Dragon war dp-3

by James Wyatt

  "Look, this isn't the time or place to talk details. But I'll tell you that I've been talking to Merrix, and he's promised his support as well." Cart recognized the name of Merrix d'Cannith, one of three barons who vied for control over House Cannith. Merrix oversaw the House's operations in the south, from his headquarters in the Brelish city of Sharn.

  "Of course he has," Ashara said. "With Jorlanna out of the way, he'll have two-thirds of the House under his thumb, and Zorlan won't be able to oppose him." Zorlan was the eastern baron, who lived in the Karrnathi capital.

  "Would that be so bad? Better that than to be a ministry of the Crown, or divided like the Phiarlans." Harkin took another step closer to Ashara, ignoring Cart entirely, and put a hand on her shoulder. "Listen, Ashara. We were friends once, and more than that. Can I count on your help, for the sake of that old… friendship?"

  Ashara looked at Cart, her face a little flushed. "We've already set ourselves against Jorlanna's schemes," she said.

  "I knew I could count on you," Harkin said. He had assumed Ashara was still talking to him, Cart realized, liking Harkin even less. "I'll be in touch again soon."

  Harkin snatched his wands from Cart's hands and held out his hand for his sword, still smiling at Ashara. Cart turned his back on the Cannith and walked toward the Tower of Eyes. A moment later, Ashara's hands were on his arm again, and he felt his anger ebb.

  Aunn sat in Kelas's chair with his feet on the desk and his chin on his chest, but Gaven didn't want to sleep. He paced the small room, feeling trapped, his mind circling around thoughts of his father and Kelas, his disturbed dreams, and Havrakhad's parting words: Use your freedom as if you deserved it.

  Aunn had spoken of making restitution for the wrongs they had done, but how could he do that? He couldn't bring the Paelions back, not any more than he could bring his father back.

  A gauntleted fist knocked at the door, and Gaven pulled it open. Cart shuffled inside with Ashara leaning on his shoulder, looking too tired to support her own weight. Gaven glanced at Aunn and saw him fighting to open his eyes, still surfacing from his dreams.

  "You all need sleep," Cart said.

  "I don't," Gaven said. "There's enough room in here to put two bedrolls on the floor. You and I can keep watch, Cart, while these two sleep."

  "Don't try that on me," Cart said. "Sleep is no weakness, and you're not some kind of great hero if you can fight it off for a few hours or days."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I used to see it all the time in the army-soldiers would decide that they were as tough as a warforged, try to go without sleep, and nearly every time they ended up dead."

  "I don't need to sleep now-I've been dreaming for the better part of a day."

  "And you're afraid of dreaming again, is that it?"

  "I'm not-" Gaven broke off. Actually, he realized, Cart was exactly right. He didn't want to dream again of Paelion ghosts, or of Rienne. And after being trapped in his dreams, he was afraid he might not wake up again.

  "We can go to Kelas's home," Aunn said. "In fact, we should. It's what Kelas would do."

  "Does he have any family?" Ashara asked.

  "No. There'll be a servant or two, but I can handle them. And we can all get a good rest in a warm, soft bed."

  A bed. Gaven hadn't slept in a bed since he and Rienne boarded the Sea Tiger in Sharavacion. Without Rienne, though, he feared a bed would seem painfully empty.

  "How far is it?" Ashara asked. She looked as though her only concern was whether she could make it all the way to a bed before she fell over.

  "Not far," Aunn said. "A few blocks."

  "I'll help you," Cart said, and Ashara smiled up at him.

  Aunn stood. "Let's go, then, before the sun rises."

  Gaven lifted the sheaf of papers from Kelas's desk, his fingers scrabbling to get the bottom page off the smooth wood. He glanced around the room to make sure he wasn't forgetting anything, but his only possessions were on his person-the armor and sword that Cart and Ashara had secured for him while Phaine held him captive. He clutched the papers to his chest.

  Aunn led the way out of the quiet white tower and onto the street. Crown's Hall rose in stately majesty just off to the left, and Gaven saw a pair of royal guards watching as Aunn led his friends away from the palace. Gaven imagined that the guards stared particularly keenly at him, though he knew it was unlikely they'd recognize him. Following Aunn's lead, he ignored them and walked with the others down the wide street, kicking at the dry leaves on the cobblestones.

  Kelas's house was everything his study in the Tower of Eyes was not-large and well lit, with tall, glass-paned windows offering a pleasant view of the tree-lined neighborhood. Aunn produced a key, but the door swung open before he could turn it in the lock, and a pretty young woman smiled at him.

  "Welcome home, Master Kelas," she said. "We weren't expecting you back so soon." To Gaven's eyes, her smile seemed forced.

  "Plans change," Aunn said. He was gruff, aloof. The woman gave way as he stepped through the door and into a long entry hall. "We haven't slept, and we mean to. Are the guest rooms ready?"

  "Of course, master."

  "And send some wine to the rooms as well."

  "The vintage?" She didn't look at Aunn when she asked that, but at Cart.

  Aunn hesitated. The servant's eyes fluttered back to him. "Bluevine '92," he said, and she seemed to relax.

  "A fine choice," she said. "Will you be needing anything else?"

  "Just sleep."

  "As you wish." She bowed deeply and withdrew.

  "This was a terrible idea," Aunn whispered. "We should just leave."

  Gaven looked at the shadows beneath Aunn's eyes. Ashara was leaning heavily on Cart, and despite Gaven's earlier protest, he felt the weight of exhaustion. "We need to rest," he said.

  "We'd have been safer at an inn," Aunn said, glancing around the hall.

  "Why?"

  "Kelas was a spy master. He had so many precautions in place-" The sound of footsteps cut him off. "The guest rooms are this way," he said, louder, and he led the way through a door into another hall.

  "Like the business with the wine?" Gaven whispered as they climbed a flight of stairs.

  "Exactly. I think I said the right thing, but I'm not positive. It's probably best not to drink the wine."

  They reached another hall, and Aunn pushed a door open. "Here's one room," he said, "and the next two doors. I, unfortunately, will be at the other end of the house."

  Gaven looked into the open doorway. It was large for a guest room, with space enough for a low table and two upholstered chairs in addition to the soft-looking bed. The first morning sunlight streamed in through a tall window on the far side of the room.

  "Avoid conversation," Aunn added in a whisper. "The servants will hear everything you say."

  Cart led Ashara down the hall to the next door and opened it for her. Gaven didn't wait to see them say good night. "Get some rest," he said to no one in particular. He tossed the papers onto the bed in the first guest room, closed the door with a last nod to Aunn, pulled off his boots, and squirmed out of the chainmail shirt Ashara had given him in the cave temple behind the Dragon Forge.

  Pain flared from a dozen scrapes and wounds on his chest and arms. His shirt was in tatters, thanks to Phaine's ministrations, and some of his cuts oozed fresh blood when he pulled the mail away. He wished Aunn had ordered the servants to draw a bath, and briefly toyed with the idea of summoning them himself. He remembered Aunn's warning, though, and decided to avoid the servants. He fell into bed, and immediately sleep reached to enfold him.

  "No," he said, and he heaved himself to a sitting position, propped against the elegant headboard. When he closed his eyes, the darkness was like the blackness of his dreams, pulling him down and holding him captive. Best not to close his eyes, then. He grabbed the papers from Dreadhold, straightened the pages on his lap, and started to read.

  Tumult and tribulation swirl in hi
s wake: The Blasphemer rises, the Pretender falls, and armies march once more across the land.

  The Storm Dragon, Gaven thought. He couldn't remember the rest of the verse, but it was something to do with the Storm Dragon.

  He ran a hand over the tender skin where his dragonmark had been. Am I still the Storm Dragon? he wondered. He reached into the pouch at his belt and pulled out the dragonshard that held his Mark of Storm.

  Or is this the Storm Dragon now?

  Turning the shard in his hand, he thought for a moment that he saw in his mark the same words he'd just read on the page. Something about the Blasphemer, anyway.

  He placed the bloodstone on the skin of his chest and balanced it there as he turned to the next page in Kelas's papers.

  The cauldron of the thirteen dragons boils until one of the five beasts fighting over a single bone becomes a thing of desolation.

  The twentieth day of Olarune, 973 YK. Gaven had scrawled those words on the wall of his cell twenty-one years to the day before the Mourning, when Cyre became "a thing of desolation." They were transcribed without comment-surely no dwarf at Dreadhold could have guessed in 973 how those words might be fulfilled. Gaven remembered that verse and its conclusion:

  Desolation spreads over that land like wildfire, like plague, and Eberron bears the scar of it for thirteen cycles of the Battleground. Life ceases within its bounds, and ash covers the earth.

  Apparently the Mourning had been foretold in the Prophecy. Did that mean it had to happen? Were the deaths of millions of Cyrans somehow necessary, because the Prophecy predicted it?

  Or had someone brought the Mourning about in order to fulfill the Prophecy? No one knew for certain what had really happened on the Day of Mourning. Perhaps some dragon or sorcerer, obsessed with the Prophecy, had decided that killing all those people was the best way to fulfill those words, words found written in the the depths of the Dragon Below or encoded in a dragonmark, or signified by the movement of the moons and stars. Where had Gaven learned them? In a nightmare?

  What nuance of meaning was obscured by the bald translation he'd scribbled in his cell? All the verbs he'd chosen seemed clear, painfully direct, making it hard to imagine any other possible interpretation. Could the Prophecy have been fulfilled in a less devastating way? Could Cyre have been spared?

  He closed his eyes as he thought, then jolted awake as sleep tried once more to claim him. He scowled, shook his head to clear it, and turned the page.

  Thunder is his harbinger and lightning his spear. Wind is his steed and rain his cloak. The words of creation are in his ears and on his tongue. The secrets of the first of sixteen are his.

  Malathar had echoed those words back to him during their final battle-why? Was the dragon-king seeing his own doom in the Prophecy? And then Malathar said another verse. Gaven looked at his dragonmark again, and saw it:

  The Storm Dragon flies before the traitor's army to deliver vengeance. The storm breaks upon the forces of the Blasphemer. The maelstrom swirls around him. He is the storm and the eye of the storm.

  Gaven stood for a moment upon the burning line of his dragonmark, red fire in the rosy crystal floor. The maze of twisting lines threatened to overwhelm him. How had he chosen a path with such clarity before, with Havrakhad beside him? Consequences and destinations eluded him, paths trailed off into darkness before he could discern their significance. Shadow closed in on him again, and he thought he heard Rienne's voice.

  "No sleep," Gaven said aloud, forcing his eyes open and then away from the dragonshard. He turned another page.

  A clash of dragons signals the sundering of the Soul Reaver's gates. The hordes of the Soul Reaver spill from the earth, and a ray of Khyber's sun erupts to form a bridge to the sky.

  There was a note on this page, written in the same angular Dwarven hand: "The prisoner's sleep was very troubled."

  Of course it was, Gaven thought. He remembered his dreams of the Soul Reaver and its hordes, though now the dreams were jumbled with the memory of the actual event. It didn't matter-the dreams had been true to reality in every detail. He had lived through a nightmare.

  He looked at the date, 21 Eyre 973 YK. Twenty-six years later, he'd been in New Cyre with Senya-he remembered the date from the forged identification papers she'd secured for him there.

  "Destiny is… it's like the highest hopes the universe has for you." Gaven couldn't see Senya's face, but he heard her voice as though she were in the same room. "Like-like my mother wanted the best for me. And you can either fulfill your destiny, or you-"

  What had Senya's mother dreamed for her daughter? Gaven hadn't really known his own mother. She died shortly after Thordren was born, leaving just a vague impression of a comforting presence in his toddler mind, an encompassing love he associated later in his life with Rienne's embrace. What had been her highest hopes for her son? Gaven thought of his father, whose hopes for Gaven had always felt like very high expectations-the hope, disappointed at every turn, that Gaven would grow into a replica of himself. Rienne, though, had always accepted who he was, and somehow at the same time inspired him to become someone better.

  He threw himself out of bed, scattering papers to one side, the dragonshard clattering to the floor on the other. A weight gripped his chest, squeezing the breath from his lungs, and he couldn't sit still. He strode to the door, thought about opening it, then turned and paced to the window at the other end of the room.

  "Where are you, Ree?" His eyes scanned the streets and buildings outside as if he expected Rienne to show herself to his view, but for all he knew she was still half the world away, rotting in some dragonborn prison. "I need you so much."

  He pressed his forehead against the cool glass and closed his eyes, drawing a slow breath to calm his racing heart. Rienne's face appeared in the darkness, streaked with tears.

  "You left me," she sobbed.

  "I'm coming to find you, love," he mumbled, his lips thick with sleep.

  He stood on a battlefield. Bodies blanketed the ground, slick with gore. Howls of fury and sobs of pain assaulted his ears. Exhaustion pulled at his limbs and dragged his shoulders toward the blood-soaked ground. Thunder crashed in the air, then all human sounds ceased, leaving only a string of syllables. They held the absence of meaning, and their sound was the unmaking of all things.

  All around him, soldiers in Aundairian blue and savages clad in hide and fur fell as one to the ground, clutching their ears, their mouths forming silent howls of agony. He saw Rienne still standing, her face wrenched in pain, both hands on the hilt of her sword. Before her was a demon in the shape of a man, bound in bloodstained plate armor. He lifted a curved sword as the sounds of destruction kept spilling from his mouth.

  "No!" Gaven screamed, and lightning arced from the red dragonshard to his body and exploded toward the Blasphemer.

  Glass shattered and fell in a hail around him on the hardwood floor.

  CHAPTER 12

  Rienne!" Jordhan's voice was a distant siren, drawing her out of sleep. She awoke in his cabin, her cheeks wet with tears, wisps of dream clouding her thoughts, Gaven's name on her lips. Jordhan was calling down from the deck, and as the haze of sleep lifted she could hear the urgency in his voice.

  She sprang out of the bunk, snatched up Maelstrom in its sheath, and bounded through the hatch to the deck. Sunlight cast long shadows across the polished wood beneath her feet, but she couldn't tell whether the sun was about to dip below the horizon or just emerging above it. Jordhan stood at the helm, alert, watching something off the starboard bow.

  "What is it?" she asked, hurrying to the bulwarks. She saw before he could answer-three pairs of wings, fierce eagle beaks and talons in front, powerful body and horse-like hooves in back. Hippogriffs-each one carrying a rider. The sun gleamed on the riders' metal armor and shone on the tips of the long lances they carried. The majestic beasts soared on wide-spread wings, on a course that would intercept the airship's in just a few moments.

  "Have they hailed y
ou?" Rienne called back to Jordhan.

  "Not yet."

  "Where are we?"

  Jordhan scoffed. "The middle of nowhere. We're almost back to the edge of the forest, ahead of the barbarians again."

  "These riders aren't from the horde, though."

  "No. There seem to be Eldeen forces coming together somewhere near here-I've seen quite a few contingents moving beneath us."

  "So the hippogriffs are part of the Eldeen defenses."

  "I'd assume so."

  Rienne slid Maelstrom into the sash at her waist and tried to relax as the hippogriffs closed the distance. She should have nothing to fear from the Reachers-she was here, after all, to help them defend their land from the barbarians. Ostensibly, though, that was the same reason that Aundair had sent troops into the Reaches. House Lyrandar had close ties to Aundair, so she wasn't sure of the reaction she should expect from these riders.

  The hippogriffs approached in a tight wedge, the wingtips of the two in the rear almost touching each other near the front one's tail. Rienne backed toward the helm to make room on the deck for one of the beasts to land, and a moment later the two rear hippogriffs split off to either side as the front one fluttered into a graceful landing, its rear hooves clattering against the deck. The rider was a human in thick hide armor, covered with a sage green tabard bearing the oak-tree emblem of the Eldeen Reaches. His skin was a shade darker than Rienne's, almost black. He set his lance into a sling attached to the saddle and dismounted.

  "Captain Lyrandar," the man said with a small bow toward Jordhan, "and lady, I apologize for this intrusion. I am Sky Warden Kyaphar."

  Rienne glanced over her shoulder at Jordhan, who smiled at the Sky Warden. "I am Jordhan d'Lyrandar-you'll forgive me not leaving the helm to greet you properly. This is Rienne ir'Alastra, of Stormhome."

  "What can we do for you, Sky Warden?" Rienne said.

  "Can I inquire as to your business in this part of the Reaches? Are you carrying cargo?"

  Rienne drew a deep breath. "We are here to offer our support to your leadership, to help defend the Reaches from its attackers."