Chapter 18 Araphi
Araphi
Mere hours later, Araphi stands by the banks of the Swallow. Since she couldn’t sleep for her nerves, she hoped to try Tea’s spellscroll before the rest of the party rose. At least she could fit some practice in while the party wasn’t around to watch her.
But that plan is foiled when Sage joins her at the river’s edge. Whether Araphi woke her or the ranger is just as anxious as she and never went to sleep, they’re here now, and Araphi may as well get started.
It’s so quiet, the only sounds are the Swallow burbling swiftly over the icy rocks, an owl hooting somewhere in the distance, and their twinned breathing.
The cold air of the Northlands prickles Araphi’s lungs, sharp and biting.
Their breaths form pearly white puffs in front of them.
Above the pines that surround the Swallow, the star-scattered, predawn sky is deep navy.
Araphi would like to say something, but what could she say? Perhaps: I’m afraid to fail. Or: Maybe you should’ve found someone else for this task. Or: I think you’re spectacular, can I kiss you under the stars instead of trying to raise an artifact?
But no.
Araphi forces herself to focus. She inhales sharply and then lets out a long breath. Once for courage. Twice for calm. Three times for steadiness, just as her mother taught her in the music room.
Courage.
Calm.
Steadiness.
She’s going to need all three if she wants to pull this off.
What are you doing, Araphi Clauneck? Why are you standing on the edge of a river, having convinced these people that you can work this kind of magic? Thinking that you can accomplish anything more important than a few floating lights or a charmed crowd?
The voice isn’t her own. Nor is it Clauneck’s or even her mother’s. Rather it sounds a bit like Denby’s—drunk, incredulous, self-assured.
But her wretched fiancé probably hasn’t even noticed she’s gone.
Courage.
Calm.
Steadiness.
She steps closer to the edge of the Swallow, peering into the fast-moving current.
Ice crusts the stones along the water’s edge, gleaming in the dancing flames from the lantern Sage holds.
The stream itself seems so small. Little more than a trickle.
Truly, with a running start, she could probably leap across the entire thing.
And yet, if Sage and Remy are to be believed, there’s an entire sideways river down there, the deadliest thing they’ve faced yet.
Araphi runs her fingers over the lemon charm at her throat and then over the bronze acorn as well, even though neither are made to bring luck.
Araphi trusts her ranger—gods, when did Sage become her ranger?
—but she’s just not confident about herself.
“Are you very sure the dragon’s tooth is here? ” she whispers.
“I’m sure.” Flickering lantern light deepens the shadows cast by Sage’s frown. She glances from the water to the ruined temple. “It has to be. This is exactly like the map.”
Dragon’s tooth? Clauneck’s voice is suddenly thunderous in her head. Where are you, Araphi Clauneck? What are you tangled up in, to toy with powers far beyond you?
She winces. Her hateful patron always manages to wedge himself in when she feels at her weakest, sensing the cracks in her confidence as soon as they appear.
Clutching her lemon charm so tightly that the texture surely imprints on her palm, she hums frantically to herself, a rotation of melodies to drown out his scathing voice until, once more, she’s shored up her walls against him.
She’s still not entirely sure where her bard magic lies. In the skill with which she plays? In her intention as she beseeches powers on another plane? In sheer luck that a god or devil is listening?
And how will any of it interact with Tea’s spellscroll?
“You can do this. You were top of your class at school,” Araphi mutters to herself as she slips the parchment out of her coat and unrolls it, holding it up to the faint moonlight.
“Were you really, Bard?” Sage’s eyebrows quirk.
Araphi meets her gaze and smirks, immediately on steadier ground with the ranger by her side. “Indeed. Though I dropped out to marry Denby.” Then she scowls at the memory. The argument she’d had over it had been vicious.
They’d been at a family dinner in late spring, after Yael had absconded to Bloomfield the first time.
The whole clan—minus Yael of course—had been called down to Hazelbend, her Aunt Menorath’s ancestral home outside Lintonbury, to strategize beyond the scrutinizing gaze of the capital.
“I know you’ll miss seeing your friends, but there are some things more important than school, Araphi,” her mother had said to her.
A note of regret laced the words, but she still pushed through them.
“It’s time to focus on what will serve the family, and what will ultimately serve you best.”
“How does leaving school help the family, or help me?” she’d snapped back.
Aunt Menorath had laughed. Because of course Yael’s parents had more of a voice in this conversation than her own parents.
Araphi’s wedding was a business negotiation, after all.
Aunt Menorath and Uncle Baremon were heads of both the family and the family business, and they weren’t taking any chances with her wedding.
“Darling, be serious for once in your life,” Menorath said. “You’re studying what, history?”
“Musical history.”
“Ridiculous. Utterly. What will you need that for? You have your beauty, your connections, the lifestyle you’ll be looked upon to maintain as both a Clauneck and an Oreborn spouse. You don’t need classes. You need to be seen in society!”
Uncle Baremon had agreed, obviously, and the conversation had moved on from there. Araphi withdrew from school the next day—the very same day she was supposed to be meeting with her advisor about an ancient ballad she’d been studying for translation.
Sage squeezes her wrist gently, the touch pulling Araphi back to the present. “I never finished school either,” Sage confesses. “Never could sit still long enough. But maybe you’ll get back to it someday.”
What she doesn’t say: Maybe you won’t marry Denby. Maybe your life won’t be the one that awaits you back in Ashaway. Maybe this adventure doesn’t have to stop here.
Of course it does. And retrieving the artifact will only bring the adventure to its inevitable conclusion. But it has to end eventually. This was always going to end.
Might as well get on with it.
“I can do this,” she whispers.
“That’s the spirit,” Sage says as she steps back from the water. “I believe in you, Bard.”
Araphi offers Sage a small, grateful smile, then takes three more breaths. Courage, calm, steadiness.
She reads Tea’s inscription from the parchment, pronouncing the strange words aloud as best she can, given the glut of Tea’s included notes.
Nothing happens. No glimmer of magic in the air, no ripple in the water’s surface.
Araphi reads it again, sure she’s got it right this time. When there’s still no change, she tries singing, pairing the words to notes in a melody she composes in an instant.
And nothing happens.
Well, fuck it.
Araphi drops the spellscroll to the snow so that she can lift the lute strapped to her back (for comfort as much as anything) and hold it in both hands. She places her fingers on the strings and begins to play.
Her voice is shaky as she starts to sing, but it grows stronger with each word.
She forgets the incomprehensible spell and sings a song of seeking—a tale of two lost lovers who find each other after many years—that her mother taught her to help her find lost items. Magic pours into her from somewhere, somehow.
By the end of the first verse, golden magic fills Araphi, sweet and dazzling like honey in a jar.
With the next section she sings, the honeyed magic pours slowly out of her, slipping into the Swallow and illuminating the water.
Araphi stirs it around with the next verse.
Her magic plumbs the depths of the river, seeking the dragon’s tooth.
Swift as sunlight, the magic slides over stones and sifts through sand.
Reaching, unspooling with each note of the song, it weaves along the riverbed.
All at once, the golden threads of magic stop, curling themselves around something tucked into a deep crevice of rock. It’s the dragon’s tooth. Araphi knows it instantly, and her magic purrs under her hands. It’s so very delighted to have found an object of such tremendous power.
Araphi sings the next two verses of the song, urging the tooth out. Whispering to it with the magic that it’s needed above. Golden fingers of magic tug at it slightly, but it resists.
Please.
Still the artifact doesn’t yield. Only two lines of the song remain. Araphi focuses all her will, all her music, all the magic pouring through her, toward the tooth.
Please, she implores the magical item. I need you to give up your hiding spot and rejoin the world.
For what cause? A voice that’s ancient yet timeless whispers back to her.
Araphi is so surprised, she nearly stops singing.
It’s for a good cause, Araphi explains through the magic, forcing belief into the promise.
She has no idea who the Client is or what they want to do with the artifact.
But producing the dragon’s tooth will help Sage.
It will make her ranger happy, and what could be a better cause than that? I promise.
The river yields at last, the golden magic surging below its surface.
For a moment, it takes the shape of something immense—scaled, with a tail as long as a ship—that the Swallow seems far too small to contain.
And Araphi understands just which powerful entity answered her song-prayer. The ancient dragon god.
Then the surface breaks, and like a shooting star, the artifact launches upward and arcs to land at Araphi’s feet as her final chords fade away.