by James Wyatt
Gaven leaped up to grab at the helm, desperately hoping to regain control of the airship before she crashed to the ground. He sensed the elemental’s acquiescence to his will, but then he felt the impact rumble through the hull. He had slowed their fall, but he was too late to stop it. Timbers groaned and then cracked, the ring of fire sputtered and went out. The airship lurched backward, jerked to port, and was still.
Rienne had kept her feet through it all, and Maelstrom was already in her hand. She swung it through slow repetitions of the whirling patterns of strikes and blocks she favored in battle. The sword seemed to sing in her hand, adding a voice of storm and steel to the mounting clamor around them. Darraun pulled himself to his feet and slid his mace out of the loop in his belt. Gaven looked up at the darkening sky, calling out to the brewing storm. If he was to be a force of destruction, best to use that power in a cause like this-to help protect the soldiers of both armies from the slaughter that surged toward them. If Vaskar was determined to be the Storm Dragon, let him face the Soul Reaver.
In the blink of an eye, the hordes of the Soul Reaver swarmed over the bulwarks of the grounded airship, and Gaven forgot himself and his friends in the storm of battle. Eyes wide open, he plunged headlong into the nightmares that had plagued him for twenty-six years.
Roaring with horror and fury, he swung his greatsword back and forth, cutting through alien flesh, shattering bone, spilling blood and ichor onto the deck. Shouting arcane syllables, he created fire and lightning to sear his foes, summoned invisible and irresistible forces to push them back, cast spells to guide his blade to the vital parts of tentacled things that refused to die. Bile rose in his throat as unspeakable horrors stared him in the face and spat oozing slime onto him in their death throes. He lashed out in reflexive fear to sever tentacles that grasped at him. The wailing ululation of the horde battered at his ears and at the ramparts of his will, threatening to break his concentration and reduce his resolve to quivering terror. And all the time the storm’s fury built around him, torrents of rain and hail, blasts of wind, and eruptions of lightning that tore great holes in the teeming carpet of aberrations that covered the Starcrag Plain.
Without warning, the battlefield fell silent, and the raving legions paused. Gaven’s ears rang in the sudden quiet, and he seized the opportunity to check that Rienne and Darraun were still alive. But the respite was brief. A moment later, every monstrosity raised its voice in a shriek, lifting arms and tentacles and limbs into the air, and the onslaught resumed. Gaven roared and spun his blade in a wide circle. A whirlwind followed his sword through the air and forced the nearest creatures back, giving him room to assess the battlefield.
He glanced up at the Crystal Spire, towering above them a bowshot away, a radiant beacon through the driving rain. He saw what had made the creatures pause: a figure hung suspended in the shaft of light, roughly human in size and shape. It was smaller than many of the creatures he had already slain, but even at that distance, it projected an aura like a low grumbling roar, tearing at the very roots of his sense and will. Long tentacles thrashed the air around its face, and clawed hands stretched up to the sky.
“Tearer and reaver and flayer of souls,” Gaven whispered.
The hordes renewed their assault, and Gaven lost himself in the battle again.
Haldren surveyed a battlefield over which he no longer had any control, clutching his reins until they bit into his palms. The full extent of Vaskar’s duplicity had made itself clear: in addition to bringing dragons to fight on both sides of the battle, Vaskar had convinced him to launch his assault against Thrane on this field-here, above the prison of the Soul Reaver. Haldren had known Vaskar would have to face that foe in the end-Gaven had seen the Eye of Siberys used as a spear to defeat the creature. But he had not expected to provide the stage for that battle. Not only had Vaskar undone the advantage he had given Haldren, but he had actually consigned both armies to slaughter at the hands of the Soul Reaver’s aberrant legions. Now Haldren would be forced to watch Vaskar’s moment of triumph, his ascension to godhood, in the air above the spectacle of his own crushing defeat. And rather than having an ally among the gods of the world, Haldren would have a bitter enemy. It was too much to bear.
His eyes wandered over the field, straining to see the magnitude of the carnage through the driving rain. To his right, ir’Fann’s infantry was falling under a renewed press, which meant that his pikemen had been overwhelmed. Near the middle of the field, a clump of Kadra’s knights stood in a tight circle as the aberrations advanced over the corpses of their steeds. He lifted his spyglass and saw Kadra Ware herself lying at the center of that circle, bloody and unmoving. To the left, ir’Cashan’s troops fled toward the sheltering hills. A group of knight phantoms, well-armored infantry riding conjured steeds of smoke and shadow, ranged back and forth along the rear, looking in vain for a place where their aid might turn the tide of battle. There could be no doubt: the field was lost. Lord General Haldren ir’Brassek had never known such a crushing defeat.
He lifted his eyes to the radiant column at the hub of the spreading devastation, and saw for the first time the tiny figure suspended in its light. He pressed the spyglass to his eye again. The Soul Reaver. Hatred welled up in his gut like bile, and he cursed under his breath. “Kill Vaskar for me, damn him.” The creature stretched its shriveled arms upward as tentacles writhed out around its face, and Haldren imagined it urging its subterranean hordes to greater fury as they swept over their foes or calling down the storm to add its wrath to theirs.
“And damn the rain,” he said aloud. “Can I not at least see my defeat through clear eyes?”
“It’s Gaven,” Senya said, pointing at the excoriate’s grounded airship. “The storm battles for him.”
“You still believe his lies? You still think he’s the Storm Dragon?”
Senya turned her gaze to meet his angry glare. “That’s our only hope.”
“Then hope is lost,” Haldren said, biting back his rage.
Cart rumbled on Haldren’s right. “We’ll see soon enough,” he said. Haldren turned to look at him, then followed his gaze back to the towering shaft of light.
A blast of lightning engulfed the Soul Reaver. For an instant, Haldren thought that the storm had lashed out at the monstrosity, but then he saw the lightning’s source: Vaskar had begun his attack.
“The Bronze Serpent,” Senya said. “He’s doomed to fail.”
“Good,” Haldren spat.
CHAPTER 48
The dragon’s roar cut through the wails of the Soul Reaver’s hosts. Gaven drove his sword down through the double head of a waist-high monstrosity and glanced up at the Crystal Spire. Vaskar had come to face the Soul Reaver, hoping to bring about the fulfillment of the Prophecy. The sounds of the battle fell away, even the howls of the monsters around him, leaving a strange stillness, and the words of the Prophecy rang in his mind: The Bronze Serpent faces the Soul Reaver and fails. But the Storm Dragon seizes the shard of heaven from the fallen pretender.
Had Vaskar accounted for those words? Did he even know about them? Gaven had spoken them to Haldren, but not in Vaskar’s presence. Would Haldren have repeated them to the dragon, when they upset him so much?
It didn’t matter, he realized. Vaskar was doomed to fail, which meant that the Soul Reaver’s hordes would continue to pour forth from Khyber’s darkness. Every soldier in the Starcrag Plain would fall beneath them. The monsters would pour into Aundair and Thrane-they might raze Thaliost, or Daskaran across the river. They might reach Stormhome. The idea of Haldren conquering Khorvaire was terrible to contemplate, but the thought of the Soul Reaver spreading his tentacles across the north was much, much worse.
Vaskar was doomed to fail, and that meant the Storm Dragon would have to do what the Prophecy demanded of him: seize the shard of heaven and drive it through the Soul Reaver’s heart.
No one could do that but him.
The aberrations crowded closer. Growling, Gaven impaled o
ne of the larger, shambling monsters, left his sword hanging in the wound, and swung his hands together to create a clap of thunder that drove the smaller creatures back. Then he grabbed the sword from the teetering bug-thing and leaped aft, toward the helm.
“Clear the deck!” he shouted. He seized the wheel and willed the elemental out of its quiescence.
“Can she fly?” Rienne called back. “That was a rough landing.”
“I’ll make her fly.” The wind howled, and the airship lurched, then she slowly lifted off the ground.
The elemental resisted Gaven’s control at first, protesting as though the damage to the hull had wounded or weakened it. Fly, damn you.
Rienne and Darraun fought hard to carry out Gaven’s command. Rienne nearly stopped using her sword, instead relying on a constantly shifting stance to overbalance the creatures that came charging toward her and throw them overboard. Maelstrom came to bear only in the one instance where a tentacle wrapped around her leg as its owner hurtled overboard, threatening to drag Rienne off the ship as well. A swift, sure blow from Maelstrom freed her from its grasp and sent the creature plummeting to its doom. Darraun swung his mace, magically enhanced to slay the aberrations of Khyber, beating them back under a constant hail of blows until they had nowhere to go but off the ship.
The Eye of the Storm teetered higher, rising above the din of the battle and the gibbering hordes below. Gaven let the winds carry her in a wide circle around the Crystal Spire as the ship swirled faster and faster around the bridge of light. That circular path provided Gaven with a clear view of the continuing battle between the Soul Reaver and Vaskar-be he Storm Dragon or doomed Bronze Serpent-as it raged in the midst of the great column of light.
It would be more accurate to say that Vaskar raged, Gaven thought. The battle was not too different from watching Rienne fight a drunken Eldeen wild man. The Soul Reaver remained calm, moving very little in response to Vaskar’s charges, his circling flights and desperate lunges. Each time Vaskar closed in, an invisible force pushed him aside, preventing him from making contact. Gaven couldn’t see the Soul Reaver make any counterattack, but it was clear that Vaskar grew more tired with each passing moment. His frustration also built with every failed lunge. He roared and spat lightning at the Soul Reaver, but though the lightning at least touched the creature, it didn’t seem to cause it any pain or distress. To his surprise, Gaven felt a twinge of pity for the dragon-he was so misguided, and ultimately so ineffectual, just as he tried to seize tremendous power.
Vaskar pulled back and floated motionless on the building gale for a moment. Carried by the wind, the airship swirled closer to him, and for a moment Gaven thought the dragon would attack the Eye of the Storm to vent his frustration. Then Gaven saw a flash of gold: from somewhere on his body, Vaskar had produced the Eye of Siberys. He fumbled with the dragonshard in claws too large to serve as hands, and Gaven saw that Vaskar had clumsily bound the shard to a straight, polished staff, making a spear to slay the Soul Reaver. He was desperate, Gaven realized, and was pulling out his weapon of last resort. The dragon didn’t expect it to work-and he was right. Vaskar was already defeated.
Gaven jerked the wheel hard to port and took the Eye of the Storm out of the cyclone.
“What are you doing?” Rienne said.
“I need to get off this ship,” Gaven said, “and I’m not going to make Darraun try to fly her in that storm.”
“No,” Rienne said, “I mean, what are you doing?”
The airship had cleared the worst of the storm and flew smoothly again, despite the staved-in timbers of her hull. “Darraun, can you take her from here?” Gaven said.
“I can try,” Darraun answered. His hands clenched the wheel, and Gaven released it. The ship bucked slightly, then leveled. Darraun nodded, but didn’t try to speak again.
“Gaven,” Rienne said, “what are you doing?”
Gaven pulled off his scabbard and untied the ash staff he’d bound to it. Touching the staff sparked a torrent of memories-stumbling, half crazed through the Mournland, climbing the storm-blasted tree to pull off the branch, a dream: a yellow crystal pulsing with veins of golden light, carved to a point and bound to a blackened branch, plunging into a body that was shadow given twisting form.
“It was my hand on the spear,” he said, more to himself than her. “It seems I will play the part of the Storm Dragon after all.” He stood with the staff in his hands and slung his sword and scabbard back over his shoulder.
Rienne lay a hand on his back. “Play the part,” she said, “but write it as you go. You are player and playwright.”
He looked into her eyes and cupped her cheek in his hand, running a thumb along the curve of her lips.
“I don’t know how I could ever have doubted your love,” he said. “I never will again.”
“Come back to me.”
“I will.” He kissed her, savoring the taste of her breath, and then jumped over the bulwarks.
A fresh gust of wind caught him up and carried him away from the airship, back to the storm that whirled around the Crystal Spire. Lightning flared and roared around him, and the rain became hail, as though the storm had been holding its full fury back until that moment. Gaven willed himself forward, toward the Soul Reaver, and the wings of the storm carried him there.
Vaskar roared when he saw Gaven approaching. “Do you still think to steal my prize?” he howled over the wind. “Get away, interloper!”
Vaskar’s outrage had a very different effect than he had intended. The Soul Reaver followed Vaskar’s gaze, turning its monstrous head toward Gaven as he approached. Then, as if the battle to that point had consisted purely of the Soul Reaver playing with Vaskar, the tentacled thing dismissed him. Barely sparing the dragon another glance, it blasted him with waves of energy that made the air shimmer, and the echoes of it made Gaven’s head throb with sudden pain. Unconscious or dead, Vaskar fell.
As the Soul Reaver turned its full attention to Gaven, lightning streaked into the Crystal Spire and coursed through the Soul Reaver’s withered flesh, though it left the creature unharmed. Wind buffeted it from every side, and the robes it wore flapped furiously around it. In return, Gaven felt his mind engulfed in a similar storm. Thoughts and feelings welled up in no sensible order, like a nightmare galloping through his mind at a breakneck pace. Slights and shames from his childhood sprang to his thoughts alongside the fresh grief of his father’s death, while the memories he’d acquired from the Heart of Khyber added their own share of fear and frustration. For a moment Gaven could not even distinguish the torrent of memories from his sensation of the present: the Soul Reaver and the storm seemed like distant thoughts amid the deluge.
Among the torrent, though, Gaven found words that connected the ancient dragon’s memories to his own past, walking the Sky Caves of Thieren Kor, and the present moment, tying them all together- 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.
The words focused his mind like a bolt of lightning. I wield the power of the Storm Dragon, he thought. If I don’t kill the Soul Reaver, who will?
He whipped the storm into a greater fury. Hail battered the Soul Reaver, rain like searing fire burned its flesh, and lightning crackled in a ball around it. Then the Soul Reaver, too, fell from the sky, sliding down the shaft of unearthly light. Gaven watched it descend and disappear again below the earth, and he wished he could believe it dead.
The Storm Dragon descends into the endless dark beneath the bridge of light, he thought, 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.
Siberys’s Eye-where was it? With a start, he searched the ground below. Vaskar lay crumpled on the rocky plain near the base of the Crystal Spire, one wing outstretched at a strange angle, his neck curved around beneath the bulk of h
is body, his head hidden from view. The Soul Reaver’s hordes had dispersed from there already, moved outward to tear into the armies gathered at either end of the plain. Gaven willed himself downward, and the wind set him on solid ground once again. Drenched with rain, chilled to the bone, he scrambled over and around the rocks to the place where Vaskar’s body lay.
The dragon looked pathetic, broken like a child’s toy dashed to the ground, and Gaven again felt the welling of pity. “The Bronze Serpent faces the Soul Reaver and fails,” he said. “But the Storm Dragon seizes the shard of heaven from the fallen pretender. Where is it, Vaskar?”
Gaven circled the fallen dragon’s body, scanning the ground for any gleam of yellow. The ground around Vaskar’s body revealed no clues, so Gaven used the ash staff to prod under the dragon’s claws. He lifted a claw, and almost jumped in surprise as the Eye of Siberys flashed gold beneath the dragon’s massive hand. He scooped up the dragonshard and yanked it free from Vaskar’s staff.
He was back in the Aerenal jungle, cradling the warm Eye of Siberys close to his chest, gazing into its vibrant core where veins of gold danced like Siberys at the dawn of creation. It was so easy to lose himself in that writhing dance, to forget his surroundings, to forget himself. Even the sound of thunderous footsteps could barely stir him from his reverie, but he made himself turn and look at Darraun.
Except that he wasn’t in Aerenal, and the footsteps had been hoofbeats. Gaven tried to shake his head clear, without much success, and sized up the rider charging him from the north. A knight of some sort, he supposed, clad in heavy armor-no, a warforged. Cart.
Gaven stowed the Eye of Siberys in a pocket and held his ash-black staff as though it were his greatsword. “What are you doing here?” he called to the advancing warforged.
“I’m not here to fight you, Gaven,” Cart said. His tone reminded Gaven of the first time he’d encountered the warforged: Cart bending down to him in his cell and trying to coax him out as if he were a frightened child. “I thought you might want some help.”
