Page 52 of Homeward for a Spell

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.

“You did it!” Sage cries, low and amazed, flinging her arms around Araphi to knock them both down into the snow. “You brilliant, brilliant bard!” She squeezes Araphi tightly, their faces inches apart.

Araphi breathes in the scent of woodsmoke, leather, and all of the other delicious things that are so very Sage, and shoves her lute aside so that nothing lies between them. Then she kisses the ranger in triumph.

She did it.

She really and truly did.

That night, after a day of rest, for themselves and the horses, as well as celebration, the party sits around the campfire they’ve made in the presumed living quarters of the temple. Orange light paints the walls, casting their shadows against the stones.

It should be relaxing, especially after all the storytelling and singing and, frankly, drinking. But worry snakes through Araphi still.

“To the end of the adventure!” Remy calls out, raising a bottle of mead brought along from Briarwall.