by James Wyatt
Before she could steady herself, the waves broke around her. Action first—thought would follow. Maelstrom went into a dance of constant motion, spinning like a deadly shield surrounding her, blocking the creatures’ attacks and biting into their flesh. Many of the monsters reached up to grab her—and a few reached down from a greater height—and those were the first to die. Haldren’s horse proved himself one last time, rearing up to strike with its hooves and felling many of the smaller creatures. But before long the horse was pulled screaming under the surging tide, throwing Rienne through the air as he fell.
With a mighty shout, Rienne brought her energy back into focus. Like Darraun piloting the airship alone, action alone would not suffice against these hordes. Rienne came down on the chitinous back of a hulking monstrosity, then bounded off it to a relatively clear patch of ground. As she landed, she kicked a skittering buglike thing out of the way and slashed two other nameless things back, carving herself a place to stand. She banished her fear and lost herself in whirling motion, feeling Maelstrom surge to life in her grip. This was the style of fighting that had given the sword its name: a constant spinning, cutting everything within reach, wheeling the blade through an unending, intricate series of swirling arcs punctuated by sharp thrusts—what she thought of as lightning strikes within the whirlwind.
As she danced, the storm answered her strikes with lightning that shook the earth, and she had the sudden thought of fighting alongside Gaven on one of their subterranean expeditions. She smiled as gore flew from the tip of her blade. No claw could touch her, no tentacle stayed coiled around her wrist or leg for more than an instant before she sliced it through. Wide eyes tried to catch her gaze and assault her mind, sharp teeth tried to close around her but met the constant motion of her blade. Her feet moved with her blade, an intricate dance of steps and lunges that guided her away from dangerous blows and brought her near the weakest foes. She was utterly lost in the dance—no memory or anxiety about Gaven remained in the diamond stillness of her mind, perfectly focused on the battle at hand. A perfect unity of will and action.
The sea parted around her, and Rienne stumbled. A greenish ray of light shot through where she would have been if she had stepped where she planned. She stopped her whirling in order to keep her full attention on the monster before her. Its body was a gigantic orb hovering a few feet off the ground, a magical buoyancy holding it aloft. One great eye stared at her from above a mouth filled with needle-like teeth, and ten more eyes writhed at the ends of long stalks on its upper surface. Years of exploring the subterranean reaches had taught her to fear the beholder above almost all other threats of Khyber. One of those smaller eyes had projected the green light, and Rienne knew the touch of that light could mean her death.
Something lunged at her from the right and lost its head to a reflexive slash of her blade. The monsters seemed hesitant to attack prey the eye tyrant had chosen for itself, but they were also driven by some madness or rage or instinct that wouldn’t let them leave her alone.
Slowly Rienne started into a new dance, ready to slash at anything that came at her from the sides or behind, but focused on dodging the beams of light that came from the many eyes of the beholder.
Displaying more coordination than she had yet seen among the Soul Reaver’s hordes, two creatures came at her from both sides. The easy response to such an attack broke her rhythm: she ducked toward one and threw it at the other. Before she could return to her rhythmic pattern, though, two rays of light made contact with her body. One seared her flesh, opening a horrible wound in her arm, black around the edges, sending horrible pain jolting through her body. At the same moment, she felt an absurd urge to flee, to turn and run from the horrifying apparition before her, even though it meant plunging headlong into a sea of smaller horrors.
She swallowed her fear, telling herself that it came from the beholder’s magic and not herself, and found her stride again in time to dodge two more beams of light. The monster might have been laughing at her, opening and closing its mouth so that its teeth rubbed together. A ridiculous image of the beholder as a butcher sharpening a knife appeared in her mind, and the smile returned to her face. It was time to charge.
With three quick steps she built up enough speed for a great leap at the beholder. She landed just close enough, swinging Maelstrom down with the full force of her jump and cutting a shallow gash in its plated hide. As she brought her blade around for another strike, a bolt of lightning struck the creature, knocking Rienne backward a few steps with the thundering force of its blast.
The beholder swung its large eye around to look for its new attacker, even as it unleashed two more rays at Rienne. She vaulted backward to avoid them, then rolled forward beneath the floating orb. Realizing its danger, it started rolling in the air to bring its eyes to bear on her again, but before it did she drove Maelstrom up through its jaw and into its core. She didn’t know what organs the thing might have in its strange body, and she didn’t much want to, but her sword must have hit something vital. Had she not rolled quickly to the side, it would have crushed her beneath its bulk as it crashed to the ground.
“Rienne!”
It was Gaven’s voice, and it was all she needed to hear.
CHAPTER
53
Gaven ran to Rienne, though his feet didn’t touch the ground. The wind carried Cart behind him, and his greatsword cleared a path through the howling monsters before them. The fall of the beholder, combined with Gaven’s stormy advance, seemed to break the horde’s resolve—what had been a tight mob clamoring to get at Rienne quickly dispersed into smaller groups fleeing the field. He stopped beside Rienne just as she got to her feet.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
In answer, she threw her arms around him, clutching him as tightly as she could. He returned her embrace with equal ardor, burying his face in her soft black hair. It still smelled of the sea, and for just an instant he lost himself in the memory of holding her on the Sea Tiger.
“What happened?” she said at last, not releasing her hold but turning her head to speak into his ear.
“I’ll tell you later.” He drew back to look into her eyes. “Where’s Darraun? And the Eye of the Storm?”
“You came here with Darraun?” Cart said from behind him, his surprise plain in his voice.
“And who’s this?” Rienne asked, keeping one hand on Gaven’s shoulder as she drew back to a respectable distance.
“Cart, Rienne.” The two nodded at each other. “And yes, Darraun rejoined us in Stormhome. I guess I’ve got a lot to tell you as well, Cart.”
“I left Darraun at the airship,” Rienne said, “at the north end of the plain. With Haldren and Senya.”
It was Gaven’s turn to be surprised. “With them?”
“Well, we knocked them out first. He said he’d get them bound.”
Cart grumbled, sort of an animalistic growl, but he didn’t say anything.
“Will the Eye still fly?” Gaven asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Let’s get there and see.” He stepped forward, and her hand trailed down his arm until it came to rest in his hand. Together, they started to run, and the wind picked up behind them. Cart shambled into a run as well, and soon the wind moved him far faster than he was evidently used to moving.
“The plain seems almost entirely clear,” Gaven noted as they ran. “Where did the hordes of the Soul Reaver go?”
“Dispersed into the woods to the east or the mountains to the west, I suppose,” Rienne said. “There were so many!”
The Eye of the Storm came into view, and Gaven slowed their pace.
“And they were just the vanguard of the host,” Gaven said as they came to a stop. “If I had not closed the chasm, they would still be pouring out.”
“There she is,” Rienne said, pointing at the airship. “But I don’t see Darraun.”
Cart walked heavily among the bodies that littered the edge of the Starcrag Plain. He sto
oped at one and rolled it over to see the face, but he stood quickly and continued looking.
“On the ship, maybe?” Gaven said.
Rienne hurried to the airship and scrambled up to the deck. “Darraun?” she called.
Gaven climbed the ropes behind her, and made his way to the ship’s highest point at the stern. There he turned in a slow circle, surveying what he could see of the battlefield and Bramblescar Gorge. The battlefield was all but deserted, and the gorge twisted away from him too quickly—he couldn’t see more than a bowshot away.
Rienne moved below decks, calling the changeling’s name. Rather, the name he had used with them. Gaven scowled. Had he been wrong to put his trust in Darraun?
He returned to the deck just as Rienne emerged from below. “I don’t know where he could be,” she said.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Gaven said.
“What part of it?”
“We trusted him, and he really proved that he deserved that trust. He didn’t interfere with me doing what I had to do—quite the contrary, in fact. He put himself at considerable risk to help me. We put our lives in each other’s hands.”
“You think he helped Haldren escape?”
“I don’t know why he would. But—”
“Gaven!” Cart called, thirty paces across the mouth of the gorge.
“Cart’s found something,” Rienne said. She tumbled off the deck to the ground and started sprinting toward Cart before Gaven had started climbing down. Gaven ran behind her, but he was in no real hurry to reach the warforged. Cart had been examining corpses. If he’d found something, Gaven wasn’t sure he wanted to know what.
His fears were confirmed when Rienne got to Cart’s side and fell on her knees. He found himself strangely touched by the depth of Rienne’s grief, written plain on her face. She had known Darraun such a short time, just a day, but clearly that act of putting their lives in each other’s hands had forged a bond that hurt in the breaking.
It wasn’t until he reached her side and saw the body that his own grief welled up in him, clenching his heart and stinging his eyes. His years in Dreadhold had left him with precious few people he could call a friend, and virtually no one he could trust. But he had warmed to Darraun almost instantly, enjoyed the parry and thrust of conversation with him, the dancing around secrets while revealing far more than was said. And in this last day—the day since he had learned of his father’s death—he too had come to count Darraun as a true friend, a friend he had trusted with his life.
And now that friend lay among the numberless dead on the Starcrag Plain, his chest foul with blood, his eyes staring blindly at the brooding sky.
Gaven dropped to his knees beside Rienne and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. She melted into his chest with a sob. Her tears seemed to unlock his own, opening the door to a fresh welling of grief for his father mixed with the loss of this new friend. The terror of the battle just ended, the weight of what he’d just done—he was overwhelmed. His body shook with sobs. And as his tears flowed, he realized with a sharp pang of regret that he didn’t know Darraun’s real name.
* * * * *
The only sound was the croaking of ravens squabbling over the bodies of the fallen. The battlefield was nearly deserted—only a few clumps of soldiers picked their way among the dead, beginning the long, slow task of building pyres or cairns for their comrades in arms. In time, more of the soldiers who had been routed would find their way back to the field. Another skirmish might even erupt, but without Haldren and his dragons there would be no full-scale invasion.
One group of Aundairian soldiers approached the fallen airship, perhaps looking for plunder or just for survivors of the crash. Gaven and Rienne stayed out of sight—the soldiers recognized Cart as part of Haldren’s command staff, and hastened to obey his order to search the battlefield for survivors. Aside from that sole interruption, Darraun’s funeral preparations proceeded in a solemn peace.
Cart did the bulk of the heavy work in building a little cairn for Darraun near the airship, at the edge of the battlefield where so many soldiers had fallen over so many centuries. The warforged showed no emotion on his face, of course, but every step he took revealed the weight of his sadness. Gaven wondered whether Cart knew that Darraun had been a changeling. It didn’t seem right to reveal that deepest of Darraun’s secrets if Cart didn’t already know, so Gaven didn’t mention it.
That thought led his mind down paths that seemed inappropriate, so he didn’t give voice to his thoughts out of respect for the grief of the others. But he realized that just as he didn’t know Darraun’s real name, he had never seen the changeling’s true face. Some part of him then began to wonder why the changeling hadn’t reverted to his natural state when he died. Shouldn’t Darraun’s corpse have worn his true face? It seemed to Gaven that death should be the end of all disguises.
None of them could think of anything to say once the cairn was built and Darraun was laid to rest, so they stood in silence for a long time. It was Rienne who finally broke the silence.
“He never made me dinner,” she said, laughing even as fresh tears sprang to her eyes.
“I was blind to entire facets of his personality,” Cart said.
Gaven laughed. “Well, I think we should have a meal in his honor. Cart, you can watch us eat, in his honor.”
“That does seem appropriate,” the warforged said.
They walked back to the airship and rummaged through the stores again. Gaven pulled together a terrible meal, with Rienne’s help, and they choked it down with laughter as Gaven and Cart shared memories of Darraun’s cooking. Cart’s tales involved what he considered strange ingredients—clams, potatoes, and mushrooms foremost among them—while Gaven had only a few excellent meals to remember him by.
When Gaven and Rienne couldn’t bring themselves to eat any more, Gaven sat back and put his hands behind his head. “What’s our next step?” he said.
Cart answered without hesitation. “My place is with the general. Darraun’s death means that he is probably free again, and I need to find him.”
Gaven’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Still the soul of loyalty,” he said. “Why did you help me, then?”
“I told you. Because we are alike, both of us made for a purpose. I helped you fulfill your purpose—I think. The Prophecy still makes my head spin.”
“Did Haldren know you were helping me?”
“I imagine the general saw me go to you, and I expect that he was not pleased. But that doesn’t change my duty to him.”
“Didn’t you once tell me that he’s not a forgiving man? Will he even accept you back?”
“If he does not, then I will have to examine my options. Assuming I’m still alive.”
“Gaven,” Rienne interjected, “if Haldren is free, we have to stop him.”
“No. First, because that would put us directly at odds with Cart, and I choose not to oppose him. Second, I don’t believe that Haldren is a significant threat to the world any longer. At least not for now.”
“Darraun said Haldren would try again someday.”
“Perhaps he will, and perhaps we’ll be there to stop him. On the other hand, perhaps Bordan and the dwarves will catch up with him first. I have other concerns.”
Cart stood. “I will say farewell, then,” he said. “I would prefer to tell Haldren honestly that I know nothing of your plans, in case he has vengeance in mind.”
Gaven got to his feet and extended a hand to the warforged. “Thank you, Cart.” They shook hands. “For everything.”
“Thank you,” Cart said. “You have taught me much.”
Gaven arched an eyebrow, but Cart turned and bowed to Rienne. “Farewell to you.”
“Goodbye,” Rienne said, returning his bow.
Cart turned back to Gaven and bowed again. “Farewell, Storm Dragon.”
Gaven bowed, but he couldn’t find his voice until after the warforged had gone.
* * * * *
To
Gaven’s great relief, the Eye of the Storm rose readily off the ground at his command. He tasted again the thrill of flying, bringing the airship up almost to the overhanging clouds while starting toward the north and east.
“What other concerns?” Rienne asked at last, leaning back in her accustomed place against the rail near the helm.
“First of all … you,” Gaven said, smiling at her. “Whatever I do next, I want you with me.”
“Whatever it is, I’ll be with you.”
“Thank you. That means more to me than you can imagine. But I won’t hold you to it—you’re always free to change your mind.”
“Gaven, you sound so serious!” she said with a small laugh. “What are you planning to do, cross the Dragonreach?”
“Well, Bordan would have a hard time finding me in Argonnessen.” He smiled. “Actually, that is what I’ve been thinking.”
Rienne fell silent in the middle of a laugh. “What? Getting away from Bordan?”
“No, visiting Argonnessen.”
“Are you mad? Do you want to be dragon food?”
“I pity the dragon who thinks me an easy meal.”
“You want to study the Prophecy at the source.”
“Yes. I’ve already learned much that concerns a great deal more than Haldren’s little coup and Vaskar’s grab for divine power. The Time of the Dragon Above is drawing to a close, but it’s just the first chapter of a larger story.”
“And what part do you play in the larger story?”
“I am both player and playwright, Rienne.”
“What part will you write for me, then? The supportive wife?”
“Sovereigns, no! No, Rienne, you set a greater destiny than that in motion the day you first laid a hand on Maelstrom. I don’t know what it is yet, but I’m looking forward to seeing how you write it.”
