’

‘Can I stay too?’ Lorie said.

‘No, you can go home.’

‘That’s not fair. I’ve done nothing wrong, and you said you’d show me the cave some time, if it was safe.’

‘All right, all right.’ He took a breath. The cave was safe, as much as any part of the mine was. ‘But both of you, stay near me. No wandering off, understand? And if I tell you do something, you do it, no arguments—’

‘Because it’s dangerous underground.’ Lorie smiled. ‘We know.’

Simon frowned at the two of them. He never used to have trouble with his children. Lorie had always been well-behaved, and Sam, well, Sam’s heart was in the right place. He just had more energy than forethought. Though really, it had been Rane who dealt with them day to day, while Simon was at work. He’d just tucked them into bed at night and laid down the law when it was needed, and that seemed to be enough.

Since his wife’s death, being a father was so much more complicated and difficult. Lorie was quiet, but she was growing up. She was already eying the town’s young men and he knew what that meant. Children grew up fast in Sark, and married young. And Sam… he really didn’t know what to do with Sam. No punishment got through to the boy.

From the corner of his eye, Simon noticed Cal smirking. He turned. ‘Let’s not keep Afsen waiting, shall we?’

Sam’s punishment for this latest escapade would have to wait until later. Simon hoped he’d think of something more appropriate than nailing him to the floor.