“It will if we do it right.” He kept going, pausing between words now as his breath grew short. “We need to find a stream or a river. The dogs can’t track us —”
Ashyn heard a whistle of air. Tova let out a snarl, racing forward as Ronan halted in his tracks and stumbled. Another whistle. Ashyn saw the arrow this time as it struck him hard in the shoulder, knocking him down. That’s when she noticed the first – lodged in his throat. He gasped and wheezed, eyes bulging as he yanked at it.
“No!” she said, racing forward. “Do not pull —”
Something hit her from behind. She went down, her dagger falling uselessly from her hand. She fought whatever had her. She heard Tova yelp, as if injured. A hand clamped a noxious-smelling cloth over her mouth and nose, and her legs slid out from under her as everything went dark.
Ashyn had been drugged once before. It was not enough to qualify her as an expert, but this time, when she woke, the period of “where am I?” confusion did not last nearly as long. Her eyes cracked open, and she felt a familiar tightness in her throat and looseness in her brain. It all rushed back. She bolted upright in the darkness.
“Tova!”
He licked her face, and she threw her arms around him, then went still.
“Ronan,” she whispered. “He was…”
Shot. In the throat. With an arrow.
She scrambled to her feet. The room, she realized, was not pitch-black. Thin light filtered in through a hole in the ceiling. Her eyes were still adjusting, though, and all she could see were that hole and Tova’s pale fur.
“Ronan,” she whispered to the hound. “Where’s Ronan?”
Tova made a noise in his throat. A whimpering whine that said he didn’t know and was wondering, too. Ashyn stumbled about, as if she might find Ronan, though she knew he wasn’t there – Tova would smell him if he was.
An arrow in the throat.
He’d been pulling it out. She’d tried to tell him not to. If it had hit a vein that was the worst thing he could do. Had he pulled it out? Was he…?
She swallowed hard and lowered herself to the floor. Her hands came down on rock. For a few moments, she just sat there, knees drawn up, thinking of Ronan, running over what had happened, hoping to recall some proof that he’d survived, trying to visualize him falling and see exactly where the arrow had gone in. It did no good. She couldn’t remember.
She blinked against the numbing sedative. Fretting and worrying weren’t going to fix anything or answer any questions.
She pressed her fingertips against the rock and ran them over the surface, feeling bumps and crevices and tiny sharp pebbles.
Why was there a rock floor in a room?
She blinked again, harder now, and then looked up at the strangely shaped hole. She rose. It was indeed a hole… in rock. A rough, natural hole that wound its way up to sunlight. She looked at the wall.
It was all rock.
I’m not in a room. I’m in a cave.
Then there had to be an exit. It was still nearly impossible to see more than that distant light and Tova, but as she squinted and turned, she made out another pale shape at least ten paces away. As she started toward it, the light seemed to catch something on the wall, making it gleam, and she jumped, startled.
A picture had been drawn on the wall. When she stood close, she saw lines. Once she backed up for the full view, though, the lines vanished into the shadows.
What had caught the light looked like the lacquered wood tiles used for armor, but it was twice the size of her hand. When she stood on her tiptoes, she realized it wasn’t brown wood. It was… every color. Iridescent, like a fish scale. She touched it and that was exactly what it felt like. The biggest fish scale she’d ever seen.
Tova whined, telling her this was no time to solve a mystery. That pale shape across the cave might be the exit. While she suspected she’d find it guarded, at least she could find out who held her here. The Okami clan, presumably. She only hoped they’d tell her what had happened to Ronan.
As she walked toward the pale object, it did indeed seem like a door. An oddly shaped one, with light coming in around the edges. The closer she drew, the less like a door it appeared, but her mind was still fixed on that image, and she couldn’t figure out what exactly she was seeing. It sat on the cave floor and reached to her head. Something white, with a dark hole in the middle. A dark, jagged hole with… teeth. She was looking at teeth, each as big as her forearm.
It’s…
She stopped short.
It was a massive skull, twice as big as Tova’s entire body.
What creature grew that large?
Moria had said the thunder hawk had huge, jagged teeth and horns, and Ashyn could see horns, long and curving. But this skull had a snout, not a beak.
Tova crept toward the skull, cautiously, as if the skull was still affixed to a living beast. He sniffed it. Then he crouched, whining.
“What is it?” she whispered.
He looked back at her and stayed where he was, hunkering down in front of the skull. She took the last few steps toward it.
What is it?
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
Yes, you do.
She swallowed and reached out to touch the skull. It felt ice-cold, but instead of pulling her hand back, she pressed it against the bone, and the chill of it made her shiver, her eyes squeezing shut. As soon as they closed, she smelled ice, sharp and cold, and she heard the flap of massive wings and a deafening roar.
“A dragon,” she whispered. “It’s —”