Kael Shadowthorn's Arc

Chapter 7 of 8

Kael dropped the broken shaft in the frozen dirt. Dravok's words hung there. The arrow was gone, and with it the only thing that could kill the dragon lord. Malthor stood beside his brother, one wing hanging wrong at his back. Kael had no answer. He had come six days for a weapon that was now cracked stone in a dead guardian's chest. "Then we're finished," Dravok said. "Nothing else pierces his heart." Lyra stepped forward. "Kael's teacher would know. Aldric sent us here. He knows the old things." "He refused to come," Kael said. "He won't help." But he had no better plan, so he turned east, back toward the road, and the others followed. They found her at the tree line before dark. An elf ranger crouched over paw prints in the snow, a small white wolf pressed to her leg. She did not look up when they approached. She wore blue armor much like Lyra's, but older, worn hard at the elbows. "You're loud," she said. "All of you. The pack's already moving." She traced a print with one finger. "Shadow wolves. Six years I've tracked them in the deep wood. They never came down to the valleys. Now they do." Kael crouched beside her. "Why now?" "Something drove them out." She stood. Her name was Aelara. The wolf, Frost, watched Kael with pale eyes. "Fire, east of here. The wood's burning where the dragon walks. The animals run from it. So do I." Malthor's head came up at the word fire. "The dragon lord." "Whatever it is, it drove the pack thirty miles in two days." Aelara looked at the broken shaft still clutched loose in Kael's hand, then at the dragon brothers' folded wings. "You're hunting it. You lost your weapon." "We did," Kael said. No use hiding it. Aelara was quiet. Then she pulled something from her hip pouch and held it out. A single arrowhead, dull black, notched along one edge. "Frost dug this out of a burned den three days back. Same stone as your shaft, if I read it right." She turned it in the low light. "There were more than one, once. Whoever forged the arrow forged the heads first. And they didn't forge just one." Kael took it. The stone was cold, like the arrow had been. His pulse jumped. "Where?" "The den's gone. Burned." She looked east, where the sky glowed faint orange. "But the shadow wolves came from somewhere with more of these. They wear them. I've seen the black stone in their dens for years and never knew what it was." Kael closed his fist around the arrowhead. The heart-piercer was not one arrow. It was a set, scattered, buried in wolf dens across a burning wood. He could still kill the dragon lord. He just had to reach the pack before the fire did. "Then we follow the wolves," he said.