by James Wyatt
Is there news?” Rienne sat in Krathas’s office, her elbows on her knees, looking at the floor to avoid the half-orc’s gaze.
The half-orc shifted some rolled papers on his desk. “There is. The woman who was with him-she’s been captured.”
“Really?” Rienne hated the tone of her voice, but she couldn’t keep the spite from her voice.
“Indeed. As I understand it, she was badly injured while she and Gaven fled from the dwarves.” A twinge of guilt pricked Rienne’s heart-she had unwittingly led the dwarves to Gaven. “Somehow, Gaven sent healers from House Jorasco to find her and bring her back to the city for care. A Sentinel Marshal apprehended her at the House of Healing.”
“Where’s Gaven?”
“I don’t know.” He paused, but something on his face indicated that there was more. Rienne waited.
“At about the same time as the Jorasco healers set out to find Senya, a horse was stolen at the eastern edge of town. It’s possible that was Gaven.”
“The eastern edge? Is that near the House of Healing?”
“Not particularly, no. Gaven might have ridden east.”
“East-toward the Mournland.”
“Right.” He rubbed the side of his face. “There’s one more thing. The horse-it found its way home.”
Rienne sat back in her chair, trying to absorb that information. Krathas found something interesting on his desk and kept his eyes low.
“Well, that might not mean anything,” she said after a moment. “I can’t imagine a horse would willingly ride into the Mournland. Perhaps he just let it go and made his way in on foot.”
“Maybe so.” He didn’t say any more, but Rienne could read his thoughts on his face: he didn’t like Gaven’s odds of surviving in the Mournland on foot.
“Why would he go in there?” She remembered her view of the roiling gray mist from the airship deck, the sense of a malevolent presence in the Mournland. The thought of walking into the Mournland made her shudder.
“I hoped you might have some idea.”
Rienne shook her head, replaying her conversation with Gaven and Senya in her mind. “He didn’t say anything.” She shrugged, feeling helpless. “It was so hard to see him. Not at all what I expected-or hoped for. He seemed so strange.”
“Strange how?”
Rienne considered her words, trying to express the thoughts that had been nagging at her since her encounter with Gaven. “He was… absent. He had no interest in talking with me. He didn’t ask me for an explanation or offer me one. I thought he would be angry. I didn’t expect him to just not care.”
“He’s had years to get over his anger.”
“So have I. But all he cared about was that damned box. What was in it, anyway?”
Krathas shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“He never told you?”
Another shrug. “I never asked.”
“He accused me of stealing it from you.” The memory stirred her anger.
“I promised him I’d keep it safe. He came to my office and found you holding it. I think I can see why he might have been upset.”
“And as soon as I left, those dwarves ran in. He probably thinks I summoned them.”
A look of profound sadness settled on Krathas’s face as he stared at his desk.
Rienne’s anger melted away. She reached out and clasped the half-orc’s folded hands. “I can’t see him go back to Dreadhold, Krathas. It’s my fault he went there in the first place. I want to help him, but I don’t know how.”
Krathas looked into her eyes. “Don’t you?” His voice was gentle.
Rienne sat in silence for a long time. Krathas held her gaze for a while, then looked back down at his desk. Finally, Rienne sighed.
“I suppose that means I’m heading to the Mournland.”
“Desolation spreads over that land like a wildfire,” Gaven muttered. He lurched forward and fell into the dust. “Like a plague.” He spat dirt out of his mouth. “A plaguefire, a virulent plague, a wasting sickness, a spreading cloud that burns and wastes and destroys.”
He scooped up a handful of the sandy ground and let it spill out between his fingers. A shadow of a dream flitted through his mind.
So many thoughts were in his mind, he couldn’t cling to one. He slowly got to his feet.
“Two spirits bound in one prison beneath the wastes,” he whispered, his eyes unfocused. Twisting caverns forming letters, letters bound together in infinite combinations of words, words that danced unfettered in his mind. “Secrets kept and revelation granted, the Secret Keeper and the Messenger.” He started to walk forward, stumbled, stopped and stared at the sky. “They bind and are bound, but their whispers are unbound.”
“Destroyer!” he shouted. “Tearer and reaver and flayer of souls, the Soul Reaver.” He staggered in a different direction beneath the featureless sky. “The Soul Reaver waits in the endless dark, where it is forever night, the un-day. Beneath the bridge of light, there will descend the Storm Dragon, the Dragon of thunder and lightning and wind and rain and hail.”
Something dark jutted up from the barren ground, tracing jagged lines against the gray horizon. Gaven turned and reeled toward it. It meant something, he knew.
“There among the bones of Khyber the Storm Dragon will drive a spear-the Eye of Siberys bound to a branch of ash, an ash tree’s branch charred with ash, a victim of the storm.”
The object began to take shape as he drew nearer-blackened branches stretching up from the earth to the sky, a memory of life where nothing else grew.
“Drive the spear into the Soul Reaver’s heart!”
A distant rumble of thunder testified to the storm that had passed and left the tree scorched by lightning.
“Where is the Eye of Siberys now, Gaven?” Gaven’s voice was suddenly clear and coherent, though lower than usual. As if startled by the sound of it, he fell to the ground again. He tore at the pouch at his belt until he got it open, then pulled out the heavy adamantine box and opened it.
The nightshard captivated him, pulsing with its purple-black light, and he mumbled at it as if answering its question. “The Storm Dragon seizes the shard of heaven, a tiny fragment of Siberys’s glory, from the fallen pretender, the bronze serpent.”
“Where is it now?” he said, clear and low again.
“Vaskar. The Bronze Serpent used it, it lifted the Sky Caves of Thieren Kor from the earth, he had it.”
He scrambled to his feet once more and lurched to the burned tree. He started to fall when he reached it, but he caught himself on its blackened trunk, smearing his hands with ash.
“Drive the spear into the Soul Reaver’s heart,” he murmured again.
He walked his hands up the trunk, stretching as high as he could, just barely managing to get his hands around the lowest branch. In one smooth movement he pulled himself up onto the branch, then climbed until he was near the top of the tree. He planted himself on a high branch and reached up to another one that seemed the right size. It broke off easily in his hand, almost throwing him off balance. He steadied himself and hefted the branch in his hand.
Perfect.
“There among the bones of Khyber the Storm Dragon drives the spear formed from Siberys’s Eye into the Soul Reaver’s heart.” Shadow given twisting form writhed in his thoughts, a distant echo of a long-ago dream. “It was my hand on the spear,” he whispered.
He climbed slowly back down to the ground, his mind suddenly clear. Studying the sky to find his bearings, he set his face to the west and started walking.
Rienne patted her new horse’s nose as the stable hand cinched the saddle. The mare hadn’t come cheaply, but she had a House Vadalis pedigree-she was magebred for speed, and the previous owner had boasted that she ran as fast as a Valenar horse. Rienne doubted that claim, but felt sure the mare would be fast enough for her needs.
Rienne checked the saddlebags, loaded with the journeybread and water she’d need for her journey. She had also secured a sizable amount of cash from
the bank operated by House Kundarak, knowing that the dwarven house might soon block her access to her accounts. She smiled wistfully. It was like the old days, setting off on another dangerous adventure, and a far cry from the settled life of a sheltered aristocrat that she’d adopted without Gaven.
“She’s ready, Lady,” the stable hand said with a small bow. “Safe travels.”
“Thank you,” she said, dropping a few copper coins into the girl’s hand. She led the mare out of the stable and mounted on the street. Reaching over her shoulder to make sure Maelstrom was securely strapped to her back, she gave the horse a gentle nudge with her heels and started riding out of town to the east.
She was happy to put Vathirond behind her. She couldn’t help but identify the city with her disastrous encounter with Gaven, a meeting she preferred to forget. As soon as she cleared the gates, she urged the mare to a gallop, exulting in her speed.
“I’m sorry I doubted you,” she whispered in the mare’s ear. “You put the steeds of Valenar to shame.”
“She must know something.” Ossa d’Kundarak glared across the table. “People don’t ride off this close to the Mournland for fun.”
Bordan shook his head, staring down into his wine glass. “It doesn’t make sense. Senya told the Sentinel Marshals that Aundair is where the action is, and the last I heard from Phaine he was there, close on Haldren’s tail. Anyway, if she knows where he is, why not just contact you or the Sentinel Marshals? Why chase after him herself?”
“She doesn’t want to see him go back to Dreadhold.”
Bordan looked up and met Ossa’s gaze. “She turned him in twenty-six years ago.”
Ossa shook her head. “She only turned him in because she thought he was possessed and hoped to get him cured.”
“And what happened the other day?”
“I think she hoped for a happy reunion, picking up where they left off before he went mad. Then he appeared in town with his new elf ladyfriend, and there went her hopes for getting married at last.”
“Oh, come now.” Bordan swirled the wine in his glass.
“I’m serious. Twenty-six years, she never gets married? I tell you, she’s been pining for him. So she ran out into the street, angry. You should’ve seen her-Natan said she was ready to cut him in half. But she didn’t want him to get caught. She knew he’d escape, somehow. Ten Seas, maybe she helped him escape.”
“Damn,” Bordan breathed. “You’re a suspicious one.”
“I’m still alive.”
“So what do you suggest?”
“I suggest we follow her, and I’ll bet you fifty crowns she leads us right to Gaven.”
Bordan drained his glass. “I’m not a betting man. And following her will be no easy task-she rode out of here on a magebred horse, remember, and not the draft kind.”
Ossa tugged at one of her long braids. “Then what’s your suggestion, d’Velderan? Following people is supposed to be your specialty.”
“Well, if I told you my suggestion was that we forget about Rienne and join Phaine in Aundair, you’d accuse me of not listening to you. And I have been listening. I’m just not sure I believe your reasoning.”
“Sovereigns! What’s it take, man?”
“Hold on,” Bordan said quickly. “I didn’t say I don’t believe you. I’m just not convinced yet. But if I were convinced, I think I’d suggest that we secure the use of a small airship from House Lyrandar. An airship can at least keep pace with a magebred horse, though she’s a little obvious. But if I’m going into the Mournland, I’d rather do it in the air than on the ground.”
“I happen to know,” Ossa said with a grin, “that House Lyrandar has a small airship in town at this moment that would be ideal for that purpose.”
“And if this turns out to be a chase after the dragon’s tail, it’ll be easy enough to turn the ship around and take her to Aundair.”
“Have I convinced you, then?”
Bordan smiled. “Close enough.”
CHAPTER 31
The moment Gaven pushed through the gray mist, leaving the Mournland behind him, his chest erupted in stinging pain. One of the ghoulish creatures had slashed his flesh when he first entered the Mournland, and Vaskar’s claw had torn him further. But the wounds had gone numb in the dead air of that desolate land, neither healing nor festering as long as he remained there. At first he was afraid that some contagion in the mist had contaminated the wounds, entered his blood, and started an assault on his body from the inside. He washed the wounds carefully in the first clear stream he could find, and the bright red blood he rinsed from them reassured him that they were still, somehow, fresh and relatively clean.
The wounds taken care of, though their sting remained, he climbed up a hill near the streambank to get the lay of the land. Putting the wall of dead-gray mist behind him, he surveyed the surrounding landscape. To his right and ahead, gentle hills, some covered with tilled fields, others painted with wildflowers and prairie shrubs, rolled on as far as he could see. To his left, the horizon was shaped by mountains-a small range fairly close-then a level gap, then more mountains. As best as he could figure, that put him somewhere southeast of Vathirond, looking at the northernmost extent of the Seawall Mountains. A careful study of the northwestern sky showed him what might be the smoky haze of the city, far in the distance.
The thought of returning to Vathirond gave him pause, and he sat down on the hill to eat some dry journeybread and consider it further. Since cutting the wood from the ash tree, his mind had been fixed on his destination, and he’d given little thought to how he would get there. Going through Vathirond presented numerous dangers: the Kundarak dwarves who had nearly arrested him on his last visit, Senya, whom he’d abandoned in the House of Healing there, and of course Rienne. He groaned. No, that was a city he would prefer not to see again.
He scanned the horizon, trying to think of another city he could use to launch his journey. But this time, something in the sky caught his attention.
“Vaskar!” he spat. But looking again, the dark shape in the clear blue sky did not resemble a dragon at all. Far too large to be a bird, though he supposed a dragonhawk was a distant possibility. But the air shimmered around it-
No, a ring of fire. An airship!
Gaven rested his hands on the ground behind him, damp with dew, and watched the airship soar closer, all his plans pushed aside. How high she flew! And there were people aboard! People who could stand at the rail and peer down, see the whole country spread below them like a grand banquet. His eyes drifted down to the hills and fields, trying to imagine what they would look like from so high in the air, but his gaze always returned to the majestic ship, the pinnacle of House Lyrandar’s achievements.
As she flew closer, he could make out more details of her shape and construction. She was about the same size as the one he’d seen moored in Vathirond-he wondered if she might be the same one. She came from the right direction, from the north along the wall of mist. Then he wondered what different sizes existed-how large was the largest airship? How majestic a vessel something like a flying galleon would be!
A sudden thought put an end to his speculation, and he stared blankly into the sky as he ran through its implications. An airship coming from Vathirond, coming closer to where he was, southeast of the city-where was she bound? Would she continue along the mist, heading somewhere in Darguun? Or soar over the Mournland to reach Valenar, perhaps? One of those possibilities, certainly, because otherwise…
Otherwise she was coming for him.
He scrambled to his feet and raced down the hill, no other thought in his mind than finding cover to get out of sight. What a splendid view the airship’s decks must offer, indeed! The whole landscape spread out below-one might even be able to make out a person on the ground! Especially if the crew had sighted him while he was still in the Mournland, where he would stand out from the barren ground like an ogre at a society gala.
Unfortunately, the land offered little in the wa
y of cover. Crawling or crouching his way through tall grasses or crops might have helped him elude a pursuer on the ground, but it would do little to conceal him from the view of watchers on the airship. What shrubs there were held little more promise: they were scattered widely, so while he might be able to hide under one, he couldn’t move from there. So if they had already spotted him, hiding would just give them more time to reach him.
He jumped back down to the streambank and stopped, surveying the land again. The stream tumbled through a narrow, rocky ravine on its way down from the mountains. It probably passed very near Vathirond by the time it joined up with the Brey River and poured into Scions Sound. The ravine didn’t offer much in the way of cover, but it might be better than nothing. Gaven looked up to the sky.
The airship was much closer, and she flew considerably lower. That probably meant her crew had spotted him. He crouched back against the side of the ravine, trying to get out of sight. But he couldn’t find a position that blocked his own view of the airship. He cursed and clambered back up to the grassy bank.
“What am I doing?” he wondered aloud. “I have walked the Sky Caves of Thieren Kor. I sent Vaskar flying away with his tail between his legs. I will not hide any longer.”
He stood and waited as the airship drew closer.
“Fifty crowns!” Ossa slapped her hand on the bulwarks. “I told you we’d find him here!”
“And I told you I’m not a betting man,” Bordan retorted, peering through a spyglass. “But I have to admit that you were correct. It certainly seems that we’ve found our man.” He watched as Gaven tore down the hillside and crouched in a ravine. “He’s seen us. And he thinks to hide.”
“Where can he hide out here? Nothing but open field as far as the eye can see.”
“He appears to have reached the same conclusion.” Gaven had climbed out of the ravine and stood on the streambank, head high, watching the airship approach.
“Ha! We’ve got him!”
Ossa was a little too pleased with her victory, in Bordan’s opinion. Certainly it was reasonable to be concerned about the honor of House Kundarak after the dwarves allowed Gaven’s escape from Dreadhold. But part of the reason for Ossa’s crowing seemed to involve the fact that she had been right and Bordan-an heir of House Tharashk who bore the Mark of Finding-had been wrong. With every exclamation of triumph, Bordan heard an undertone of condemnation, as if the dwarf said, “If we’d taken the course you suggested, we’d still be chasing the dragon’s tail.” He had very quickly grown tired of Ossa’s voice.