by James Wyatt
Storm dragon
( Draconic prophesies - 1 )
James Wyatt
James Wyatt
Storm dragon
PART I
When the Eternal Day draws near, when its moon shines full in the night, and the day is at its brightest, the Time of the Dragon Above begins. Showers of light fall upon the City of the Dead, and the Storm Dragon emerges after twice thirteen years. Tumult and tribulation swirl in his wake: The Blasphemer rises, the Pretender falls, and armies march once more across the land.
CHAPTER 1
A distant rumble of thunder.
Thunder is his harbinger and lightning his spear.
Gaven stared up into the darkness of his cell, trying to clear his mind. Trying not to sleep.
He remembered perching on a cliff face, watching a storm blowing over the sea, brooding on those words. No. That had not been him. That was the other.
Wind is his steed and rain his cloak.
The words whispered in his mind in a voice that was not his. They filled him with foreboding. Echoes of a coming doom. His skin prickled. Another peal of thunder, more distant. Sleep closed in around him.
“No no no-no sleep,” he murmured. He forced his eyes open.
The Storm Dragon rises.
“Make it stop make it stop make it stop.” The prayer that had been his constant companion for twenty-seven years.
He remembered standing in the stone courtyard, head thrown back, arms spread to the sky, and singing to the storm. Exultation. Lightning danced along the high tower walls, and thunder beat a cadence for his song. Until the dwarf guards tackled him, wrestled him to the ground, and beat him into unconsciousness.
… the endless dark…
The darkness swallowed him, drawing him into nightmare.
He lay entombed in the depths of Khyber. Creeping things crawled and slithered over his body. The legs of a centipede undulated across his face, his lips. He tried to lift his head, to raise a hand, to scream. He couldn’t move, couldn’t draw breath.
A spear of blinding light shot up from the ground, impaling him before it broke through the ageless stone above him, soaring up and up until it reached the sky, stabbing through a storm cloud to touch the heights of Siberys.
Khyber and Siberys. The Dragon Below and the Dragon Above. A bridge of light joined heaven and earth.
… a ray of Khyber’s sun erupts to form a bridge to the sky…
On every side, creatures began to move-writhing, snaking, quivering. Eyes stared at him from the darkness, dimly reflecting the light. Eyes that formed no intelligible faces, leering from quivering masses of amorphous flesh or glowering alone in bestial skulls. Mouths gaped at him, toothy maws biting, serrated sucking parts trying to bore into his flesh. Tentacles grabbed at him, coiling around his limbs and probing his head.
The Storm Dragon descends into the endless dark…
A tentacle worked its way into his mouth, smothering his scream.
The waves of the Lhazaar Sea crashed against the rocks at the base of the walls of the fortress. The walls rose hundreds of feet, unbroken by windows or balconies. Four towers stood at the corners of the fortress, and a watchtower at the center pierced the night sky. This was Dreadhold: the greatest prison of the Five Nations, kept by the dwarves of House Kundarak to hold the world’s most dangerous criminals-the most bloodthirsty, sadistic, and evil villains to plague civilization. Its impregnable walls also contained those who posed a significant threat to the fragile peace-or to the interests of the dragonmarked houses-but who could not be executed.
Gaven slept fitfully in his cell, the roar of the breaking waves far below nothing more than a faint whisper through the stone. His eyes shot open, and he sat up with a gasp, staring around at the utter blackness of the tiny room. He threw off his threadbare wool blanket, oblivious to the chill, and groaned. Though he couldn’t see them, he felt the walls closing him in, and the moist air stifled him. He staggered off his bunk and fell into the cell’s iron door, fumbling around with his hands until he found a shutter at the level of his chest. He slid it open, and a few beams of light, gray and cold, spilled into the room, shining on the sheen of sweat that covered his face. With the light came the merest breath of fresher air, and he gulped it like a drowning man.
Gaven slumped backward against the door and sank to the floor. His thin shirt did little to shield him from the cold, but the iron felt good against his back. Amid the silence of the prison night, the door at his back and the stone floor beneath him reminded him where he was, which actually reassured him. His eyes darted around as if he were still in the throes of the nightmare that had awakened him. Everywhere his gaze fell, writing covered the walls and floor.
“Gaven!” A hoarse whisper came across the hall. “What did you see?”
“The hordes of the Soul Reaver,” Gaven rambled, making no effort to lower his voice. “Wild. Gibbering. Swarming out of the earth.” He pressed his palms to his eyes. “Brilliant light, spilling up from the depths-a ray of Khyber’s sun, a bridge to the sky.”
“What else, Gaven? Tell me what else you saw!”
The lingering memories of his nightmare started to fade, replaced by a memory of the old man’s mouth pressed against the shutter in his own cell across the hall. Gaven had seen him-out in the yard, in the library, always under the watchful eyes of the dwarf guards-but the image of his mouth was fixed in Gaven’s mind. Pale, cracked lips surrounded by white hair, a tongue occasionally darting out to moisten them. That image merged in Gaven’s mind with the vision of the Soul Reaver’s hordes-tentacles, eyes, gaping mouths-and sent a wave of nausea through him.
“Tell me what else,” the old man rasped.
But the vision had faded. In its place came words, something he had read once-or had he? Gaven could no longer tell which memories were his.
“When the Eternal Day draws near,” he recited, “when its moon shines full in the night, and the day is at its brightest, the Time of the Dragon Above begins. Showers of light fall upon the City of the Dead, and the Storm Dragon emerges after twice thirteen years.”
“The Storm Dragon will come for us, Gaven.”
Gaven’s laugh was utterly without humor. He stumbled to his feet, bracing himself against the doorframe. Black hair fell over his face, but he didn’t bother pushing it back. He reached into a pocket in his thin breeches and found the tiny steel stylus the guards had allowed him, then stood shakily on his bunk. He stretched as high as he could toward the ceiling, and scratched what words he could remember into the stone, describing the gibbering hordes, the brilliant bridge from earth to sky. The Time of the Dragon Above and the Time of the Dragon Below. Showers of light falling to earth, and brilliant beams of light rising from the earth.
He was still writing when the room shook, throwing him from his bunk and sending him sprawling to the floor. In the dim light spilling through the shutter in his door, he saw a crack form in the ceiling and begin to spread. The shaking resolved into a rhythmic pounding-something large smashing against the tower.
“Gaven!” the old man across the hall yelled, in a hoarse voice Gaven had never heard before. “They’re coming! They’re here for us!”
Gaven curled up on the floor of his cell and shielded his head with his arms as shards of masonry fell from the ceiling. After one more thundering crash, the tower shuddered, and the ceiling collapsed. Gaven rolled to his right, and a great stone slab just missed him. He looked up in terror and awe, and for the first time in twenty-six years, he saw the Ring of Siberys stretching across the sky.
Darraun stood and surveyed his handiwork. It had taken every ounce of power he had in him, but he’d managed to weaken the magic reinforcing the walls of the tower enough for Vaskar to break a
great hole in the tower’s ceiling. One great crack stretched down the wall of Gaven’s cell and into the cell across the hallway. Haldren’s. The way into Haldren’s cell was probably too small for Cart, the warforged, but Senya was already making her way down into it. The lithe elf avoided heavy armor for exactly this reason-she liked being able to slip into tight spaces. She preferred tight-fitting clothes beneath her leather coat for a different reason. She and Haldren had been lovers before he ended up in Dreadhold, so it was fitting that her short, black curls and painted face should be his first glimpse of freedom.
Cart jumped into Gaven’s cell and shifted the rubble around the cowering prisoner. The warforged moved the heavy stones with ease, metal cords and leather sinews shifting and pulsing beneath his armor plates as he worked.
Above Darraun, Vaskar circled through the sky, making short work of the manticore guardians as they swooped and dived around the dragon. Some fell victim to great blasts of lightning from his mouth, others he tore with his teeth and claws. One he slammed with his tail so hard that the beast crashed into the side of the watchtower. The three wyverns perched on the roof around Vaskar’s hole watched the aerial battle with interest, as if they longed to join in, but they were well trained and wouldn’t abandon their riders. They shifted their weight restlessly on their two clawed feet, flexed their leathery wings, and slowly pulsed the stingers on their tails, arched up over their backs like scorpions.
Everything seemed to be going according to plan.
Darraun jumped down into Gaven’s cell. Huddled on the floor, Gaven looked up at the warforged, his eyes wide. Darraun remembered that the first warforged had been created only thirty-four years ago, and Gaven had been in Dreadhold for the last twenty-six. Had Gaven seen warforged during his imprisonment? Darraun somehow doubted that many warforged ended up in Dreadhold. So many people considered them less than human. It was hard to imagine that anyone would think a warforged criminal of any kind was too important to execute.
Darraun moved to the door and rested a hand on the cold iron. He closed his eyes in concentration, sensing and visualizing the magic that flowed through it, keeping it securely locked. He slid his hand slowly up, then down, looking for just the right place.
“Don’t you want to be rescued?” Cart rumbled behind him, extending a three-fingered hand down to Gaven. “We’re friends. We want to take you out of here.”
Darraun smiled at the way the warforged mimicked the voice of a child coaxing a nervous or reluctant pet. Cart had made a serious study of human behavior, considering that he had spent most of his short existence as a soldier.
Darraun found what he was looking for-a knot of magic that would respond to the properly enchanted key. It was a simple matter to tangle that knot further, break some connections, cross some lines. It would take time to sort that out and get the door open, and by that time Gaven would be long gone.
Haldren’s head appeared in the crack above him-Senya had evidently succeeded in getting him out. He was an old man, Darraun saw, his hair almost completely white, only a few streaks of coppery red suggesting what he’d looked like in his younger days. His skin had the pallor of prison, his hair was wild and his beard unruly, and his lips were cracked and dry. He still had his presence, though. As soon as he extracted himself from his cell he took command of the operation.
“Darraun,” he barked,” help the warforged get our prophet out of there. We don’t have much time.”
We have time, Darraun thought, but he followed his orders.
Gaven had taken Cart’s hand, but he still stared warily at the warforged. He seemed vaguely pathetic. He was a half-elf, so he didn’t look old despite his sixty-odd years. His long hair was wild but still black as night, and he had no beard. He was still well muscled, his chest and arms displaying the strength that had been nearly legendary in his time. His dragonmark stretched across the skin of his neck and upper chest before disappearing beneath his threadbare shirt.
“Gaven,” Darraun said, moving to stand beside him, “the guards will be here any moment. We have wyverns on the roof, ready to carry you away. You’ll be safe with us.”
Mumbling incoherently, Gaven tore his gaze from the warforged and shuffled forward. Too slow-Darraun could hear the guards shouting in the hall beyond the heavy iron door. He met Cart’s eyes and nodded. The warforged stooped over, put one arm around Gaven’s legs, and lifted the prisoner to his shoulder. Gaven went limp, without a sound of protest or a struggle. Perching on the fallen stone slab, Cart clambered out of the cell and onto the roof.
Above him, Darraun heard Haldren’s voice. “You see, Gaven,” he said, “I told you he would come for us. Behold the Storm Dragon!”
If Gaven made any response, Darraun couldn’t hear it. He looked around the shambles of the cell. Writing was scratched into almost every possible surface. He picked up a shard of stone at random from the wreckage strewn across the floor and turned it over in his hands, straining to read the faint, tiny scratches on what had been part of Gaven’s cell wall.
… recapitulates the serpents’ sacrifice, binding the servant anew so the master cannot break free.
Darraun raised one thin eyebrow and shoved the masonry shard into a pocket of his leather coat.
“Darraun!” Haldren roared above him. “We fly!”
As he scrambled back up onto the roof, Darraun heard shouts through the door. The guards had come and found their own door locked to them. He smiled, but he also slid a wand from his coat pocket as he vaulted into the saddle of his wyvern, eyeing the crack leading into Haldren’s cell. Vaskar had already taken to the air with Haldren on his back, and Senya’s wyvern lifted off behind it. Cart had put Gaven on his own mount, and the man’s arms were wrapped around the thick chest of the warforged.
As Cart’s wyvern lifted into the air, Darraun heard Gaven mutter, “… its moon shines full in the night.” Then Darraun followed.
Gaven looked down in front of the wyvern’s strong wings, and a thrill went down his spine. Below them, the Lhazaar Sea churned violently as dark clouds and gusting winds rolled in across the eastern ocean. Gaven clung tighter to the adamantine-plated body of the warforged, who had introduced himself as Cart, back in the cell. He forced his attention off the ocean below and onto Cart. He had seen warforged before, but only from a distance. The plates looked like heavy armor. Subtle engraving decorated the edges, but Gaven could tell from the way the plates moved along with the slightest shift in Cart’s body that they were attached, somehow, to the body underneath, which seemed to be made of wood, fibrous bundles, perhaps some stone, and other kinds of metal. The strangest thing, to Gaven’s mind, was that Cart was undeniably alive, not like some automaton made for the battlefield. He saw cords and bundles pulsing between the plates, and the warforged moved constantly just like a living person-the smallest shifts of posture, turns of his head, fidgets. Gaven had the clear sense that a sword cut would make Cart bleed, and a blow to just the right place could stop that ceaseless motion forever.
He turned his head to get a better look at the dragon. The Storm Dragon, Haldren had said. “The Storm Dragon emerges after twice thirteen years,” Gaven whispered. “Where did you come from, Storm Dragon? You plan to walk in the paths? It’s a long road ahead of you.”
The warforged turned his head, trying to see Gaven over his shoulder or perhaps hear his mutterings better. Gaven closed his eyes, pretending to sleep. He felt the warforged shift, turning back to watch where he was flying.
Falling-
Gaven started awake, still safe in the saddle though his arms had slipped from the warforged’s chest. He blinked, trying to clear his mind from his nightmare-a strange light spilling up out of the earth, gleaming on bronze scales.
CHAPTER 2
The Lord Warden scowled, his rage written plain across his face. Of course, Bordan thought-so brazen an attack on Dreadhold was unheard of, even during the chaos of the Last War. The fact that the dragon had been able to penetrate the tower walls
was astonishing. Two prisoners escaping before the guards could respond… well, that was simply embarrassing.
Bordan settled back in his chair and stroked his neat beard, watching the other two people in the briefing. One was a Sentinel Marshal, who had introduced himself as Evlan d’Deneith. He was frowning, which Bordan could tell had become a habitual expression for him. Evlan wore his age and his station well. The gray at his temples made him look distinguished, and he had the body of a much younger man beneath his mithral mail and black surcoat. Above the collar of his mail on his neck, the Mark of Sentinel was just visible, an abstract tracing of color on his skin that resembled the head of a dragon with long spines trailing behind the neck. Like Bordan’s own dragonmark, Evlan’s was an intricate weaving of blue-more a part of his skin than a tattoo, and far more elaborate than any birthmark. The skin that bore the mark was slightly raised, and Bordan knew that the ‘mark gave Evlan powers similar to those of a wizard. The bodyguards of House Deneith used the powers of the Mark of Sentinel to protect their charges from harm, and the Sentinel Marshals used the same powers to protect themselves as they pursued dangerous criminals across Khorvaire.
Seated beside Evlan was another dwarf of House Kundarak, much calmer than the blustering warden. The warden had introduced her as Ossa d’Kundarak. She had not yet spoken a word. A scarlet shirt of fine silk stood out against her black skin. She sat with her hands folded on her lap, studying Bordan as carefully as Bordan examined her. Bordan had heard that House Kundarak maintained a small force of soldier-assassins called the Manticore’s Tail-or Ghorad’din in the Dwarven language-and he suspected Ossa represented that organization. Ossa’s dragonmark wasn’t visible, but her surname indicated that she carried the Mark of Warding, which the heirs of House Kundarak used to protect banks and vaults in every city of Khorvaire, as well as the prison of Dreadhold.