Page 4 of Dragonbound

‘Be careful, girl. We don’t want to fall from a peak,’ Sereh cried. While it might be a less painful way to die than freezing to death, she didn’t want to try it. She could think of nothing worse than having the ground give out unexpectedly below her feet. The constant presence of the ground gave some small comfort as she continued to battle her way onwards.

Arrow’s whimper reached her ears from ahead, barely discernible but unmistakable.

‘Arrow.’ Sereh tried, but the wind whipped the words right out of her mouth. She staggered forward, hand outstretched. Arrow continued to whine until Sereh reached her. Only then did Sereh realise Arrow must have turned away from their previous path because now the wind buffeted Sereh from the side instead of from ahead. ‘Where are you going, girl?’ Sereh mumbled but was resigned to simply following the wolf-dog.

Arrow had been a puppy when Sereh had entered Rankil’s steading. They’d bonded and grown together, both forced to serve an ungrateful and often-times cruel master.

Arrow suddenly stopped short, and Sereh only just prevented herself from walking into the back of her. Beneath her hand, Sereh could sense the wolf-dog sniffing, body tense. Letting out a small whine, Arrow resumed her path, leading Sereh onwards to who knew where.

Abruptly, Sereh felt the howling blizzard stop, and could breathe again. It was dark within whatever they were within, yet somehow not as dark as it had been outside. A faint luminescence, which appeared to be coming from the walls, allowed Sereh to see they were inside some sort of cave.

‘Good girl,’ Sereh gasped, still holding tightly to the wolf-dog’s neck, before allowing herself to sigh with relief as she turned to face the outside. Out there, everything was black. She couldn’t even see where they’d been walking only moments before. Grateful to be out of the wind, Sereh slumped against the bare rock face at the back of the small cave. She slid to a sitting position, releasing the straps of her backpack as she did so. It clattered to the ground. She peered back towards where they’d entered the cave, but there was nothing to see, even now.

‘Arrow,’ she mumbled to the wolf-dog, who joined her, lying at her feet. ‘How did you manage to find this sanctuary when it’s so dark?’ Once more, there was no reply from the wolf-dog aside from a contented little sigh.

‘We’re safe,’ Sereh exclaimed, aware, out of the wind, she felt warmer too, evident in the way the frozen tracks of tears and the snot from her nose were starting to run once more. ‘That’s all that matters.’

The how would have to be discovered when daylight returned.

The pair sank into an uneasy sleep, only lessened by the warmth of the one against the other. In her dreams, Sereh was sure she heard a baby cry.

3

SEREH

Sereh woke disoriented, still dreaming. There it was again, a soft rustling noise. But even as she blinked into the gloom, she wondered if she’d imagined it. Her dream was slipping fast, but it had been so vivid. The baby. A steading. Warmth. Memories of the blizzard from the night rushed to take its place. By rights, she should be dead, in a snowdrift somewhere. Icicles hanging from her nose, her clothes encrusted in ice, her corpse waiting to be discovered by the first unfortunate traveller to venture this way.

But she was safe and she was alive. She was gloriously alive! She snuggled into her cloak against the chill of the morning air and listened to the familiar and comforting sound of Arrow’s breathing. The wolf-dog had spent the night draped over her legs. The cave wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t as cold as spending the night outside. And not just any night; the first night of the Long Day. One of the longest nights of the rotation, only bested by the Long Night itself.

The wolf-dog began to stir. Sereh didn’t rush her. She knew her legs would feel hollow when Arrow got up, but it was worth it. Instead, she lay there, enjoying the luxury of waking in silence and not having to get up, despite the chill. Usually, she’d be awoken by the other servants, or by Rankil’s shouting and stomping around the steading. She allowed a smile to steal over her face. For eight rotations Rankil had been the cause of her waking. So, she’d allow herself to enjoy this moment. She doubted the chance would present itself again. After all, while her survival was miraculous, she’d need to return to Rankil’s steading. The smile slid from her face at the thought. For the briefest flutter of breath a different opportunity had presented itself to her. But no. She would have to return to her life of servitude. It was the only one she had.

Arrow leapt to her paws with a gracefulness Sereh envied. She moaned as her legs flooded with pins and needles. Once more, Arrow’s nose was to the ground. She sniffed where Sereh lay. Sereh risked removing her gloves to run her hand through the wolf-dog’s fur. The wolf-dog felt warm and her coat was free of icicles, reinforcing the realisation that within their cavern it wasn’t that cold.

‘Good morning, girl,’ she offered, joyfully, banishing thoughts of Rankil. ‘Thank you for finding this place. I can’t believe it was here, just waiting to keep us safe from the storm.’ Her words sounded overly loud now that the blizzard of last night had blown itself out. The silence was so complete, it was almost unnerving, as her words echoed back to her. She glanced around, still unsure what to make of where they were. Abruptly, her attention returned to Arrow. The wolf-dog’s ears were pinned back, her tail between her legs, and a soft whine came from her closed mouth. Sereh had never heard her make such a noise before.

‘What is it, girl? What can you smell?’

Arrow cast her a quizzical look before stalking outside, away from the little cavern she’d found in the darkness of the raging storm.

‘Nothing then,’ Sereh muttered. She struggled to her knees, her legs not yet ready to bear her weight, leaning on the cave’s wall for support.

Beneath her ungloved hands, the wall felt completely smooth. She’d never touched anything like it before.

The interior had been too dark to see much last night. Now, in the growing light of the second day of the Long Day, she could see the vastness of the space. The cavern was even bigger than two steadings, stacked one on top of the other. Bigger even than the Library. The smooth walls rose steeply high above her head, further than the eye could see. Although daylight came in from the entrance through which Arrow had just left, the walls themselves seemed to glow, a strange pulsing green light, which had no source, as far as Sereh could tell.

From outside, Arrow gave a sharp bark. Shaking her head at her myriad thoughts, which she suspected were more to do with what she’d endured than actual fact, Sereh hurried after Arrow and stepped into the weak sunlight of the second day of the Long Day.

Fresh snowfall covered everything. The sun glowed weakly in the cloudless blue sky. Sereh blinked in the sudden brightness. Pulling her cloak tighter, she gazed at the rock face, almost entirely obscured by the snow, although clearly visible in the smoothness of the snow now she knew to look for it. There was no other opening in sight. She guessed they’d been very lucky last night to discover the small cavern entrance when they had. Once more, Sereh wondered how Arrow had managed to find it in the nightmare of the swirling snowstorm and the all-encompassing black of night.

The rays of the rising sun reached the wall inside the narrow entrance. Sereh felt her breath catch. Her backpack slipped from her grasp. She peered more closely. The deep blackness of the rock was extraordinary. She’d never seen its like. It was so black it seemed to suck the sunlight into it.

‘What is this?’ she asked wonderingly, distracted once more, despite her intention to forget all about it.

She was certain she’d never seen this type of rock before. She moved back into the cavern and pressed the rock face with her gloveless hands once more. The rock was cold, but not icy. There was no trace of a seam. And she couldn’t shake the sensation that, when the sunlight did touch the surface, it revealed shapes cut into the rock, more evident in the disturbed shafts of light than in what she could see. She felt with her hands, convinced of the notion although now her eyes didn’t reveal it, even when she squinted.

‘What is this?’ she asked once more, as her fingernail quested in and out of something that was most certainly there, even if she could only see the effect of the patterns and not the patterns themselves. Were they curling shapes? If they were, what did they mean? They were no script she’d ever seen before, and she didn’t believe they were a natural part of the rock’s formation.

Her stomach rumbled loudly in response, distracting her from the mystery of the cavern. It had been nearly a whole day since she’d last eaten. She had some peat cakes in her backpack. She bent to retrieve it from where it lay discarded and grabbed the food from inside. Only as she chewed the slightly spongy texture, reminded of the poor food she was often provided with at Rankil’s house, did the spark of her idea reassert itself.