by James Wyatt
Cart stepped in front of Caylen to meet the charge of the fire-seared worg. Holding his axe back, he thrust his shield at the leaping beast and deflected it to his left, away from the wizard. As the worg hit the ground, Cart’s axe sliced down and bit into its armored hindquarters. Not a serious wound, but Cart hoped it would at least keep the worg’s attention away from Caylen.
With a rumbling growl, another worg slammed into Cart’s shield and shoulder, knocking him back and scrabbling to pull him to the ground. As he brought his axe around to swing at that one, still another one nipped at his right arm, trying to hold back the blow. With all his strength, he wrenched his shield around, smashing its top edge into the jaw of the worg on his left and hurling it off him. He used that momentum to pull his axe-hand away from the worg on his right and bring it around to cleave into the skull of the one he’d just thrown to the ground.
Keep them alive, Cart thought grimly.
He couldn’t see Tesh, and Caylen was circling nervously around him, trying to keep Cart between himself and any worg. That game would end soon—two worgs were stalking toward him from both sides.
The worg he’d nicked on the flank took advantage of his distraction. Its jaws clenched around his right shoulder and its weight knocked him to the ground. A blaze of agony seared through his chest and arm as the worg bit and tore. His shield arm was pinned beneath him, and his axe was between his body and the worg’s. He tried rolling the creature over, but it was too heavy.
Panic welled in his mind—fear without discipline, a burning and impotent need to run away. Rational thought was no longer possible, and he no longer gave a damn whether the others survived. Flailing his legs in search of leverage, he managed to roll the worg’s weight off, but he still couldn’t free his pinned arm with the shield attached. The worg rewarded his efforts by twisting its teeth in his shoulder, and he heard as well as felt crushing metal and splintering wood. The pain and fear burst from his mouth in an agonized howl.
Three yelps of pain answered Cart’s, and the weight of the worg suddenly lifted off him. His panic got him to his feet before he had any idea what had happened, then his eyes fell on Caylen. The wizard stood in the burning center of a swirling galaxy of tiny stars, his mouth moving in a silent incantation. His tome floated on a column of fire before him, its pages fluttering as light danced across them. Threads of fiery radiance ran from him to three of the worgs and held them suspended in cages formed of searing flame.
Cart glanced around. Tesh was on his knees, shakily getting to his feet next to one of the imprisoned worgs. One worg lay dead where Cart had cleaved its skull, and three were hanging in the air. That left one—
It sprang at Caylen with a growl, yelped as it passed through the motes of light surrounding the wizard, then slammed into him. The three worgs dropped to the ground as Caylen fell. Cart leaped over the one that had pinned him, swinging his axe at the one on Caylen. In the instant before his blow connected, the worg sank its teeth into Caylen’s throat.
Cart buried his axe in the worg’s skull and sent the creature rolling on the ground away from the wizard, where it lay still. Caylen’s tome fell to the ground, its pages rustling as they settled into place.
CHAPTER
21
Despite the fury of their uncontrolled rush down the canyon wall, the barbarians were disciplined fighters. Without Vor, Kauth and his allies were crippled—they couldn’t coordinate their attacks or cover each other’s defenses. They were hedged in, unable to maneuver into favorable positions, slowly forced apart until each was an island in a sea of enemies. Kauth fought fiercely, mustering all the magic he could to ward himself from the barbarians’ attacks and to make his own weapon strike harder, but he knew it was a futile effort. Zandar was the nexus of a storm of eldritch energy, but Kauth saw the storm drift farther and farther away from him and slowly wane in fury. Sevren growled and roared as he cut around him, tearing flesh and splintering bone, but he soon disappeared under the raging sea.
Kauth saw the Traveler leering at him from the faces of the enemies surrounding him, mocking the foolish convictions that had turned him back from his mission. It was what many people would call the perfect gift of the Traveler—a sudden attack of conscience, an attempt to do the right thing, that immediately ended in disaster. By deciding to save his friends, he somehow led them to their deaths.
His body and his will were flagging. His mace was a heavy weight in his hands, blood ran from a dozen small cuts, and drawing breath wracked his chest with the pain of broken ribs. Using a wand to restore his strength would mean dropping his guard and inviting a killing blow from one of the barbarians pressing in on him. If he didn’t keep his weapon in constant motion, he felt, he would die.
He had one last, desperate hope—a trick worthy of the Traveler herself. Smashing his mace into the nearest barbarian, he changed. He didn’t have time for more than a quick sketch—paler skin, longer hair, scarred cheeks in place of his beard, a thinner nose, a bit shorter and slimmer. He tore off his cloak, threw off his leather cap, and dropped his mace, then scooped up the club of a fallen foe. Kauth died in that instant, and the Carrion Tribes gained a new member.
The barbarians who saw him transform shouted and lunged at him. He barreled into the midst of his foes, let the chaos swallow him, and then completed his transformation. He was one of them—shouting his alarm at the apparent disappearance of his enemy, staring at every nearby face to find the imposter.
“There he is!” The barbarian who had been Kauth pointed at a man about his height and build, and watched as the other barbarians bludgeoned him to death. As he watched, he changed his features again, making his face an exact duplicate of the dying man’s. While his new allies stared at the corpse and struggled to make sense of what had happened, he stooped to pick up another dead man’s heavy iron helm and put it on his head.
A name—he needed a name. What sort of names did the Carrion Tribes give their children?
“Aric, look.” A man next to him hit his arm and pointed. Aric, then—that would be his name.
Aric’s stomach sank as he saw a long pole rise erect in the midst of the barbarians. An iron ring at the top of the pole held a heavy chain, and Zandar hung by his wrists from the chain. A cheer went up from the barbarians, and Aric joined in, celebrating the death or capture of the warlock who had been his friend—in a different life, under a different name. He wanted to vomit.
A second pole went up beside the first, and Aric saw Sevren’s broken body hanging from the chain at its end. Another cheer. Aric remembered riding the Orien coach to Varna and spotting the shifter for the first time.
No, he told himself, that was Kauth, not me.
Both men were still alive, as far as Aric could tell. The gift of the Traveler was complete—in addition to leading his friends to their deaths, the changeling would complete his mission as soon as he decided to abandon it. He cursed the goddess’s ten thousand names.
Two strong barbarians held each pole upright by handles at the bottom, and they started moving at the front of the horde, carrying the prisoners like battle standards. Aric fell in among the mob as the barbarians began a hasty march toward whatever sinkhole they called home.
The barbarians jogged through the Labyrinth for the rest of the day and through the night without stopping. Aric’s muscles burned, but he dared not fall behind the mob or attract attention of any kind. Aric recognized morning by the vague brightening of the blood red sky as he emerged from the narrow canyons of the Labyrinth into the expanse of the Demon Wastes.
The gravelly soil of the Labyrinth gave way to a broad expanse of blackened sand and jagged obsidian, broken here and there by geysers of fire reaching toward the belly of the red clouds. On this desolate plain, an army was encamped, a horde that dwarfed any single military force Aric had seen during the Last War. Campfires shone like stars in an obsidian sky, far too numerous to count.
Despair threatened to swallow Aric. Here was a barbarian horde a
lready poised to scour the Labyrinth and spill over the Shadowcrags into the Eldeen Reaches. The work Kelas had sent him to do was done already—Vor had died for nothing, Zandar and Sevren were about to suffer torture and die for no reason, no pretense of greater good. Kelas sent him into the Demon Wastes, into the path of this horde, to die.
“Prisoners!” the men carrying the poles shouted as they approached the camp. “Prisoners for Kathrik Mel!”
That cry sent the camp into a frenzy of motion, the main effect of which was to increase the size of the mob sweeping Zandar and Sevren forward. Aric rode the tide, terrified of what lay ahead but seeing no avenue of escape.
“Prisoners for Kathrik Mel!” The mob took up the cry and turned it into a chant. Here and there, Aric heard a nearby barbarian shout “sacrifice” rather than “prisoners,” and dread clenched his chest.
Aric felt himself jostled as the mob in front of him came to a stop and the people behind continued to push forward. Peering over shoulders and between heads, he caught sight of an enormous black pavilion adorned with banners of blood red and bone white. To one side of the tent was a high platform built of bone, and Aric saw three people climbing makeshift stairs to the top. Two of them looked like the barbarians around him, with unruly black hair and pale skin, though their armor was dirty scale armor rather than hide, presumably scavenged from the Ghaash’kala, and they both wore cloaks of black fur.
The one in the middle, though, was not of the Carrion Tribes—he was not human. He stood taller than the people to his front and back, and he wore the plate armor of a knight, stained red-brown with blood. Two long horns swept back from his forehead, and a bony ridge jutted from his jaw as if it were a beard. His skin was brick red, and a long tail twitched and coiled behind him as he walked. His right hand gripped the haft of a wicked-looking glaive.
As this man reached the top of the stairs, the mob’s chant changed to a simple repetition of his name: “Kathrik Mel! Kathrik Mel!”
This, Aric knew at once, was the warlord Kelas had described. His hold over the barbarians was unmistakable, the sheer force of his personality palpable even from this distance. This was a man who could unite even the warring Carrion Tribes. He held up his clawed left hand, and the mob fell instantly silent. His voice was low and loud.
“You bring prisoners before me?” he said. “A blood sacrifice to me?”
The barbarians raised a shout of “Kathrik Mel!”
Kathrik Mel strode to the front edge of the platform and examined Sevren. “A shifter, a brave explorer from the Eldeen Reaches, no doubt.” His voice dripped with scorn—and so powerful was his hold on the crowd that Aric found himself loathing Sevren, pitiful and broken in his chains. The warlord took a few steps and looked down at Zandar. “And a human from the soft cities beyond the forest.”
He traced a finger below Zandar’s jaw in what seemed at first to be a gentle caress. Zandar gave a weak cry, though, and blood welled up in the wake of the warlord’s claw.
“See how soft they are!” Kathrik Mel shouted. “The cities of the east will fall before our might as easily as these two fell before our smallest band!”
The mob howled its approval, and Aric joined in.
The scratch on Zandar’s neck was only the first of many small cuts the prisoners suffered. The barbarians toyed with them as if examining how much pain they could endure before finally dying. Aric heard Zandar confess that he was an Eldeen spy sent to scout the Demon Wastes, and he heard Kathrik Mel promise the utter annihilation of the Reaches. The barbarian horde would burn the Towering Wood to the ground, the warlord said, until not a single tree remained standing.
Mission accomplished, Aric thought bitterly.
And rather than watch Zandar and Sevren endure any more torture, he slipped through the bloodthirsty mob and lost himself in the Labyrinth.
CHAPTER
22
Gaven felt the nearness of the shrine before Lissa pointed it out to him, as though the words of the Prophecy contained inside were calling to him. The building was not particularly remarkable, except for the two dragons, painstakingly sculpted in wood, that flanked the stairway leading to the open archway—one painted red, the other gold. White plaster smoothed the stone walls, and gold leaf decorated the edges of the peaked roof. But to Gaven’s eyes, it seemed as if the Prophecy had written the building into existence.
An elaborate mosaic adorned the ground just outside the shrine, depicting the three primordial dragons—shriveled Khyber coiled at the heart, enfolded by the sinuous body of Eberron. Siberys formed a snaky ring around the others. The Dragon Above, the Dragon Between, and the Dragon Below.
Lissa gestured for Gaven and Rienne to enter ahead of her. Gaven held his breath as he stepped across the threshold, hardly daring to hope that he might find what he sought inside. Colorful murals of dragons and dragonborn decorated the inside walls—dragonborn prostrate before dragon-kings, dragons unleashing their devastating breath upon armies and cities, dragonborn soldiers and courtiers and heroes. A stone tablet rested on a carved wooden pedestal at the far end of the room.
And that was all. Gaven let out his breath in a sigh of disappointment. He had expected something more like a library, or at least walls covered in writing rather than space wasted on murals. But this—a single stone tablet. How many of these shrines would he have to visit in order to find what he sought?
“Welcome to the shrine of the Prophecy in Rav Magar,” Lissa said. “May you find here the insight you seek.”
Gaven turned to her. “Where do we sleep?”
“On the floor, of course. In front of the tablet. Dream well.” She bowed, then she was gone.
Gaven stared out the archway at the mural on the ground outside. “I don’t believe it,” he said, glad to slip back into the comfortable Common tongue.
“Not what you expected?” Rienne was examining the murals.
“Might as well at least see what the tablet says.”
“There’s writing on the walls as well. Maybe just captions, but you should check.” Rienne sighed. “Here, take off your pack. I’ll get our bedrolls ready while you read.”
Gaven slid the pack off his shoulders and kneeled in front of the tablet. “Three shadows … stifle? … extinguish? Stupid verbs. They put out the light of three stars, and their blood—is that the blood of the stars or the shadows? Probably either one. Their blood scours or cleans or refines the drakatha—the dragonborn, maybe, or the spawn of a dragon, maybe the brood of Khyber.” He sighed. “I don’t think this is what we’re looking for.”
He turned to Rienne and saw her smoothing her bedroll next to his—the shrine wasn’t large enough to allow any space between them. His heart ached.
No wonder she feels like a supportive wife, he thought. She doesn’t speak the language, and she’s not invested in our purpose here. She’s only here because of me.
She looked up, and her eyes were full of sympathy. “I’m sorry, love. You’ll find it, I’m sure.”
He glanced around at the words woven into the murals. They seemed like captions to the illustrations, though they were couched in the language of the Prophecy. He figured the murals might have illustrated a particular interpretation of the Prophecy, but there was nothing that struck him as relevant to the Time Between. He’d examine them in the morning.
As he lay awake long into the night, Rienne’s head on his chest, his heart still ached. He had the nagging feeling Rienne had only accepted him back into her arms to comfort him, to fulfill her role by supporting him.
Rienne’s hair became a mass of snakes, then a knot of tentacles reaching for him. She was the Soul Reaver then, an abomination, a tentacled head crowning a slender body, great claws on shriveled arms grabbing at him, blank white eyes staring into his and whispers of malice flooding his brain. Gaven rolled on top of it, pinning it to the ground. His hand clenched the spear whose point was the Eye of Siberys, embedded in the Soul Reaver’s chest. His mouth full of slime and bile, the creat
ure’s tentacles raking across his face, he thrust the spear down into the Heart of Khyber.
Through his own hand.
The blood from his hand became a spear of lurid red light, jabbing up from the depths of the earth to pierce the sky. Scarlet filled his vision, and he floated in blood.
Three drops of blood mark the passing of the Time Between.
A ring of silver, a serpent coiled into a circle, shone brightly in the field of red. The red turned to sapphire blue, and the silver ring burst into blinding argent flame. A sword slid through the ring, and then it became a stream of blood, mingled silver and black, flowing out through the ring of fire. Searing flames burst to life around Gaven.
The Time Between begins in blood and ends in blood. Blood is its harbinger, and blood flows in its passing.
Pain like he had never imagined woke him from his sleep.
Rienne stood in darkness. A hard floor, smooth as glass, was cool against her bare feet. The only thing she could see was Maelstrom, suspended in the air before her, the blade pointing up and shining a faint beam of light upward into the darkness. She reached out and grabbed the hilt, savoring the touch of the leather wrapping its hilt. With ground beneath her feet and Maelstrom in her hand, she was solid, rooted.
Maelstrom jerked her arm upward and then lifted her off the ground. She floated in a void. Maelstrom was all—all she could see, all she could feel.
Dragons fly before the Blasphemer’s legions, scouring the earth of his righteous foes.
Carnage rises in the wake of his passing, purging all life from those who oppose him.
Vultures wheel where dragons flew, picking the bones of the numberless dead.
