by James Wyatt
Dragon war
( Draconic prophesies - 3 )
James Wyatt
James Wyatt
Dragon war
PART I
Thunder is his harbinger and lightning his spear. Wind is his steed and rain his cloak. The words of creation are in his ears and on his tongue. The secrets of the first of sixteen are his. In the darkest night of the Dragon Below, storm and dragon are reunited, and they break together upon the legions of the Blasphemer. The maelstrom swirls around him. He is the storm and the eye of the storm. His is the new dawn. In him the storm cannot die. His are the words the Blasphemer unspeaks, his the song the Blasphemer unsings.
CHAPTER 1
It began as an itch, a minor annoyance that grew until it woke him in the night. Gaven sat by the door of his cell, scratching at his neck, his shoulder, his arm, until his skin was raw. By morning it was a raging fire on his flesh, and he began to feel the lines.
He hadn't understood them then, the twisting lines of his dragon-mark. Or had he? His mind was so lost in the Prophecy while he was in Dreadhold. Had he unknowingly mumbled the verses that wrote themselves on his skin?
They first appeared as white marks against his red skin, raised like welts. A guard noticed them while Gaven was out in the yard. He yanked Gaven's hair to pull him down for a closer look, ready to summon a healer. His eyes grew wide when he realized what he was seeing, patterns similar to the one on the warden's hand. He ran to tell his superiors, and Gaven stood in the yard, looking up at the clouds that churned the sky.
When the first fork of lightning struck the prison tower, Gaven laughed. He spread his arms and tasted the rain on his lips. The guards began to clear the yard, herding the prisoners back indoors. They sent four guards for Gaven. When they laid hands on him, the rain turned to searing acid, and cries of pain and surprise filled the yard. Another blast of lightning hit the high tower, and for a moment it seemed that the prisoners might revolt, as though the storm raged in their own hearts. Ducking their heads against the rain, the guards dragged Gaven to the nearest door. Gaven laughed at the acidic shower that seared his skin, laughed at the fist-sized hailstones that pummeled the last stragglers, laughed as lightning speared a guard on the outer wall.
He didn't resist as they dragged him through the corridors, carried him up the stairs, and threw him in his cell. He could hear the hailstones clattering on the stone roof above him, and he marveled at the elegant blue loops and swirls that stood out clearly on his skin, still burning, but also cool, refreshing.
He was marked after all. Wouldn't his father be proud?
"Gaven?"
The thunder of the storm had been so loud that Aunn could no longer hear his own voice. He stepped closer and saw the dragonshard clutched to Gaven's chest. Gaven rocked the shard like a baby, gently, back and forth, his glassy eyes fixed on the stone in his hands, the brilliant red lines of his dragonmark coiled within it. The wrecked husk of the Dragon Forge loomed around them, the roof wrenched open by Gaven's storm, steam rising in great billowing clouds from the infernal furnaces.
"Gaven, look at me." Aunn still couldn't hear himself speak. Perhaps Gaven had been deafened, too. He reached out a hand but stopped just short of Gaven's shoulder. Last time-
They had been in the jungle of Aerenal, the cool of the evening beginning to clear the humid air. Gaven clutched the Eye of Siberys to his chest, rocking it forward and back. Aunn shook Gaven's shoulder, trying to jolt him out of his trance or stupor. When it didn't work, he threw a punch at Gaven's chin. But he never connected. A clap of thunder sent Aunn sprawling on his back.
Aunn wished they were back in Aerenal, holding the Eye of Siberys as Haldren puffed toward them. Aunn would do everything differently. He'd show Gaven his true face, and they'd work together to find Rienne, put a stop to Haldren's scheme before it cost hundred of lives at Starcrag Plain, stop Kelas too. There would be no clash of dragons, no Dragon Forge. And they wouldn't end up in the wreckage of the Dragon Forge, with Gaven lost in the depths of his dragonshard.
We wouldn't be here now, he thought.
"Come on, Gaven," he said, shaking Gaven's shoulder. His ears had begun to ring as they rebounded from the thunder's assault. Gaven gave no sign that he could hear any better than Aunn could.
There was so much he wanted to say, so much he had to explain, so many questions he needed answered. He shook Gaven's whole body, pushed him from side to side, but he couldn't break Gaven's glassy stare.
"Please come back," he said, taking Gaven's head in his hands and staring into his eyes, trying to will Gaven to meet his gaze.
He felt Cart's hand on his shoulder, glanced back, and saw Ashara there, her hands folded around Cart's arm, fear etched on her face. In Aerenal, Cart had knelt beside him after Gaven's thunder knocked him back, making sure he wasn't badly hurt, while Senya stood beside them both.
He dropped to his knees beside Gaven and rested his head on Gaven's unmoving shoulder. At last he heard his own voice, howling his grief.
Arnoth stood over Gaven, holding out his hand and smiling. Gaven looked up, weak from his ordeal. Why was his father smiling? He had failed the Test of Siberys.
"A Siberys mark," Arnoth said. "Gaven, I'm so proud."
Gaven looked down at his skin. No, he wasn't the young man on the brink of death, scorched by the sun and parched by the ocean wind. He was strong, and the Mark of Storm flowed over the rippling muscles of his chest and arm.
"Thank you, father." Gaven took his father's hand and stood, then stepped into Arnoth's embrace.
"I love you, son."
"I-"
Searing pain choked the words from his throat. Something wrenched Arnoth out of his arms. His dragonmark burned, scorching his skin.
His father was pulling away, eyes wide with terror. "Help me, Gaven!"
Smoke rose from his shoulder and arm-his mark was burning away to nothing. He stretched a feeble hand toward his father, but then Arnoth was gone.
Gaven slumped to the ground, his dragonmark stripped from his skin.
Without Starcrag Plain, there would have been no clash of dragons, no Soul Reaver, no Crystal Spire. Gaven would not have been the Storm Dragon. The Prophecy would unfold in a different way, a different time and place, far beyond Aunn's own tiny life.
He could have stopped Kelas before it all got out of hand, before Aunn outlived his usefulness. He would never have gone to the Demon Wastes, never have led Sevren and Zandar to their deaths or witnessed Vor's sacrifice. He would never have fought alongside the Maruk Dar, and the proud orcs of that city might still be alive, safe from the advancing hordes of Kathrik Mel.
And yet… Aunn wiped his eyes. Without Vor and the Maruk Ghaash'kala, without the utter desolation of the Labyrinth, who would he be? Would the Traveler's question still haunt him? Where would he have found the will and the conscience to stand against Haldren and Kelas, if not for all the events they set in motion?
"What's wrong with him?" Ashara's voice jolted him back to the present.
"I don't know," Aunn said. "He seems… gone."
Ashara walked around Aunn, kicked aside a shard of twisted iron from the forge's destruction, and knelt in front of Gaven. "Interesting," she said. Her voice held no trace of emotion, as if she thought Gaven were an unusual magical artifact. Indeed, her attention was focused on the shard, not on Gaven. "I might expect that of a Khyber shard, holding his mind or spirit inside it. But not an Eberron shard."
"It has his dragonmark," Aunn said.
"And it has for some time." Ashara put a hand out to the shard. "Why should it take his mind now?"
Aunn almost stopped her, afraid of Gaven's reaction. He was too slow. Ashara's fingertips touched the pink surface of the bloodstone and she close
d her eyes in concentration.
Cart shifted, and Aunn looked back over his shoulder. The warforged looked distinctly uncomfortable, flexing his hands into fists and stretching them wide in turn.
Seeing Aunn's glance, Cart said, "What if it captivates her as well?"
Aunn looked back at Ashara. She smiled without opening her eyes. "She's fine," he said. "She knows what she's doing."
Gaven was a storm, looking down upon the water churning in his wake. He was a hurricane, riding a blasting wind as long rolls of thunder announced his coming. He was a god, as blindly destructive as the Devourer. Thunder is his harbinger and lightning his spear. Wind is his steed and rain his cloak.
He shot toward his prey, a city perched on the water's edge. His winds tore at its banners and stripped the leaves from trees within and outside its walls. Waves broke upon the wharves, washed over the decks of ships and dragged them under, crashed against the city walls. He hurled lightning like spears at towers and parapets, and his rain sizzled on streets and roofs. People screamed and ran for cover, but there was no shelter from his storm. He blew away shingles and thatch, knocked over walls, stripped away every shred of protection. He stopped his advance and hovered over the city, pouring out destruction. His storm flies wild, unbound and pure in devastation, going before the traitor's army to break upon the city by the lake of kings.
His rage was unrelenting, fueled by dragon fire and the blood of fiends. His storm did not stop until the city's streets became canals, its outer wall lay in ruins, and half its people lay dead. Only then did his thunder fall silent, his rain and hail cease, his churning clouds disperse back into the clear blue sky. He retreated and coiled once more into fire and blood at the heart of the Dragon Forge.
Ashara opened her eyes, shaking her head, her brow furrowed.
"What did you find?" Aunn asked.
She shrugged. "What our plans anticipated, nothing more. The dragonshard's magic is structured to hold his mark, and that's exactly what it's doing. I didn't see any flaw or addition that might have caused his stupor."
Her words made no sense at first. "Your plans…" Slowly it dawned on Aunn, and he looked around the ruin of the Dragon Forge. "You were part of it? You helped build all this?"
"Of course," she said. "What did you think I was doing here?"
Hot anger rose in his chest. "You did this to him!" He rose to his feet, looming over Ashara, his hand fumbling for his mace. "You-"
Cart seized his arm and yanked him back from Ashara. "We have all played our parts in this scheme," he said. "I served Haldren. Ashara served her House. You were part of it as well, from the day you helped us get Gaven out of Dreadhold. None of us are innocent."
Aunn slumped, and Cart let him fall back to his knees. Grief drowned his anger, and he mumbled an apology to Ashara.
Ashara turned her attention back to the dragonshard. "Rather than casting blame, perhaps we should focus on how to get out of the mess we're in."
He was a dragon in the form of two-legged meat. Shakravar didn't remember how he got into that form, but it was proving useful in bringing the Prophecy to its fulfillment. The opportunity had at last presented itself: the twelve dragonmarked Houses would soon become the thirteen dragons of the Prophecy.
He sat in a dirty, noisy tavern in eastern Khorvaire, and an elf sat across the table, leaning forward over his untouched mug of ale. Shadows pooled beneath the elf's hood and clung to his black clothing like cobwebs. The Prophecy had written itself on the elf's pale skin, starting on his cheek and disappearing beneath his armor.
"Listen, Gaven," the elf said.
Shakravar knew his own name, but somehow Gaven was also his name. It didn't matter. Like the meat, the name was useful. He looked up from the ring and met the elf's dark eyes.
"I have an associate in Karrnath," the elf continued. "Very well-connected. He says that one branch of my family is working with Breland in a plot against the regent and the young king of Karrnath. I think it's even worse than that." The elf paused, his eyes fixed on the table.
"Go on," Shakravar said.
"You have to understand, Gaven. My House has been troubled for a long time. We claim three different lines of descent, and the head of each one believes that his own family should control the House. Few people outside our House know this, but we spend nearly as much time spying on each other as we do in our more lucrative endeavors."
"So you think that the plot extends beyond Karnnath?"
"Exactly. I believe that the Paelion family plans to destroy the other two-the Phiarlans and my own Thuranni line."
"Why are you telling me this?" Shakravar knew the answer, but he played his part, feigning ignorance.
"I have no proof. I need evidence I can show the baron, something to prove the Paelions' guilt."
"What does that have to do with me? Your family is full of master spies."
"If I infiltrated a Paelion enclave and was discovered, the Paelions would have an excuse to strike against us. They could justify it to the Phiarlans and the rest of the world, if they had to. We need someone who's not connected to our House to do it."
It was perfectly clear. Shakravar could help the Thurannis and help the Prophecy. If he found the evidence he needed, proof of what the Thuranni suspected, the Thurannis would attack the Paelions before the plan could be set in motion. The Phiarlans would condemn the Thurannis, and the stalemate would be broken-House Phiarlan would split. Twelve dragons would become thirteen, and the Prophecy could be fulfilled.
"What's in it for me?" Shakravar asked. He didn't care, but his Thuranni friend would be suspicious if he didn't ask.
"There's the Gaven I know." The elf allowed himself the hint of a smile. "My House will pay you well. Name your price."
The price didn't matter. His goal was within his grasp. Shakravar would find the evidence the Thuranni sought, even if he had to create it.
"Perhaps if we take the shard away, he'll snap out of it," Cart said.
"Perhaps you should try," Aunn said. "I don't want another taste of Gaven's thunder."
Cart shrugged and leaned over Gaven. He hesitated only a moment before grasping the dragonshard and yanking it out of Gaven's grasp.
Gaven didn't move. He didn't even cling to the shard-his hands just fell away.
"Gaven?" Aunn said. He shook Gaven's shoulder again.
Ashara slapped Gaven's face. The force of it knocked him off balance, and he fell over on his side. His body slowly curled inward.
Aunn scowled at Ashara. "Was that necessary?" he said.
"Evidently it wasn't enough. Maybe we need to hit him harder. Cart?"
Aunn jumped to his feet and put himself between Cart and Gaven. "I don't think that's the answer. He needs more help than we can give."
Cart looked down at him. "Don't you have a wand for this sort of thing, Darraun?"
Aunn's hand shot to his face as panic seized his chest-the fear that he was supposed to be someone else, that he'd let his identity slip without realizing it. No, he realized, he hadn't been Darraun since Starcrag Plain. Darraun was dead. "Aunn," he said.
"Sorry. Aunn."
"And he's beyond the help of wands, I think. A ritual scroll might…"
Gaven's body curled on the ground suddenly became Vor, bleeding out his life into the scorched earth of the Labyrinth. Aunn saw the scroll he'd tried to use to bring Vor back, felt an echo of its magic flowing through him, and then felt again the void that followed, the desolate silence of his failure.
"No," Aunn said. "We need to take him somewhere. A Jorasco healing house perhaps."
"Shall I carry him?" Cart said, stooping down beside Gaven.
It seemed they were back in Dreadhold, standing over Gaven in the wreck of his cell. Aunn's eyes stung.
"Not yet," Ashara said. "We need a plan."
CHAPTER 2
Aunn's mind couldn't handle making plans yet. Cart cleared away enough of the forge's debris that he and Ashara could sit on the ground near Gaven, a
nd he started tracing a rough map in the sand. Aunn heard them talking, but his mind couldn't process their words. His eyes kept wandering to Gaven, to the wreckage of the Dragon Forge all around them, and finally he left them to their planning and wandered away.
The iron dome of the forge was open to the sky, torn asunder and strewn in masses of twisted metal around the canyon. The towering apparatus at the forge's heart had collapsed into a pile of rubble, half filling the trenches beneath it, scattered plumes of smoke and steam still billowing into the air around it. The camp that had grown around the forge was deserted, and its tents and structures were a shambles, torn up in the fury of Gaven's storm. The sky was clear and blue, the air perfectly still and warm. The shaft of clear crystal that towered over the end of the canyon, though, had clouded over into blue-gray stone, smooth and hard, only slightly out of place among the other rock formations of the canyon. The sense of malevolence that had spread from it was gone.
What of the Messenger? Aunn had felt its presence, too, like velvet whispers in his mind, reassuring him and guiding him. That feeling was gone as well, and Aunn's heart felt empty without it. He slid his hand absently into a coat pocket and felt the cool metal of Dania's torc against his fingers.
He drew out the torc and examined it closely for the first time. When he first brought it to Kelas, he had barely given it a second glance-professionalism, he'd told himself at the time, but the truth was that it hurt to see it. It reminded him of Dania's death, and pricked at his conscience. When it fell from the surface of the blue crystal prison, he stuffed it into his pocket and moved on to deal with more pressing matters, like finding Gaven. Now he held it up to the sunlight and took in every detail.
It was pure silver coiled into the shape of a serpent, about as thick as his thumb. It was hinged at the back, but the hinge was so well concealed that it seemed like a single piece of metal. Each one of the serpent's featherlike scales was carefully engraved, and two feathered wings were barely noticeable near the head, held close to the body. The glittering eyes were pools of quicksilver, somehow liquid but firmly rooted in the solid metal head.
