Page 97 of The Last Rose of Ashwood

Listen only when called.

Do not answer what speaks without name.

Blood opens.

Memory binds.

The final inscription had not weathered away. Someone had struck it repeatedly until the meaning was gone. That unsettled her more than ruin ever could. People destroyed warnings only when they feared someone might understand them. The tallest stone stood at the center of the ring, its listening mark cut deeply enough that snow had gathered within the grooves. Beneath it, half-hidden at the base, a narrow opening interrupted the stone.

Seren crouched and brushed snow away with her good hand. “A door?”

“A threshold.”

She glanced up. “There is a difference?”

“There usually is when the person standing before it intends to survive crossing.”

A faint movement touched Seren’s mouth, but she returned her attention to the opening. Aelira knelt opposite her and examined the locking marks without allowing her fingers to touch them. The seal had not been broken. No tool had chipped the stone, and none of the binding lines had been cut. Yet the seam had opened.

“General.” Mara’s voice drew them both around. She had moved to the outer edge of the circle and was crouched over a shallow impression in the snow. With the side of her glove, she brushed away the fresh powder until the shape of a boot emerged beneath it.

Then another.

Several people had approached the stones before the storm. The tracks were too deliberate for villagers wandering out of curiosity, and the soles were finer than anything worn by hunters or ordinary soldiers. One heel had left the faint remains of a geometric tread Aelira had seen often enough in Coalition administrative districts.

Council.

Cold settled deeper into her than the weather.

Seren saw it too. Aelira watched understanding move through the general’s face as she connected the tracks to the green clerical cloth caught among the roots below, and whatever anger followed was restrained enough to make it more convincing.

Aelira had spent years imagining what satisfaction might feel like if Seren Veyr ever looked upon the Coalition and saw something rotten beneath its promises. The reality proved disappointingly complicated. Seren did not look like a woman offended that her institution had deceived her. She looked like someone discovering harm she believed she should have prevented.

“The key,” Seren said, turning back toward the central stone. “Will it open this?”

Aelira’s hand settled over the inside of her coat. She wished Seren had asked a different question. The stone fragment hidden there was not a key in the crude sense of metal fitted to a lock. The oldest seals had been made before Earthspeakers separated craft from covenant, when doors were built to recognize not only the object placed into them but the authority behind the hand that carried it.

A key could be copied.

Blood could not.

At least, that was what Aelira had been taught. If the seal answered her, she would have to explain why. Not all at once, perhaps, but Seren was already building the shape of her from fragments, and Aelira knew too well how one dangerous answer led naturally to the next.

Why do you know the script?

Why did the roots find you?

Why does the key recognize your hand?

Aelira had kept her identity alive by ensuring questions never formed a path. Now the earth seemed intent upon laying one at Seren’s feet.

“Elira?”

Aelira withdrew the key. The response was immediate. Green light moved through the carvings around the circle, faint beneath the frost at first, then bright enough to cast thin veins across the snow. Coren whispered something that sounded suspiciously like prayer, while Mara remained silent, one hand resting near her knife. Seren’s fingers moved toward the hilt of her sword. There was something oddly comforting about Seren Veyr believing that, if the ancient earth finally rose against them, steel should at least be given the opportunity to object. The stone vibrated against Aelira’s palm. Recognition passed through her skin.

With it came memory.

Her father stood beside her beneath the Worldroot Tree, his hands covering hers as he guided a child’s uncertain fingers over another ancient seal. Green light threaded the roots around them, turning his face gentler than memory had any right to preserve.