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Instead, there was a dried-up creek bed, wilting grass and flowers surrounding it sparsely. The clearing seemed empty and was enclosed all the way around, so it could make a decent place to stay the night.
I approached the crumbling bank and looked down, finding a stone tablet half-buried in the bottom of the creek bed. There was writing carved on it, but too much dust covered the words.
I stepped down into the dirt, checking around me and keeping my ears and nose in tune with my surroundings.
Everything remained silent as I brushed away the dirt to reveal a poem carved into the stone.
Gentle enough to soothe the skin,
Light enough to caress the sky,
Hard enough to crack rocks
Three lives have I.
My fingers brushed away more of the dust, looking for other clues, but what I found instead was that the tablet was actually the lid of a box, buried in the hard dirt of the dry creek.
I tried to pry it up, but it wouldn’t move an inch, and I suspected magic was involved. This was a riddle.
I read the poem again, thinking about what might have three lives. Metal could crack rocks, and it could melt and form weapons, which might be a symbolic new life. That didn’t fit the other parts, though. Thinking of how Kas and I had found the falseBook of Ice, I remembered how ice could crack rocks.
But ice wasn’t light or gentle... I smacked my forehead with my palm. Water. Water had three forms - three lives. Liquid, gas, and solid.
“Water,” I said out loud, running my fingers over the box lid. I let out a surprised laugh as beads of water began to well up from the letters, seeping through them and dripping down into the creek bed. I let it run for a few minutes, then tried again to open the box, or dig out around it as the dirt turned to mud. But it was still fixed solidly shut.
Standing and stepping out of the creek bed, I began to pace.
“Ice and steam,” I said, hoping to trigger the rest of the riddle. The water kept tricking out of the box, though, and nothing else changed. Maybe it wasn’t enough to just solve the riddle.
Maybe I needed a way to freeze the water, which would crack the stone box lid, like in the poem. I had no idea what use steam might be, but I did know that the Ancient Magic once allowed vampires to actually manipulate water into ice, in addition to the freezing mindspeak magic we had now.
The words from the mist echoed in my head - remember to remember. I’d been part of the mist, if only briefly.
That meant I had some small connection to my ancestors - to their memories. I just had to focus on it to bring it into reality, like Nicolas had said.
Settling onto the bank in a position that let me watch the entrance to the clearing, I lifted my shirt and drew out theBook of Ice, still slightly awed that my wish had actually worked. Flipping through the pages, I asked the magic to show me a spell to change water into ice or steam.
I nearly fell over when the book delivered, falling open to a page I could easily read, with clear, crisp words on the paper.
“Holy fuck. Looks like things are finally looking up for me,” I murmured, committing the spell to memory before slipping the book back against my skin.
The water in the creek bed had risen several inches, and the box was all the way underwater. Wanting to stay dry, I called up my ice armor before stepping down into the water and tugging at the box. Still stuck. So I accessed my ice magic again and spoke the spell, cursing as the water froze instantly - all the water - temporarily trapping me in the creek bed up to my ankles.
Just like with my wish from the crimson stag, I would have to be careful of these spells. I was no trained mage, and there could be plenty of unintended consequences.
Kicking free of the ice, I stomped on the box lid, laughing in triumph when the stone cracked into several pieces.
Brushing away the shards of ice, I peered down into the box, which was incredibly deep, more like a well than a box.
Something was encased in ice at the bottom, but even on my belly stretching my arm down, it was too far for me to reach. The other part of the poem had mentioned caressing the sky, so I shrugged and stepped out of the icy creek.
Speaking the spell in reverse, I turned the ice to water. The item in the box didn’t float to the surface, so I tried the spell again.
The water immediately began to bubble and boil, turning the creek into a steaming mess within minutes. As it bubbled, something dark bobbed to the surface of the box and floated toward the opposite bank.
Hell yes - keeping my ice armor up, I hurried to retrieve it before my skin scalded.
The ice armor only held for a few seconds before melting off my body, but it had been enough.
