Edge of Destiny

by J. Robert King

  The crowd cheered, and Knut Whitebear clasped Eir’s hand and raised it overhead.

  She shot him a fierce look. “You should not have doubted me.”

  He grinned, not looking at her. “I did not doubt you. I doubted that anyone could do what you set out to do.”

  “I have greater things I will do.”

  “I hoped you would say that.” Still holding her hand, Knut Whitebear led Eir and the others into the great hall of Hoelbrak, to the fang of Jormag, embedded in the ground. The fang was a sacred relic from the dragon, harder than diamond. Thousands of norn had tried their blades against it, but none could even dent the fang. Walking beside it, Knut leaned his head toward Eir. “So, when will you challenge the dragon’s tooth?”

  Her smile faded slightly, but she turned to the revelers all around and cried out, “Let the feast begin!”

  A great cheer rocked the rafters of Hoelbrak.

  And what a feast it was! The fires of Hoelbrak had been stoked, and six caribou turned on spits above them. There were kettles of stew and mounds of bread and barrels of beer. The whole hall filled, with revelers arriving throughout the day and evening. Every warrior in the area converged to gaze on this ragtag band, came to lift a mighty flagon to their health and hear them tell their tales of valor.

  As the ale and mead flowed, the crowd thickened around Snaff and Zojja, the best storytellers in the group. Snaff’s account was florid and fantastic, and Zojja’s interruptions were comically earnest. When they pantomimed Sandy’s fight against the whirling cyclone, the hunting hall filled with laughter and cheers.

  Caithe endured the festivities as long as she could. The crowd was unsettling to her—so many people crossing paths, so many false words spoken. Snaff was perhaps the worst. Everything he said was an exaggeration, which meant a lie, but still the norn roared with approval.

  “Why should the Dragonspawn’s defeat be commemorated with lies?” Caithe wondered to herself as she stepped from the hunting hall.

  “You never could enjoy a party,” came a voice like scarlet silk.

  Caithe gasped, turning to see Faolain. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve been following you,” Faolain said, standing in her black-orchid dress, leaning in so that her warm breath wafted across Caithe’s ear. “I’ve watched you risk your life to kill a dragon champion. Foolish girl.”

  Caithe stared quizzically at her. “You act as if it is nothing.”

  “It is nothing. Your life is too precious for this.”

  Caithe pushed Faolain back. “I don’t belong to you.”

  “Don’t you?” Faolain’s black fingernails flashed to pull back the collar of Caithe’s shirt. There, above her heart, a black handprint marked her skin. “Your heart belongs to me.”

  “No!” Caithe said, prying Faolain’s hand loose and turning away. “I reject the Nightmare.”

  “But you love me.” Faolain nodded toward Eir and Rytlock within the hunting hall. “Do they love you, as I do?”

  Caithe scowled. “I don’t know what they feel. They are a mystery to me.”

  “But I am not. There are no mysteries between us.” Faolain’s black eyes grew suddenly intense. “Join me! The Dream is only a dream. The Nightmare is the reality.”

  “Leave me.”

  The dark sylvari took an unsteady step toward Caithe. “My love is poisoning you. You cannot be without me.”

  “Go!”

  Snaff was in the middle of another retelling when Caithe staggered into the hunting hall as if drunk—except that she had tears running down her cheeks.

  Snaff broke away from the group he had been entertaining and approached Caithe. “Tears?”

  Caithe dashed them away. “They’re nothing.”

  “Nothing? They’re everything. They’re what you feel. Why are you crying?”

  “It’s nothing,” Caithe averred, rubbing her hand on her cheek.

  Snaff said levelly, “You wouldn’t cry unless the world itself was in danger.”

  Her eyes glistened. “It is!”

  “What danger?” Snaff asked.

  “The dragons. No one is fighting the dragons, but we must. We stopped a dragon champion, but what about the power behind him?”

  “You’re right,” Snaff said gently, “but that’s not why you’re crying.”

  Caithe stared at him, her eyes wide but searching, trying to decide if she could trust him. “It’s that someone I care about has chosen the wrong path.”

  Snaff bowed his head and pursed his lips. “Anyone I know?”

  “No.” Caithe shook her head. “Another sylvari. She has gone to Nightmare.”

  Snaff nodded. “I’m sorry. Every creature must choose her own path.”

  “But what can I do? I have to save her.”

  Snaff smiled sadly. “You can’t save anyone but yourself. I can’t save my own apprentice, though she means more to me than the world. I can only be good to her and hope she notices, hope she learns from me.” His expression clouded. “She will outlive me, as she should. She will face horrors that I will not. And in those moments, I hope she remembers my strength, not my weakness.”

  Caithe stared at him for a searching moment. “She will. She will remember.”

  “And this one that you care about—she will remember, too.”

  The east was gloaming with approaching dawn when at last Eir and her comrades bid farewell to the other revelers. They staggered to the rooms prepared for them—the finest in Hoelbrak, which meant huge beds and simple linens and great basins for washing. It was more than any of them could have hoped for, and each was asleep the moment his or her head hit the pillow.

  They slept all through the day and into the next night, awakening to hear the sounds of more merrymaking—norn merrymaking, which sounded like a continual bar fight punctuated with ferocious laughter. Norn were streaming into Hoelbrak from dozens of miles away—the wild wanderers and the loner nomads who had only just heard of the Dragonspawn’s destruction and of the team that did him in. Every one of these new arrivals had suffered beneath the terrible reign of the dragon champion. Every one had battled the icebrood. They now gathered to give thanks and gawk, to have a drink or five and celebrate heroes whose deeds would be retold for generations.

  Eir retired from the second night of celebration a little earlier than the others, and Garm went with her. He watched her with interest. She had that look—the look of planning something.

  First, she went to the statue of her father. “I did it, Father. I killed the icebrood, and the Dragonspawn, too.”

  She paused as if expecting some response from the stony figure. The old man only returned her gaze, his eyes seeming to look beyond her.

  Eir looked down at her feet. “I know. There’s still the dragon. He’s crippled now, without his greatest champion, and maybe we can strike.”

  Still, the statue watched her impassively.

  Eir went to her drafting desk, drew out a scrap of paper, and began drawing. At first, the figure was the Dragonspawn, and then, the Dragonspawn devolving into a cyclone, and then Sandy being pulled into the monster. She sat back and blinked.

  Garm nuzzled her.

  “Perhaps it is time to make a try at the old wyrm.”

  The wolf looked levelly at her.

  She smiled, ruffling the fur between his ears. “I’ll start by chipping its tooth.”

  Next afternoon, before the celebrations began in earnest, Eir strode down the lanes of Hoelbrak. Her carving belt jangled, her axes and mallets hung in hand, and her dire wolf jogged beside her.

  “She’s going to take on the fang!” shouted one of the norn revelers.

  Many followed this living legend as she made her way toward the hunting hall. The crowd seemed to swell with each step Eir took. They had heard the magnificent tales of the Dragonspawn’s defeat, and whatever this woman planned next must be even more spectacular.

  Among the crowd were Eir’s companions, following with excitement and a mix
ture of other emotions. When Rytlock and Logan had heard what Eir planned, they had wanted to lend their weapons to the attempt. Snaff had even wanted to bring Sandy to bear. Eir refused them all, saying she was their leader, and that if she was not strong enough to break the tooth, they would not face the dragon.

  Caithe and Zojja were not starry-eyed about the prospects, either. Caithe knew all too well the power of the dragons, and she feared that Eir was only setting herself up for failure. Zojja, on the other hand, thought it absurd that physical attacks could do anything against a magical creature.

  Dragging along a crowd of believers and skeptics, friends and foes, Eir reached the hunting hall of Hoelbrak and hurled the doors open. She strode in, and the crowd around her flooded in as well. Eir headed straight toward the central feature of the hall—the Fang of the Serpent. This relic of the dragon had been brought back by the great hero Asgeir and rooted in the floor of the hall—a challenge to all norn champions. If they could not chip or dent or scratch the fang, they had no hope of facing and defeating Jormag himself.

  Eir strode up before the fang, which was eight feet tall, broad, curved, and icy white. The crowd murmured excitedly as they settled in around it. Eir’s eyes traced across them all, and she bound her red hair back from her shoulders.

  “You have heard great tales of us, of the ones who slew Jormag’s champion. But we did this thing only to weaken the dragon himself. I’ve come here tonight to see if he is weak enough that we can face him.”

  The crowd applauded, watching avidly as she drew two great axes from her belt. When she began to swing the axes in wide arcs, though, the spectators fell back.

  “Spirit of Wolf, guide my work.”

  The two blades crossed in midair, and then Eir lunged forward, and the heads came down on either side of the tooth. They crashed into it, their keen edges biting into the hard whiteness—but no. It was biting into them. The axes skirled down the fang in a shower of sparks, their faces worn away in curves.

  Eir looked at the blades, burrs rising from their ruined edges. She tossed the axes aside. “Axes are for trees,” she said, and the crowd laughed. Eir drew from her belt a large, keen chisel and a great mallet. “Imagine these on your own tooth.”

  As the crowd cringed, Eir positioned the chisel in a line that ran the length of the fang. She raised the mallet and brought it down with a crack. The fang showed no damage. She reared back with the mallet and pounded the chisel again. Crack! Still no fault shown on the fang. Then she took a deep breath and struck it an almighty CRACK!

  The fang was unharmed, but the chisel’s end had curled over.

  Eir dropped the chisel and mallet beside her. She also let fall the whole belt of tools. Closing her eyes, she raised her face toward the dark rafters high above and said, “Spirit of Bear, guide my work.”

  She swung her arm at the fang, but before she could strike it, fingers had become claws. The foreleg of a great grizzly lashed at that tooth. Claws rasped across it but left no mark. From the other side, more claws ripped at it. These were claws that could tear down a young tree, could scratch stone, but the fang stood, inviolate. Now fully a bear, Eir lunged in to set her own massive teeth against the dragon’s great tooth. Enamel skirled, but no harm came to the Fang of the Dragon.

  Eir reeled back, her figure transforming again into that of a norn warrior—shaking, sweating, enervated, and defeated. She looked out numbly at the crowd.

  Rytlock stepped up, pulling Sohothin free. “Let me have a shot at that thing.”

  Logan arrived with hammer in hand. “Me, too.”

  “No!” Eir snapped. “We’re done here. Let me through! Let me go!”

  Her friends pushed back the crowd and moved in to hold her up as she went.

  “It’s fine,” Snaff said softly as they moved along. “So, we’re not ready yet. But we will be. We’ll defeat the dragons. Together, we can defeat anything.”

  That night, there were more gifts and feasts and stories and ale. But Eir was quiet through it all, and all the comrades felt the weight of what had happened. Even more norn had flooded into town. From hundreds of miles, they had come, and the merrymakers from the last two nights had not dispersed. The sound of the ongoing party was like a logging camp next to a stockyard beside a slaughterhouse.

  “With an army like this, they could have done it without us,” Eir muttered.

  She gathered her companions and led them to her workshop. “I’ve had about as much of this as I can take,” she confessed.

  Rytlock laughed out loud, but then looked around at the others, saw that they agreed with Eir, and sullenly stared at his claws.

  “Norn ale is stiffer than most,” Logan said, rubbing his forehead. “And norn pints are gallons.”

  “That’s what I like,” Rytlock said.

  “And here they are!” came a new voice at the workshop door—a deep voice that was somehow both jovial and ferocious. Eir and her companions turned to see Captain Magnus the Bloody Handed. He towered in the doorway, his pistol-strewn bandoliers gleaming in the lantern light. A smile lurked beneath his long mustache. “I came all the way from Lion’s Arch to toast Destiny’s Edge, the slayers of the Dragonspawn—and yet, no one knew where you were.”

  “Here we are,” Eir replied.

  Magnus sighed, his breath ghosting from his nostrils. He stepped into the workshop. “Well, anyway, congratulations!”

  “Something like that.”

  Magnus set his boot on a nearby chair and leaned toward them all. “Now I need a favor.”

  Logan said, “What kind of favor?”

  “Help me hunt down and destroy another dragon champion.”

  Rytlock arched an eyebrow. “Who is this dragon champion?”

  “His name is Morgus Lethe,” Magnus responded. “He rules the black seaways beyond Lion’s Arch—he and swarms of undead. They attack ships and tear through their hulls and drop them to the bottom. They kill hundreds of sailors a week and turn them into more undead.”

  “Can’t you handle a few undead?” Rytlock asked. “After all, they are prekilled.”

  “One by one, they are nothing, but where there’s one, there’s a thousand.”

  Logan put in, “If you haven’t noticed, there are only seven of us.”

  “Yes, but you defeated a thousand before,” Magnus replied. “And I have a personal score to settle with this devil Morgus Lethe. In life, he was a norn like me, captain of the Cormorant before me. Since he fell among the undead, they have known our every move, our every route, our tactics, our vulnerabilities. I need—”

  “You need strangers,” Eir interrupted.

  Magnus nodded thoughtfully. “You’ve destroyed one dragon champion. Help me destroy another.”

  “We must,” Caithe said. “If we are not yet powerful enough to face down a dragon, we must face down their champions. We must fight them.”

  Logan shrugged. “Sounds less dangerous than another night of celebration in Hoelbrak.”

  Rytlock growled. “I’m not leaving until tomorrow.”

  Caithe, Logan, and Rytlock exchanged looks, and Caithe spoke, “We’ll go.”

  “Of course we’ll go,” Eir said, “all of us. We go not just because you asked, but to destroy another dragon champion—”

  “Wonderful!” Magnus proclaimed. “Morgus Lethe, prepare to meet Destiny’s Edge!”

  From Her Royal Majesty, Jennah,

  Queen of Kryta and so forth . . .

  To Logan Thackeray

  Greetings:

  The news spreads through Kryta of your conquest of the Dragonspawn. Congratulations, my dear Champion. I knew that my trust in you was well placed. Your brother was relieved to hear the news as well, though he hid it with annoyance. Comparing your battles against icebrood to his long days guarding castle walls, I can see why he might be jealous. I hope that, someday, you both find common ground and brotherhood.

  I had hoped you would return to Divinity’s Reach, but I hear that is not to be. With
the news of your victory also came a report of your next mission: to face Morgus Lethe, champion of the dragon Zhaitan.

  It seems you are most alive in the heart of danger.

  My heart tells me to forbid you to go. I should. An entire army would have difficulty facing Lethe. You are my champion, not one of Captain Magnus the Bloody Handed’s sailors. But I know you will not turn away from danger. Not when doing so could aid Kryta. And in that, I support you.

  But if you lose to Morgus Lethe, it would be worse than losing an army.

  So, your Queen must allow you to go. Yet still, I think of you often. I imagine you marching across blasted tundra, battling monsters in caves of ice, standing stalwart against our enemies. Perhaps I am just imagining the battles you fight, but I choose to believe we have a deeper bond. When you are finished killing Lethe—which I know you will do—I hope that you will come to Divinity’s Reach. I would see you once more, and greet you as a true hero of our grateful nation.

  Your grateful queen,

  Jennah

  MORGUS LETHE

  Two weeks later, Captain Magnus the Bloody Handed led a pair of tiny geniuses on a tour of his gigantic galleon—the Cormorant. “Through here, we have the captain’s quarters,” Magnus said as he pushed back a pair of twelve-foot-tall doors. “A little cramped.”

  “Spacious! Tremendous!” Snaff said.

  Zojja started to march off the dimensions of the room.

  Snaff went on, “We could fit two golems in here if we put the table, bunk, ale cask, and so forth into storage.”

  The captain colored slightly but managed a laugh. “No. This is the captain’s quarters, not the golems’ quarters.”

  “Fifty feet wide by forty feet deep,” Zojja announced with satisfaction.