The cold draft rising off the underground lake met the sweat soaking Edris’s torn coat, and a violent shiver ran through his shoulders. Every time his chest jerked, the fresh fracture near his left hip pulled against the ash slats, making his teeth chatter so hard he bit the inside of his lip again.
Pip watched him from four paces away. The creature lowered its head, sniffed the sharp smell of pain-sweat and wet wool, and took two slow steps down the gravel shelf toward Edris’s left side.
Along Pip’s right flank, the soft, muscular fold of its shelter pouch loosened and opened slightly, radiating the steady, dry animal heat that had kept a half-drowned mouse and a trough of chilled glassfish hatchlings alive through cold water.
“Wait,” Ashaun said sharply, stepping down a pace with her right hand on the hilt of the narrow bell dagger. “Look at the bars.”
Inside the wedged black-stone cage at Edris’s right elbow, the heavy bronze clapper was no longer humming at a steady, low pitch. As Pip’s chest plate came within six feet of the frame, the iron suspension link trembled, and the bronze mass began to ring with a faster, hungry pulse that sent ringing circles of ripples across the puddles on the floor.
