Page 139 of Silverbow
The real ones are probably sharper.She stomped on that voice, shoving it away, and inched forward. She held her breath as she nudged a toe over the threshold and reached up to lower her hood.
She’d been searching through Hylee’s visions every night, turning them over and over in her mind, examining them from every angle. She had conferred with Colm, drilling him for any scrap of dragonlore that might help with what she was about to do.What I am already doing.
She hadn’t realized how lackingA History of Dragonkindwas until she actually needed to know something about dragons. She knew Drulougan’s clan, and Preya’s, but beyond the history of deeds and explanations of the differences between clans, none of it had been useful.
Drulougan the Dread of Clan Taradad. The Taradad were proud. Easily angered.
Not helping.
She’d been mulling this plan over since her bargain with the witch, and there was still very little in the way of an actual plan here. Skulking and sneaking seemed the like the fastest way to become dragon fodder. Trying to rob the keep was likely to cut her song from the symphony that Colm talked of. Dragons could probably shred entire orchestras with a single swipe of a claw.Focus.
No, stealth would not be her friend. Not inside the keep. Inside the keep, she would don a new mantle and Estryia’s Second would not shrink from a dragon.
“Hello,” she called softly, her voice wavering. The sound echoed in the vast chamber, loud enough to make her wince.
She waited for the echo to fade before she took another step forward. There had been a chapter about this keep in her father’s book, though she had pictured something far more palatial, and far less…dark, deserted, desolate.She shook her head and blew out a long breath. It sounded like a shout in the silence.
The dome was said to be only an antechamber with lofty perches for its winged inhabitants. Most of Blackash Keep rested below the Flame Quarter; a massive cavern the people of Misthol trod over day in and day out. She felt the floorslope downward as she took the first few steps beyond the threshold and supposed it had been true.
“Drulougan?” She called tentatively. She willed herself to take a handful of steps, then paused to listen for any response. “Hello?”
Nothing.
“A smart Second would have brought a lantern,” she muttered to herself. Everything the witch had shown her had been in an oddly diffuse light, like looking through fogged glass, but the keep she saw there had not been pitch black. She wondered if Drulougan preferred the dark or if no one bothered with lamps anymore.
When her eyes had adjusted as far as they would and no sound came other than the faint dripping of water on stone deeper in the keep, Enya cleared her throat and started to sing.
“The sun sets low in the Greenridge sky, where the wild winds blow and the eagles fly.”
She let the song drift down, her heart keeping time to the beat.
“There’s a lass named Mary, with a heart so true, in her laughter sings the morning dew.”
The sound, she realized, would help guide her as it reverberated.
“From the valleys below to the peaks above, here’s to the girl from Greenridge, our love!”
The descent through the cavern felt endless. The dark pressed in on her and it grew colder with each step. She tried not to think about how deep underground she must be, how much rock must be separating her from the air above.Breathe. Just breathe.But the air was hard to breathe. It reeked of sulfur and char.Hold it together.
She drew breath to push out the shaky words. As she neared the end of the tune, firelight flickered ahead. The chamber from the vision opened wide at the end of the dark tunnel.Almost there. Almost there. Where is he?
She hadn’t considered the possibility Drulougan wouldn’t appear before she reached the nest. What would she do then? She craned her neck as she stepped into the chamber, warmed by the flickering blue flames and searched the dark expanses overhead their light didn’t reach. Blinded by the flame, she could see nothing. She turned back toward the dais in the center where a ring of fire guarded a nest of rock and rubble.
“With the stars as our witness and the night as our guide, we’ll toast the girl from Greenridge, our pride.”
She crept forward, still searching the dark, her heart thudding in her ears. Enya stumbled over something on the floor. The clatter that echoed off the stone as a length of white bone rolled across the floor sounded nothing at all like the rattle of that dice cup. She tried not to look at the stacks and piles of pearly white all around her.
Bloody fool.
She held her breath, listening for the beat of wings over her own flailing heart, but there was still no sign of Drulougan. She stared at the five steps that led to the dais, wondering if she dare take the first before confronting the dragon.
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
Whoosh.
Enya staggered under the current of air that told her Drulougan indeed was there and he was stirring. She turned her back to the dais and bowed low at the waist, staring at the floor as he landed with a softthud.In the vision, Enya hadn’t been so acutely aware of the way her knees knocked together.
A huff of hot steam over her back and the choking smell of putrid, sulfuric breath made her eyes burn. Enya blinked away the tears when she dared to open them again. She promptly wished she hadn’t, swallowing a scream when she found a very human skull looking up at her from the stone floor. Slowly, so slowly, she lifted her hands, showing she bore no weapon. She hadn’t even brought her bow.
