by James Wyatt
Kyaphar's face twisted in anger. "Which attackers do you mean? The Carrion Tribes or the armies of Aundair?"
"I believe the Carrion Tribes to be the greater threat," Rienne said, "with dragons as their vanguard."
"And vultures at their rear. But Aundair is no less an invading army. The defense of the Reaches is a Reacher concern, not Aundair's, and not yours. What is your stake in our fate?"
Kyaphar's words echoed the words of her dream, and she shuddered. Vultures wheel where dragons flew, picking the bones of the numberless dead. "I had a dream," she said, to herself as much as to him.
"And your dream led you to the defense of the Eldeen Reaches?"
Rienne threw a sharp glance at Kyaphar, but his face held no mockery-rather, he seemed intrigued.
"Yes," she said. "I believe my destiny is intertwined with that of the barbarian leader." The Blasphemer, she thought.
"And you believe that the two of you, and your airship, can make a difference in this war."
"We already have," Jordhan said from the helm. "One fewer dragon flies before the horde already, thanks to Rienne and this airship."
Rienne felt embarrassed at Jordhan's boast and looked away. Kyaphar's hippogriff shifted nervously on the deck, while the other two riders circled their mounts around the airship. The sun was sinking behind the distant mountains, streaking the smoke-filled sky with red.
"All our fates are intertwined," she said. She stepped to the bulwarks and looked eastward. The forest dwindled away into the farms of the eastern Reaches, and beyond them the writhing line of the Wyr River glowed red in the evening sun. The land across the river was Aundair-more fields, vineyards, and bustling Fairhaven at their heart. She struggled to find words to make sense of something that hovered at the edge of her understanding. "The Blasphemer is coming," she said. "This isn't a war of conquest. He doesn't want your land, or Aundair's. The barbarians aren't going to settle down and start farming these lands when this is over. It's about annihilation. He will sweep through behind his dragons, and leave nothing in his wake. I don't know if I can stop him, but I have to try."
Kyaphar stared at her for a long moment, then he nodded slowly. "I would welcome your help against the Blasphemer," he said. He turned to Jordhan. "If you would be kind enough to bring your vessel to the ground, I would like to introduce you both to the Mosswood Warden."
Jordhan looked to Rienne, and she nodded. The airship started to descend, startling the hippogriff. It squawked and flapped its wings, spreading its legs to keep its balance. Kyaphar turned to the beast and laid a hand on its neck, soothing it.
The Mosswood Warden, Rienne thought. The Eldeen Reaches were governed by druids, nature priests of various sects who led by wise guidance and example, striving to keep their people in harmony with nature as much on the farms of the agricultural east as in the wilds of the Towering Wood. What would the druids have to say about the Blasphemer?
Kyaphar returned to his saddle and raised a hand in salute to Rienne and Jordhan. "I will guide you to a safe moorage," he said, "then escort you to the Warden." He gently pulled on his mount's reins, and the hippogriff's wings spread out wide. Catching the wind, it lifted off the deck as the airship continued her descent, and Rienne watched Kyaphar and his mount soar over them, then swoop down past them to a towering oak in the forest below.
As the airship followed Kyaphar down, the ground came alive to Rienne's eyes. Soldiers massed in ragged lines, spear tips glinting in the sun-militia called from their farms to defend against the invaders. Clumps of warriors in thick hide armor formed around enormous Eldeen bears, clad in their own plates of metal-studded leather. Men and women in flowing robes of green, brown, or gray huddled around menhirs and obelisks of rough-hewn stone, raising their voices in droning chants. Rienne couldn't see a settlement of any sort, let alone a wall that could help hold the barbarians back. What were the Reachers hoping to defend here?
The spreading branches of an ancient oak made a perfect mooring tower for the airship. Kyaphar left his hippogriff on the ground and climbed a rope ladder into the branches. He walked nimbly among them, tying ropes to hold the ship in place, then helped Jordhan and Rienne off the deck and led them down the ladder to solid ground. At the bottom of the ladder, he extended an arm toward where a small clump of people waited for them.
Rienne had formed a picture in her mind of the Mosswood Warden, based in part on Sky Warden Kyaphar-an old man, as dark as Kyaphar but with gray hair and a long beard, so hunched he was almost lost in his moss-green robe. Her image could hardly have been more wrong. As Rienne approached, one woman stepped forward to greet her, and Kyaphar introduced her as Mosswood Warden Elestrissa.
She did wear some moss green in her cloak, but that was where the resemblance to Rienne's mental picture ended. She was a gray-skinned half-orc, taller by a head than Kyaphar and powerfully muscled. Her long black hair was strung with beads that clattered as the wind stirred them, and her powerful chest was wrapped in armor made of thick bark sewn to tough leather. In one hand, she held an ornate shield carved of dark-wood, and the other clutched a short spear tipped with a gleaming crystal point.
The Mosswood Warden's face was grim as Kyaphar repeated what Rienne and Jordhan had told him on the airship-about their desire to help defend against the barbarians, and Rienne's conviction that her destiny was linked to the Blasphemer's.
"Tell me your dream," she said to Rienne.
Rienne felt the half-orc woman's eyes bore into her. They were steel gray, intense, perhaps haunted. "I was in darkness," Rienne said. Her dream suddenly was as vivid in her mind as when she'd had it in Argonnessen, four weeks earlier. "All I could see was my sword, suspended in the air, so I took it by the hilt and it lifted me into the air. I heard words-no, I didn't hear them, I just knew them. The words of the Draconic Prophecy." She closed her eyes and recited them.
"'Dragons fly before the Blasphemer's legions, scouring the earth of his righteous foes. Carnage rises in the wake of his passing, purging all life from those who oppose him. Vultures wheel where dragons flew, picking the bones of the numberless dead. But the Blasphemer's end lies in the void, in the maelstrom that pulls him down to darkness.'"
She opened her eyes, feeling the weight of the Mosswood Warden's stare, and found Kyaphar and a circle of retainers all staring at her intently. "Then I was on a battlefield. I saw dragons in the air, and the barbarians' white banner in the wind. I was fighting, and I killed many soldiers before I finally stood before the Blasphemer."
Elestrissa didn't move, but kept staring, as if waiting for more.
"That's all," Rienne said. "That's when I woke."
The half-orc's shoulders slumped. "So you did not foresee the Blasphemer's death," she said, clearly disappointed.
Rienne thought back over the dream. It seemed strange, but Elestrissa was correct-she had seen herself standing before the demonic figure of the barbarian leader, but there her dream had ended. She had associated the dream with the Blasphemer's death because of the words of the Prophecy. In her mind, the maelstrom was her Maelstrom, the blade that had led her into the dream in the first place. She shook her head as she repeated the words: "'But the Blasphemer's end lies in the void, in the maelstrom that pulls him down to darkness.'"
"Look around you, lady," Elestrissa said. "Does this place look familiar to you? Might this be the place where the battle took place in your dream?"
Rienne looked at the forest behind the Warden, and turned to see the trees thinning off to the east into farms and fields. "No," she said. She closed her eyes again. She had not been in the forest in her dream. She saw open sky, and heard the shouts of soldiers and the screams of the dying… and the rush of the river. "No-in my dream I was at the river."
"Then it appears your destiny is bound to the defense of Aundair after all, and not the Reaches."
"I have to help stop the Blasphemer, if I can."
"And perhaps you will, when he crosses the Wynarn. But by then, it will be
too late for us. We take our stand here, even if it is our last."
"I will fight here," Rienne said, "if you will let me."
"We will not refuse another sword pledged against the barbarians," Elestrissa said, shaking her head and turning away. "But I fear it will do precious little to help us. Kyaphar will put you and your airship where he thinks you can do the most good."
"Wait-"
"Good fortune, Lady Alastra, Captain d'Lyrandar." The Mosswood Warden and her retainers walked away, leaving Rienne and Jordhan alone with Kyaphar.
"Well, that was strange," Jordhan said.
"Ten Seas! There's so much more I wanted to ask."
"Ask me," Kyaphar said. "You seem to have been placed under my command." He smiled, and Rienne couldn't help but return the warmth of it. "Let's go back to your airship, and you can ask me anything you need to know."
"The most important thing is, what are we defending? Why make our stand here?"
"I suspected that might be your first question. And it's a question best answered from the air."
CHAPTER 13
Gaven stared up at a storm-wracked sky where dragons wheeled like vultures. Darkness slowly poured into the sky until it was a whirling cloud of shadow, and Gaven saw the souls of the fallen drifting into that new storm. He is the storm, and the eye of the storm, he thought. In him the storm cannot die.
The harsh chant of the Blasphemer was gone, but no sound dared to take its place. He felt but did not hear heavy footsteps drumming the floor beside him, and then Cart crouched over him. Cart's mouth opened, but no words emerged. Gaven tried to focus on Cart's face, but his eyes kept drifting past the warforged to the storm of souls. Cart turned away for a moment, then leaned close, putting a steadying hand on Gaven's shoulder.
Ashara came then and leaned over him, and Cart shifted away to give her room. A slender wand was in her hand, and she moved it slowly over his body, as if it were a tool knitting his wounds closed. Her touch was cold on his skin, but it woke his nerves, first to a cacophony of pain, then as the wand worked its magic, to the hard floor and sharp glass beneath him.
"What happened?" Kelas's voice, somewhere behind him, was the first clear sound he heard. "Damn! Is she hurt?"
"The servant?" Ashara said, glancing up. "She'll be fine. Don't move her! I have more work to do yet. But we almost lost this one."
"Gaven?" Kelas's face appeared in his vision. Gaven felt a surge of rage and fear before he noticed the lines of worry and the genuine concern in the man's eyes and remembered it was Aunn looming over him, not Kelas. Aunn looked him over, then surveyed the room. Something caught his attention, and his eyes shot wide. "Fire!"
Cart sprang to his feet, following Aunn's eyes. Gaven managed to turn his head enough to see the warforged snatch a blanket from the bed and beat it against the floor, sending smoke in eddies toward the open door. After a moment the warforged stopped and stood back.
Aunn barked orders. "Ashara, see to the servant. Cart, as soon as Ashara says you can move her, carry the girl into a bed and find out what she saw." He turned to address someone Gaven couldn't see. "You, put that wine on the table, then go and bring me a fresh bottle." He crouched beside Gaven and sighed. "I think I'm going to need it."
Ashara stood and strode toward the door, leaving Gaven in Aunn's care.
"Can you hear me, Gaven?" he said.
Gaven opened his mouth and found that he had no voice. He managed a slight nod.
"Can you tell me what happened?"
Gaven turned his head to the side. Even if he could speak, he wasn't sure he knew what had happened.
"Well," Aunn said, "it looks to me like we had a lightning storm in here. If I had to guess, I'd say that a bolt of lightning connected that dragonshard to the sky, with you and the window caught in between. Which resulted in a burning rug, a shattered window, a wounded servant, and you…" His brow furrowed. "On the brink of death. Which seems odd."
Gaven closed his eyes, trying to remember the lightning.
"I've seen lightning go through you quite a number of times," Aunn continued. "But I've never seen you burned like this." With a glance at the door, Aunn slid a wand out of a pouch, hiding it halfway in his sleeve. Warmth flowed into Gaven's body where the wand and Aunn's hands touched him, and he felt a surge of renewed strength.
"The Blasphemer," Gaven said. He could manage a rasping croak, no more.
"You were dreaming," Aunn said. "By the window?"
"A vision. Rienne."
"I see." Aunn looked around, lifted a sheet of paper from the floor beside him, and read it aloud. "'In the darkest night of the Dragon Below, storm and dragon are reunited, and they break together upon the legions of the Blasphemer.' That's pleasant bedtime reading. No wonder he was haunting your dreams." He turned and started collecting the other pages strewn across the floor.
"Wait," Gaven said. "Read that again."
Aunn did, and Gaven felt his pulse quicken. Storm and dragon reunited…
That could just mean Gaven holding the dragonshard that contained his mark. Or it could point to his mark being somehow restored to his skin-or, he supposed, to the involvement of some dragon. "Is there anything else on that page?" he asked.
"Just the date, 22 Dravago 988. Why?"
"I've forgotten so much."
When he had first left Dreadhold, the Prophecy swam in Gaven's mind. He remembered every dream that had haunted his sleep, every scrap of writing he'd collected and deciphered in his expeditions through the depths of Khyber, and even verses he'd never read-fragments held in the dragon's memories trapped in his mind. Haldren and Vaskar had questioned him about the Time of the Dragon Above, the Eye of Siberys, the Soul Reaver-and those memories had flooded over him and spilled out of his mouth. Flashes of memory still surprised him occasionally, but the Prophecy no longer felt like a part of him.
"Just set it down and leave us alone," Aunn said, looking toward the door again.
With an effort, Gaven sat up and looked around the room. A young man stood in the door, eyes wide, clutching a bottle of wine. The floor around him was covered with shards of glass, and only a few jagged pieces remained in the frame. A faint smell of smoke lingered in the air, but Gaven couldn't see the damage his dragonmark had caused. Cart and Ashara had vanished.
The servant placed the bottle on the small table beside the bed, knocking it into a glass that was already there, sending a splash of red wine over the lip. Flustered, he looked around in vain for something to clean up with, but Aunn barked at him and he scurried away.
"Let's get you into bed," Aunn said, extending a hand to Gaven.
"I'm fine." Gaven managed to stand, glass crunching against the wood under his feet. Now he could see the rosy dragonshard on the other side of the bed, resting in a blackened crater in the woven Talentan rug. Between the window and the rug, Gaven's outburst had probably caused a thousand gold galifars of damage. He stepped carefully out of the glass and bent to retrieve the shard.
Its heat surprised him, and a sharp surge of anger shot through him. For an instant, the man before him was really Kelas, who had stripped his mark from his skin. A prickle ran over his chest and shoulder, where his mark had been, and he heard thunder crack outside. He dropped the shard back on the bed.
Aunn's hand shot to the hilt of his sword, as if the thunder heralded an imminent attack. "What was that?" he said.
"His storm flies wild," Gaven muttered, "unbound and pure in devastation."
"Nara said that," Aunn said. "Is that the Prophecy?"
Gaven nodded.
"What's the rest of it? You were saying it with her."
"Pure in devastation, going before the traitor's army to break upon the city by the lake of kings."
"The city of Varna, on Lake Galifar."
"Going before the traitor's army," Gaven said. "Kelas? Did he send the army marching to Varna?"
"Or Nara. Is there anything else about the traitor's army, or the traitor herself?"
"I don't know." Gaven slumped onto the bed. "I don't remember. Why don't you look in there?" He gestured vaguely toward the papers still strewn on the floor.
"You didn't sleep at all, did you?" Aunn asked.
"No. You?"
"A little. I'm sorry. I'll stop interrogating you."
"What do you know about Nara?"
Aunn laughed. "It's only fair, I suppose. But let me find Cart and Ashara first. They should hear this as well."
Gaven gathered the papers from the floor while Aunn ventured down the hall in search of the others. He didn't give the pages any more than a glance until he saw his father's writing. The sight of the flowing script made something in him break. He fell on his knees, felt glass bite through his skin, and dissolved into grief.
"She was bringing the wine." Ashara's voice came from the doorway. "She said she had just knocked on the door when it flew open and threw her back."
"Where's Gaven?" Aunn said.
Gaven tried to compose himself and got to his feet, fumbling with the papers in his hand. Aunn stood in the doorway, relief plain on his face as Gaven returned to his view. Cart and Ashara crowded the hallway behind him.
"Is the servant badly hurt?" Gaven said.
"She'll be fine," Ashara said. "You're bleeding again."
Gaven looked down and saw blood soaking into the knees of his pants, where glass had cut through the cloth and sliced his skin. "It's nothing," he said. The cuts burned, but they weren't serious. He looked at Aunn. "So tell us about Nara."
Aunn took a deep breath and let it out. "Very well. Nara ir'Galanatyr led the Royal Eyes from 975, I think, to 996. She was supposed to be close to Queen Barvette, but I've heard nasty rumors that she had something to do with the old queen's death. When Aurala took the throne, though, Nara became one of her closest advisors, and she stayed that way right up until the end of the war."
"When she was dismissed," Cart said. "She didn't want Aurala to sign the treaty, so Aurala appointed a new spy master who would work for peace."
"Something like that," Aunn said, "but there was more to it." He paused, biting his lip.