by James Wyatt
His vision began to blur as he stared at a coded message-a hundred blocks of five letters each, each letter representing one of five different letters depending on its position in the block-and tried to puzzle out its sender and its contents. He leaned back, rubbed his eyes, and yawned. When he looked back at his desk, the crystal orb was glowing again.
Nara. She had promised to contact him again tonight, but in the frantic activity of the day he'd utterly forgotten. He had nothing he could tell her-should he ignore the glowing orb? She would be furious. Best to stumble through another conversation with her. He reached for the crystal, and as soon as his fingers touched the surface the light diminished and Nara's face appeared in its heart.
"Good evening, Kelas," she said. "I have exciting news."
CHAPTER 20
Rienne!" Gaven ran across the square. She turned and searched the square for the source of the call, then a smile spread across her face. She started away from her companions-two women he didn't recognize-and then she was in his arms, weeping into his chest.
He lifted his face from Rienne's hair-something was wrong-the smell of her hair, the feel of her in his arms. Her companions moved closer, circling to either side. They were armored, and when they realized he'd seen them they sprang at him. He tried to push Rienne away, but she clung to him.
She had betrayed him again. The thought was cold steel in his heart.
"No!" he cried. His voice was thunder, and it threw Rienne away from him. Her two companions, each clutching a jagged blade, staggered away from the blast, but they recovered quickly and lunged at him, both blades darting at him.
He felt the dragonshard in its pouch at his side, his mark coiled inside it like a sleeping dragon-and he felt the wyrm awaken in fury. It was still a part of him-its rage coursed through his veins and out through his hands, joining him to the two assassins in a bolt of lightning that stretched across the plaza. His enemies were on their knees, smoke wafting from their clothes and hair as they struggled to stand, and Rienne lay on the ground before him, tears streaking her horrorstruck face.
"Gaven, no," she sobbed.
How could she have betrayed him again? Some part of Gaven's mind screamed at him to stop and think, to make sense of what was happening, but the storm churned in his chest and surged in his veins, a fury that wouldn't be contained.
Gaven raised his arms and looked up into the storm-darkened sky. Thunder rumbled, so close and loud that the ground shook. Then everything was brilliant white, and a deafening crack split the air. When his vision cleared, the two attackers lay blackened and still on the ground. Rienne was scrambling to her feet, no longer pleading but trying desperately to flee.
Gaven heard Cart's heavy footsteps running toward him, and Ashara calling his name. He didn't turn. He pulled his sword from its sheath on his back and walked toward Rienne. Lightning danced along the edges of the blade and sparked from the point.
Rienne looked over her shoulder as she found her feet, eyes and mouth wide with terror. Her face was badly burned, almost unrecognizable-and then Gaven realized it wasn't her face.
"Gaven!" Cart caught up to him and grabbed his arm, pulling him to a stop.
Gaven watched Rienne run away, her streaming dark hair becoming short and blond, her lithe body growing wider, more masculine. The changeling-she'd been a changeling, of course-stripped off some of the distinctive red silks as he ran, then he disappeared at the edge of Chalice Center.
"Aunn?" he murmured.
"Gaven, we have to get out of here." Cart's voice was loud and urgent at his ear, and his grip was painfully tight. "A dozen witnesses just watched you kill two people with a freak storm out of nowhere."
"What?" Gaven heard the words, but he couldn't quite understand them. They didn't make sense. Nothing made sense. He looked around, stared at the bodies on the ground, then gazed in the direction the changeling had run.
A changeling-she wasn't Rienne at all. Rienne hadn't betrayed him again. Relief washed through him, mingled with horror at what he might have done to Rienne if it had been her. He sagged in Cart's grip, stunned at the destruction he had wrought so quickly, caught up in his rage.
"Soldiers or Sentinel Marshals will be here any second, Gaven," Ashara said, seizing his other arm and helping to steady him on his feet. "Run!"
Together they pulled him into a stumbling run between them, and they made their way into the nearest alley, behind the mooring tower.
"Now what?" Ashara said, looking to Cart. The warforged looked around, uncertain.
One feeling surged to clarity in Gaven's jumble of thoughts-he needed to be alone. "We should split up," he said. "You two shouldn't have let yourselves be seen with me."
Ashara glared at him. "We were helping you," she said.
"Which is a crime you committed in public view. We were going to part ways anyway. You two lie low in the city someplace. I'll get out of here-there's nothing here for me anyway."
"What about Aunn and your papers?" Cart said.
"A changeling just tried to kill me. I'm not dealing with Aunn anymore."
"You think that was him?"
"I… probably not. He mentioned facing a different changeling in Kelas's house. Maybe it was that one. I don't know-how many changelings are there in this city?"
"Aunn's your best hope for getting papers," Ashara said. "Shouldn't you-"
"I'll find a way. Thank you for your help. Now go."
"Gaven," Cart said, extending a hand, "I hope you find what you're looking for."
Gaven clasped his hand. "Thanks, Cart. I wish you the best-both of you." He clapped Cart's shoulder. "Now get out of here. I'll draw their attention." He turned back toward the plaza. A soldier's voice was barking orders.
"Gaven," Ashara said.
"Will you two go?" He shot a glance over his shoulder. Cart had started in the opposite direction, but Ashara hadn't moved. "What is it?"
"I'm sorry," Ashara said. "For my part in all this."
"Go!" Gaven chose a path that would take him near the plaza again but not quite into it, and he started to run. He didn't look back.
Running with Ashara was awkward, Cart realized. If he ran, he quickly left her behind-her short legs didn't move fast enough to keep pace with him. If he walked, even his fastest stride left him lagging behind her. So he fell into a sort of trot, half walking and half running, alternately surging ahead and falling back while she maintained a steady pace, as fast as her legs could carry her, away from Chalice Center and toward… he wasn't sure.
"Where are we going?" he asked.
She had trouble speaking as she ran, with her body demanding more air, drawing it in and expelling it in great gasps that interfered with her voice.
"Following you," she managed to say.
"Oh. I thought I was following you." Cart slowed, trying to get his bearings. He hadn't been paying attention to their route-
He stopped dead as the buildings fell away, and he saw again the horrible dreamscape Havrakhad had shown him. Gaven's storm overhead trailed streams of purple and red fire down to the earth, where they swirled into cyclones of terror among shadowy crowds. In contrast to the silent lightning of the night before, thunder rumbled in the storm, accompanying flashes of yellow, orange, and blue. It was unreal, and yet somehow more real than the normal world-it seemed heavy with meaning, with significance. Cart's every sense was on edge, tingling at the edge of pain.
Cart saw barbarian hordes, natural catastrophes and horrible crimes enacted in endless repetition. Then he noticed that the worst horrors seemed to ripple outward from a single point, waves of disturbance in the collective soul of the city. At the center of that nightmare, he saw again the monstrous form Havrakhad had identified as a quori.
In its general form, it was almost like a snake or an enormous, reddish-pink worm. Its long body trailed into the mists of nightmare behind it. The vaguest hint of a humanlike chest, armored in black chitin plates, loomed above the mists. Two thick arms ending in pinc
erlike claws darted among the screaming mob around it, selecting prey from the tortured dreams of the city's people. Numerous smaller arms jutted from its flanks, some ending in fleshy hands, others in chitinous claws. Its shoulders were crowned with a bulbous mass rather than a head, studded with a dozen eyes, each one a different color and no two looking in the same direction.
Except that as Cart stared at it in horror, one of its eyes fixed on him, and one by one the others joined it until the thing's entire fractured gaze focused on him.
You can see me. Its voice manifested in Cart's mind as the buzzing of a thousand insects in imperfect unison. Why can you see me?
Cart cast his eyes around in a panic, looking in vain for Ashara. The quori was advancing on him, slithering and squirming among throngs of souls-some screaming in terror, some staring in shock, some cowering on the ground and covering their heads, and a few, most frightening of all, just observing without a hint of fear.
Why can you see me? the quori repeated. Its voice became the hissing of a hundred snakes, a whispered threat of poison and death.
Cart reached for his axe, but it was not at his belt. He looked down at his body and saw not armored plates protecting fibrous cords, but skin-delicate, light brown skin stretched over muscles and organs, held up by a framework of bones. He was naked and defenseless as the quori surged forward.
A small, soft hand clutched his arm, and he wheeled to see Ashara, concern but not panic written on her face. For a moment, his skin tingled with fire at her touch, and he wanted to take her in his arms, heedless of the danger. But metal plates interposed between his skin and hers, spreading from her touch to cover his body again, to encase him in his armored shell.
"What's wrong?" Ashara said.
Close your eyes, whispered the voice in Cart's mind, a rustle of feathers. Pain stabbed through the back of his head, where it met his neck, and his vision blurred for a moment.
Cart turned, but the quori was gone. The storm-Gaven's storm-still rumbled overhead, but its lurid colors and deadly fire were gone. The buildings of Fairhaven stood where they always had, as their inhabitants slept their troubled sleep, feeding the quori with their nightmares.
"Cart, what is it?" Ashara's touch was still soft and warm.
"The turning of the age draws near," Cart said. "Come on."
At first Gaven felt the wind on his face, just the resistance of still air against his sudden movement. Then the wind stirred around his feet as they hit the flagstones, and then it blew at his back, carrying him along through the streets and alleys. Thunder rumbled in the sky, lightning flashed around him, and a torrent of rain began to fall.
I am still the storm, he thought. They stripped it from my skin, but it's still mine.
He heard shouts behind him, but a rumble of thunder drowned out the words. He didn't know where he was going-he'd never known Fairhaven as well as Stormhome, and it had changed far more during the years he spent in Dreadhold than his old home had. His first thought was simply to draw them away from Cart and Ashara, and it seemed he had accomplished that much. Beyond that-well, he needed a plan, and it was hard to come up with one while running at top speed in the midst of a raging storm.
It was all too easy to get lost in the storm. The wind that carried him so he barely touched the ground, the rain cascading around him, the lightning that flashed above-he felt each gust of wind and rumble of thunder in the depths of his body, like the beating of his heart and the flexing of his muscles as he ran. He felt like a thunderhead surging across a lake…
He saw Varna lying in ruins beneath him, laid waste by the fury of his storm. He saw the two would-be assassins lying charred and dead in Chalice Center, and the shattered glass of Kelas's window cutting into his knees. He saw the wreckage of the Dragon Forge, torn apart by the hurricane of his wrath, in retribution for what it had done to him.
"I hope you find what you're looking for," Cart had said as they parted.
What am I looking for? he wondered.
He'd been determined to find Rienne, but perhaps he wasn't ready to find her. For a moment he'd held her close to his heart, and in the next instant he was caught in the fury of the storm. If that had been Rienne, he might have killed her. He had become a force of destruction, wild as the storm-particularly, it seemed, since the Dragon Forge had stripped his mark from his skin. He couldn't risk hurting her.
In his mind, he was racing on the wind through the streets and alleys of Stormhome, Rienne at his side, leaving Bordan and Ossa's team of dwarves behind them. Then he was running, free for the first time in decades, through the Aerenal jungle, racing to the Eye of Siberys.
In Aerenal, Senya's ancestor, long dead but enshrined in unlife in the City of the Dead, had recognized him-or, rather, the dragon whose memories were stored in his mind-from a past visit, some four or five centuries before he returned with Senya and Haldren. "Twice you have come to me now," she had said. "The third time, you will finally find what you seek."
A plan formed in his mind, as much raging storm as conscious thought, and he chose a path through the streets of the city.
CHAPTER 21
Good evening," Aunn said. He tried to find just enough warmth for his voice, with a hint of excitement about the news Nara had promised, without revealing any hint of his fear. "What is it?"
"I'll tell you in a moment." Nara's smile, tiny and distorted in the glass orb, struck him as odd. There was too much of the predator in it, and Aunn couldn't be sure whether Aurala was the prey or he was. "You first."
Behind a bemused smile, Aunn tried desperately to think. He had to trust that the secret of his identity was safe with Thuel-they had agreed that he would continue playing Kelas's role in the unfolding drama. But he couldn't count on any other secrets. Anything that anyone knew-anyone besides himself and Thuel-Nara could find out.
"It's been an interesting day," he said, and sighed. Nara gave the slightest nod, and Aunn knew he was right-she already knew much of what had made it interesting.
"Gaven emerged from his stupor," he said, "and escaped my control."
He braced himself. If this was a surprise to Nara, she would almost certainly erupt in anger.
"So I have heard," she said.
Aunn tried not to let his relief show, even as he wondered who her source was. "Thuel has involved himself in the matter, and sent a team of agents to capture him this evening. I haven't been told yet whether they were successful."
"They were not."
Who could have told her that before anyone told him? One of the agents Thuel sent?
"That's unfortunate." Aunn measured his response, just as Kelas would have done. Nara had started the conversation on a cheerful tone-she wasn't as angry as circumstances seemed to warrant, so there must have been something important she hadn't told him yet. "What happened?"
"Gaven killed two of the three agents, right in the middle of Chalice Center. In full view of a dozen witnesses. I'm surprised you haven't heard yet."
"As I said, Thuel has involved himself. He's watching me very closely, and evidently not telling me anything. It will pass. It always does." That was fair-Kelas had been through similar periods before, when Thuel decided in a fit of pique or jealousy to involve himself more closely in his underling's affairs. It never lasted long.
"Don't you want to know how I know all this?" Nara said. She was smiling, and Aunn found it unsettling.
"I've never been naive enough to assume I was your only contact within the Royal Eyes."
"Oh, Kelas, are you jealous?"
What was she playing at?
"Of course not." Aunn let some of his irritation filter into his voice. "But I am tired of this game. Why don't you just tell me your 'exciting news' and we can get on with figuring out what to do next?"
"Well…" She hesitated, waiting for something.
A knock came at Kelas's door, and Aunn looked up, startled. "Damn," he said. He glanced around the office, looking for something he could drape over the orb to hi
de it from view.
"You should answer the door, Kelas," Nara said. "Don't worry about the orb."
Aunn looked back at Nara's face in the orb. She wore the same disturbing smile. She knew who was at his door, he realized. Had she sent an assassin to punish him for his failures?
"N-Nara," he stammered. It was more than he could take-too much in a single day, from appearing in Jorlanna's enclave before dawn to his audience with Thuel in the afternoon, and now this.
Her smile vanished. "Answer the door, Kelas."
He stood and fumbled with Kelas's sword. Gripping its hilt, standing behind the cover of the great desk, he called out, "Come in." His voice didn't quite carry the authority he tried to weight it with.
The latch rattled and the door swung open, and Aunn saw a face that registered as familiar, but he couldn't place it. A nondescript face on an average man-medium height, medium build, neutral hair. The kind of face that witnesses have trouble describing. He knew the kind, because Kelas had guided him in developing his own version of the same face. The perfect killer's face. Aunn hadn't worn his killer's face in many years, and he didn't even have a name for it.
The killer stepped into the room, cautiously, but he didn't have a weapon in his hand.
