Kael Shadowthorn's Arc

Chapter 6 of 8

The guardian filled the hall. It stood taller than two men and dragged cold air with it. Kael swung his sword at its leg. The blade struck stone and skipped away. No mark. No blood. He struck again, harder. The shock ran up his arm and numbed his hand. The creature raised one long limb. Kael pulled Lyra back into the small room. The limb crashed down where they had stood and cracked the floor. "Steel does nothing," Kael said. His breath came fast. "Arrows?" Lyra loosed one. It shattered against the guardian's chest. "Nothing." Her wolf snapped at the creature's heel and darted clear. The guardian turned toward the growl. It moved slow, but the hall was narrow. There was no gap to slip past. Then Kael remembered the arrow. The black arrow said to pierce any heart. He had carried it six days to keep, not to spend. But a dead man keeps nothing. He drew it from his quiver. The shaft was cold in his fist. If he used it here, the arrow would be gone before he ever left the crypt. "Kael," Lyra said. She saw the black shaft and understood. "That's why you came." "I know." He nocked it. His hands shook. The guardian swung toward the wolf again, and its chest turned open toward him. Kael let the arrow fly. It struck without a sound. No shatter, no spark. The black head sank in to the fletching. The guardian stopped. Its cold air went still. Then it folded down, joint by joint, and lay across the broken door in a heap of gray stone. The hall fell quiet. Kael stared at the shaft standing in the fallen guardian. He walked to it and pulled. It would not come loose. He set his boot on the stone body and hauled. The shaft snapped in his hand. The black head stayed buried in the guardian, cracked and spent. He held half a ruined arrow. The heart-piercer was gone. Lyra put her hand on his shoulder. "You're alive. So am I." They climbed the stairs and pushed out through the iron door into gray daylight. Kael expected the wilds, empty and cold. Instead two figures stood beneath the bone tree. Black armor. Folded wings. The dragon brothers from the cave. Kael had met them days ago, when they warned him the guardian struck at a touch, then rode off to hunt easier prey. The larger one, Malthor, looked at the broken shaft in Kael's fist. "You killed it," he said. Not a question. "With the arrow," Kael said. "It's spent." Dravok's mouth went hard. "Then you wasted the one thing worth killing." He nodded east. "The dragon lord burns his way to the capital. Nothing else pierces his heart. We came back for that arrow." Kael looked at the useless shaft. He had the crypt's prize, and it was already gone.