At the Spire Door

Kaelen barred the upper-room door with a length of iron and tested it twice. Elora watched from the bed, her boots on and her coat buttoned wrong at the throat.

“Keep the boots on,” he said. “If I call, come down only when I open the door.”

“What if you can’t open it?”

“Then stay here.”

She looked at the iron bar. “That’s a long time to stay.”

He pulled her collar straight and fastened the top button. “It won’t be long.”

He had no reason to promise that. He went out before she could ask what he meant.

The Spire’s lower entrance faced the southern slope. The stone passage beyond it narrowed before the first stair, a poor place for anything to turn around. Kaelen had dragged a heavy iron screen across the inner side of the doorway. It would slow a creature. It would not stop one. The fire line below the town had burned a gap, and there was little timber left to feed another blaze. The furnace beneath the Pyre-Chime held heat, though he could not bring it down here without risking the tower’s heart.

He carried a short iron bar instead and set it within reach of the stair. The handle was warm from his hand.

A knock sounded above him: three taps, then two. Elora’s signal from the upper room. She’d heard something.

Kaelen went to the narrow slit in the southern wall. The fog had thinned, showing the black slope and the snow pressed into its seams. Near the base of the Spire, tracks crossed the open ground. More than one set. They ran right up to the stone.

He had seen the trail bending toward them. He had hoped it meant the creatures were passing close by. Now there was a dark shape below the window, its shoulders hunched beneath flaking hide. Another moved behind it.

Kaelen lifted the iron bar and went back to the entrance.

“Stay up there,” he called.

“I am.”

The answer came through the floor, followed by the scrape of something being dragged across the upper room. She was setting the chest against her door. He had told her to stay put. She had found a way to help from there.

The lower door shuddered. The iron screen clanged against its frame.

Kaelen stood to one side of the passage, where the creature would have to turn to reach the stair. He kept the bar low. The Pyre-Chime’s outer ring waited above, close enough that he could reach it in a few breaths. He had told himself he would not use it for one creature. He had told himself that often enough to know what the words were worth.