by James Wyatt
“What?” Darraun said, but then he nodded. “Yes, it’s to the east of the Starpeaks.”
“They’re attacking there in order to fulfil the Prophecy. Sovereigns,” Gaven said, “it’s going to be a bloodbath.”
CHAPTER
44
While Darraun and Rienne slept, Gaven was left alone on the deck. The Ring of Siberys shone bright overhead, and the approaching dawn stained clouds in the eastern sky red. To his mind, they whispered warnings of doom: the shining ring of dragonshards that lit the night foretold the consummation of a prophetic cycle, the emergence of the Soul Reaver and the revelation of the Storm Dragon, while the bloody signs of dawn spoke plainly of the cost that would be paid in human lives.
He turned the airship inland, and absently guided her between the darkness of the Whisper Wood on his right and the shadows of the Gray Wood on his left, following a narrow strip of grassy land between the two forests. He was grateful that the navigation didn’t require more attention—his vision seemed to keep slipping between the reality that presented itself to his senses and something deeper, the language of creation.
The Prophecy was written everywhere. Everything he saw spoke of its past and its potential. As he piloted the Eye of the Storm between Aundair’s primeval forest and its younger offspring, making his way to the jutting Starpeaks, he saw the words that had made them and heard distant echoes of the language they strained to speak. And images of his nightmares flashed through his mind, tastes of the horrors those lands would see.
Vultures wheeling over fields strewn with corpses. The howling hordes of the Soul Reaver boiling up from Khyber and spreading out across the land. Legions of soldiers beneath the banner of the Blasphemer. Dragons in the sky.
The visions blended and blurred together, weaving themselves into a tapestry of horror in which he could no longer discern individual threads. Haldren’s march to war would not be the end of the nightmare.
* * * * *
Rienne emerged from below decks at dawn, and Gaven watched with a tired half smile as she stretched and practiced with Maelstrom at the keel. Darraun came up a little later, rubbing his stomach.
“Do you think Thordren had any supplies stashed away?” he asked no one in particular.
“You’re welcome to look below,” Rienne said, “but don’t get your hopes up.”
Darraun disappeared back down the forward hatch, and Rienne hopped up onto the bulwarks’ railings, keeping perfect balance as she practiced complex sequences of lunges, parries, and ripostes. Gaven watched carefully, and chose a moment when her balance seemed most tenuous to jerk hard on the wheel, making the ship lurch to port.
Rienne didn’t miss a step in her exercise, but Darraun let out a cry of pain from the cargo hold. A moment later his head appeared in the hatch.
“Everything all right?” he called to Gaven.
“Fine, sorry,” Gaven said. “Did you hurt yourself?”
“Just cracked my head on a beam.” He rubbed his scalp, then checked his fingers for blood.
“Maybe you should go back to being a dwarf,” Rienne suggested.
Darraun scowled and dropped below again.
“Do you think I hurt his feelings?” Rienne asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Aha!” Darraun yelled from below. “We’ve got breakfast!”
Rienne stepped lightly from the railing to peer down the hatch. “What did you find?”
Darraun emerged with an armload of small boxes and a strip of dried beef dangling from his mouth. “Lady Alastra,” he mumbled around the meat. He left his sentence unfinished as he began setting out the foodstuffs he had gathered—pickled vegetables, dried fruits, nuts, and salted beef. When he had swallowed, he addressed Rienne again. “Lady Alastra, I hope that we have the pleasure of traveling in each other’s company under better circumstances so that I can cook you a proper meal. But for the present, please enjoy these … erm, trail rations, with my compliments.”
Rienne and Gaven laughed. “He really is quite a cook,” Gaven added. “I’ll vouch for him.”
“There are many men to whom I would entrust my dinner,” Rienne said, bowing slightly to Darraun. “There are precious few to whom I would entrust my life. I don’t know if I can bring myself to entrust both to the same man, but it would be an illustrious honor indeed.”
Darraun smiled awkwardly, then busied himself with the food.
* * * * *
With the help of a box of spices he unearthed from his pack, Darraun managed to make even the preserved food palatable, which earned him a new measure of respect in Rienne’s eyes. As the day wore on, Gaven found himself dozing at the wheel, while Rienne and Darraun took turns pacing along the prow. They left the Gray Wood behind and followed the curve of the Whisper Wood’s edge along to the south, then left it as well, making straight for the eastern edge of the Starpeaks. Any movement on the rocky plain below brought a moment of intense scrutiny and heightened tension, then a return to the interminable waiting once the lookout realized it was just an animal or a farmer or a gust of wind below.
Rienne and Darraun were so focused on searching the ground below that it was actually Gaven who spotted the first real threat. “Check the sky,” he called, “four points to port!”
The sun was high in the sky, but beginning its descent behind the Starpeaks on the airship’s port side. Darraun had to cup his hands around his eyes, but Rienne spotted it immediately.
“A dragon,” she said.
“Are you sure?” Gaven shouted. “It’s not very big.”
Rienne wheeled and gave him an incredulous stare. “Not very big?” she said.
“No, he’s right,” Darraun said. “Compared to Vaskar, this one’s small, immature. No bigger than a bear.”
“If you mean one of those Eldeen bears that the druids send before them in war to tear up enemy infantry, I’ll grant you that.” Rienne gripped Maelstrom in a trembling hand.
“Yes, that’s exactly the kind of bear I mean,” Darraun said.
The dragon closed on them quickly—it had clearly seen them before Gaven spotted it. The sun gleamed dull red on its scales, and Gaven’s mind filled with the image of the Morning Zephyr in flames outside the Mournland. He had a sudden, unsettling realization.
“How do I land this thing?” he called.
“Land her?” Darraun said. “I don’t think you do. That’s why they have mooring towers.”
“Well, start looking for a mooring tower. I don’t want to be in the air when that thing breathes fire on this ship.”
“No,” Rienne said, “you should be able to do a ground landing in a ship this size. Smaller airships like this are designed to moor just about anywhere.”
“Then take a look beneath us, and tell me where to set her down.” He glanced at the onrushing dragon, now close enough that he could distinguish its horns and the predatory curve to its mouth. Rienne rushed to the starboard side and peered over the edge.
“Rocky, very steep—and trees to the east. I don’t see—”
“Oh, damn it to the Darkness!” Gaven swore. He stretched one hand to the clear blue sky, and the sun went dark, blotted out by a black thunderhead that appeared from nowhere. He jerked his hand downward, and a bolt of lightning thundered out of the sky and struck the onrushing dragon. For an instant, it hung suspended in the air, engulfed in burning light, then it plummeted downward.
Spreading its wings, the dragon pulled out of its fall and swooped back up toward the airship, sending a blistering gout of fire from its gaping maw ahead of its flight. The flames parted around the keel and licked up around the bulwarks, but it seemed that much of their energy was pulled into the ring of fire surrounding the ship, making it flare brightly for a moment, then fade back to normal.
Gaven smiled. “Looks like I was more worried about the fire than I should have been,” he said.
“Don’t get too confident,” Rienne shot back.
As if reinforcing Rienne’s warnin
g, the airship lurched suddenly to starboard. The wheel jerked free of Gaven’s hand and started spinning wildly.
“Concentrate on the helm,” Rienne said. “Let me and Darraun handle the dragon.”
When Gaven touched the wheel again, flames leaped out from its wooden spokes and seared his hands. Gaven cried out, more in surprise than pain, and eyed the wheel warily.
“The dragon’s breath gave the elemental a taste of freedom,” Rienne explained. “You need to remind it who’s in charge.”
“Maybe riding horseback isn’t so bad after all,” Gaven grumbled as he approached the wheel again.
“You ever let a stallion think he’s in charge?”
“Good point.” Gaven seized the helm again, ignoring a new flare from the wheel. Be still! he commanded the elemental, and he felt it rebel against his control—very much like a spirited horse pulling against its reins. For an instant, the fire that formed a ring around the airship flickered and died away, letting the airship fall freely, but Gaven stretched out his will like a whip and brought both elemental and ship back under control.
Which meant that he could do nothing but watch as the dragon’s fiery breath engulfed both Rienne and Darraun where they stood on the deck. Rienne tumbled away and stood up again barely singed, but Darraun could do nothing but huddle on the deck and weather the blast’s greatest force. In the wake of its breath, the dragon swooped in and alit on the deck, stretching its wings into the air to keep its balance.
As the flames died around Darraun, wisps of smoke trailed off him, but to Gaven’s surprise he leaped toward the dragon as though he’d just been immersed in water rather than fire. As he hefted his mace, Gaven noticed a ring on Darraun’s hand that glowed red as if it had been newly forged in the inferno, and he suspected that the artificer had turned the ring into a magic ward against fire before the dragon’s onslaught.
The dragon’s enormous wings made it seem considerably larger than a bear—even an Eldeen bear. Its head whipped away from Darraun’s mace, then arched back around to bite at his shoulder even as it lifted its front claws to tear at him. It was caught off guard and off balance, though, as Rienne tumbled into it, slamming both feet into its chest. She knocked it backward, and Maelstrom was ready to cut at its neck as it yanked back. The magic blade only nicked its scaled neck, and it retreated a couple of steps to regain its balance, all four feet firmly on the deck. Its neck swept back and forth as it sized up its opponents.
At almost the last moment, Gaven remembered.
An arcane word sheathed him in cool fire that would protect him from the dragon’s breath. Then fire spewed from the creature’s mouth in a great blast that engulfed all three of them and started several small fires on the deck. Gaven took cover behind the wheel, and his fiery shield protected him from the rest of the blast. Darraun laughed it off, and again Rienne bounced clear of the worst of it—her constant movement in battle was both her strongest offense and her best defense. She proved it by leaping onto the dragon’s back and bringing Maelstrom down hard into its neck, spraying a gout of steaming blood onto the deck. The dragon thrashed and reared, throwing Rienne backward off the deck.
Darraun lunged to the prow, his panicked look telling Gaven everything he needed to know. The dragon leaped into the air, pushing away from the airship so hard that the prow bobbed downward, then spun itself in the air to plummet downward, following Rienne to the ground—out of sheer malice or perhaps blind fury. Gaven released the helm, and a gust of wind lifted him off the deck. A quick glance around showed him that Rienne was still falling, and an equally quick gesture brought a whirlwind out of the brewing storm to lift her safely out of her fall. With the merest thought, he impaled the dragon on another bolt of lightning. After Rienne’s deadly blow, the dragon had no more strength to evade or resist the blast, and its charred corpse spiraled away like an autumn leaf, dry and drained of life.
But as the airship swept past Gaven, caught in a terrible maelstrom of air dragging her to earth, he realized it would take considerably more effort to stop her fall.
CHAPTER
45
The Eye of the Storm did not simply drop out of the sky. Snared in the whirling currents of air born of Gaven’s storm, she spun in a great wheel through the air, her magical buoyancy still fighting against the downward pull. At the same time, the elemental bound within her flared to rebellion in the absence of Gaven’s control, coursing visibly through the arcane channels carved into the hull. Gaven didn’t see Darraun immediately, but after a moment spotted him clutching the wheel, struggling to control the ship as he had in Stormhome. A valiant effort, but one doomed to failure.
Gaven’s first impulse was to crush the airship between irresistible blasts of air, to shoot her through with lightning and scatter her flinders to the wind. Destruction was the easy path, the purest manifestation of his power. So simple, so tempting. The impulse startled him—his friend was aboard that ship. Why would he destroy her?
Gaven snarled his frustration, and lightning coursed around him. Destruction was easy. It was far more challenging to create, to build, to save. His anger was a tight knot in his gut—he felt it as he roared, like nausea. He wanted to curl his body around it, cradle it in his arms and vomit it out.
The wind tore at him in a manifestation of his rage, and the airship bucked against Darraun’s control.
No, Gaven thought. I need to let it go.
Layers upon layers of rage and resentment fueled the storm. The dragon’s attack mattered little, just the fury of a misguided minion, now undone. A thin layer of anger, easily sloughed away.
Haldren’s brewing rebellion angered him, the way Haldren had used him, manipulated him, coerced him. Was that truly significant? Haldren had also engineered his release from Dreadhold, and his attempt at conquest would soon be quashed. The world would return to its uneasy peace. Another layer gone.
The howling of the wind diminished, and Darraun managed to tame the blazing elemental fire in the airship, leaving only the bright ring.
Twenty-six years in Dreadhold …
Haunted by visions, plagued by nightmares, abused by guards and fellow prisoners alike …
So utterly alone in the wilderness of his mind.
Waking from sleep, night after night, to stumble to the door and speak his dreams through the shutter in the door—he’d done it long before Haldren had come to occupy the cell across the hall, as though giving his dreams voice would help exorcise them from his mind.
Carving the words into the floor and walls of his cell—writing them in his blood before they finally relented and gave him a stylus to scratch the stone. Trying to make them solid, to ground them, to fix them into the present.
It had nearly driven him mad—perhaps he had gone mad.
He wished for true freedom—freedom from the ceaseless pursuit of Bordan and the Kundarak dwarves, freedom from the visions that still besieged him day and night. That anger seethed and bubbled, fierce and hot. He squeezed his eyes shut and roared again. The wind snatched away his cry and carried his boiling anger with it. His knowledge of the Prophecy might have seemed like a curse in the past, but he was using it to his advantage. It had given him power and insight. It was a gift.
The Heart of Khyber with its stored memories. The dragon who had altered the course of his life. A hard shell of resentment.
“I’ve given your life a purpose,” the dragon said. Its voice was Gaven’s.
“I didn’t want that purpose.”
“But you chose a new one. You can’t carry on without one. And you will never again be content to live an ordinary life.”
Another gift. The hard shell broke and fell away, leaving a blazing core of molten fury.
Lightning seared through Gaven’s body, and he hung in the sky. Lightning flowed through each hand and foot and poured from his mouth as he screamed.
Rienne shook him gently awake. He sat bolt upright—he heard the jangle of chainmail.
Tears streamed down R
ienne’s face. He was too stung by her betrayal to resist the Sentinel Marshals.
The person he loved most in the world sent him to Dreadhold. This anger was thick and hot, and would not fall away so easily.
At night in Dreadhold, waiting for the nightmares to come, he lay in his bunk and nursed that anger.
Rienne testified to the Tribunal. She wanted to convince them he needed help, but instead she convinced them of his guilt.
He glanced down to where she hung in the air, held aloft by the winds at his command. Again the urge to destroy welled up in him. It would be so easy to let her fall.
Four Sentinel Marshals struggled to restrain him. He wanted to get to Rienne, to break her neck, to tear her small, lithe body apart with his bare hands.
“Let him live, I implore you.” Rienne was pleading for him, even as he tried to reach her. “By all that is holy, have mercy! If he is mad, who knows but that he might one day recover his senses?”
For twenty-six years he’d nurtured a lie—a lie that let him focus his anger outward at her, instead of inward. Rienne had not betrayed him, she had tried to protect him. She had acted out of her love for him. He had kept her out while the Heart of Khyber had wormed its way into his heart—he had betrayed her.
“Don’t you think I deserve an explanation?” she said.
“No.”
“I think I do. I loved you once, Gaven, and you made me believe you loved me.”
Sobs wracked his body. “I’m sorry, Ree,” he whispered, and he imagined that the wind carried his voice down to her.
The knot of his anger was stripped down to its core.
“Let me see you, Gaven.” Arnoth stood over the parched, feverish body of his son.
Gaven huddled under a blanket that chafed against his sunburned skin.
“Let me see him,” Arnoth said.
Someone pulled the blanket off him, and Gaven felt his father’s eyes searching him, looking for any sign of a dragonmark. In vain—Gaven had failed his test.
A blur of faces surrounded him, but one face stood out clearly—his father’s, trying to smile.