by James Wyatt
“Clearly, in this realm I do not need your advice.”
“Clearly.” Cart’s jaw tightened. A human like Haldren would not detect the flex of fibers at the joint.
“Dismissed.” Haldren spat. He turned his attention to the papers on his desk.
Cart had to give credit where it was due. Haldren had learned to rein in his temper. Of course, that meant he was little more than Kelas’s lackey. He did not like to see the Lord General so beaten. Though he had to admit that his confidence in Haldren’s judgment had diminished since the debacle at the Starcrag Plain.
He put his hands on Haldren’s desk and rose slowly to his feet. Haldren did not glance up. A quick salute, then Cart turned crisply and strode out of the room. He turned just as decisively to the left and made it down past four other doors before he realized he’d gone the wrong way. He stopped abruptly, then pivoted where he stood and walked back the way he’d come. He fought the impulse to slam a fist into Haldren’s door as he walked past it.
The halls and offices beneath the abandoned cathedral of the Silver Flame formed a labyrinth appropriate to their new use as Kelas’s base of operations. Cart found himself just as lost among the vaulted passages as he was in the political scheming, and just as frustrated.
He rounded a corner and something slammed into his chest. Not something, he realized—someone. His arms folded reflexively around her as she yelped in surprise, then he gently took hold of her shoulders and steadied her on her feet. Only then did he recognize her as Ashara d’Cannith, Kelas’s liaison to the northern branch of House Cannith.
“I’m sorry—” she began.
Cart cut her off as he fell to one knee. “Lady Cannith, the fault is mine.”
House Cannith had built him and given him life. Their creation forges had birthed his race. Any dragonmarked heir of the House was his rightful master. The question had never come up, but if he were forced to choose between obeying the Lord General and obeying the most insignificant heir of the House, it would be a difficult decision.
“No, no,” she protested. She reached down to his elbow and gently guided him to his feet. “I wasn’t watching where I was going. You’re Cart, aren’t you? Haldren’s …”
“His advisor, yes.” He wondered what she was going to say. Slave? Part of him suspected that, despite the emancipation of the warforged with the Treaty of Thronehold, House Cannith still thought of them more as property than as people.
“I don’t know if you remember me, but I was at Bluevine with you and Haldren. I’m Ashara.” She held out her hand to him, as naturally as if she were meeting a new friend in a tavern.
“Lady, I—”
“Just Ashara.” She smiled, and Cart found himself warming to her.
She was a small woman—her head had collided with his chest, her shoulder hitting the bottom of his chest plate. The lyrelike shape of the Mark of Making swooped across her upper arm. Her brown hair was cut short, and her eyes were the same color, warm and bright in the pale magical light of the everburning torches that lit the halls. Her smile—once again, Cart marveled at the intricacy of the muscles. Her smile reached all the way to the corners of her eyes.
He clasped her outstretched hand. “I’m glad to meet you, Ashara,” he said.
“Likewise, Cart.” Still clasping his hand, she asked, “Were you on your way somewhere?”
“Out of here, that’s all.”
“Oh, good. Perhaps you could help me find the exit?”
“I’ll try,” Cart said. “I confess I often get lost under here. But I think it’s this way.” He pointed the direction he’d been walking, and they started walking side by side along the hall.
“I feel lost in this whole affair,” Ashara said.
Cart turned his head to look at her. She did not seem to be joking, which made her confession surprising both for its content and in the simple fact that she made it to him.
“But you’re essential to the whole operation,” he said.
“My House is essential. I am not. And this is the first time I’ve been in this position—negotiating for the House, mediating between Kelas and Baron Jorlanna. I wish they’d just talk to each other and leave me out of this.”
“I feel much the same way.”
“What’s your role in all this?”
“I’m not certain. I work for Haldren, and he keeps asking me for advice in matters I just don’t understand. Including,” he added, “how to get Baron Jorlanna committed to Kelas’s plans. What is it that Kelas wants from House Cannith?”
“Armaments, for one thing. But primarily, just the assurance of Jorlanna’s support in the … transfer of power.”
“And what’s he offering in return?”
“In the short term, a new facility. He says he has plans for a new kind of forge, one that will triple the House’s production capabilities and enable the creation of entirely new kinds of weapons.”
“The Dragon Forge,” Cart said.
“So you know about it.” Ashara seemed surprised. Tiny muscles lifted her eyebrows higher on her forehead and widened her eyes.
“Only the name. Haldren is accustomed to telling me only what I need to know.” Cart shrugged. “And underestimating what I need to know.”
“Sounds familiar. Except that Kelas tells me only what he wants the Baron to know. And Baron Jorlanna tells me what she wants him to know. Precious little passing in either direction. I have to guess the rest.”
“What do you know about the Dragon Forge? And what have you guessed?”
“Well, not much more than what I said—higher production, new armaments.” She frowned. “The work of artificers and mage-wrights depends largely on the ability to manipulate the magic that’s locked inside everything. We sometimes describe it as finding a knot, a tangle of energy in the heart of something and loosing it so the magic can flow properly. What Kelas promises amounts to an enormous knot and the means to open it.”
“Why is it called the Dragon Forge? Where do the dragons come in?” Cart asked.
“I’m not certain.”
“I would have thought we were done with dragons after the Starcrag Plain.” The memory of that defeat still stung. The bronze dragon, Vaskar, had led Haldren into it, lying to him all along. He’d promised Haldren a flight of dragons to guarantee victory, even as he was marshaling a flight of dragons to fight on the Thrane side of the battle as well. All to orchestrate the fulfillment of the Prophecy—a foretold “clash of dragons.”
“This world will never be done with dragons, I’m afraid.”
“They’ve been here since the beginning, I suppose they’ll be here until the end. But why do we have to deal with them at all?”
“It takes power to seize power. And the dragons have power to spare.”
They finally emerged from the old cathedral into a secluded alleyway. Ashara turned her face to the sun and basked in it.
“I hate it down there,” she said. “I should have been a Lyrandar, not a Cannith. I’d much rather spend my days on the deck of an airship than down in some forge.”
The mention of House Lyrandar made Cart think of Gaven, and he fell silent. At the end of the battle at Starcrag Plain, Cart had left Haldren’s side to fight with Gaven, helping him carve a path through the hordes of the Soul Reaver. Down in the Soul Reaver’s haunts, he had briefly toyed with the idea of becoming a god himself, imagining what it would be like to be god of the warforged.
From the threshold of immortality to the cellars of the abandoned cathedral. How he had fallen.
“Where are you going now?” Ashara asked.
“A fine question,” Cart muttered. There seemed nowhere to go but farther down.
“Would you care to accompany me to our enclave? You could meet the Baron.”
Cart had heard Haldren speak of disgust rising in his gut, or the taste of it in his mouth, and indeed he made the same face when he felt disgust at some person or idea that he made when he tasted something he didn’t like. Lackin
g a digestive system or any sense of taste, Cart had never understood the physical sensation of it, but disgust assailed his mind like a wave of unease radiating back from his face.
“No,” he said. He had no taste for the scheming, the maneuvering. And he had a sudden sense that even kind, pleasant Ashara was using him, trying to bring him into a position that would bring her advantage. “I enjoyed our talk, Lady,” he said, honestly. “I hope to see you again soon. But I must go.”
He put his back to the cathedral and the Cannith district and walked away.
He was a good twenty paces away when he heard Ashara’s quiet voice. “Good-bye, Cart.”
CHAPTER
7
Kauth’s first conscious awareness was of motion—back and forth, bouncing up and down. Slowly the sensation resolved into the gentle lurch of the Orien coach, continuing along the rough road to Greenheart. The light began to register in his vision, and he opened his eyes. Zandar crouched over him, wearing his habitual sardonic smile. “He lives!” the warlock proclaimed.
Full awareness of where he was rushed into his mind, accompanied by a surge of panic. He put a hand to his face to check—yes, he was still Kauth. He tried to roll himself sideways and nearly fell off the bench he was lying on. With some effort, he managed to prop himself up on one elbow. His body still screamed with pain, and he grimaced at Zandar.
“You have my thanks, Zandar,” he said. “But you’re about the last person I’d think to call a healer.” He fumbled at his quiver, reaching for one of the wands he used most often, one that held healing magic. It wasn’t there.
“Looking for these?” Zandar said, holding three wands out to Kauth. “You can thank them, not me.”
Kauth snatched them away. He didn’t like the idea of anyone rummaging through his pouches—especially the warlock, he realized. Even if Zandar had just saved his life, he wasn’t quite ready to trust the man. Choosing one of the wands, he extended his mind to touch the weave of magic it held, and felt a fresh wave of healing magic wash over his body like cool water against fevered skin. He took a deep breath and sat up.
A murmur of approval arose in the seats around him—evidently several of the nearby passengers had been watching with interest. Sevren and Vor stood in the seat behind him, and even the orc was smiling. Zandar moved from his crouch and sat on the bench next to Kauth.
Zandar leaned close and murmured in his ear. “I’m afraid we’ve become celebrities on the coach,” he said. “Too much attention, if you ask me.”
“What happened?” Kauth asked, shaking his head. “It’s all a blur.”
“The Children of Winter attacked the coach, of course. And we killed them. That makes us heroes.” Zandar grinned again. “I’ve always wondered what that would feel like.”
“Who are the Children of Winter, and why did they attack us?”
“Sevren, you want to answer that?”
The shifter leaned over the bench. “They’re one of the—” He stopped suddenly, and Kauth turned to look at him. Sevren’s amber eyes were narrowed as he looked down at him.
“What’s wrong?” Kauth asked.
“What kind of agent of the Wardens doesn’t know who the Children of Winter are? Khyber’s blood, what Reacher doesn’t know them by reputation at least? Who are you really?”
Kauth glanced at Zandar, who sat between him and the aisle. The warlock scowled, and Kauth could almost see his eldritch power boiling in his eyes, churning shadow eager to burst forth and wreak destruction.
Damn Kelas, he thought, and damn the Royal Eyes of Aundair. They should have given me more information.
But they want me dead, he reminded himself.
“All right,” he said, looking back at Sevren. “I wasn’t completely honest with you back in Varna. I’m not a Reacher. I was born in Stormreach, and I’ve only been in Khorvaire for a few weeks. I came here looking for work—the kind of work that my experience in Xen’drik might help with. The Wardens hired me for this mission, so I’m a sword for hire, not one of their regular scouts or agents.”
“Much like us,” Vor observed.
“How much are they paying you?” Zandar asked.
Kauth did some quick math in his head. He had offered them payment of a thousand gold galifars each. It would be reasonable for him to keep two parts for himself. “Five thousand.”
Zandar looked to Sevren, and Kauth met the shifter’s gaze. Sevren stared at him for a long time. Finally he said, “That’s a pretty good story. It’ll do for now. Zandar, Vor, you agree?”
The others nodded. Zandar’s smile returned to his face. Kauth wasn’t sure what to make of that.
“So here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll take that five thousand and divide it in four parts instead of five. We’re all equal partners in this mission now. Twelve fifty each.”
Just the right amount of hesitation, Kauth reminded himself.
“Done.”
Sevren extended a hand over the back of the bench, and Kauth clasped it. “Equal partners,” the shifter said. “That means I give the orders now.”
Zandar laughed, and Kauth just shrugged. “Seems to me you’ll do a good job keeping us alive,” he said. “I have no problem with that.”
“Good. That’s settled. Now, back to your question, ignorant Stormreacher.”
Kauth laughed. The people of the Eldeen Reaches were used to scorn coming from the self-styled sophisticates of the Five Nations. They all looked down together on the provincials of Stormreach, situated at the tip of the mysterious southern continent of Xen’drik.
Sevren shared the laugh. “The Children of Winter are one of the crazier sects running around the Reaches,” he said. “Their leaders are druids, so they have sort of a respect for nature. But they tend to focus on a part of nature’s cycle that other sects prefer not to dwell on.”
“The dying part,” Kauth guessed.
“Exactly. They work with spiders, scorpions, wasps, and centipedes—that sort of thing. That seems to be a matter of personal preference rather than a part of their philosophy, but it certainly helps them terrify the peasants, which seems to be part of their goals.”
“So why did they attack the coach?”
Sevren shrugged. “That’s what they do. They believe that nature is going to cleanse the land, and they see themselves as agents of that cleansing.”
“Hastening the cycle of nature,” Zandar observed.
“Something like that.”
“I hope they were prepared to meet the end of their life cycles,” the warlock said.
Kauth laughed—it was easy to make himself laugh. But as he laughed, he wondered whether his companions were prepared for their own deaths.
Nothing is permanent, he reminded himself.
His next thought disturbed him: Perhaps I should join the Children of Winter.
Greenheart was a stark contrast to Varna and, indeed, to every capital city of Khorvaire. It would be a stretch to call it a city at all. At a guess, Kauth figured that fifty Greenhearts would fit inside Fairhaven’s walls, but he thought he might be guessing too low. There were precious few actual buildings—little more than stone huts that looked as though they’d been lifted out of the earth to serve as shelter. Other residents lived on strange platforms in the trees that seemed to be extended from the branches themselves. Nowhere in the town was the work of carpenters or masons readily apparent.
The Orien coach dropped them near the center of town, took on a few new passengers, and started quickly back the way it had come, along the only road into or out of the capital of the Eldeen Reaches. The town center itself was not a marketplace or business district, but a lush green grove ringed with ancient pines. Hard-looking warriors stood guard among the pines—humans and shifters armed with bows and knives, much like Sevren Thorn. Kauth shot a glance at Sevren. Had he once stood as a guardian of Greenheart’s sacred grove?
There could be no doubt that this grove was sacred to the Reachers. Even with his limited knowledge o
f the Eldeen Reaches and their druids, Kauth knew that Greenheart was a center of religion, not politics. The druids of Greenheart supervised the activities of the Wardens of the Wood throughout the Reaches, and that supervision extended to matters of governance as well as spirituality, but this was no many-tiered, rigid hierarchy like Thrane’s. The Wardens served as spiritual advisors to their communities and arbitrators of disputes, and the druids of Greenheart offered them support and advice more than supervision or discipline.
“Ah, Greenheart,” Zandar sighed. “The only capital city of Khorvaire without a tavern.”
“The druids will give us shelter,” Sevren said. His voice was hushed, almost reverent, heightening Kauth’s suspicion that the shifter had some connection to the guardians of the grove.
“What about the Great Crag?” Vor said. “Is there a tavern in the court of the three sisters?”
The capital of Droaam, a nation of monsters just to the south of the Eldeen Reaches, was little more than a collection of goblin camps and gnoll barracks. Harpies nested in the cliffs of the city, and three hags—the three sisters—governed the fractious nation from a court built among the ruins of the ancient hobgoblin empire of Dhakaan.
“Have you ever seen an ogre drink?” Zandar said. “There must be taverns there to feed those appetites.”
“House Tharashk has an outpost there,” Kauth added. “I’m sure they maintain something like civilized facilities.” House Tharashk, made up of orcs and half-orcs as well as humans, had made enormous profits during the Last War by recruiting mercenaries from among the monsters of Droaam.
“What about Ashtakala?” Zandar said, grinning wolfishly at Vor.
“The city of demons is not the capital of the Demon Wastes,” the orc growled.
“Isn’t it a legend?” Sevren said. “I’ve never heard of anyone who’s actually been there.”
“It’s real,” Vor said.
Zandar smirked. “Or as real as a million-year-old city populated with masters of illusion can be.” He was clearly trying to nettle Vor, and it was working. “Maybe we’ll find it on our expedition.”
