Even by the marble light of the moon, the scale glowed with an inner flame, as if part of Glaedr’s fire yet flickered within its faceted depths.
Murtagh placed it in the center of the foursquare knot and pulled tight the strands until they locked the scale into place.
Satisfied that it was secure, he removed his gloves. “Right, let’s find this fish,” he muttered, and walked to the end of the slate. He spun the scale about his head and let the cord play out of his hand a fair extent. Then he loosed the scale out over the water. It landed with a splash that echoed along the shore and sent up a fountain of droplets before sinking from sight like a dying ember extinguished in the depths of the abyss.
“Maybe I should have tied a log as a float.”
I can get one, said Thorn, settling on his haunches.
“Let’s wait a bit first. Here, hold this.”
Thorn obliged by lifting his left forefoot, and Murtagh looped the loose end of the cord around the dragon’s middle toe. Then Thorn made a fist of his foot and secured what remained of the skein.
“Give it a tug on occasion.” Murtagh fit an arrow to bowstring. All of the fishing he’d done during their travels had been with the aid of magic, and never for anything larger than a trout, so he wondered about how best to attract the beast.
He stared into the inky mass of the lake and pushed out with his thoughts. This far from Gil’ead, he didn’t worry about being noticed by another spellcaster and so used the full force of his mind.
He closed his eyes to better concentrate on what he felt.
Behind his eyes, darkness reigned. But then he looked to the side, and Thorn appeared as a burning blaze of heat and life, a radiant star amid the void.
In the lake, he beheld many lesser stars, tiny spots of warmth that marked the location of a myriad of different creatures. Fish floating in safe crevices and by the base of swaying water weeds, resting the night away. Eels burrowed into the lakebed mud—their minds faint and indistinct, dominated by the baser instincts: cold, hunger, fatigue. Fainter still were the hundreds, if not thousands, of insects that swarmed the water, darting about, or else resting beneath rocks and sticks or cocooned in shells. And Murtagh felt sure that if his inner eye were sharper still, he would continue to see the life force of smaller and smaller creatures until he came to the smallest iota of matter.
But among the many animals he sensed, and even among the barely perceptible warmth of the water weeds and other lake-born plants, there was no creature big enough to be Muckmaw. Not even close.
He let out his breath in frustration and exchanged mental sight for physical. The tips of the low waves were like chips of metal across the lake.
“Nothing,” he said to Thorn. “There isn’t even a hint of something…. Pull in the scale. We’ll have to try another spot.” He turned back to the dragon, discouraged. “Blast it. This is going to take days, and we don’t have—”
Look! Thorn nudged him with his nose, pointing toward the lake.
Murtagh spun about, lifting his bow.
Fifty-some feet from shore, the water swelled, thinning and smoothing as it went, like a wave passing over a capsized boat. A huge, bulbous mass pressed the water upward, and in the shadow beneath, Murtagh caught a hint of white-rimmed eyes as large as his fist rolling in their sockets.
Then the swell subsided, leaving only a trail of ripples behind.
“I swear, I didn’t feel anything,” said Murtagh, tracking the ripples. It’s huge! Cardus-chewer’s description had failed to adequately convey the true size of the fish. Muckmaw was bigger than a cave bear, bigger even than a three-month-old dragon (if one ignored the wings).
Murtagh marshaled his mental resources and then stabbed outward with his thoughts, aiming to locate and immobilize the gigantic animal, even as the elf had immobilized him at the barrow.
“I still don’t feel anything,” he whispered. “Thorn, can you—”
A faint growl escaped the dragon. It’s like claws on ice. I can’t catch hold.
Murtagh swore under his breath. “I’m going to have words with that werecat,” he said, scanning the now-seamless lake.
Durza must have hidden Muckmaw’s mind, said Thorn.
“A pretty trick too. I’m not even sure how I’d go about doing that…. Try drawing in the scale. Let’s see if that gets his attention.”
Thorn obliged with some difficulty. The toes on his forefoot were too large for nimble work, and yet he managed to twist and tangle the cord about his limb enough to shorten the line yard by yard.
A new ripple, proud and wide, appeared, moving crosswise to the prevailing current, heading toward where Murtagh guessed Glaedr’s scale was. There. It was a long shot, especially when firing into water, but Murtagh decided to chance it. In a single smooth motion, he pressed the bow away while pulling the string to the corner of his jaw and—without hesitation—released.
The arrow whirred as it flew, and he sent with it a killing word spoken with fatal intent.
Droplets shot up as the arrow hit the lake just ahead of the ripples.
And then…
…the ripples smoothed and subsided, and from the spell he’d cast, Murtagh felt no drain of energy.
He’d missed.
He bit back a curse and nocked another arrow, fast as he could.
“Here, fishy, fishy,” he muttered, sweeping his gaze across the lake. He squinted. Was that movement to the right? The water was too dark to be sure.
“Brisingr,” he whispered, and released the energy in a carefully measured trickle, so as to create a dim orb of red fire in front of him. It hung over the water like a minor sun, just bright enough to allow him to clearly see the heaving hide of the lake.
He hoped the light might help tempt the fish closer.
Thorn continued to pull in the cord. Glaedr’s scale was nearly to them. Murtagh could make out a golden shimmer beneath the waves, rising toward the surface.
He opened his mouth to suggest that Thorn try jiggling the line.
A great mass raced upward from beneath the scale, and blackness yawned around Glaedr’s jeweled remnant, and hideously wide jaws clamped shut, disappearing it from view.
Thorn yanked on the cord. The line snapped with a wirelike twang.
Murtagh drew and loosed in a single motion, and with it, he cried the killing word.
A line of white bubbles traced the arrow’s downward path. It was a good shot. The shaft hit somewhere on Muckmaw’s yard-wide head. Murtagh saw, felt, and heard the impact.
The arrow glanced to the side and disappeared into the waves of Isenstar. Again, Murtagh felt no decrease in strength from his spell.
Then Muckmaw’s bulk sank from sight, as a hulled derelict descending to its final resting place, and no hint of his pale-rimmed eyes remained. Nor of Glaedr’s scale.
Murtagh lowered his bow. Nocking another arrow would be pointless. He cursed.
Beside him, Thorn shook the slack remnants of the cord off his forefoot. The fish is formidable.
“If we lose him, I swear, I’ll drain the whole blasted—”
A V-shape of ripples formed off to the right, maybe seventy feet from shore. The ripples traced a curve about the tongue of slate he and Thorn stood on.
Thorn shifted slightly, gaze intent on the disturbance. He has not fled.