7

Snow closed the road.

Kaoran checked it from the wall every morning.

He pushed a staff into the passage, measured the new layer, and returned with ice in his beard.

On the sixth day, the stable roof disappeared beneath a white slope.

On the tenth, the well began to freeze. On the fourteenth, the firewood was down to two rows.

Isolde split the thickest logs with a wedge and mallet. Her left hand guided the wood. Her right struck. She had learned to stop the movement before the force reached her weak fingers.

“Eight days left,” Kaoran said.

“Ten if we put out the upstairs hearth.”

“The north wall is gathering ice.”

“We’ll sleep downstairs.”

“Bruma will need more hot water.”

Isolde looked at the sacks of oats.

“We reduce her work.”

“Her work consists of staying inside.”

“Bruma does it with dedication.”

The mare struck the stable wall as though she had heard.

They organized the house around the cold.

A single room kept its warmth. They hung blankets across the doors, brought Isolde’s mattress downstairs, and filled bottles with hot water to keep the medicinal roots from freezing.

Kaoran taught her to make a lamp with goat fat.

The first wick produced so much smoke that they had to open the window.

Wind came in with snow.

Isolde laughed as they tried to save the blankets.

Laughter pulled at her scar. She leaned against the bench while Kaoran fought the window. Almost a year had passed since Cendral, and she was still surprised to lose her breath over something so small.

She wanted to save the story to tell Darian. The thought came whole, with the table where she would have looked for him and the words he would use to mock the lamp. Isolde stopped laughing before she decided to. She stared at the fat spilled on the floor.

Kaoran had managed to close one shutter. He handed her the rope to secure the other. She took it. Before her stood a man who needed help with a knot; elsewhere was someone she still sought by habit at the end of a day. She pulled the rope tight until the shutter stopped banging.

Kaoran gathered the spilled fat.

“Your lamp is trying to kill us,” she said.

“You lit it.”

“Following your instructions.”

“That shows why I distrust oaths.”

They laughed again. The smoke took an hour to clear.

The storm reduced their training ground to the gap between the table and the fireplace.

They cleared the dishes after breakfast, extinguished the nearby lamp, and placed a sack on each piece of furniture Isolde had to protect.

Kaoran threw small bundles at her from different angles.

When they finished, she counted how many she had deflected; then they put everything back.

One morning, as they tidied up, Isolde asked for one more attempt. Kaoran raised the mallet’s smooth handle for her to see and waited for her nod. Then he moved out of her field of vision.

Isolde turned, caught the object with her forearm, and placed the knife beneath Kaoran’s wrist.

“I was preparing the bread,” he said.

“With a mallet.”

“The dough has grown aggressive.”

“Yield.”

Kaoran opened his hand. Isolde caught the mallet before it fell.

“One,” she said.

“It took you a year.”

“You’ve spent decades practicing excuses.”

The old man cut a mark into the edge of the table. It was the first on Isolde’s side. Seventeen stood on the other.

That afternoon, the wind changed.

The house felt the movement before they did. The red veins in the floor warmed. The animals fell silent. A vibration climbed the table legs and put out the lamp’s flame.

Isolde set down the knife.

“Wait.”

Isolde rested her palm on the table. The pulse returned, slow, followed by two beats that reached her scar. For months, she had sought Ydrael in warm veins that cooled before answering. This persisted even when she took her hand away.

“I think it’s him.”

Kaoran touched the wall.

“It’s coming from farther down.”

Isolde counted the time between the vibrations. The second changed when she breathed. She approached the hearth without calling the dragon by name yet.

Isolde knelt. The stone beneath the hearth had a fresh crack. She placed her fingers along its edge. Heat entered through her left hand and traveled up her arm to the scar.

The edge of the fireplace disappeared behind blue light. Isolde could still feel stone beneath her knees, but she saw a corridor as though she were lying inside it. She recognized Cendral’s veins. She tried to look toward the entrance, and the image resisted; it answered to another will.

Masked men dragged chains through a gallery. Each link was joined to a stone driven into the floor. The metal bore new marks, lines extending west. Behind a translucent wall lay an immense eye.

Ydrael was looking at her.

Isolde felt his body as an impossible extension of the mountain: a claw beneath the river, a wing compressed between chambers, his neck encircled by rings drawing out heat. Weariness filled his chest. So did a taut will, awake and furious.

“Where are you?” Isolde asked.

The dragon answered with pressure on her wound.

The image changed. She saw three galleries, a tower of blue stone, and a diverted watercourse. The men were setting charges around a red root. Beyond it stood prisoners with tools.

“Get out of there.”

Ydrael closed his eye.

The rejection struck Isolde in the chest. The connection broke. She returned to the house on her knees, with blood in her mouth.

Kaoran held her by the shoulders.

“What did you see?”

Isolde coughed over the floor. A red line fell between her hands.

“They’ve extended the chains. There are workers inside.”

“How long were you linked?”

“A few seconds.”

“You stopped breathing for more than a minute.”

“I told him to withdraw.”

“And what did he say?”

“He pushed me out.”

Kaoran gave her water. Isolde rinsed her mouth. Her jaw hurt from clenching it. Kaoran examined her mouth and found a split in her gum.

“In Cendral, you saw him holding up the mountain,” Kaoran said. “Did you see what would fall if he moved today?”

Isolde tried to recall the gallery. She remembered tools, a raised arm, and the curve of a claw beneath the ground.

“There were workers.”

“Could he leave them?”

She rinsed her mouth. She had entered asking for a route and, when she received one, ordered the dragon to abandon the place from which he could show it to her.

“I need to see him again.”

Kaoran rested two fingers on her wrist.

“Get your breath back first. When he answers, let him finish.”

Isolde looked at the crack. The heat was fading. She feared she had lost the bond again and had to contain the urge to press her whole body against the stone to reach him.

For two days, Ydrael kept silent.

Isolde touched the stone at dawn and dusk. She lit a small flame, held it for three breaths, and extinguished it. Then she withdrew her hand. Kaoran watched the pulse in her neck and the color of her skin.

On the third day, the root answered with a brief vibration.

Isolde kept her palm open.

“I want to listen,” she said.

She waited.

The connection came with less violence. Ydrael showed her darkness, water, and the weight of a chain around his throat. The pain had no edges. It had lasted so long that it was part of every breath.

“What do you want me to know?”

An image came from the dragon: the prisoners’ gallery. A stone beam had split. Ydrael held the lower root with a claw. If he moved away, the ceiling would fall on the people. The masked men were using his decision to fit another chain.

Fear.

Ydrael knew fear and offered it without concealment. He feared the new ring. He feared crushing those above him. He feared Isolde would mistake the bond for obedience.

Isolde kept her hand open, still on the rock. She saw the claw beneath the workers and let the image last. When the pressure in her side eased, she could make out the edge of the fireplace beside the immense eye.

“Kaoran is here. Do you want him to see?”

The eye opened in the dark. Its attention turned toward the man’s presence beside the hearth. Ydrael sent an image of a strap buried in ash.

Kaoran received the blow through the stone. He sat down abruptly.

“Thalyon,” he said.

The ancient dragon had found the name inside him.

Kaoran rested his hand beside Isolde’s. Ydrael showed the chains once more. Then he closed the bond.

They remained before the crack, breathing hard.

“He heard us,” Isolde said.

“He’s been listening for a long time.”

“He’s afraid.”

“Yes.”

Kaoran took a while to withdraw his hand.

“Was Thalyon imprisoned in Cendral?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ydrael saw the strap.”

“He saw what I carried with me.”

Isolde wanted to ask for more. Their agreement gave her a right to news of Ydrael, though Thalyon’s story belonged to Kaoran. The first fragment had already cost him enough.

“What do we do about the new chains?” she asked.

“We record what he showed us. When the pass opens, we check the stone routes.”

“I could warn Nydel.”

“Enna hasn’t been able to come up for twelve days.”

“The signal chimney.”

“The wind covers the valley. They’d see the smoke from Varek’s post, and we don’t know whether Nydel would receive it.”

Isolde looked at the snow against the door. Ydrael held up a gallery while winter kept them trapped. Distance rendered many of her regained abilities useless.

“Then we’ll keep listening,” she said.

Every night, she repeated the contact for three breaths.

Ydrael decided when to answer. Sometimes he sent a pulse.

At other times, he remained absent. Isolde began to distinguish his states: a slow warmth when he slept, brief jolts when the men drilled the rock, and a deep vibration when he moved beneath the mountain.

One night, she heard another presence at the edge of the bond.

It was younger, quick, and familiar.

Rheskan.