Page 276 of The Cradle of Ice

Off to the side, Daal stepped toward the beast.

The bat noted his approach and snapped its neck around, hissing ferally.

“Stay back,” Graylin warned.

Daal continued forward. “I must try.”

* * *

DAAL CROSSED TOWARD the huge Mýr bat. It shifted warily on its wingtips, hunching low over Nyx. He read the defensive posture in that stance.

“You’re protecting Nyx,” he whispered, seeing a twitch of its wings at her name. “I know that.”

He approached, as he did with the raash’ke, leaning on the memories of his ancestors who handled and bonded with such fearsome creatures. Though this bat was from Mýr, it could not be that different. He kept his gaze askance, his head low. He lifted his hands, palms raised.

“I want to help Nyx, too,” he assured the beast, emphasizing her name to reach through the madness shining in its eyes.

Daal touched the fire inside him. He had recovered some of his flames, but they remained mere flickers. Worse, he had little true skill with bridle-song. Though he had been altered by the Dreamers into a font of heightened strength, they had not honed any talent of song to match. Instead, he leaned on Nyx’s memories that had been shared with him.

He followed her example and hummed softly. He reached into his fire and stirred a golden glow over his raised palms. “Nyx needs me. I will help her.”

The bat hissed at him with a frisson of apprehension, but not about his approach.

You’re worried about her, too.

Daal frowned.

But why?

He hummed his hands brighter, while reaching into the shared memories inside him. He found a melody, one that Nyx often sang, one with roots in a lullaby from her father. Something to soothe. He tightened his throat and molded his tones to match that lullaby. To his own ears, his efforts sounded tinny and far from melodic, but it was a fair approximation.

He read the effect. The bat’s neck stretched out, and its hissing lowered to a whispery whistle, nearly inaudible, but Daal heard it trying to join him. It was the quietest harmony, like a dream just out of one’s grasp.

You know this. You’re struggling to remember.

Again, a question persisted.

How does it know this?

A nose reached to his raised palms, while the bat continued whispering that haunting tune.

Daal fought not to cringe. He stared at the raw scalp of the monster. Blood flowed black from the holes where the copper needles had once stood. A few spikes still poked high.

The soft flaps of that questing nose sniffed at the glow about Daal’s fingertips. As contact was made, he sensed the storm under the ruins of that scalp. It shone with corruption and an emerald fire. But further back, a well of golden light shone, struggling to quash those malignant energies.

Deep inside him, a memory stirred out of Nyx’s past, as if drawn up by that golden light.

—she cradles the tiny bat in her lap and reaches a finger to brush the velvet chin. She lowers the dagger to his throat. She does not want him to feel the sting of this blade, so she keens, a quiet song to her brother to soothe him, stirring a dream of them nestled in slumber …

As this memory stirred, Daal heard that same quiet melody echoing in the bat’s whistle now.

“You know this song, don’t you,” Daal whispered. “You’ve heard this before.”

He now understood why this memory had risen again. He knew why this bat protected her so diligently, even in the storm of madness.

Daal now grasped who this bat truly was.

Not a monster—