Kael Shadowthorn's Arc

Chapter 8 of 8

They followed the wolf tracks east until the smoke thickened. Kael's eyes burned. Ahead, the fire had jumped the ridge. Whole stands of trees stood black and cracking. Somewhere past that wall of flame lay the last dens, the ones the pack had not yet fled. Aelara stopped at the edge of the burn and shook her head. "No path through," she said. "Not that way. The fire owns the low ground now." Kael looked left and right. The flames ran unbroken across the valley floor. Heat pushed at his face. Every den with an arrowhead sat beyond that line, and the fire crept closer each minute. He could not walk through it. He could not go around before it reached him first. Aelara crouched by Frost. The small white wolf pointed his nose at the rock face behind them. She followed his stare. "There." A dark gap split the mountain, tall as two men. "Frost smells cold air. Caves breathe. If it runs deep, it runs under the fire." Kael doubted it. But the flames left no other door. He pulled a torch from his black leather pack, struck it, and stepped inside. The cave swallowed the firelight whole. The floor sloped down and away from the heat. Water dripped somewhere ahead. Aelara came behind him, Frost trotting at her boot. "Wolves used this," Aelara said. She touched old scat and bone by the wall. "Old sign. They know the mountain has back doors." They went down and down. The torch showed wet stone and narrow turns. Twice the passage split, and each time Frost picked the branch with moving air. Kael's boots slid on loose rock. He kept the flame high and counted the turns aloud so they could climb back if the way closed. The air changed. It grew warm again, then hot. Light glowed ahead, not torch-orange but the deep red of a coal bed. Kael slowed. The tunnel opened onto a shelf above a slope of scorched earth. They had come out past the fire. Below lay a hollow ringed by dead trees, and dug into its bank sat a row of dens. "We're behind it," Aelara said. "The burn's above us now." Kael scrambled down the slope. He tore into the first den with his hands, throwing out packed leaves and gnawed bone. His fingers closed on cold stone. He pulled it free. A black arrowhead, notched like the one in his pouch. He checked the next den, and the next. Three more. Four heads of heart-piercer stone, cold in his palm. Then Frost growled low. Aelara went still, staring up the slope. The fire had crowned the ridge above the dens. It was coming down the far bank now, and the cave mouth behind them had begun to fill with smoke. "We have the heads," Aelara said. "Now we need a way out that isn't burning."