by James Wyatt
Still chuckling with pleasure at his success, Kelas placed the dragonshard in another setting embedded in the apparatus, this one made of glass pipes and studded with gemstones.
“Wait,” the dragon-king whispered, and Kelas froze. “I must examine it first.”
“You’ll have your chance,” Kelas snapped.
Malathar lifted his head to loom over Kelas. “I will. And it will be now. Or at my command, the dragons that fuel your forge cease their work.”
Kelas stood looking up at Malathar, fists clenched at his sides, his face growing deeper red. The dragon-king returned his stare blankly. Finally Kelas broke. He lifted the dragonshard from its setting and handed it to Malathar, who held it gingerly between his two front claws.
Gaven found his feet and strained for a better view of the shard as the undead dragon held it, to no avail. A movement at the corner of his eye drew his attention to Phaine, who also gazed at the dragonshard with longing. Several pieces of the puzzle fell into place in Gaven’s mind.
Malathar and the other dragons helped Kelas build the Dragon Forge because of their interest in the Prophecy, and particularly in the Time Between. They had fulfilled their vision of that Prophecy, with three spillings of blood joining the primordial dragons in pairs. Gaven’s blood joined the Eye of Siberys and the Heart of Khyber. The Ramethene Sword spilled symbolic blood—the magical energy that powered the forge—to join the spawn of Khyber with the spirit that bound it, which must somehow represent Eberron. And Gaven’s blood again joined his Siberys mark with an Eberron dragonshard. By their reading, the Time Between must be drawing to a close, and the Time of the Dragon Below beginning.
More than fulfilling the Prophecy, though, Malathar sought to learn more about it, particularly as it was scribed on the skin of Khorvaire’s dragonmarked heirs. He had said that the Prophecy was defiled by being written on the skin of meat, and that the Dragon Forge would purify it. He wanted to study the marks separated from the skin of the mortals who carried them, and the Dragon Forge allowed him to do that.
Phaine’s interest in the dragonshard was more surprising, but Gaven suspected it arose from the same intent. The elves of Aerenal had almost as much interest in the Prophecy as the dragons, and House Thuranni might be making a study of it for their own ends. Or perhaps Phaine—or all of House Thuranni—wanted to understand dragonmarks better, or even to control the power of the other Houses’ marks. Could they harness the magic contained in a dragonmark that was held within an Eberron dragonshard? If so, they might be able to compete with all the other Houses—build and operate their own lightning rail, open their own message stations, control the weather and pilot airships and galleons.
Enough, Gaven thought. It’s time for the Storm Dragon to get out of the Dragon Forge. I am the storm….
But he was not the storm. It had grown easy for him, since walking the Sky-Caves of Thieren Kor, to submerge his mind in the atmosphere, to join himself with the storms that always accompanied his anger or distress. But there was no storm to join—he couldn’t find the weather at all.
It was not just his dragonmark they had stripped away. He was no longer the Storm Dragon.
Ashara’s hands moved over Cart’s inert body, finding the damage, the places where the knots of magic that gave him life were broken. Eyes closed, she saw him as a tapestry nearly ripped to shreds, almost every strand of warp and weft broken in one place or another. It would be some time before she could make him fully alive again, but he was not dead.
It was a strange thing about the warforged, and something that the living armies of the Last War had often forgotten to their detriment. A human soldier dealt a mortal blow would die before long, his life ebbing out with his blood. A warforged, though, could linger in that state of unconsciousness—still alive, but so badly wounded that he couldn’t function—for days, weeks, or months. She had heard stories within her House of warforged who lay in remote battlefields for years, then were repaired and rose up ready to battle.
She wondered what Cart was experiencing as his body lay inert. The warforged didn’t sleep, so they weren’t accustomed to dreams. Would he dream in his unconsciousness? Or was his mind simply blank, unaware of the passage of time? She would ask him when he awoke at last.
It was hard to work in the little tent, with Gaven’s screams of agony in the background, but by nightfall she was confident that Cart would be up and around. Then, under the cover of darkness, they could flee. Together.
Gaven’s resolve had drained away, and he hung from his manacles again. Without the power of the Storm Dragon, he had nothing to rely on but a sword and a handful of spells—and he had no sword. Before the Sky-Caves, before Dreadhold and his Siberys mark, sword and spell had been enough. But now, against Kelas, Phaine, Malathar, and a small company of soldiers, his situation was hopeless.
Malathar gave the dragonshard back to Kelas without a word. Gaven had neither strength nor will enough to strain for another look at the stone, though he saw Phaine shift again in hope of a better view. Kelas turned back to the eldritch machine and returned the dragonshard to the new setting of glass and gems.
“Now,” he said, “we learn the true power of the Dragon Forge.”
He grasped two crystal rods that jutted out beneath the shard, and a brilliant light flared to life between them. Gaven couldn’t look at the light, but he didn’t need to—the tracings of the dragonmark, his dragonmark, now filled the enormous room. Lines of scarlet fire etched the ceiling’s arch and turned slowly as the machine rotated the dragonshard in its setting. A cluster of artificers flocked around the machine and manipulated its controls.
The sky rumbled with thunder, a brewing storm that had nothing to do with Gaven.
It was all around him, the mark he had carried for five years, the Prophecy that had been written on his skin but out of reach of his understanding. His gaze darted around the room, trying to take it all in.
The Storm Dragon flies before the traitor’s army to deliver vengeance.
The storm breaks upon the forces of the Blasphemer.
When Rienne traced his dragonmark on his skin, it had been only a vague foreboding, a sense that his end might come at the hands of the Blasphemer. Now it took concrete shape in his mind, spelled out in the breadth and depth of his mark.
But did it apply to him? Without the Mark of Storm, without the Storm Dragon’s power, he couldn’t fulfill that part of the Prophecy. But if he was no longer the Storm Dragon, then who was?
A deafening clap of thunder made the soldiers cover their ears and even Phaine looked up nervously. Rain fell in huge, splattering drops, and shouts of fear and pain arose from outside, from soldiers and laborers seared by the acidic downpour.
I am the storm….
Gaven remembered losing himself in a storm over the Aerenal forest, fighting off a pack of beasts with his bare hands and summoning lightning to spear them. He made one more effort to reach his mind up into the storm, but his mind was as tightly bound as his hands.
My hands …? Gaven thought.
He looked at the manacle holding his right wrist and the chain that pulled his arm out straight, almost wrenching it from its socket. The chain disappeared into an extension of the forge machinery, presumably attached to the winch he’d heard.
Perhaps the manacles were constraining more than his body. Maybe with his arms free he could command the storm again. Or at least die trying to fight his way out of the Dragon Forge.
Once he’d been known for his strength. Especially for a Khoravar, he was mighty—his body had none of the slender grace of his elf ancestors. Whenever he was in Stormhome, delivering his latest cargo of Khyber shards for use in his House’s elemental galleons, he used to arm-wrestle at taverns, to Rienne’s utter embarrassment—and he never lost. He defeated Cart at the goblin wrestling game in Grellreach. Even without a sword, he had that strength to fall back on.
The winches creaked slightly as he began to pull. He glanced around at Phaine and
the guards, but none of them paid him any mind. He’d become irrelevant.
He shifted his weight to his left side and was pleased to find some relief to the burning pain in that shoulder. He’d already created some slack in the chains. With one more glance around at his guards, he pulled the chain on his right. The winch groaned and pain stabbed through his shoulder, but the chain didn’t give.
Another clap of thunder shook the roof and walls, and sparks shimmered down along the metal walls to the ground. Kelas looked up for the first time, then looked at Gaven. He strode over to stare Gaven in the face.
“Did you do that?” he demanded.
“I thought you were making the storms now,” Gaven said. His throat was raw from screaming, and his voice came out a rough scratch.
Kelas’s face flushed with anger. “I am,” he said. “I made it. Did you make the lightning strike the forge?”
“Lightning is a willful mount. Sometimes it goes where it wants to go.” Gaven’s heart thrilled at the idea that he might still have influence over the storm, might still be able to control it. “It especially likes metal buildings.”
Kelas slapped him, surprisingly hard for a man half Gaven’s weight. “Before treating me like an idiot, remember who has done this to you.”
Anger flooded Gaven’s body, surging into his muscles and pounding in his heart. He would never forget who peeled the dragonmark from his skin. The winch on his right creaked again, louder, making Kelas wheel to look.
Just as Kelas called out—“Knock him out! Get him out of here!”—something cracked inside the forge and the chain rattled loose. Gaven yanked the chain free, grabbed a loop of it, and swung it hard into Kelas’s face, sending him reeling backward.
A needle of pain lanced Gaven’s shoulder and his arm went limp. Gathering more chain in his left hand, he wheeled to see his attacker. Phaine stood there, the very tip of his dagger stained with blood. Gaven glared—of all his captors, Phaine had managed to make Gaven loathe him most of all. He aimed right at the elf’s smirking face, but the chain, still attached to the winch, caught him up short. Phaine vanished into the gloom, then another quick stab of pain numbed his left arm.
“Do you like that?” the elf whispered over Gaven’s shoulder. “We use that to incapacitate people we aren’t quite ready to kill. Yet.”
Gaven’s foot shot out behind him, cracking into Phaine’s shin. He tried to tangle Phaine in the chain binding his legs, but the elf stepped nimbly away. At least Gaven had the satisfaction of seeing Phaine favor his injured leg.
In a panic, Gaven tried to shake his arms, to bring feeling back into them or make them move, but they just swung from his shoulders, useless. Phaine vanished into shadow again, and Gaven spun just in time to see the Thuranni appear right in front of him. He jerked his head forward and down, smashing his forehead into the bridge of Phaine’s nose. As the elf stumbled back, clutching at his bloodied nose, Gaven kicked at his knee. Gaven had almost reached the end of the chain that held his left arm, but he just had room to bring his foot down on the prone elf’s neck—
His right arm jerked up across his chest, pulling him back and off balance before his foot came down. Kelas had hold of the chain, and Gaven’s limp arms now crossed in front of him, holding him firmly in place.
“Damn it, Thuranni!” Kelas yelled. “Stop playing games and get him out of here!”
Gaven threw his weight away from Kelas, yanking the chain from his hands. Some feeling was returning to his right hand, and he fumbled trying to grab hold of another loop of chain to use as a weapon.
A sharp jab of pain in his neck made his whole body go limp, and the world went black as he slumped to the floor.
Ashara laid her hands on Cart’s shoulder, giving him one last infusion of magical power, and he was as strong as when he’d come out of his creation forge. He watched her as she worked, bewildered by the attention she gave to him, by the concern in her eyes and the care in her hands.
“There.” She sighed. “Feeling better?”
“Why are you doing this? I turned against Kelas, killed Haldren—” The memory of what he’d done overwhelmed him. He killed the Lord General, the man he’d sworn to serve, the man he’d helped break out of Dreadhold.
“You really don’t know?”
Cart shook his head.
“You’re my friend,” she said. Then her brow furrowed, unsure of his reaction. “Aren’t you?”
Friend. Cart cast his memory back over the thirty years of his life. He’d been one of the first warforged, born as a slave to House Cannith and then sold to Aundair’s army. He was a successful soldier, not just surviving year after year of battle, but rising through the ranks to Haldren’s right hand. Soldiers had called him comrade, or they’d called him Captain. Haldren had described him once as his most trusted ally, and he’d included Cart when addressing his “friends”—but Cart knew full well that Haldren used that word to manipulate his audiences. Always in the plural.
No one had ever called him friend before, not really.
“I … I hope to be,” he said, and she smiled.
“Good. Then let’s get out of here.” She stood and held out a hand to help Cart up.
“Wait. What happened to Gaven?”
The smile fell from Ashara’s face. “I’m told the Dragon Forge worked perfectly, and that Kelas is very pleased with me.”
“Is he dead?”
“Dead? No, not yet.” She looked at the ground. “But the Thuranni has him in custody. It might take a while, but death will come.”
“I need to free him,” Cart said, getting to his feet.
Ashara sighed. “I thought you’d say that. But look where it got you last time. It’s far easier for you and me to sneak out of this camp than for us to break Gaven out of Phaine’s hands.”
“You were right about me, Ashara. It’s not enough for me to be a soldier. Now Haldren is dead and no one gives me orders. It’s time for me to be a hero.”
She put a hand on his arm and looked up, her face a mixture of pleasure and grief. “You already are,” she said.
“Time to act like one, then. Where is Gaven?”
“You have led me on quite a chase, Gaven.” Phaine was clearly enjoying himself. With every prick of his blade, he leaned close to Gaven’s ear and whispered some new taunt or imprecation. He had bound Gaven to a wooden chair and continually pricked at his nerves to deaden his limbs, ensuring he never mustered the strength to break his bonds. Blood trickled from a dozen tiny wounds.
“From Dreadhold to Q’barra. When we found your room in Whitecliff, the bed was still warm.”
“You’ve been following me since Dreadhold?” A personal or House interest in dragonmarks couldn’t explain that kind of interest. Had Phaine come looking for the Storm Dragon as soon as he escaped?
“Indeed. Then to Aerenal, which was most enlightening. It had been some time since I visited my ancestors.”
“It took you this long to catch up to me? Three other Houses got to me first, you know.”
“And failed to capture you. You killed the Deneith Sentinel Marshal, of course. House Tharashk, too, has abandoned the search. House Kundarak is probably still scouring Khorvaire, stinging from the blow of losing two prisoners from Dreadhold. But then, none of them knew what you were.”
“And what am I?”
“You were the Storm Dragon. Now, you’re nothing. Nothing but a man who’s responsible for the extermination of the Paelions and the fracture of my House.”
“You can blame your own baron for that.”
That must have angered Phaine—he jabbed his dagger more deeply into Gaven’s upper arm.
“The baron acted on information you planted.”
Gaven’s memories of that period of his life were shrouded in a haze. It had been nearly thirty years, but more than that, he had barely known his own mind at the time. But he knew there was some truth to what Phaine said. He had helped plant false evidence to suggest that the Paelions were plo
tting against the other Houses. But it had been Baron Elar d’Thuranni who ordered the slaughter of the entire Paelion clan.
“So you’ve followed me all this time to get revenge?”
“That is merely the sweet finish to the chase.” Another jab of pain showed Gaven how much Phaine enjoyed the taste of revenge.
CHAPTER
37
Rays of sunlight from the shattered ceiling lit clouds of dust as the rubble settled in the great chamber. Smaller rocks shifted and fell within the pile and tumbled from the cracked roof above. Gaven had been there. Rienne was certain of it. But he was gone, and whoever or whatever he had been fighting was gone as well.
She walked in a dream into the chamber, circling the largest pieces of the fallen roof. Something moved in the rubble, and she hurried to the spot, lifting slabs and pushing rocks aside until she found bare floor beneath. There was nothing, no sign that he had been present.
A sparkle of color at the edge of the room caught her eye. Crushed gemstones in pieces ranging from powder to granules filled a pattern of lines engraved into the floor. Shattered granite covered most of the pattern, but she guessed it was a circle lining the perimeter of the room. Magic. Some ritual had taken Gaven away.
The thunder of approaching footsteps filled the hall. She turned to face the doorway, Maelstrom limp in her hand. She wasn’t sure she could muster the energy to fight anymore. Why bother? Gaven was gone.