by James Wyatt
Vaskar roared when he saw Gaven approaching. “Do you still think to steal my prize?” he howled over the wind. “Get away, interloper!”
Vaskar’s outrage had a very different effect than he had intended. The Soul Reaver followed Vaskar’s gaze, turning its monstrous head toward Gaven as he approached. Then, as if the battle to that point had consisted purely of the Soul Reaver playing with Vaskar, the tentacled thing dismissed him. Barely sparing the dragon another glance, it blasted him with waves of energy that made the air shimmer, and the echoes of it made Gaven’s head throb with sudden pain. Unconscious or dead, Vaskar fell.
As the Soul Reaver turned its full attention to Gaven, lightning streaked into the Crystal Spire and coursed through the Soul Reaver’s withered flesh, though it left the creature unharmed. Wind buffeted it from every side, and the robes it wore flapped furiously around it. In return, Gaven felt his mind engulfed in a similar storm. Thoughts and feelings welled up in no sensible order, like a nightmare galloping through his mind at a breakneck pace. Slights and shames from his childhood sprang to his thoughts alongside the fresh grief of his father’s death, while the memories he’d acquired from the Heart of Khyber added their own share of fear and frustration. For a moment Gaven could not even distinguish the torrent of memories from his sensation of the present: the Soul Reaver and the storm seemed like distant thoughts amid the deluge.
Among the torrent, though, Gaven found words that connected the ancient dragon’s memories to his own past, walking the Sky Caves of Thieren Kor, and the present moment, tying them all together—
The greatest of the daelkyr’s brood, the Soul Reaver feasts on the minds and flesh of a thousand lives before his prison breaks.
The Bronze Serpent calls him forth, but the Storm Dragon is his doom.
The words focused his mind like a bolt of lightning. I wield the power of the Storm Dragon, he thought. If I don’t kill the Soul Reaver, who will?
He whipped the storm into a greater fury. Hail battered the Soul Reaver, rain like searing fire burned its flesh, and lightning crackled in a ball around it. Then the Soul Reaver, too, fell from the sky, sliding down the shaft of unearthly light. Gaven watched it descend and disappear again below the earth, and he wished he could believe it dead.
The Storm Dragon descends into the endless dark beneath the bridge of light, he thought, where the Soul Reaver waits. There among the bones of Khyber the Storm Dragon drives the spear formed from Siberys’s Eye into the Soul Reaver’s heart.
Siberys’s Eye—where was it? With a start, he searched the ground below. Vaskar lay crumpled on the rocky plain near the base of the Crystal Spire, one wing outstretched at a strange angle, his neck curved around beneath the bulk of his body, his head hidden from view. The Soul Reaver’s hordes had dispersed from there already, moved outward to tear into the armies gathered at either end of the plain. Gaven willed himself downward, and the wind set him on solid ground once again. Drenched with rain, chilled to the bone, he scrambled over and around the rocks to the place where Vaskar’s body lay.
The dragon looked pathetic, broken like a child’s toy dashed to the ground, and Gaven again felt the welling of pity. “The Bronze Serpent faces the Soul Reaver and fails,” he said. “But the Storm Dragon seizes the shard of heaven from the fallen pretender. Where is it, Vaskar?”
Gaven circled the fallen dragon’s body, scanning the ground for any gleam of yellow. The ground around Vaskar’s body revealed no clues, so Gaven used the ash staff to prod under the dragon’s claws. He lifted a claw, and almost jumped in surprise as the Eye of Siberys flashed gold beneath the dragon’s massive hand. He scooped up the dragonshard and yanked it free from Vaskar’s staff.
He was back in the Aerenal jungle, cradling the warm Eye of Siberys close to his chest, gazing into its vibrant core where veins of gold danced like Siberys at the dawn of creation. It was so easy to lose himself in that writhing dance, to forget his surroundings, to forget himself. Even the sound of thunderous footsteps could barely stir him from his reverie, but he made himself turn and look at Darraun.
Except that he wasn’t in Aerenal, and the footsteps had been hoofbeats. Gaven tried to shake his head clear, without much success, and sized up the rider charging him from the north. A knight of some sort, he supposed, clad in heavy armor—no, a warforged. Cart.
Gaven stowed the Eye of Siberys in a pocket and held his ash-black staff as though it were his greatsword. “What are you doing here?” he called to the advancing warforged.
“I’m not here to fight you, Gaven,” Cart said. His tone reminded Gaven of the first time he’d encountered the warforged: Cart bending down to him in his cell and trying to coax him out as if he were a frightened child. “I thought you might want some help.”
“Help? Why would you help me?”
Cart dismounted and walked closer to Gaven. “Because we are alike, you and I.”
“Alike? How so?”
“Each of us was made for a single purpose, Gaven. It’s foolish to deny that purpose. I was made for war, and I will continue to war until I finally meet a foe who can defeat me. And I’ll die knowing that I lived according to my purpose. What more can anyone hope to do?”
“And for what purpose was I made, Cart?”
“You were made to be here at this moment, to fight that monstrosity down there and do what Vaskar could not. To be a god.”
“Of all people, shouldn’t gods be free to choose their destinies?”
“What greater destiny could you ask for?” Cart sounded as though he couldn’t possibly imagine a satisfactory answer to his question.
Gaven looked up into the storm, feeling the rain striking his skin. The wind lashed his hair against his face. He was the storm: he felt himself raging in the whirling clouds and booming thunder. But he was also a rain-drenched man, feet planted firmly on the ground. “You’re wrong about me, Cart,” he said. He pulled the Eye of Siberys out of his pocket and started binding it to the ash staff.
“Am I? Then why are you readying your weapon?”
“Oh, I’ll play the Storm Dragon’s part, for now. You’re right—someone has to stop the Soul Reaver, and no one here is going to do it but me.” The branch he had pulled from the ash tree seemed made to fit the Eye of Siberys. He jabbed the ground a few times to make sure the dragonshard was securely affixed.
Satisfied, he pulled his adamantine box out of another pouch and sprang it open. The nightshard inside seemed to spring to life at the proximity of the Eye of Siberys. “The Time of the Dragon Above draws to a close,” he said, not really addressing Cart. “The Time of the Dragon Below approaches. The Eye of Siberys and the Heart of Khyber are united, just as the Crystal Spire links the Dragon Above and the Dragon Below.”
“I agree with Darraun,” Cart said. “The Prophecy makes my head spin.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” Gaven lifted the nightshard and tossed it gently away from him. It seemed to float along that path for a moment, then it circled back, drawing a ring of lightning behind it. Like the whirlwind that had borne him aloft, it swirled around him, tracing its path in crackling light.
“Are you coming with me?” he asked the warforged.
Cart nodded.
“Let’s go, then.” Gaven strode over to the base of the Crystal Spire, to a ledge overlooking the chasm that rent the plain. He tried to peer down into it, but the light blinded him. “The Soul Reaver awaits.” Without a backward glance, he stepped off the ledge and fell.
CHAPTER
49
I‘ve got to get her back on the ground.” Darraun’s face was deathly pale, and his hands gripped the spokes of the wheel. Speaking seemed like an enormous effort.
“Keep going south,” Rienne said. “Behind the Thrane forces. We’ll be off the plain in no time.” She tried to sound more optimistic than she felt. But she had just watched Gaven fall down into the depths of Khyber, and dread had a chill grip on her heart.
Darraun fixed his eyes jus
t to the port side of the prow as he steered the airship in that direction. His every movement was stiff and clipped, as if moving too fast would break his mind’s hold on the elemental bound in the ship. His apparently fragile state did nothing to ease Rienne’s apprehension. She leaned on the port bulwark, watching as the chasm grew smaller in the distance behind them, until it was swallowed up in the rain and hail, and she could barely even make out the Crystal Spire.
“See anything?” Darraun grunted.
Rienne shifted her gaze to examine the plain below them. The Soul Reaver’s hosts rampaged across the battlefield. She saw Thrane banners cast down in the mud and trampled, though clusters of knights still held their ground against the tide of horrors. I see the world sinking into chaos, she thought.
“The Thranes are still fighting the creatures from the chasm,” she said. “Do you suppose Thrane will blame Aundair for that?”
Darraun nodded, and Rienne had to agree in her heart. The situation was grim in any event: If the Thrane army were completely destroyed, the Cardinals would assume that Aundair’s attack had been successful. If there were survivors—there had to be survivors!—they would describe how Aundair’s forces opened a crack in the earth and brought the monsters forth, and trafficking with the Dragon Below would be added to Aundair’s list of real and imagined crimes. It seemed the storm of war had broken again and nothing could stop it.
She leaned against the railing and stared down at the carnage below. Something had to stop it—something or someone. Gaven’s talk of being a hero, of choosing his own destiny and writing his own part in the play, stirred in her memory. “Darraun,” she said, whirling to face the changeling at the helm, “turn us around, take us north!”
His eyes were wide. “Back into the storm?” Yes, but not that storm, she thought. “Circle it. We need to get to Haldren.”
Darraun nodded and turned the wheel.
“Why should I be content to be a minor player in this drama?” Rienne mused aloud.
A smile quirked at the corner of Darraun’s mouth.
* * * * *
Haldren stared through the spyglass at the dragon’s crumpled body. Vaskar did not stir. He had watched Vaskar’s defeat with satisfaction diluted by growing rage. Vaskar had brought his plans to ruin, so it pleased him to see the dragon’s ambitions quashed as well. At the same time, Vaskar’s defeat left room for Gaven to seize what Vaskar had sought. Gaven—the pathetic madman that had started all this, without having the slightest idea what he was doing. Gaven was supposed to be a tool, a pawn Haldren could use to manipulate Vaskar and to facilitate his own rise to power. Instead, the bastard had stolen Senya, thwarted Vaskar, and appeared out of nowhere to take part in the ruin of Haldren’s plans.
“If I achieve nothing else in this lifetime,” he whispered, “I will destroy him.”
“You aim to destroy a god?” Senya said.
“He’s not a god.”
“Not yet. But his power is already greater than yours.”
“What did he do to you, Senya? How did he bend you so completely to him?”
“He didn’t bend me to his will. That’s how you work with your magic and your oratory. You taught me to work that way as well, using my body. And oh, you taught me well—well enough that the disciple became the master. I had you wrapped around my finger. But Gaven—he didn’t bend me. He straightened me out.”
Senya’s words stabbed Haldren’s heart and poured ice into his gut. “You … used me?” he whispered, quivering with rage.
“Of course.” Her voice was not cruel or bitter, just … dismissive. Utterly calm and cold. How could he have been such a fool?
He turned away from her and urged his horse forward a few steps. “Do you see the warforged?” he asked, trying to keep his voice as calm as hers.
“I saw him last on the east side of the field, riding hard.”
“Has he gone mad? What is he doing?”
“Cart was never good at standing by and watching a battle unfold. He was made for war, as he said, built by Cannith to be a soldier.”
“No,” Haldren breathed. He had put the spyglass back to his eye, and finally found Cart near the middle of the field. “He was evidently made for treachery. He’s talking to Gaven.”
“Don’t be absurd, Haldren. No one is more loyal to you than Cart.”
“If he treats with my enemy, he is my enemy.”
“I wonder if you have any friends left.”
Haldren surveyed the battlefield again. Ir’Fann’s infantry was gone, wiped from the field, leaving a strange calm on the eastern side. No wonder Cart had ridden that way. Kadra’s knights had fallen as well, which meant that if she hadn’t been dead when he saw her before, she certainly was now. The knight phantoms he’d seen earlier had actually rallied ir’Cashan’s troops on the west side, but there was no sign of ir’Cashan herself. Her death had probably caused her soldiers’ initial rout. He hadn’t seen Rennic Arak or his troops since the crevice opened—they had been at the vanguard, and were probably the first to fall. General Yeven, at least, was still alive: he had taken his command staff and retreated back up Bramblescar Gorge at about the same time as Cart had ridden off.
Haldren returned his gaze to Senya. “No,” he said, “none are left.”
As he spoke, something in the air caught his eye. A bright flash—lightning, perhaps? He almost dismissed it as yet another effect of the storm, but then he saw it again. An airship, a small one, and she was soaring closer to them through the storm.
“That’s Gaven’s ship,” Senya said.
“He’s not aboard, though.”
“You just saw him talking to Cart.”
“Well, if I can’t destroy him, perhaps I can at least destroy someone he loves.”
* * * * *
Rienne kept her eyes on the battlefield as Darraun piloted them around the storm. The skirmishes thinned on the south side, the Thrane side, and gave way to random clumps of monsters spreading over the plain to the east and shambling toward the Silver Woods. As the airship rounded the Crystal Spire and the raging storm, she saw more signs of battle—Haldren’s remaining troops struggling to hold the monsters off.
“I give better odds to the Thranes,” she said.
Darraun nodded. “Without the dragons, Haldren wouldn’t have had a chance.”
“So he had lost the battle even before the Crystal Spire appeared. His fate was sealed when the other dragons appeared to fight for Thrane.”
“Exactly.”
“What will he do?”
“Lick his wounds,” Darraun said. “He doesn’t take well to defeat.”
“Do you think he’ll try again someday?”
“If he gets out of this alive and manages to stay out of Dread-hold, yes.”
“Then I need to make sure he doesn’t.”
“Yes, we do,” Darraun said with a smile. The airship lurched, and his smile disappeared. Shaking his head, he renewed his concentration.
“I’m sorry. I’m distracting you.” Rienne turned back to the railing.
The Aundairian side of the field had boiled down to a single pitched battle on the western side. Haldren’s troops fought bravely, but they were completely encircled by the gibbering hordes. She watched sadly as the nightmarish host whittled away at the Aundairian formation, every fallen monster quickly replaced by another drawn to the battle from elsewhere on the field.
She pointed to the mouth of the small valley at the north end of the plain, the opening between the rocky wall of the Starpeaks and the Silver Woods where they had emerged into the Starcrag Plain. “There,” she said over her shoulder. “That’s the way we came, and I expect that’s where we’ll find Haldren.”
Darraun adjusted his course slightly, and they soared past the Aundairians’ last stand.
Rienne’s first indication that they had indeed found Haldren was a blast of fire exploding around the airship’s prow. Rienne tumbled away from the edge of the flames, unhurt, but she heard Darra
un let loose a string of vehement and evocative curses. Flames danced along the arcane tracery in the hull, fire answering fire, and she knew that the ship’s bound elemental would rebel against Darraun’s control as it had when they fought the young red dragon.
“Bring us down!” she shouted, but there was no need. Darraun was already urging the airship downward, though Rienne couldn’t tell whether he exerted such enormous effort to force the airship down or to keep her from falling too fast. Beads of sweat trickled down his face, and he squeezed one eye shut to clear sweat or smoke from it—he didn’t dare release even one hand from the wheel.
Rienne leaned over a railing on the port side and looked below them to help guide Darraun to a relatively safe landing spot. She was so intent on getting the airship safely down that she almost forgot about Haldren’s imminent threat, until another burst of fire engulfed her. She cried out in pain and fell back away from the bulwarks. Darraun must have lost concentration, either because he was injured as well or out of concern for her, because the airship suddenly jerked to starboard and then plunged downward. Rienne scrambled for a grip on something, and finally managed to clutch at a web of rope netting that secured a few small crates to the deck. As soon as she was sure of her hold, she looked at Darraun.
His eyes were squeezed shut, and his knuckles were white on the wheel. The muscles in his neck stood out like cords pulled tight beneath his skin, and sweat glued short tendrils of blond hair to his forehead. She didn’t see any sign of serious injury, but if he didn’t regain control of the airship quickly they would both be dead. She felt powerless, and she didn’t like that feeling.
Keeping a hand on the ropes, she half climbed, half crawled to the helm. She had tried to help Darraun fly the Eye of the Storm when they first left Stormhome in search of Gaven, but he had said that if two minds tried to control the elemental at once it was less likely to respond, not more. Darraun had been the obvious one of them to try steering the vessel, both because of his expertise with magic and because his changeling nature might allow him to trick the elemental into believing that he was an heir of House Lyrandar. But at that moment, Darraun was failing, and it was about to cost them both their lives.