Storm Dragon: The Draconic Prophecies - Book One

by James Wyatt

  “You’re risking everything for me.”

  “And you can’t understand why I would do that. But Rienne’s risking everything, too. Do you understand that?”

  “Not really,” Gaven admitted, “but it’s harder for me to imagine what she might be hiding.”

  Thordren’s eyes were bright with tears again. “Did Dreadhold make you forget what love is?”

  Gaven turned back to the window. “My betrothed delivered me to the Sentinel Marshals. My family disowned me, cut me out. Nobody spoke in my defense at my trial. It wasn’t Dreadhold that made me forget.”

  Rienne moved behind him and clasped his arm, but she was evidently at a loss for words. He stared blindly out the window, savoring the bitter taste of anger in his mouth. He heard Thordren step away and then settle in a chair. He started to turn back around, but something in the street below caught his eye.

  Dwarves. If they hadn’t been in Stormhome, he probably wouldn’t have noticed, but in the home of the half-elf House Lyrandar—a single dwarf might not draw the attention, but half a dozen of them, trying to look inconspicuous, certainly did. When he spotted a scarlet shirt on a dark-skinned dwarf, he was certain.

  “You bastard.” Gaven whirled to face his brother. “You almost had me convinced with your little speech about brotherly love.”

  “What are you talking about?” Thordren looked genuinely confused.

  “Those thrice-damned Kundarak dwarves are on their way,” Gaven said.

  Rienne gasped, and stepped to the window. “How many?” she asked.

  “I saw five.”

  “Gaven, I had nothing to do with this,” Thordren said. “Please, you have to believe me.”

  “They’ve probably been watching the house since you escaped,” Rienne said.

  “It doesn’t matter any more how they found me. I need to figure out how I’m getting out of here.” Gaven started out of the room, but Rienne grabbed his arm.

  “How we’re getting out of here,” she said. “We’re still in this together, Gaven.”

  “The airship,” Thordren said.

  “You have an airship?” Rienne asked. “Here?”

  “Not here. But close. Rienne, you know where the bakery is?” He gestured to the west, and Rienne nodded. “If you turn right at that corner, there’s a mooring tower halfway up the next block. It’s not hard to miss. She’s called the Eye of the Storm. Take her with my blessing.”

  Gaven stepped close to his brother and clasped his shoulder. “Thank you, Thordren. I’m sorry I mistrusted you.”

  Thordren smiled and nodded. “Hurry,” he said.

  “And I’m sorry for this,” Gaven added, punching him hard in the jaw. Thordren spun halfway around before hitting the floor, unconscious. “But things will go much better for you this way,” Gaven added.

  Rienne took his hand and pulled him out of the room and down the stairs.

  Just as they reached the bottom of the stairs, a pounding erupted from the door. Jettik hurried toward it, but Rienne stopped him with a gesture. The boy looked confused, glancing between Rienne, the door, and the stairs, as if waiting for an explanation from Thordren. Ignoring him, Rienne led Gaven through the house to the kitchen and yanked a back door open.

  A dwarf stumbled through the door and collided with Rienne. Rienne let herself fall backward under the rushing dwarf’s weight. Keeping her hands and knees between the dwarf’s body and her own, she lifted him up and hurled him into the iron cookware hanging on the opposite wall. He collapsed in a heap of pots and armor, jerked slightly, and fell still.

  “Natan!” a voice shouted outside, then, “Around back!”

  Gaven grabbed Rienne’s hand and pulled her to her feet as he charged out the door. As he ran west down an alley, he turned his face to Rienne. “You have to lead the way—I don’t know any bakery around here.”

  “It’s only been there about ten years,” Rienne said with a smile, but then she pointed to their right and up. “I think that’s where we’re heading.”

  Gaven followed the direction of her finger with his eyes, and saw the distinctive shape of a small mooring tower jutting above the surrounding buildings. “Got it,” he said. “The Eye of the Storm.”

  “Let’s hope she’s ready to fly.”

  “Do you know how to fly an airship?” Gaven asked.

  “Sovereigns, no. That’s your job, heir of Siberys.”

  Gaven growled and made a sharp right turn into another alley, trying to steer more or less toward the mooring tower. Just as Rienne made the turn, a crossbow bolt clattered against the wall of the alley.

  “Fortunately, these alleys haven’t changed much in thirty years,” Gaven said. He pointed ahead. “We’re going right at that T, though it leads away from the tower.”

  “If you say so.”

  They ran at top speed, and once again Gaven felt the wind pick up around them, carrying them so their feet barely touched the ground. When they reached the branching alley, the wind carried them smoothly around the corner without slowing. At the same time, though, a man came hurtling from the opposite branch, falling into stride right behind them, evidently carried by the same wind. Gaven barely caught a glimpse of him as he rounded the corner, but that was enough to identify him without wasting time on a backward glance.

  “Bordan,” he growled.

  “That’s right, Gaven.” Bordan had to shout to be heard over the wind. “We found you again. The rest of your life will be like this, you know, as long as you keep running.”

  “Still better than Dreadhold,” Gaven replied.

  “And Dreadhold’s far better than you deserve!” As he shouted, Bordan leaped forward and threw his arms around Gaven’s legs, bringing them both to the ground.

  Gaven landed on his side and kicked hard at Bordan’s head. As his foot connected, a blast like thunder threw Bordan backward. Rienne helped Gaven stand, and they kept running down the alley. They made a sharp left turn, then stopped short, faced with a blank stone wall.

  Lightning flashed in the darkening sky. Gaven shouted a curse, but a peal of thunder overhead drowned him out.

  “I guess the alleys have changed a bit,” Rienne said. She drew Maelstrom and stepped back to look the way they had come. “The dwarves are almost here, and Bordan’s right behind them.”

  “If they want a fight, I’ll give it to them.” Gaven wreathed his body in flames as he drew his sword and stepped beside Rienne to face the onrushing dwarves.

  Rienne looked at him sadly. “Gaven, I don’t want their deaths on my conscience.”

  “You’re a criminal now, Ree. You can’t afford a conscience.”

  The dwarves slowed their approach, demonstrating more caution than they had last time. There were five, and Gaven thought three of them looked familiar from Vathirond. There was the scarlet-shirted leader Rienne had identified as Ossa. The one who had crashed into the kitchen had been in Vathirond as well—he’d knocked Gaven to the floor and almost cracked his ribs with his mace. The woman who had fenced with Senya was there too. The fourth wore the heaviest armor, a steel breastplate with a few other plates of metal protecting sensitive spots, and hefted a greataxe as long as Gaven’s sword. The fifth kept to the back, her empty hands poised in front of her body, preparing to cast a spell. Bordan walked more slowly, trailing the dwarves by a dozen yards or so.

  Ossa stepped ahead of the others and addressed Rienne, pointedly turning away from Gaven. “I know from experience it’s pointless to ask for Gaven’s surrender,” he said, “but there is still a chance for you, Lady Alastra.”

  “Surrender?” Rienne said. “You don’t know me very well, Ossa.”

  “There are few witnesses to the events near the Mournland, and it’s not too hard to believe that he enchanted you and forced you to aid him. I certainly can’t think of a more logical explanation for your behavior.”

  Gaven sneered. “You’re wasting your time, Kundarak.”

  “Am I?” Ossa finally acknowledged Gaven�
�s presence with a glance. “She delivered you to justice once, she can do so again. And certainly escape with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. You needn’t spend the rest of your life a fugitive, Lady Alastra.”

  “No,” Gaven interjected, “You’re wasting your time chasing me at all. Two of us escaped from Dreadhold. Haldren’s the one fomenting war and planning his conquest of Khorvaire. Why are you spending all your energy chasing me?”

  Bordan stepped forward at that. “When you’re just a harmless, misunderstood victim? Is that it, Gaven? We’re chasing you because you’re a dangerous fugitive. You expect us to just let you run around Khorvaire crashing the lightning rail and airships as the mood strikes you?”

  “If you hadn’t been chasing me, neither of those accidents would have happened,” Gaven said.

  “What makes you think you’re so damned important, Gaven?” Bordan pushed his way through the rank of dwarves and thrust his face into Gaven’s, heedless of the shield of flames around Gaven’s body. “You think you’re more important than the people you’ve killed? Is your life worth more than theirs?”

  “Haldren’s about to plunge the world into war again. Do you understand that?”

  “You’re the one who doesn’t understand, Gaven. Yes, Haldren’s a mass murderer. But you still have Evlan d’Deneith to answer for. You might be less evil than he is, but that doesn’t mean you’re good. You’ve earned your place in Dreadhold—or worse. So we’re going to take you in, whether it’s now or later. And then we’ll find Haldren and take him in, and put an end to this nonsense. And the world will be a better place when you’re in a cell again.”

  Gaven snarled, and lightning answered him, dancing around the spires of the mooring tower above them. “Take me in? You?”

  “We will prevail, Gaven.” Bordan’s smile was calm and confident, which only infuriated Gaven more.

  “How? You can’t handle me.”

  It was not Bordan who answered, but Ossa. Her voice, too, was calm. “We don’t have to handle you, Gaven,” she said. “We just have to handle her.”

  Gaven realized his mistake at once. While he’d been yelling at Bordan, the dwarf in the back had cast a spell on Rienne, freezing her in place. Gaven sent a hurricane blast of wind down the alley, sending Bordan sprawling on his back and forcing the dwarves into half crouches. But two of the dwarves held Rienne’s arms, and they started pulling her stiffened body away, letting the wind lighten their load. Ossa pressed the tip of a dagger to Rienne’s neck.

  “Careful, Gaven,” the dwarf shouted over the gale. “The wind seems to have caught my blade.”

  Gaven saw a prick of crimson well up on Rienne’s neck. The wind caught it and drew it in a line across her throat, as though demonstrating what Ossa threatened to do. With another rumble of thunder overhead, Gaven made the wind stop. His shoulders slumped.

  Rain began to patter on the cobblestones around them, to hiss and vanish in the flames that still licked across Gaven’s body, to spatter Ossa’s scarlet shirt with darker spots like blood. The dwarf spellcaster spoke another spell and snuffed the magic of Gaven’s fiery shield. Gaven stared at the tip of Ossa’s blade and the dimple it made in Rienne’s throat.

  “If you harm her,” he growled, “I swear that I will hunt down every person that so much as knows your name.”

  Two of the dwarves moved to seize Gaven’s arms and pull them behind his back. As they clamped manacles around his wrists, he saw Bordan get to his feet and look up at the sky.

  “I must admit my surprise, Gaven,” Bordan said. “I knew you were powerful. But when did rain last fall in the streets of Stormhome?”

  PART

  IV

  The greatest of the daelkyr’s brood,

  the Soul Reaver feasts

  on the minds and flesh of a thousand lives

  before his prison breaks.

  The Bronze Serpent calls him forth,

  but the Storm Dragon is his doom.

  A clash of dragons signals the sundering of the Soul

  Reaver’s gates.

  The hordes of the Soul Reaver spill from the earth,

  and a ray of Khyber’s sun erupts to form a bridge to the sky.

  The Storm Dragon descends into the endless dark

  beneath the bridge of light, where the Soul Reaver waits.

  There among the bones of Khyber

  the Storm Dragon drives the spear formed from

  Siberys’s Eye

  into the Soul Reaver’s heart.

  And the Storm Dragon walks through the gates of Khyber

  and crosses the bridge to the sky.

  CHAPTER

  41

  The Starpeaks jutted up above Thaliost as if a fiend imprisoned in the earth had pushed them upward in its struggles to escape. Senya stood on a rocky overlook at the edge of the mountains, with Arrakas d’Deneith at her elbow, never letting her stray too far. The dramatic landscape spread out below left her speechless. To the southeast, hills spread out from the mountains like ripples frozen into earth. Boulders littered the rocky ground, gathered in places into enormous cairns commemorating fallen soldiers from untold centuries of warfare. On the eastern edge of the plain, a dark forest stood out against the background of the jagged field. A chill wind blew out of the mountains at her back, moaning as it blew through gulleys and chasms in the bare rock.

  It was easy to see why Aundair considered this land Aundairian soil: the only natural feature that divided the land was the Aundair River, which flowed into Scions Sound just south of the plain. But at the end of the Last War, the Thronehold Accords had established the new border between Thrane and Aundair somewhere in the middle of this plain below them, and extending on an indeterminate path through the Silver Woods beyond. By demanding that Thrane’s borders include Thaliost, the Thrane delegation to Thronehold had almost undercut the peace process. Had the memory of Cyre’s desolation not been so fresh in everyone’s memory, this plain might have seen another decade of war.

  “The Starcrag Plain,” Arrakas said, gazing down with Senya onto the rocky field below them. “So just to the north—” He pointed an armored finger to the left, to the mouth of a wide valley that opened into the plain. “Bramblescar Gorge. Not too deep into that charming valley, just across the border in Aundair, we’ll find your Haldren camped and ready to launch a new war over Thaliost. We’ll reach his camp by nightfall.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” Senya said. She knew her protests were futile—she had run through the same arguments at least a dozen times since Arrakas had captured her in Vathirond. “He won’t jeopardize his plans for my sake.”

  “Don’t worry,” the Sentinel Marshal said, still staring at the valley. A grin touched the corner of his mouth. “You’re not the only dragon in my flight.”

  Senya suppressed a shudder at the mention of dragons, though she knew the phrase simply referred to a tavern game. She wondered how much Arrakas knew about Haldren’s plans. Was he prepared to venture into that valley and come face-to-face with a real flight of dragons?

  Senya found herself much less nervous about a score of dragons than she was about her inevitable encounter with Haldren.

  Arrakas signaled to the half a dozen Sentinel Marshals at his command, and they started down the craggy overlook toward Bramblescar Gorge.

  * * * * *

  Senya’s sharp elf ears heard the pounding hoofbeats a second before any of the human Sentinel Marshals who surrounded her. She wheeled her own horse around to find their source, but two Sentinel Marshals spurred their horses toward her, anticipating an escape attempt. They wrested the reins from her hands and seized her arms before Arrakas’s sharp command cut through the din.

  “Release her!” The marshals obeyed, though one kept hold of her reins. Both looked daggers at her, and Senya returned the glare. Between them, she could just make out a party of perhaps a dozen knights charging across the plain.

  Arrakas had clearly seen the knights as well. “Harkas! Lucan! Giv
e Senya her reins and turn your horses around.”

  The anger on the marshals’ faces turned to surprise, and they did as their officer commanded. Senya saw the approaching knights more clearly—they wore plate armor and full helms, and carried shields and lances with the tips held high, gleaming in the sun. Their shields bore the silver arrowhead of the Silver Flame, marking them as Thranes. A regular border patrol? Or scouts from an advancing army, massing on the Thrane side of the border to face Haldren’s forces?

  “Senya,” Arrakas said, “you will be silent while I talk with these knights. You will not speak without my leave. Do you understand?”

  Senya nodded, even as she wondered what kind of trouble Arrakas feared from her—and how she could cause worse.

  Arrakas nudged his horse forward to await the Thranes’ arrival. Senya saw him straighten his cloak, ensuring that the large brooch at his throat was clearly visible, since its chimera symbol marked him as an heir of House Deneith and a Sentinel Marshal.

  The knights rode hard to meet them. The leader of the charge circled a raised hand in the air as he came to a halt, and the others spread out to encircle the intruders. When all the knights were in position, they lowered their lances in unison—all except the leader, who sat unmoving on his steed, his face covered by a full helm. Glancing around the circle at fourteen shining lances leveled in her direction, each carried by a heavily armored rider on a barded warhorse, Senya started to reconsider the idea of causing trouble.

  After a few heartbeats, Arrakas gave an exasperated snort and addressed the knights’ leader. “Knights of Thrane,” he called, “I am Sentinel Marshal Arrakas d’Deneith, traveling your lands in pursuit of a fugitive. Under the provisions of the Treaty of Thronehold pertaining to the order of Sentinel Marshals, I claim safe passage.”

  “With all due respect, Sentinel Marshal, as far as I am aware the Treaty of Thronehold is about to be torn to shreds. I need to ask where you are going.” The knight’s voice was muffled by his helm. Senya thought it odd that he had not removed it to speak.