Dha'je-Khan crouched over the deer carcass and knew he was wasting his time. The kill was three days old. Wolves had taken the belly. Something smaller had cracked the ribs. Nothing here matched the wound he carried in his memory — the clean split that had opened three of his brothers from throat to hip. He had come to this forest world to claim the skull of the beast that killed them, and to be sure it was the deadliest thing walking under this sky. Six local nights in, he had followed four rumors and found four ordinary predators. He rose and moved through the pines until he found the cottage he had marked the day before. Smoke still curled from the chimney. A woman lived alone inside with a small gray animal that followed her like a dog. He had watched her through the trees. She traded pelts at a trail-head twice a week and spoke to the animal in a low, steady voice. His cloak held him invisible against the bark. He did not want her. He wanted what she knew. Trappers learned a forest faster than warriors. He waited until she left with a basket, then stepped into her yard. The gray animal stayed on the porch. Pale lines traced its face in patterns he did not recognize — too neat for fur, too bright for scars. It watched him without fear. He held out a hand. It sniffed, then trotted past him and pawed at a flat stone near the woodpile. Beneath the stone lay a bundle of oiled cloth. Inside the cloth was a curved black tooth as long as his forearm, and a shard of shell like poured obsidian. He had seen that shell before, wet with his brother's blood. The animal sat and looked at him as if waiting to be paid. Dha'je-Khan closed his fist around the tooth. The trapper knew where the thing denned. The small creature with the strange markings knew where she hid her proof. He would not chase another rumor. He would wait in the trees until the woman returned, and he would make her show him the ground where she had found these pieces. His hunt had a direction now, and a witness who did not yet know she had been chosen.

The trapper returned at dusk. Dha'je-Khan let her cross the yard and open the door of the pine cottage before he stepped from the trees. She saw him and did not scream. She set her basket down and put one hand on the gray animal at her hip. The animal did not bristle. It watched him with pale eyes that caught the last light like glass. He held up the curved black tooth. He spoke in her tongue, the few words he had learned from listening. "Where." She looked at the tooth, then at his face, then at the sky. She said nothing. He stepped closer. She still said nothing. He set the tooth on her table and drew his blade and laid it beside the tooth so she would understand the shape of the question. Her mouth stayed shut. Her hand on the animal did not shake. He had hunted enough prey to know when fear would not work. This woman had lived alone in these woods and kept a shell fragment under a stone by her woodpile. She was not going to speak because he showed her a knife. He put the blade away. He sat down on the floor of her cottage, across from her, and waited. The gray animal left her side and crossed to him. It pawed at his shin, then at the pouch on his belt where he had stored the obsidian shard. He took the shard out and set it on the floor. The animal touched it with one small hand. Then it walked to the door, stopped, and looked back at him. It did this three times. The trapper watched the animal, and then she watched him, and something in her face changed. She spoke at last, low and flat. She said the animal had found the place first. She said she had followed it once and turned back because the smell was wrong and the trees around the hole were scored to the heartwood. She said she would not go there again. But she would draw it. She drew on the boards of her table with a piece of charcoal. A stream. A ridge. A split rock shaped like a tooth. A black mark for the den. Dha'je-Khan memorized the map before the charcoal was dry. He left the tooth on her table as payment and stepped back into the trees with the shard in his fist and the raccoon watching him from the porch. He had a direction now, and a place, and one full night to reach it before the thing that had killed his brothers woke and hunted again.

Dha'je-Khan moved through the woods with the map burned into his mind. A stream. A ridge. A split rock shaped like a tooth. He kept the shard in his fist and the trapper's cottage at his back. The moon rose thin above the pines. He found the stream where she had drawn it and followed it north until the ground began to climb. The ridge came where it should. He crossed it and looked for the split rock on the far slope. He did not find it. He found instead a second ridge the trapper had not drawn, and below that a stand of black pines that all looked the same in the dark. He worked from one landmark to the next and each one refused to match. He climbed a tree to sight the ground and saw only more trees. He had turned somewhere. He did not know where. He smelled it before he saw the sign. A wrong smell, sharp and wet, like metal left in rain. He drew his blade and stood still. The trees around him were scored to the heartwood, long clean gouges at the height of his chest. He was not near the den. The den was somewhere behind him. This was hunting ground. Something moved above him in the branches, a shape too long and too quiet, and he saw the glossy curve of a black skull and a tail that hung and coiled without sound. He pressed his back to the trunk and killed the light on his mask. The creature crossed above him and did not stop. It was moving toward the stream. Toward the cottage. A small weight brushed his boot. He looked down. The gray animal from the trapper's porch stood in the leaves, circuit lines faint on its fur, pale eyes fixed on his. It had followed him. It turned and went three steps and looked back. Then three more. He remembered the door of the pine cottage and the animal walking to it and looking back the same way. He sheathed the blade and went after it. The animal moved fast and sure through ground he had lost himself in. It led him down off the wrong ridge, across a shallow cut in the stones, and put him on a game trail he had not seen. He did not know yet if it was leading him to the den or away from the thing in the trees. He knew only that he was moving again, and that the creature was ahead of him now instead of behind, and that it was hunting toward the woman who had drawn him the map.