by James Wyatt
“Help? Why would you help me?”
Cart dismounted and walked closer to Gaven. “Because we are alike, you and I.”
“Alike? How so?”
“Each of us was made for a single purpose, Gaven. It’s foolish to deny that purpose. I was made for war, and I will continue to war until I finally meet a foe who can defeat me. And I’ll die knowing that I lived according to my purpose. What more can anyone hope to do?”
“And for what purpose was I made, Cart?”
“You were made to be here at this moment, to fight that monstrosity down there and do what Vaskar could not. To be a god.”
“Of all people, shouldn’t gods be free to choose their destinies?”
“What greater destiny could you ask for?” Cart sounded as though he couldn’t possibly imagine a satisfactory answer to his question.
Gaven looked up into the storm, feeling the rain striking his skin. The wind lashed his hair against his face. He was the storm: he felt himself raging in the whirling clouds and booming thunder. But he was also a rain-drenched man, feet planted firmly on the ground. “You’re wrong about me, Cart,” he said. He pulled the Eye of Siberys out of his pocket and started binding it to the ash staff.
“Am I? Then why are you readying your weapon?”
“Oh, I’ll play the Storm Dragon’s part, for now. You’re right-someone has to stop the Soul Reaver, and no one here is going to do it but me.” The branch he had pulled from the ash tree seemed made to fit the Eye of Siberys. He jabbed the ground a few times to make sure the dragonshard was securely affixed.
Satisfied, he pulled his adamantine box out of another pouch and sprang it open. The nightshard inside seemed to spring to life at the proximity of the Eye of Siberys. “The Time of the Dragon Above draws to a close,” he said, not really addressing Cart. “The Time of the Dragon Below approaches. The Eye of Siberys and the Heart of Khyber are united, just as the Crystal Spire links the Dragon Above and the Dragon Below.”
“I agree with Darraun,” Cart said. “The Prophecy makes my head spin.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” Gaven lifted the nightshard and tossed it gently away from him. It seemed to float along that path for a moment, then it circled back, drawing a ring of lightning behind it. Like the whirlwind that had borne him aloft, it swirled around him, tracing its path in crackling light.
“Are you coming with me?” he asked the warforged.
Cart nodded.
“Let’s go, then.” Gaven strode over to the base of the Crystal Spire, to a ledge overlooking the chasm that rent the plain. He tried to peer down into it, but the light blinded him. “The Soul Reaver awaits.” Without a backward glance, he stepped off the ledge and fell.
CHAPTER 49
I‘ve got to get her back on the ground.” Darraun’s face was deathly pale, and his hands gripped the spokes of the wheel. Speaking seemed like an enormous effort.
“Keep going south,” Rienne said. “Behind the Thrane forces. We’ll be off the plain in no time.” She tried to sound more optimistic than she felt. But she had just watched Gaven fall down into the depths of Khyber, and dread had a chill grip on her heart.
Darraun fixed his eyes just to the port side of the prow as he steered the airship in that direction. His every movement was stiff and clipped, as if moving too fast would break his mind’s hold on the elemental bound in the ship. His apparently fragile state did nothing to ease Rienne’s apprehension. She leaned on the port bulwark, watching as the chasm grew smaller in the distance behind them, until it was swallowed up in the rain and hail, and she could barely even make out the Crystal Spire.
“See anything?” Darraun grunted.
Rienne shifted her gaze to examine the plain below them. The Soul Reaver’s hosts rampaged across the battlefield. She saw Thrane banners cast down in the mud and trampled, though clusters of knights still held their ground against the tide of horrors. I see the world sinking into chaos, she thought.
“The Thranes are still fighting the creatures from the chasm,” she said. “Do you suppose Thrane will blame Aundair for that?”
Darraun nodded, and Rienne had to agree in her heart. The situation was grim in any event: If the Thrane army were completely destroyed, the Cardinals would assume that Aundair’s attack had been successful. If there were survivors-there had to be survivors! — they would describe how Aundair’s forces opened a crack in the earth and brought the monsters forth, and trafficking with the Dragon Below would be added to Aundair’s list of real and imagined crimes. It seemed the storm of war had broken again and nothing could stop it.
She leaned against the railing and stared down at the carnage below. Something had to stop it-something or someone. Gaven’s talk of being a hero, of choosing his own destiny and writing his own part in the play, stirred in her memory. “Darraun,” she said, whirling to face the changeling at the helm, “turn us around, take us north!”
His eyes were wide. “Back into the storm?” Yes, but not that storm, she thought. “Circle it. We need to get to Haldren.”
Darraun nodded and turned the wheel.
“Why should I be content to be a minor player in this drama?” Rienne mused aloud.
A smile quirked at the corner of Darraun’s mouth.
Haldren stared through the spyglass at the dragon’s crumpled body. Vaskar did not stir. He had watched Vaskar’s defeat with satisfaction diluted by growing rage. Vaskar had brought his plans to ruin, so it pleased him to see the dragon’s ambitions quashed as well. At the same time, Vaskar’s defeat left room for Gaven to seize what Vaskar had sought. Gaven-the pathetic madman that had started all this, without having the slightest idea what he was doing. Gaven was supposed to be a tool, a pawn Haldren could use to manipulate Vaskar and to facilitate his own rise to power. Instead, the bastard had stolen Senya, thwarted Vaskar, and appeared out of nowhere to take part in the ruin of Haldren’s plans.
“If I achieve nothing else in this lifetime,” he whispered, “I will destroy him.”
“You aim to destroy a god?” Senya said.
“He’s not a god.”
“Not yet. But his power is already greater than yours.”
“What did he do to you, Senya? How did he bend you so completely to him?”
“He didn’t bend me to his will. That’s how you work with your magic and your oratory. You taught me to work that way as well, using my body. And oh, you taught me well-well enough that the disciple became the master. I had you wrapped around my finger. But Gaven-he didn’t bend me. He straightened me out.”
Senya’s words stabbed Haldren’s heart and poured ice into his gut. “You… used me?” he whispered, quivering with rage.
“Of course.” Her voice was not cruel or bitter, just… dismissive. Utterly calm and cold. How could he have been such a fool?
He turned away from her and urged his horse forward a few steps. “Do you see the warforged?” he asked, trying to keep his voice as calm as hers.
“I saw him last on the east side of the field, riding hard.”
“Has he gone mad? What is he doing?”
“Cart was never good at standing by and watching a battle unfold. He was made for war, as he said, built by Cannith to be a soldier.”
“No,” Haldren breathed. He had put the spyglass back to his eye, and finally found Cart near the middle of the field. “He was evidently made for treachery. He’s talking to Gaven.”
“Don’t be absurd, Haldren. No one is more loyal to you than Cart.”
“If he treats with my enemy, he is my enemy.”
“I wonder if you have any friends left.”
Haldren surveyed the battlefield again. Ir’Fann’s infantry was gone, wiped from the field, leaving a strange calm on the eastern side. No wonder Cart had ridden that way. Kadra’s knights had fallen as well, which meant that if she hadn’t been dead when he saw her before, she certainly was now. The knight phantoms he’d seen earlier had actually rallied ir’Cashan’s troops on
the west side, but there was no sign of ir’Cashan herself. Her death had probably caused her soldiers’ initial rout. He hadn’t seen Rennic Arak or his troops since the crevice opened-they had been at the vanguard, and were probably the first to fall. General Yeven, at least, was still alive: he had taken his command staff and retreated back up Bramblescar Gorge at about the same time as Cart had ridden off.
Haldren returned his gaze to Senya. “No,” he said, “none are left.”
As he spoke, something in the air caught his eye. A bright flash-lightning, perhaps? He almost dismissed it as yet another effect of the storm, but then he saw it again. An airship, a small one, and she was soaring closer to them through the storm.
“That’s Gaven’s ship,” Senya said.
“He’s not aboard, though.”
“You just saw him talking to Cart.”
“Well, if I can’t destroy him, perhaps I can at least destroy someone he loves.”
Rienne kept her eyes on the battlefield as Darraun piloted them around the storm. The skirmishes thinned on the south side, the Thrane side, and gave way to random clumps of monsters spreading over the plain to the east and shambling toward the Silver Woods. As the airship rounded the Crystal Spire and the raging storm, she saw more signs of battle-Haldren’s remaining troops struggling to hold the monsters off.
“I give better odds to the Thranes,” she said.
Darraun nodded. “Without the dragons, Haldren wouldn’t have had a chance.”
“So he had lost the battle even before the Crystal Spire appeared. His fate was sealed when the other dragons appeared to fight for Thrane.”
“Exactly.”
“What will he do?”
“Lick his wounds,” Darraun said. “He doesn’t take well to defeat.”
“Do you think he’ll try again someday?”
“If he gets out of this alive and manages to stay out of Dread-hold, yes.”
“Then I need to make sure he doesn’t.”
“Yes, we do,” Darraun said with a smile. The airship lurched, and his smile disappeared. Shaking his head, he renewed his concentration.
“I’m sorry. I’m distracting you.” Rienne turned back to the railing.
The Aundairian side of the field had boiled down to a single pitched battle on the western side. Haldren’s troops fought bravely, but they were completely encircled by the gibbering hordes. She watched sadly as the nightmarish host whittled away at the Aundairian formation, every fallen monster quickly replaced by another drawn to the battle from elsewhere on the field.
She pointed to the mouth of the small valley at the north end of the plain, the opening between the rocky wall of the Starpeaks and the Silver Woods where they had emerged into the Starcrag Plain. “There,” she said over her shoulder. “That’s the way we came, and I expect that’s where we’ll find Haldren.”
Darraun adjusted his course slightly, and they soared past the Aundairians’ last stand.
Rienne’s first indication that they had indeed found Haldren was a blast of fire exploding around the airship’s prow. Rienne tumbled away from the edge of the flames, unhurt, but she heard Darraun let loose a string of vehement and evocative curses. Flames danced along the arcane tracery in the hull, fire answering fire, and she knew that the ship’s bound elemental would rebel against Darraun’s control as it had when they fought the young red dragon.
“Bring us down!” she shouted, but there was no need. Darraun was already urging the airship downward, though Rienne couldn’t tell whether he exerted such enormous effort to force the airship down or to keep her from falling too fast. Beads of sweat trickled down his face, and he squeezed one eye shut to clear sweat or smoke from it-he didn’t dare release even one hand from the wheel.
Rienne leaned over a railing on the port side and looked below them to help guide Darraun to a relatively safe landing spot. She was so intent on getting the airship safely down that she almost forgot about Haldren’s imminent threat, until another burst of fire engulfed her. She cried out in pain and fell back away from the bulwarks. Darraun must have lost concentration, either because he was injured as well or out of concern for her, because the airship suddenly jerked to starboard and then plunged downward. Rienne scrambled for a grip on something, and finally managed to clutch at a web of rope netting that secured a few small crates to the deck. As soon as she was sure of her hold, she looked at Darraun.
His eyes were squeezed shut, and his knuckles were white on the wheel. The muscles in his neck stood out like cords pulled tight beneath his skin, and sweat glued short tendrils of blond hair to his forehead. She didn’t see any sign of serious injury, but if he didn’t regain control of the airship quickly they would both be dead. She felt powerless, and she didn’t like that feeling.
Keeping a hand on the ropes, she half climbed, half crawled to the helm. She had tried to help Darraun fly the Eye of the Storm when they first left Stormhome in search of Gaven, but he had said that if two minds tried to control the elemental at once it was less likely to respond, not more. Darraun had been the obvious one of them to try steering the vessel, both because of his expertise with magic and because his changeling nature might allow him to trick the elemental into believing that he was an heir of House Lyrandar. But at that moment, Darraun was failing, and it was about to cost them both their lives.
She seized the wheel, grabbing two spokes between the two that Darraun gripped. She felt the elemental’s presence immediately. It pulled away from the touch of her mind like an unbroken horse shying or bucking from a trainer’s hand. She pulled her hands away from the wheel as she imagined a bucking stallion’s hooves lashing out at her-the elemental’s resistance was so violent it felt physical. The ground was dangerously close, though, so she tried again.
This time she did not pull away when the elemental reacted. She felt Darraun’s mental presence there as well, and she understood what he had meant in Stormhome. It would have been easy for the two of them to pull in two different directions, to give the elemental two competing voices to listen to. Too many warriors did exactly that-they let their minds give one command to their swords and their bodies another. Rienne’s training had taught her the alternative. Rather than throwing another rope around the wild elemental’s neck, she focused her attention on strengthening Darraun’s grip, just as the mind could heighten and enhance the body’s reflexes. One hand at a time, she shifted her grip on the wheel so that she held the same spokes Darraun did, and their hands touched even as they both grasped smooth wood.
The airship pulled out of her fall so suddenly that the lurch almost threw them overboard, but they held the wheel and managed to keep their feet. Rienne opened her eyes and saw Darraun smiling at her across the wheel, still tense but seeming far less panicked. She returned his smile just as another of Haldren’s fireballs burst between them.
It stung her eyes with heat and brilliant light, scorched her face, and even seared her lungs as she gasped in surprise. Pain overwhelmed her, and she slumped to the deck.
CHAPTER 50
Gaven fell.
The cold radiance of the Crystal Spire failed to light the sides of the chasm, so he fell blind, just as he had fallen when he found the nightshard. Time vanished, and his sense of motion failed as well, so he felt as though he hung suspended in the column of light. He might have fallen for a matter of seconds, but it seemed like hours.
Strangely calm, he kept his feet below him and stretched his arms to the side, one hand clenching the spear he had made from the Eye of Siberys. The Heart of Khyber continued its orbit around his body, but the lightning trailing behind it had vanished in the overwhelming light that bathed him. Air rushing past his ears was the only sound, and it faded into a dull roar.
Slowly a shape took form below him-the only feature he could make out in the light. A mouth gaped wide to receive him, like the jaws of Khyber waiting to engulf him when he reached the end of his fall. The Crystal Spire seemed to pour out of that mouth like lightning from
Vaskar’s maw. The shape grew larger, though he couldn’t tell whether he fell toward it or it surged up to meet him.
Then it was upon him: the face of a great dragon carved into ancient stone. Though the storm raged far above him now, he called a gust of wind to stop his fall and planted his feet gently to one side of the dragon’s mouth. He barely remembered in time to make sure that Cart landed safely on the other side. To his credit, the warforged made no sound that indicated he’d been worried about the fall. His face, of course, was unreadable.
The First of Sixteen descended to this gate. The Soul Reaver spoke to his mind, bypassing both ears and language, but carrying the same grumbling roar he had sensed when he first saw the Soul Reaver high above the battlefield. Any who would follow in his paths must be prepared for what lies beyond.
Gaven peered into the darkness for a sign of the Soul Reaver, cursing the brilliance of the Crystal Spire that blinded his eyes without illuminating the shadows around it. Only the Heart of Khyber in its steady rotation cast a faint strobe of light around the chamber. Gaven had a vague sense of a dome arching overhead and smooth, round tunnels leading off into darkness. “And what if I don’t want to follow his paths?” he called into the nothingness.
Cart looked at him strangely-the Soul Reaver evidently hadn’t spoken in his mind.
Then I will kill you.
A wail filled Gaven’s mind, different from the torrent of thoughts with which the Soul Reaver had assaulted him in the air. That attack had called his own mind up against him, but this was an intrusion, a blast of psychic force so great that his vision began to cloud over. He clamped his hands to his ears but couldn’t block the sound, and squeezed his eyes shut to no avail. He dropped to one knee, searching for the still point he had found in his mind before, the focus that would enable him to shrug off the psychic attack again.
