Dragon war dp-3

by James Wyatt

  The figure lunged again, and Gaven tried to bring his sword around to block the blow. His left hand, though, was numbed by whatever toxin coated the assassin's dagger, making his grip on his own sword unsteady. He banged his elbow against the wall as he maneuvered his sword in the tiny room, and the black dagger slipped past his guard and toward his neck.

  His attacker's face was close enough that Gaven could see through the veil of shadow. "Phaine," he breathed.

  Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the point of the elf's dagger touched the skin of his neck and pressed inward. Then a burst of blinding white light drove away Phaine's cloak of shadows and threw the elf back as a crack of thunder exploded between the two men. Gaven and Phaine slammed against opposite walls of the room.

  Phaine struggled to his feet, his breath rasping. "The power of the storm is still with you after all," he said, scowling. His eyes ranged over Gaven's body, lingering at the pouches at Gaven's belt. "So you must have the bloodshard."

  The cut on Gaven's arm was on fire, even as his hand grew increasingly numb and cold, and the toxin spread up into his shoulder as well. His heart pounded in his chest, which he knew would just send the poison coursing more quickly through his veins.

  "Isn't that why you're here? Malathar never did give you a chance to study it, did he?"

  "He didn't," Phaine said. "You have disrupted a great many plans."

  "Considering that those plans involved torturing me and stealing my dragonmark, I can't say that I'm sorry."

  "You will be." Phaine's shadow-filled eyes were fixed on Gaven as if he were watching the poison spread through his body, waiting for him to keel over. As if in response, a sharp jolt of pain stabbed through Gaven's chest.

  Gaven fumbled with his numb left hand at the pouch that held the dragonshard, then shifted his sword to that hand and reached for the shard with his right. Phaine chose that awkward instant to leap at him again, his dagger poised to swing in a broad arc across Gaven's neck.

  Gaven's fingers touched the smooth crystal and lightning gave shape to his fury and hatred, leaping out from him to engulf Phaine. The elf's black eyes shot wide as twisting tendrils of lightning suspended him in the air between floor and ceiling, with a stream of blinding light connecting him to Gaven.

  Gaven withdrew the shard from his pouch and shook it in Phaine's direction. "Is this what you came for?" Sparks danced in his mouth as he spoke. A second bolt of lightning shot from the shard to spear through Phaine's middle for a moment, and smoke started to billow from his scorched clothes and hair. "Here it is, you bastard. Want to take it from me?"

  Gaven was a pillar of crackling lightning. It coiled in arcs around his body and cascaded down his outstretched arm, and tendrils of it danced over the walls of the room. He was more than the storm-he was destructive energy barely contained in mortal flesh, annihilation he couldn't restrain.

  "Gaven?" The door swung open, and a tendril of lightning leaped to course over Senya.

  "No!" He let go of the dragonshard, but it clung to his flesh as lightning continued to flow through him and dance across the walls, up to the high window and the ceiling, across the floor, and over the still forms of Phaine and Senya where they hung suspended in the air.

  A sharp crack that sounded like thunder, muffled but not distant, caught Aunn's attention as he hurried toward Chalice Center. He slowed his steps, trying to determine what he had heard and decide whether to investigate. He scanned the sky, but it was clear and cold with winter's approach, with no sign of a brewing storm, either natural or sprung from the twisting lines of Gaven's mark.

  He heard some commotion, distant shouts and running feet. Clearly, he hadn't imagined the sound. He was in a part of the city he didn't know particularly well-he remembered a tiny enclave of Aereni immigrants nearby, elves who clung to the ways of their ancestors, unlike most of the urbanized elves of Khorvaire, who worshiped the Sovereign Host and fit in smoothly with their human, dwarf, and gnome neighbors. What would Gaven be doing in that neighborhood?

  A chill ran up Aunn's spine as he remembered the undead thing Senya had addressed as a revered ancestor, and he shuddered. "All right," he muttered, "I'm coming." He listened for the nearest sounds of commotion and followed them.

  "Who you are now is who you have been and who you are yet to be."

  The cold, clear voice of Senya's ancestor echoed in Gaven's mind as he hung suspended in time, lightning like the twisting lines of his dragonmark binding him together with Phaine and with Senya. Pain seared along his every nerve, power too great for his body to contain.

  "You are Gaven. You are the Storm Dragon. You are a dishonored child of Lyrandar, cut off from your line but still a product of it. You are Shakravar, and you are the murderer of the Paelion line."

  I've killed her, he thought. He tried to shake the dragonshard from his hand, but it was a part of him. He struggled to lower his hand, to bring it in to his chest so his other hand might pry the dragonshard free, but the lightning was like a swift-flowing river that would not release his arm.

  "However, you are also, in this moment, who you will choose to be, and that is a far better thing."

  And so, Gaven thought, I now choose this.

  He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. The air, heated by lightning, seared his throat and lungs, but he focused his thoughts on the dragon-shard in his hand. He saw the lines of the Prophecy winding within its rosy heart, and words formed in his mind-words he might have known once, in this life or another, but which were now part of his destiny and part of himself:

  Under the unlight of the darkened sun, the Storm Dragon lays down his mantle; he stops his song before it can be unsung, and so his storm is extinguished.

  The dragonshard clattered to the floor in a shower of sparks, and the writhing tendrils of lightning withdrew into its gleaming surface. Phaine and Senya, released by the storm, fell to the ground, shrouded in reeking smoke.

  "Senya!" Gaven gasped. He stepped toward her, but his leg faltered under his weight and he toppled onto the floor beside her. He was vaguely aware of voices outside the door, chattering in confusion and alarm, but he couldn't lift his head to look. His face pressed against the cold stone, he could see only the death mask of Senya's tattooed face.

  "Senya, I'm sorry," he gasped.

  Blackness swallowed his vision, but he thought he saw two smoldering green flames looking into his eyes before the darkness claimed him.

  It would have been easy for Aunn to put on an elven face and blend in among the dozens of elves rushing into their temple to find out what was going on, but he did not. He saw some bluntly hostile glances, but no one accosted him as he moved through an open courtyard outside the temple. Flickering light-white like lightning, not the red of a fire-lit a high window near the top of the temple, and Aunn could feel the ground beneath his feet rumbling with the thunder of Gaven's storm. He could feel the fear of the elves around him, and it was no wonder. Aunn was terrified, and he had a pretty good idea what was going on. To the elves, this must have seemed like an angry divine manifestation.

  As he climbed the stairs to the temple, he drew more angry glares. A few elves shouted at him in Elven, which he couldn't really make out. "No go in," one managed in Common, but Aunn ignored her and pushed his way into the building.

  A pair of tall stone doors stood open inside the temple, and a few of the elves gathered inside, seeking solace in the spiritual presence of their ancestors in the absence of any priests. A dozen or so more huddled around the bottom of a staircase leading up in the direction of the storm-filled window, as if waiting for news to be delivered from on high. The flickering light cast eerie dancing shadows down the stairs, and the building trembled with the rumble of thunder. Aunn hesitated, unsure if he'd be allowed to climb the stairs or if he could even make it through the press of elves.

  The building stopped shaking abruptly, and the flickering light went out. A hush fell over the crowd, but in a moment there were shouts from the top of th
e stairs. A murmur spread through the elves around him, and they turned toward the temple sanctuary.

  Aunn bit his lip and started walking against the crowd. There weren't that many elves, but they were crammed into a narrow antechamber and moving with some urgency in the direction opposite the one he wanted to go in. Every time he collided with an elf, he provoked shouts and glares, and he understood just enough Elven to know quite clearly that he wasn't welcome.

  Finally he reached the bottom of the stairs, and stopped in his tracks. A deathless soldier blocked his way, clutching the haft of a poleaxe with both bony hands and staring at him with eyes of green fire.

  "You are not welcome here," the soldier said. "This is where we pay honor to our ancestors."

  Aunn swallowed hard. His fear of the undead was utterly irrational, but that didn't make it any less paralyzing. It took root in him years ago, on one of his first missions during the war, in Atur-the Karrn city rightly called the City of Night. He tried to answer the soldier, but his voice froze in his throat.

  You are mine. He felt Tira's breath on his lips again. I did not call you to live in fear.

  "Please," he said, the memory of the presence in the cathedral giving him strength. "My friend is upstairs."

  "Your friend? The Khoravar?"

  It took Aunn a moment to recognize the word, a term for half-elves. "Yes! Gaven."

  The undead guard made an eerie sound that was half growl and half wail, and Aunn's fear returned in force. "Your blaspheming Khoravar friend killed our priestess."

  CHAPTER 30

  Someone shouted her name. Rienne looked up from the blood-soaked ground and saw Kyaphar at the edge of the clearing, beckoning to her.

  "The Mosswood Warden calls us to battle!" he cried. "Come!"

  It's too late, Rienne thought. The battle is over.

  The healer's spirit bear shifted nervously on its feet, punctuating its whimpers with an occasional quiet roar. The healer herself seemed lost in a trance, one hand planted on the ground, grave concern written on her face. The Blasphemer had already started to break the seal, and the battle was lost.

  "We can still drive him back!" Kyaphar shouted. "We can limit the damage he does! Come!"

  Rienne forced herself into a run. Kyaphar was probably wrong-this final charge had little chance of success, and was most likely just a headlong rush into destruction. But she had to try. She had committed her sword to the defense of this site, and she would not back down.

  "This way," Kyaphar said.

  Rienne shot past him, unhindered by armor and empowered by the energy coiled in her soul. She heard him laugh behind her-grimly cheerful on this day of doom-and then his laugh turned into a growl. He loped beside her in the shape of a shaggy black wolf, easily keeping pace with her light steps.

  They charged together through the woods, bounding over fallen trees and scrambling beneath low branches. It was exhilarating. The leaves and twigs that brushed her as she passed seemed to gift her with some of their life, as if the forest was fortifying its defender. Kyaphar must have felt it as well, for his bestial form raced with increasing vigor, keeping pace with her as she sped up.

  He barked and jerked his head to the side, and they altered course. A moment later, they emerged from the grove onto the slope of a hill overlooking the battlefield, and Rienne slowed her pace, then stopped. The sky was a black dome of smoke, neither day nor night but a ruddy twilight of fire and shadow. From her higher ground, she saw the barbarians arrayed in a wide arc, with a wall of flames at their back, driving them forward at their fiendish leader's urging. The Eldeen defenders were a ragged ring, unable to hold the barbarians back. Dragons flew here and there above the fray, occasionally loosing blasts of fire or frost, bolts of lightning or sprays of acid down onto the soldiers below.

  Rienne couldn't see any sign of the seal breaking, but she could feel it-a sense of wrongness radiating up from the violated land. It reminded her of Starcrag Plain, the feeling she'd had as wave after wave of monstrosities, the hordes of the Soul Reaver, spilled out of the earth and washed over her.

  Elestrissa stood a few paces away, surrounded by a clump of warriors, mystics, and rangers. The men and women gathered around the Mosswood Warden wore superior armor and carried weapons that shone with magic, clearly setting them apart from the rank and file soldiery. A few of them, like her, bore the signs of their own struggles against the Blasphemer's dragons. These, she guessed, were the greatest heroes of the Eldeen Reaches, gathered from across the lands that the Blasphemer had already devastated-a half-dozen humans, about as many shifters, a few elves and half-elves. Two dwarves covered in thick hide armor stood beside a goliath who towered over them; its leather armor left much of the patterned markings and rocklike protrusions on his stone-gray skin exposed.

  "Ah! Kyaphar," Elestrissa said, gesturing toward them. Rienne turned to look at the Sky Warden, and saw the tall, proud man once more where the wolf had been a moment before. "And Lady Alastra Dragonslayer. Good! We have precious little time."

  Elestrissa turned back to face the battlefield, and Rienne stepped forward to join the others at her side.

  "There he is," the Mosswood Warden said, pointing toward the center of the arc of flame. "The Blasphemer, the opener of the seal. He has spread his forces thin, because he knows that our defense is thinner still. That means there aren't many soldiers between us and him. Our plan is as simple as it is desperate: We charge straight for the Blasphemer. The greater our speed, the less chance he will have to put more of his forces in our way. If we're fast enough, we'll cut right through his lines and get to him. One man cannot stand for long against twenty of us. And when he is dead, our hope-our only, desperate hope-is that his sundering will cease. Perhaps none of us will survive this day, but if we succeed, the world can rest tonight free from fear."

  Elestrissa turned and let her eyes range over the men and women gathered around her. Rienne watched emotions flit across her face as she met the gaze of each individual-it was clear that Elestrissa knew all of these people personally and held them in the highest respect. Rienne felt sadly out of place.

  "Sky Warden Kyaphar," Elestrissa said as her eyes fell on him, "your place is not at my side this day. I want you with the Lyrandar airship."

  Jordhan! Rienne couldn't believe that she had all but forgotten him in the press of the battle. She searched the sky, and saw the airship drifting over the glade behind her, as if it had followed her from the healer's clearing. Elestrissa must have held it in reserve for this moment, knowing that revealing it too soon would make it a target for the dragons.

  Elestrissa was still addressing Kyaphar. "You may choose a few others to join you, and your task will be to rain the fury of wind and storm down upon our foes. If we succeed in destroying the Blasphemer, the survivors will need help getting back through his forces. Clear them a path."

  Kyaphar bowed. "As you command," he said. He sounded pained, as though he wanted to be part of the ground assault-or else he was already grieving those who would surely fall.

  Then Elestrissa stood before Rienne and looked solemnly down at her. "And you, Lady Dragonslayer. Do you still wish to stand with us in our foolhardy defense of this place?"

  "But the Blasphemer's end lies in the void, in the maelstrom that pulls him down to darkness." Rienne's dream flashed through her mind, and briefly she wondered whether she should flee-fall back to the river, join the Aundairian defenders there, and seek to bring about the Blasphemer's end the way her dream suggested.

  "What is the Prophecy?" she asked.

  Elestrissa looked confused.

  "Is the vision in my dream an immutable image of what will be, regardless of what I choose? If it is, then what I do now doesn't matter-one way or another. I'm fated to end up facing the Blasphemer at the river. I can join your charge knowing that somehow I'll survive, even if no one else does, because my destiny is to face the Blasphemer in two weeks, when he reaches the Wyr."

  "But we and the Eldeen Reac
hes are doomed," Elestrissa said, scowling.

  "Or perhaps my vision was just a glimpse of what could be, a foretaste of what might come to pass if I make the choices that lead me to that point. In that case, I'm free to choose a different path and perhaps arrive at a different destination. That would mean I could die in this foolhardy defense, or I could defeat the Blasphemer two weeks early."

  I wish Gaven were here, she added silently.

  Elestrissa frowned. "Such questions are best discussed in the groves of the druids in times of peace," she said. "Now is a time for action." She took a deep breath, and seemed to swell with it, growing taller and broader. "Perhaps we all die here today, but perhaps our charge is necessary to weaken the Blasphemer so he can fall at the river." Her skin, where her hide armor left it exposed, was transforming into thick bark, and leafy twigs appeared in her hair. "Perhaps you will live to see the Blasphemer fall, Lady Alastra." Her voice rumbled and resounded like thunder over the noise of the battle, and her limbs became the mighty trunks and branches of an oak. "Then you can tell the tale of this day, and ensure that the story of the defenders of the Mosswood is told until the end of days!"

  A cheer went up from the battle-worn heroes, and Rienne smiled. She would fight beside Elestrissa, and if fate allowed, she would destroy the Blasphemer before his fated day. Perhaps she would die without having seen Gaven again, but after all the times she had told Gaven that he was the author of his own destiny, she couldn't do otherwise.

  Elestrissa raised her war club over her head and roared, drawing another cheer from the heroes around her. She turned and began a lumbering stride in the direction of the barbarians.