by James Wyatt
The next day, they emerged from the forest to the bank of a wide, slow river, the opposite bank barely within bowshot. Gaven guessed, and Lissa confirmed, that the river flowed past Rav Dolorr and emptied into the bay. For seven more days they traveled upriver, scrambling up past its rapids and cataracts. Before long they were walking in a narrow gorge that cut through the mountains. Then, at the end of the eighth day, the gorge opened into a wide valley cradling a large, still lake—the source of the river.
Fields spread along the nearer sides of the lake, and herds scrambled over the valley’s steep sides—probably goats or sheep, but just shadows on the darkening hillside. The city of Rav Magar grew around the far end of the lake and up the back of the valley. A high wall surrounded the city, spiked with jagged blades reminiscent of the dragonborn’s weapons—they might even have been halberds and glaives propped against a battlement. Torchlight flickered through arrow slits cut through the wall, and great watchfires blazed in towers spread along the wall. Similar towers flanked the head of the river where Lissa’s band emerged from the gorge.
Gaven glanced up at the sky as they approached the gates between the towers, then stopped, staring. A row of bright disks shone like a strand of pearls stretched across the Ring of Siberys—ten moons all rising full on the same night. Ten eyes gaze brightly upon the City of the Damned, watching as the pilgrim arrives. He was the pilgrim, he was sure of it—it was just the echo of a memory, but the verse that had sprung to his mind went on to speak of the Storm Dragon.
Rienne and Lissa stopped together to look back at him, and Gaven hurried to catch up.
Guards challenged them at the gates, but let them pass as soon as they recognized Lissa. They gawked at Gaven and Rienne as they followed Lissa through, and two of them speculated aloud about what they could be, apparently not considering the possibility that Gaven could understand their words.
“They wear clothes like people,” one said.
The other snorted. “But they have fur like—” What was that word? Meat-animals. Livestock.
“Not much meat on them.”
The second guard gasped and pointed at Gaven. “His skin, look!”
His dragonmark. Gaven hadn’t thought about how the dragonborn would respond to the mark of the Prophecy on his skin, but Lissa hadn’t seemed to give it any notice. He was curious to hear what the guards would say about it, but they just gaped and pointed, and then he was past the guardpost and walking a rutted dirt road along the lake shore.
Lissa noticed the attention his dragonmark drew, and took off her cloak when they were out of sight of the guardpost.
“Better put this on,” she said, “and cover it up.” She gestured at his neck and arm, apparently at a loss for words to describe “it.”
“Why?” Gaven asked. “My mark didn’t seem to disturb you or your scouts.”
“Disturb is perhaps not the right word. Interest would be better. And it did interest me.”
Gaven gathered the dragonborn’s cloak—made of linen, apparently woven from flax just like in Khorvaire—around his neck. He let its folds drape over his left arm, where the dragonmark extended down past the half-sleeve of his chainmail coat. For good measure, he pulled the hood over his head, hoping it might reduce the number of casual observers who stopped in their tracks to gawk at the unfamiliar creature. Rienne had the same idea. She had unwrapped the long silk cloth she wore around her waist and was carefully draping it over her head and around her shoulders.
As they drew closer to the city, they fell in among a steady stream of people—dragonborns, entirely—making their way both in and out of the city at the end of the day. There were farmsteads dotting the sides of the valley, hearthfires springing to life inside them as the sun went down, and some merchants and farmers were leaving the city walls to join their families at home in those dwellings. Laborers and travelers were shuffling in, returning from their work as farm hands, masons, or carpenters to their homes safe inside the walls. Like Lissa’s band, every one of the dragonborn made or received some gesture of submission while passing another. Gaven tried in vain to make sense of it, then finally resolved to ask Rienne about it later.
The variety among the dragonborn struck him for the first time. Their coloration ranged from Lissa’s bronze-gold to dark shades of red, covering a spectrum of golds, browns, and rust along the way. They were generally large and strongly built, but they showed as much variation in height as humans did, even if the shortest of them was as tall as Gaven. Most of them had leathery hide covered with very fine scales, with larger scales on a few areas of their arms and legs. A few had large scales over their whole bodies, like soldiers in heavy armor. The more of them he saw, the more he recognized differences in facial features—the spacing and shape of the eyes, the structure of the frills, width of the head and mouth, and the height of the brow and the length of the snout.
The city itself might have been full of farm hands, merchants, and blacksmiths, but it seemed no less alien to Gaven than the bodies and customs of its dragonborn inhabitants. The city grew like a mountain against the back of the valley, filling the valley floor and then narrowing as it climbed higher to a single palace silhouetted against the sunset at the lip of the valley. Gaven imagined that the structure of the city mirrored the social structure of its people, with the ruler in his palace at the peak, then progressively larger neighborhoods of decreasing status. He wondered if the ruler were a drakamakk, a dragon-king—and if a drakamakk was actually a dragon, or just an exalted dragonborn with a lofty title?
Whoever sat in the palace, dragons were everywhere in the architecture of the city. Dragon heads jutted out from lintels, dragon claws held signs lettered in Draconic, and dragon mouths belched smoke from chimneys. Dragons dominated pediments on the front of larger buildings, and elegant dragons coiled around the pillars that supported them. They snaked along stairways and over archways, and dragon statuettes crouched outside doorways.
All of the buildings aspired to a monumental style—especially the larger stone buildings with their columns and pediments, but even smaller homes were fronted with fieldstone and boasted pillars and sometimes friezes above the doorways. Yawning archways unblocked by doors seemed to welcome guests to every home.
And among all these strange buildings and carved dragons, the dragon-headed people walked the streets, filtered into taverns, closed shops and retreated to their hearthfires. Gaven felt overwhelmed, and suddenly very vulnerable.
As soon as they were inside the city, Lissa dismissed her takarra, who took their scouts off in loose formations toward the heights of the city. When they were gone, she turned to Gaven.
“You are pilgrims, so you will visit and stay at the shrine,” she said. “I will lead you there, and then I will have to leave you for now.”
“What’s at the shrine?”
“You told me you were interested in the Prophecy.”
Gaven couldn’t believe it. “The shrine is dedicated to the Prophecy?” Was it possible that he could find what he sought in a single place, and so soon?
“Of course,” Lissa said, in a tone that suggested she couldn’t imagine any other possibility.
“Then we’ll be happy to visit it. And stay there.”
CHAPTER
19
Kalok Shash!” Vor’s roar resounded in the canyon, and it seemed to Kauth that the earth beneath him shook with it. Clutching his belly as he fell to the ground, Kauth turned to look at the orc.
The giant’s sword was buried in the orc’s shoulder, and Vor was drenched in blood. His left arm hung lifeless at his side, but the sword in his right hand was in the midst of a mighty swing aimed at the stooping giant’s neck. Silver light traced the arc of the blade, and it flared into a brilliant explosion as it struck true. The giant toppled, but Vor followed it down to the ground.
“No no no,” Kauth groaned. He tried to crawl to Vor, but his arms wouldn’t support his weight.
Sevren’s foot slammed into his ri
bs, knocking him over onto his back. The shifter held his knife poised for a killing blow, but his face showed signs of his internal struggle. He was trying to resist whatever compulsion held him in its grip—but he couldn’t.
Just as the knife began its downward plunge, Zandar leaped over Kauth and into Sevren, knocking him down. Kauth loosed the wand’s healing magic into his body, stopping the blood flowing from his gut, at any rate, though it still left him feeling weak from the blood he’d already lost.
Sevren had the upper hand in grappling the warlock. Though his knife had fallen away somewhere, his claws tore at Zandar. Worse, beetles now swarmed over Zandar as well, burrowing beneath his skin. On the other hand, Zandar completely occupied the shifter’s attention, leaving his back open to Kauth’s wand.
Kauth struggled to his feet and bent over the shifter. As the wand’s magic coursed into Sevren’s body, beetles erupted through his skin and fell dead to the ground, leaving bloody ulcers behind. Sevren stopped struggling against Zandar, and the warlock pushed him off. Kauth bent over Zandar next.
“I’m fine,” the warlock said, pushing him away. “Check on Vor!”
A surge of grief clenched in Kauth’s chest and pressed at his eyes. “It’s too late for Vor,” he said.
“It can’t be! Go heal him!” Zandar’s face was twisted in pain that reflected Kauth’s own and magnified it.
The beetles that still crawled over the earth came together and started building their slender pillar again. Kauth pulled out the fiery wand again, but Zandar snatched it from his hand.
“I’ll kill it,” Zandar said. “See to Vor!”
Kauth couldn’t argue. Dreading what he would see, he picked his way among the swarming beetles to the fallen orc’s side. Fire burst behind him, and he heard the drone of the beetles.
He’d been right—there was no pulse of life in Vor’s neck, no breath in his mouth. His eyes stared blankly at the sky. But in this one place, the sky did not seem so dark. Kauth felt a sudden surge of hope—hope, perhaps, for Vor above all. At the last, he had struck the giant with the power of Kalok Shash. The Binding Flame had not abandoned him.
Another burst of fire made Kauth’s shadow fall across Vor’s face. Then silence. He heard quiet footfalls approach, then Zandar fell to his knees at Kauth’s side. Sevren stood behind them. There was nothing to do but mourn.
Vor’s lifeless eyes stared at the burning sky. Kauth followed them up as if there were something to see, and lost himself in the churning of the clouds, the strange red light, and in memories of Vor.
Zandar was weeping unabashedly beside him, displaying far more affection for the dead orc than he ever had while Vor was alive. The sounds of his cries seemed a fitting background to Kauth’s thoughts.
Vor had died for him. The giant-demon would have killed him if Vor had not charged in when he did. Kauth had put his own life in danger to reclose the Gatekeeper seal in the serpent’s lair and saved his companions, but Vor had been the one standing beside him, hacking off the alien tentacles that wrapped around his neck while he worked.
Why should Vor’s death bother me? Kauth thought. I brought him here to die. The whole plan rests on him dying, along with the others. Along with me. Their lives are playing pieces in a much larger game.
He shook his head, still staring up at the clouds.
“Do it now!” Kelas stood behind her, yelling in her ear. “No one lives forever.”
Laurann stared into her friend’s eyes. She had trained with Kyra for a month. They had been girls together, laughing and laughing over the most foolish things. She had told Kyra things she had never told anyone. Now Kelas was making her kill her friend.
Kyra set her mouth in a thin line, but her eyes betrayed her. The eyes always do.
“You have no friends,” Kelas said. “If you cannot kill her, I will make her kill you before I kill her myself. Kill or be killed. If you love you will fail!”
“I’m sorry,” Laurann whispered. She drove the knife into Kyra’s heart as fast and hard as she could, hoping her friend would die quickly.
Kelas spun her around and punched her face. “You are not sorry!” he yelled. She fell to the floor and Kelas kicked her in the gut. She curled around the blow, gasping for breath, and he kicked her again. “You do not care for this girl! She failed, so she died!”
He kicked her once more, and Laurann rolled over into the spreading pool of Kyra’s blood.
How many people had he killed at Kelas’s command? He couldn’t begin to count. It started when he was barely old enough to wrap his hand around the hilt of a sword. How many times had Kelas beat him for displaying a shred of hesitation or compassion, for caring a whit about anyone? Kelas had worked hard to ensure that Kauth—that Aunn in all his faces hated him. Hated him and obeyed him without question.
Always the message was the same: Aundair was everything and the lives of individuals meant nothing. A Royal Eye was willing to sacrifice anything and anyone for the good of the nation, even himself. The needs of the nation and its hundreds of thousands far outweighed the life of any one person.
I don’t believe it anymore, he realized. He looked down from the sky to Vor’s corpse on the ground, to Zandar weeping over his friend. This, he thought, is what life is about.
I won’t do it. For the first time in my life, I’m going to fail. And Kelas can burn in the Lake of Fire for all I care.
He unslung his pack from his shoulders, opened the front pouch, and drew out an ivory cylinder. He unscrewed the lid and shook out a roll of papers, then began to shuffle through them, looking for the one he needed.
“What are you doing?” Sevren asked. The shifter had been standing silently behind him, mourning in his own quiet way.
“I’m going to bring him back.”
Zandar looked up at that. His face was a mask of anguish, streaked with tears. His violent display of emotion no longer seemed out of place to Kauth. It was right and good that he should care so much about his friend.
“You can do that?” the warlock asked. The note of hope in his voice convinced Kauth that he had made the right decision.
“I can damn well try.” He’d carried the scroll with him for years, hoping he would never have to use it, and never quite sure that it would work if he did. He found the right one, withdrew it from the sheaf, and returned the others to their case.
“How can I help?” Zandar asked.
“Pray for me.”
Kauth let his eyes roam over the scroll, blocking out the rest of the world from his mind. A devotee of the war god, Dol Dorn, had scribed it, ornamenting it with images of weapons and marching armies. The priest had probably intended it to be used in the event of a great general’s death on the field of battle. Presumably whoever carried it into battle had died before the general in question. Kauth had purchased it some years ago with money he’d secreted away without Kelas’s knowledge.
Kauth had heard other changelings in the Royal Eyes speak of the Traveler over the course of his training, always out of earshot of Kelas and other handlers. The ever-changing trickster of the gods, the Traveler did not answer prayers or accept sacrifice—the Traveler smiled on the self-reliant. The Traveler’s ten thousand names were said to hide the secrets of the universe for those who could puzzle them out. The idea of those ten thousand names had always captured Kauth’s imagination, and he figured that the best way to glean their secrets was to adopt ten thousand names himself. In thirty years, he had yet to take on a hundred names, and he felt more than nine thousand names distant from the mysteries of the universe.
He wasn’t sure whether the Traveler had really appeared to him in a dream. He had been inclined to dismiss that apparition as the product of a fever. But her persisent question—he had always thought of the Traveler as her, though others described him as male in sometimes vulgar myths—that question had lingered with him: “Who are you?” It galled him that he hadn’t yet come up with a satisfying answer.
So it was her image that
Kauth fixed in his mind as he began to read the scroll, as she had appeared to him in that dream, wearing the face of the martyred paladin Dania ir’Vran and bathed in argent light. Perhaps Kalok Shash would smile on that mental image of silver fire and favor Vor because of it.
He reached into the scroll with his mind, gingerly touching the magic bound in each letter, amplified in each syllable, straining against the bonds of each word. One by one, he wrapped his mind around the knot of magic in each word and felt the knot loosen as he spoke. Magic streamed from the letters on the page, dissolving the ink it left behind, and poured from his mouth like sound. A cloud of divine power swirled around him like a brewing storm.
In that shadow of that storm, he felt infinitesimal, and he felt infinite. He felt himself dissolved in divinity, stretched across the universe and beyond, as though if he looked he could see everything and if he thought he could know anything. But he was far past sight and thinking. He was a tiny mind and a feeble hand reaching to touch a far greater power, speaking words that hallowed his tongue, daring to command the power of the gods.
It seemed to him, for a fleeting instant, that the gods deigned to be commanded, as he felt the power of the divine storm break and pour into Vor’s body. He was empty, every mote of energy scoured from his body and mind. A shimmer of silver ran over the fallen orc, and some part of his mind heard Zandar next to him gasp, then hold his breath.
There was a moment of perfect silence. No one breathed, no waft of wind stirred the dusty ground, nothing moved. They hung suspended in time.
And then the sky rumbled with thunder somewhere in the distance, the gravel shifted and crunched under Sevren’s foot, and the last flicker of silver faded from Vor’s blood-soaked armor.
Nothing. There was nothing. His failure was complete.
Zandar couldn’t bear the thought of Vor’s body becoming a feast for whatever carrion feeders might crawl through the Demon Wastes, but there was no wood to build a funeral pyre. So he and Sevren collected rocks and piled them in a cairn over Vor, hoping that would do the job but not really believing it. Kauth sat alone as they worked, trying to recapture some of what he’d felt as he read the scroll and agonizing over his failure. Against the magnitude of that failure, turning his back on his mission and the Royal Eyes seemed paltry.
