Dragon Forge: The Draconic Prophecies - Book Two

by James Wyatt

  Ashara was the first to reach him, rushing from the chamber’s entrance to kneel beside him while two soldiers behind her gawked at the carvings around the crystal door.

  “Stay back from it,” Cart groaned. “Ashara, take a look, but be careful. We need to bring this temple down as soon as possible.”

  Ashara ran a hand over the blue crystal, and a shadow fell over her face. She seemed to shake it off quickly, and she pulled away. Glancing around the rest of the chamber, she nodded, apparently satisfied.

  “Bring it down,” she said.

  CHAPTER

  30

  Vaneshtra has sent word,” the dragon-king’s rasping voice said. “All is prepared for our arrival.” Gaven managed to raise his head and look around. This was a different chamber than the other one, darker and a little smaller, though still larger than most cathedrals. High windows let in little light, and Gaven saw storm clouds churning the sky. The dragon-king stood at the edge of a gigantic circle inscribed into the stone floor and inlaid with crushed gemstones of various colors, combining abstract patterns with Draconic characters. Four other dragons stood around the circle. One was a deep forest green, its head pronged with vicious-looking spikes and its mouth dripping with venom. The next was black, shining in the dim light as though it had just emerged from water, its horns curving forward like the dragon-king’s and its face suggesting the skeletal appearance of the undead dragon. The third was red as autumn leaves, with great horns swept back from its proud head. The smallest of the four enormous dragons was a gleaming red-brown, with the fainest hint of a green patina as though its scales were cast from copper.

  Phaine d’Thuranni knocked his face back to the ground and Gaven groaned. They had given him water, trusting that his weakness would prevent him from attacking guards who opened his cell door long enough to throw him a waterskin. He still had not eaten, and he felt stretched, like cotton being spun into yarn. A rumble of thunder from the clouds overhead reminded him, though, that he was still the Storm Dragon—there was still power in his blood and in his dragonmark, if only he could marshal the strength of will he needed to channel it.

  “Step now into the circle,” the dragon-king said.

  Gaven felt all the dragons move closer, as though each one exuded an aura that pressed against him, squeezing him from all sides. Then the dragon-king began a chant, its words already burned into Gaven’s memory.

  “Three drops of blood mark the passing of the Time Between.

  The three dragons are joined together in the blood,

  and the blood contains the power of creation.

  The Time Between begins with blood and ends in blood.

  Blood is its harbinger, and blood flows in its passing.”

  Thunder is his harbinger and lightning his spear, Gaven thought—that was the Storm Dragon, described in the Prophecy. Wind is his steed and rain his cloak.

  Another rumble of thunder made Gaven smile.

  Without a pause, the dragons launched into a different chant, formed not of words but of syllables of power. Almost as soon as it began, Gaven felt the engraved circle spring to life beneath him, energy coursing along its channels and magic stirring the air.

  Lightning struck the roof of the chamber, and he heard one dragon’s voice falter, then pick up the chant.

  Gaven felt a surge of elation that began to overpower his fatigue. I am the storm, he thought. I am the Storm Dragon!

  Another lightning strike shook the building, and a shower of gravel fell from one of the windows. Rain drove against the roof and walls, and wind swirled inside the chamber. Gaven lifted his head again, and Phaine did not push it down. The elf had his sword in his hand as if to menace Gaven with it, but his eyes were on the roof and walls. Another strike made the copper dragon falter again, and the red growled a warning even as it continued the chant. Gaven saw cracks start to form across the roof, and the swirling air lifted him to his feet.

  I am the Storm Dragon. You cannot contain me!

  He began to rise into the air on a column of wind, power surging through his body, giving life to his muscles. He could feel the incantation building to its conclusion, and he lifted his arms to the sky to summon the full power of the storm. Lightning hit the roof again, and it began to crumble. Had someone called his name?

  The copper dragon pounced and brought Gaven to the ground beneath its claws. Flat on his back, he saw a huge stone slab break off from the roof and fall. The dragons uttered the last syllable of their ritual chant, and magic flared in a shimmering aurora along the lines of the circle.

  Before the falling roof reached the ground, they were gone.

  Gaven lay on broken ground, looking up at a clear blue sky that framed the angry face of the copper dragon. Its horns were similar to the red’s, but their bases met between the dragon’s eyes to form a V shape atop its skull. Its eyes were smooth pools of liquid turquoise, burning with fury.

  “You thought to escape us, meat?” the dragon growled. “You think your power is a match for ours?”

  Phaine, the other dragons, and the undead dragon-king stood around them in the same positions they had occupied in the chamber. Gaven’s body ached from the dragon’s attack, even though its claws hadn’t torn his flesh. He was utterly spent.

  “Enough, Aggrand,” the dragon-king hissed. “He has failed.”

  Still snarling, the copper dragon stepped off Gaven and backed away to its place in the circle. There was a circle traced in the ground here, a faint echo of the elaborate carving in the chamber they’d left behind. It might have been scratched in the dirt with a stick, but its lines were carefully drawn to match the whorls and words of the original. Rocky canyon walls rose up on two sides, framing the sky.

  He tried to sit up and look around, but the tip of Phaine’s sword appeared at his throat. His head fell back to the ground, and he watched a cloud begin to form in the cloudless sky.

  “Knock him out,” the dragon-king said. “We will have no more storms to ruin this perfect day.”

  Sword still at Gaven’s throat, Phaine kicked at his head. It was a precise blow despite its savagery. Gaven struggled for a moment to keep the darkness from closing in on his vision, but a second kick tipped him over the edge into oblivion.

  Blue light. Gaven blinked, trying to clear his vision. Two human men propped him up between them, eyeing him warily as he lifted his head. They were burly soldiers in metal-studded leather, their hair matted with the dirt of weeks in the field. They stood facing an enormous mass of blue crystal that jutted up from the ground at the head of the canyon. At the top and sides, large facets blended into the surrounding rock of the cliff wall, but the front was a smooth plane, like a window into a vast blue sea.

  Near the canyon floor, a tracing of gold wound its way from the edges of the crystal to a circle engraved in the center. Two great metal cylinders stood on either side, connected to the inlay with fine gold threads and covered with gemstones arranged in precise patterns. Glass tubes extended out from these cylinders, greenish liquid lying quiescent in their bottoms, linking them to what seemed to be construction in progress—the shell of a metal building surrounded by a deep trench.

  Something nagged at the edge of Gaven’s memory, disjointed scenes from a dream that made no sense. The crystal—he’d seen it, a coil of silver writhing inside, a smear of darkness trapped in its grasp. On the lightning rail in Zil’argo he’d dreamed it, jutting from the ground in this canyon. Two spirits bound in a single prison.

  A man stepped in front of Gaven, blocking his view of the construction. Another human in studded armor, this one was older than the soldiers holding Gaven up, and carried an air of authority. He wore a midnight blue coat over his armor and fashionable boots that marked him as something more than a soldier or even a military officer. He smiled warmly at Gaven.

  “I’m so glad you’re awake to see this, Gaven,” he said. “It would be a shame for you to sleep through such a turning point in history, since you play such an impor
tant part in it.”

  Gaven looked around and saw other people arrayed around the crystal, many of them familiar. Phaine d’Thuranni stood just off to his left, his sword still in his hand. Haldren ir’Brassek stood away to the right, arms crossed, glaring at Gaven with barely contained fury. Cart was in his accustomed place behind the general’s shoulder. Gaven felt a pang of disappointment and grief—Cart could have been so much more than Haldren’s lackey.

  The dragon-king perched on the edge of the canyon above the crystal, but there was no sign of the other dragons. A scattering of soldiers with spears and swords, miners hefting picks and shovels, and what might have been magewrights—Gaven saw the Mark of Making on one or two of them—filled out a rough arc centered on the crystal. They watched him and the man standing before him with expectation.

  “I’m Kelas ir’Darran,” the man said. “I see you recognize some of your old friends.”

  Gaven scanned the crowd for Rienne, but of course she wasn’t there. His gaze fell on Cart again, and he thought of Darraun.

  Could the changeling be here? he wondered. Perhaps wearing a different face? No, of course. Darraun is dead.

  “I have no friends here,” Gaven said, his eyes still fixed on Cart. He saw the warforged shift, and he wondered if that were true.

  “Indeed.” The smile fell from Kelas’s face. “However, at this point you are here merely as a witness—the Dragon Forge is not ready for you yet.”

  Gouts of dragonfire in a furnace below him—another scene from a dream. The same dream? He wasn’t sure.

  Kelas turned his back on Gaven and looked up at dragon-king. “The Prophecy, Malathar!” he shouted in Draconic. “Tell us!”

  The dragon-king’s voice was undiminished by the distance to the top of the canyon. “One drop unites Eberron with the Dragon Below,” he said.

  Kelas repeated the dragon’s words in the Common tongue, his arms spread wide like a priest in prayer.

  Gaven whispered the Draconic words along with the dragon-king. “Blood is drawn from a serpent binding the spawn of Khyber and the fiend that is bound.” His eyes fixed on the crystal and the vague shapes within it. “Bound they remain, but their power flows forth in the blood.”

  From somewhere inside his coat, Kelas produced a large silver ring, a torc in the shape of a twisting serpent. He held it up, and silver light flashed within the crystal in answer.

  “The Torc of Sacrifice,” he said, addressing the entire assembly, “an embodiment of the power that allows the serpent of the crystal to bind the fiend. With this torc around her neck, a paladin of the Silver Flame took a possessing spirit into her body and bound it there, then gave her own life to destroy it. With the torc at the heart of the Dragon Forge, we will siphon power from the mighty beings in this prison—without setting them free.”

  “Bound they remain,” Gaven said, “but their power flows forth in the blood.”

  Kelas turned, all warm smiles again. “Very good, Gaven.”

  Gaven looked at Cart, a willing participant in this … the only word Gaven could find to describe it was blasphemy. The emblem of a paladin’s sacrifice, used to draw power into this Dragon Forge. For what purpose?

  Kelas walked to the crystal prison, holding the torc in both hands, and carefully placed it over the ring of gold at the center. It flared with brilliant white light, and white fire ran along the intricate gold inlays, outward from the ring, turning the gold to silver. Kelas stepped back and watched the transformation, flexing his hands in anticipation. When the fire had burned to the gem-covered cylinders and gone out, he drew his sword and held it above his head.

  “The Ramethene Sword,” he said, “forged by fiends for their champion to wield in battle against the dragons of the world’s dawn. Haldren, what say the Serpentes Fragments?”

  Ramethene Sword, Serpentes Fragments—the names meant nothing to Gaven, but the sword drew his attention. It was heavy and angular, almost as though it had been carved of stone. It looked like it might have come from the ruins of Paluur Draal or Xen’drik, but it was not really like anything Gaven had seen before.

  Haldren cleared his throat and recited a verse, unfamiliar to Gaven.

  The Sunderer smote to the dragon’s heart,

  and its blood formed a river upon the land.

  The Fleshrender drew forth the serpent’s life

  and its blood gave life to the gathered hordes.

  For the blade drinks the blood, and the hand that wields it feasts

  on the life.”

  The Sunderer seemed more like a name from the Prophecy, and Gaven racked his brain in an effort to dredge up anything pertinent.

  “The Sunderer, the Fleshrender,” Kelas said. “This is the weapon that will smite to the heart of this prison and draw forth the blood to power the Dragon Forge.”

  Gaven wondered whether Kelas had any idea what he was doing. He had noticed that the dragon-king omitted any mention of the Time Between from his recitation of the Prophecy. Almost without doubt, Kelas was a tool in the dragon’s claw, fulfilling the Prophecy of the Time Between while vainly pursuing his own ends.

  Once again Kelas stepped up to the crystal. He put both hands on the hilt of the Ramethene Sword, drew a deep breath, and shoved it through the circle of the silver torc.

  There was a sound like the plucking of an enormous string, almost too low to hear, but making the air thrum with its vibration. Gaven felt a wave of nausea pass through him, and his muscles felt even weaker. The soldiers supporting him staggered as well, and his knees buckled. Everyone standing around the crystal clearly felt it—they lowered their heads, staggered backward, or fell to their knees. The dragon-king and Cart alone seemed unaffected.

  The canyon was hardly vibrant with life, but something was happening to it—the thin patches of grass dissolved into ash, bare rock blackened, the dry shrubs that grew here and there on the canyon walls shriveled and died. Desolation spread out in a wave from the crystal. Gaven looked in sheer terror at the shadow, expecting to see it burst forth from its azure prison.

  Both the silver serpent and the dark fiend were agitated, moving quickly, almost frantically. The Ramethene Sword glowed so brightly it hurt his eyes to look at it. The inlaid tracery pulsed with light as well, and gemstones came to life on the surface of the cylinders, glowing in a mosaic of different colors. The liquid in the glass tubes began to bubble and churn.

  Then fire burst from the earth to fill the trench that surrounded the Dragon Forge.

  CHAPTER

  31

  Rienne awoke, and Gaven was not there. She frowned at the place where he’d lain—usually she awoke long before he did and had time to exercise and meditate before she roused him for the day’s journey. Something was wrong.

  She sprang up with Maelstrom in her hand and rushed out of the small shrine. The dragonborn city was only starting to come alive with the first light of dawn. She saw dragonets flapping at open windows where dragonborn placed scraps of meat in tiny houses. She heard strange singing, low droning chords and high chanted melodies, that might have been a form of morning prayer. But she couldn’t see Gaven.

  “Gaven?” she called. Several pairs of eyes turned her way and quickly turned back. Louder—“Gaven!” He did not appear or call an answer.

  The sky was cloudless, which gave her an odd reassurance that he was not in serious trouble. If he were fighting somewhere, certainly a storm would be brewing. At the same time, it was disappointing—if nothing else, she could have found him by heading to the heart of the storm.

  “Gaven!” She heard the desperation in her own voice.

  “Rienne!” The voice was not his, and she barely recognized her own name. A dragonborn was running toward her—the one who had led them to this city and shown them the shrine. Lissa.

  As the dragonborn drew nearer, Rienne clenched the hilt of Maelstrom more tightly and called out. “Where is he?” Even as she said it, she realized the stupidity of it—Lissa didn’t understand Common, a
nd Rienne knew only a few words of Draconic, mostly words related to obscure aspects of the Prophecy that resisted translation.

  Lissa’s axe was slung at her belt and her shield at her back, so Rienne sheathed Maelstrom out of courtesy. The blade could be back in her hand in an instant if she needed it. When the dragonborn reached her, spewing a torrent of Draconic babble, she put a hand on Rienne’s shoulder and tried to guide her back into the shrine. She seemed anxious, so Rienne followed.

  When they were in the shrine and safely out of view, Lissa slumped against the wall beside the archway. Rienne could read the fear on her face, but couldn’t determine the cause of it—was she being pursued? She should, perhaps, not be here with Rienne.

  “Gaven?” Rienne asked desperately. Could Lissa give an answer she could understand?

  Another gush of Draconic, but Rienne heard Gaven’s name. She stared blankly at the dragonborn, and Lissa started again, slowly as if talking to an imbecile, but accompanying her words with pantomime, watching to make sure that Rienne understood each concept.

  “Gaven,” she said … hands bound together—a prisoner. Lissa pointed at Rienne … go, go quickly, Lissa wiggled her fingers like legs at top speed. Run. Run away. Lissa shook the axe at her belt and then pointed again at Rienne.

  Flee or die.

  “Not without Gaven,” she said, more to herself than Lissa. She took the dragonborn’s hands and put the wrists together, as Lissa had done to show Gaven’s imprisonment. Pointing at Lissa, she said, “Gaven.” Then she pointed at herself, and chopped her hand between Lissa’s wrists. “I must free him.”

  Lissa’s eyes went wide with fear, and she shook her head. Rienne guessed that meant the same thing to the dragonborn that it did to her.

  “I can’t leave him here,” she said, her voice pleading. Lissa’s eyes softened—she recognized the tone, at least. Rienne held up one fist—“Rienne”—and the other, “Gaven.” She brought the two hands together, entwined the fingers. “Together.” Hands still together, she moved them in imitation of the gesture Lissa had used to mean go away. “We have to leave together.”