Page 66 of The Cradle of Ice

Wryth took a moment to study the wonder before him.

A convoluted web of copper tubes and blown-glass tanks bubbled and flowed with arcane alchymicals. The apparatus filled the obsidian chamber, stretching from the floor to the arched roof. It huffed, steamed, and thumped like a living beast.

“Come see this!” Keres urged from the heart of the mechanism.

Concerned, Wryth bowed and twisted his way through the gleaming copper web, aiming toward its center—where a talisman of great significance lay hidden and wired in place, fed by the energies of the bloodbaernes.

To the eye, it appeared to be an ordinary bronze bust of a curly-bearded man. But it was so much more. Its bronze skin roiled with the energies suffusing through it. The finest of its curls and strands of hair waved, as if stirred by invisible winds. Crystal eyes of a violet blue glowed dully, blind to all around it.

The artifact had been discovered two millennia ago, but for centuries, no one truly knew what to make of it, only appreciating its beauty and workmanship. It had been studied, dismissed, until it finally made its way to Azantiia.

Over time, following the guidance found in ancient tomes, the Iflelen had learned how to fuel the artifact and stir it back to life. Still, it had taken centuries to wake the talisman from its slumber and glean what little they could. The head had spoken only four times. Each utterance was cryptic, whispered in a language no one understood. Those four messages were inscribed in the Iflelen’s most sacred texts, waiting to be deciphered.

Upon further study, their order also discovered that the holy talisman produced a strange emanation, not unlike bridle-song. It was as if it were forever calling out to the world. To monitor this keening, the artifact was surrounded by concentric bronze rings, lined by crystal spheres that contained lodestones suspended in oil, which served like hundreds of tiny weathervanes.

Then, last summer, another artifact was discovered—not just a bust, but an entire bronze figure, one that melted to life. Before they could secure it, the treasure was stolen.

Wryth’s hands curled into fists.

So close …

Still, he refused to give up. It was why he had come down here.

Keres waved him to the side, to where a new addition adorned the web, siphoning off a portion of the apparatus’s energy to fuel it. “Something strange is going on. The signal stopped its course and has not moved all day.”

“Show me.”

Keres made room for Wryth. The other Shrive, two decades younger, bore a matching gray robe and tattooed eyes, but exposure to corruptions long ago had flaked his skin, leaving him hairless, unable to grow the braids of most of their order. Many shunned him, but Wryth valued his brilliance.

Keres pointed to a waist-high dais. “Look for yourself and see.”

Atop the table rested a perfect cube of crystal, veined through with copper. At its core, a golden fluid pulsed and undulated. Wires ran from the vast machinery surrounding them to the cube. The artifact had been discovered at the location where the bronze woman had slept, deep in the mines of Chalk.

Another of their cabal—Skerren—a true alchymical genius, had come to believe the cube functioned like a tiny flashburn forge, but one of limitless power. With it, he had engineered a listening device capable of detecting emanations from the stolen bronze woman over a great distance.

Unfortunately, even genius took time.

Above the cube, a crystal sphere hung in a nest of wires that ran down to the pulsing artifact. The sphere was divided into two hemispheres. One had been cast in azure hues, the other in pinkish crimson, representing the Urth’s two halves. Between them circled the green band of the Crown.

Keres pointed to a softly glowing yellow blip far out into the Frozen Wastes. It marked the location of the bronze woman’s emanations. Sometimes it shone brighter; sometimes it was barely discernible.

This morning it had flared so intensely that it had cracked a web of lines into the crystal. It was what had troubled Wryth all day. He feared the listening device might have been damaged.

Wryth leaned closer, noting that the glow had shifted slightly from where the sphere had cracked—but just barely.

“And it settled there?” he asked. “It’s not moved?”

Keres nodded. “Not as of yet.”

Wryth frowned, struggling to understand what had happened. Still, he saw an opportunity. “This may serve us.”

He reached to the sphere and hovered his fingertip over another glow, reddish in hue. It also shone out in the Wastes, only farther to the east. It marked a fleet of craft—three swyftships and one battle barge—that Wryth had dispatched across the ice. Skerren commanded the barge, wielding an instrument that continually emanated the same bronze signal, one that Wryth could track from here. Skerren also carried a fist-sized sphere of lodestones to locally monitor for the bronze woman’s presence—though it could reach only so far.

Months ago, when Skerren had first tested the listening device, it had quickly detected the signal out in the Wastes. The location had made no sense at the time. Even Skerren had thought his calculations might be off. But many lowborn along the Crown’s eastern border had been questioned. Gold and torture soon revealed the truth.

The girl Nyx, along with her allies and the bronze woman, had indeed set off into the Wastes. But no amount of gold or torture could reveal why they had set off on this course.

Regrettably, the enemy had a month’s lead on them. Still, Wryth had the resources of the entire kingdom at hand. Ships had been quickly modified for icy travel and heavily fueled. The hope was to close that distance.