Draxus Flameheart's Arc

Chapter 4 of 9

Kerra needed to know where the raid began. Only one person could tell her. Lyra said the name at dawn, and Draxus went cold. "There's an elder who saw it," Lyra said. "Ashara. She lived through the raid. But you haven't spoken to her in years, brother." Draxus stared at the snow. He knew why. He had left the clan to die and never gone back to face the ones who stayed. He baked something before they set out. Small golden cakes, glazed with honey, marbled with sulfur-yellow. Ashara had loved them when he was a boy. He wrapped them in cloth and carried them the whole cold walk. Ashara lived in a dark onyx longhouse, its roof cracked, its carved beams weathered black. Draxus climbed the worn steps and knocked. The door opened. A red dragon filled the frame, scarred across one eye, her horns notched with age. Her good eye found him and narrowed. "So the boy who ran comes back," Ashara said. "With cakes." She did not move aside. Draxus held out the cloth. "I should have come sooner. I know it." His voice cracked. "I'm not here to make excuses. I'm here because raiders took the hoard, and the young ones freeze without it. You saw the raid. I need to know where it began." Ashara looked past him to Lyra, then to the elven tracker at his side. She did not take the cakes. "You want the one thing I carry," she said. "After years of nothing." Her tail lashed once against the doorframe. Draxus knelt on the cold stone. He pulled the black-dragon signet from his finger and set it on the step between them. "This is all I have left of us. I'm trying to rebuild what the raid broke. Not for gold. For the hatchlings." He looked up. "Punish me later. Help me now." The old dragon stared at the ring a long time. Something in her hard face loosened. She stepped back and let the cold air pull the door wide. "Come in, then. All of you." Inside, she sat by a low fire and spoke plain. "They came from the frozen cliffs to the north. A keep built into the ice. I watched their banners cross the ridge before they burned us." She fixed Draxus with her good eye. "I know the place. I can draw it. But hear me, boy." She leaned close. "The ones who hold that keep still hold your hoard. And they are stronger now than the night they took it." Kerra met Draxus's eyes across the fire. They had a starting point at last. Ashara reached for the honeyed cakes and broke one open. "Sit," she said. "You'll need your strength for the cliffs."