Chapter 18: The Stone Rings

The stone was cold for as long as it takes to be afraid.

Then it wasn't.

Heat ran up my arm from the palm, bright and clean, and the gray rock under my hand turned the color of the moon.

Silver light went out from my fingers along the top, and down the sides, and into every name cut there.

Row after row of old names lit up, one at a time.

The last name lit was at the top, in new letters, and the light there stayed white.

It said ALDRIC.

Then the stone rang.

It was one long, pure note, so deep I felt it in my teeth, and it filled the round room and the great room beyond.

Behind me, three hundred people made a single sound.

I turned around with my hand still on the stone.

They were crowded in the open doors, Blackwater and Cedar Ridge together, with their faces lit silver from below.

An old woman at the front of the Blackwater side put both hands over her mouth.

She was bent and white-haired, and she was the first to speak.

"Those are his eyes," she said.

"Whose?" someone whispered.

"Aldric's." Her voice broke. "Look at her. She has his eyes."

The old oath keeper of Blackwater pushed through the crowd with a cane.

He looked at the stone and then at me, and he went down on one knee on the bare floor, slowly, with a crack of old bones.

"It has rung for no one since the night of the fire," he said. "I thought I would die before I heard it again."

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