Dragon War: The Draconic Prophecies - Book Three (25 page)

They didn’t immediately accost Gaven—they were probably accustomed to people stumbling into their little enclave, looking around incredulously, and hurrying back out. Gaven didn’t see anyone else in the courtyard, so he steeled himself and approached the soldiers.

“Have you lost your way?” the living soldier asked coldly. He spoke Common with a thick accent.

“I know where I am,” Gaven answered in the best Elven he could muster. “I—” What was the correct phrase? “I invoke the right of counsel.”

The guard’s face was as expressionless as his skull tattoo as his eyes searched Gaven’s. Then the deathless soldier’s bony hand lashed out and struck Gaven’s face. A last echo of thunder rumbled overhead, but Gaven squelched his surging anger.

“The Right of Counsel?” the living soldier said in Elven. “You have no such right. You should leave this place before my friend’s righteous anger increases.”

“My ancestors fought under Aeren as yours did,” Gaven said. He wasn’t surprised, except perhaps by the violence of the deathless guard’s response. But he had no alternative plan. He couldn’t give up without a fight.

“Name them,” the dead soldier demanded.

“I am an heir of House Lyrandar,” Gaven said. It was the best answer he knew. The first Lyrandars had already been half-elves, their elven blood mixed with a noble human line from Khorvaire. But perhaps the elves knew more about his ancestry than he himself did.

“No doubt you have ancestors among the elves of Aerenal,” the living soldier said, “but their names are not honored, nor were they worthy of joining the ranks of the deathless.”

“Name them,” the guard repeated. “Name a single ancestor you claim among the Undying. Whose counsel do you seek?”

“Alvena,” Gaven blurted. “In the name of my friends Mendaros Alvena Tuorren and Senya Alvena Arrathinen, I seek the counsel of Alvena.”

Both guards took half a step backward, and they exchanged a glance.
Gaven wasn’t even certain he’d blurted out the right name, and he had no idea whether it was Alvena or the name of one of his friends that had given the soldiers pause.

“I shall go,” the living soldier said. With a quick glance at Gaven, he hurried across the courtyard.

“Wait here,” the other soldier said. “On your knees, and do not speak to me again.”

Gaven didn’t know what was happening, but at least he’d made something happen. He decided it was best to obey the undead soldier, so he dropped to his knees and waited. Clutching his poleaxe in both withered hands, the guard stood a few steps away, his burning eyes fixed on Gaven in an unwavering stare.

Gaven watched the living soldier climb the wide stair at the far end of the courtyard and disappear into a darkened archway at the top. What was he doing? Whatever had provoked them, it had clearly suggested a course of action so obvious that the only question was which soldier would carry it out.

“You Khoravar,” the deathless guard muttered, half to himself, “so full of human arrogance.” He stepped closer and addressed Gaven directly. “The Undying exist only because of the veneration of their descendants. You hybrids who can’t even remember the names of your ancestors—if it were up to you, the Undying would all fade into death. Memory is life. Without memory, your people are already dead. You don’t know who you are—you might as well be beasts.”

Gaven bit his tongue and stared at the flagstones. The soldier had ordered him not to speak, so he bit back an angry retort, but as he did, the guard’s words echoed in his mind. Gaven’s memories were a jumble, a shattered mosaic of his own past and the memories of the other. The time before he found the nightshard was shrouded in fog, particularly now that Rienne was gone. When he’d been with her, that time had seemed clearer in his mind.

“Gaven?”

Gaven looked up and scanned the courtyard. The living soldier had emerged from the building and started back down the stairs, followed by a woman in a plain white robe. Her head was shaved bald, and her face bore a skull tattoo like that of the soldier.

The deathless soldier stepped back and watched the others approach. Gaven started to stand, but the guard turned and glared at him, so he stayed on his knees. The woman hurried toward him, sandals slapping
against the flagstones. Gaven watched curiously—there was something familiar about the woman, but he couldn’t place her in the fragments of his memory.

Finally she stood before him, a little breathless, her slight smile strangely out of place on her tattooed face. “Gaven,” she said Common, “I’m glad to see you again.”

Gaven stared dumbly.

“Gaven, it’s Senya.”

“Senya?” Gaven gaped at her, trying to see Senya’s face past the tattoo. Her full lips, no longer painted scarlet, had been made to look like stark white teeth, and the eyelids she had colored blue before were black, so that when she blinked, they might have been empty sockets. Her bald head was perhaps the most disconcerting, but when he tried to imagine a full head of curly black hair, he could almost see her face.

“Yes, it’s really me.” She bent down and kissed his cheek in greeting. She smelled of incense and spice, not the flowered fragrances she’d worn before.

“You have changed,” Gaven said.

She laughed. “Yes, I have. You may stand.” She offered her hand to him, and he took it as he rose to his feet. “And I have you to thank for it.”

“Me? Why?”

“You helped me discover who I am. You gave me the courage to stand up to Haldren. You taught me …” She looked away. “Many things.” Glancing at the two soldiers who frowned at them, she took Gaven’s arm. “Let’s discuss this indoors. It’s cold out here.”

“One moment, priestess,” the living guard interrupted in Elven.

Gaven looked at Senya again. Priestess?

“What is the matter?” Senya said in the same language.

“This man you greet with such familiarity has spoken blasphemously of the revered ancestors and demanded a right he does not have. I would see him punished.”

“I will bring your concern to the ancestors,” Senya said. She tugged Gaven’s arm. “Come with me,” she added in Common.

“But priestess—”

“That is all. Return to your post.”

Both guards bowed and stepped back from them, and Senya led Gaven toward the building she had emerged from.

“Priestess?” Gaven said, once they were out of the soldiers’ earshot.

“Indeed. Much has changed since you left me outside Vathirond.”

“You were at Starcrag Plain,” Gaven said. “With Haldren. Darraun and Rienne captured you.”

“Yes. We’ll discuss it inside.”

Gaven walked beside her up the wide stairs to the many-tiered tower. The warmth of her hands on his arm stood in strange contrast to the death mask inscribed on her face, and when he wasn’t looking at her it was easy to imagine her at his side in Korranberg, too close for his comfort, flirting seductively. But then he looked at her again, and all he could see was a priestess of the Undying Court, her body shrouded in her shapeless robe.

“Senya?” he said as they passed through the arch at the top of the stairs.

“Yes?”

“I’m glad to see you, too.” Strangely, he meant it.

Senya smiled up at him, clutched his arm a little more tightly, and led him toward a narrower stairway inside the building—which Gaven suddenly recognized as a temple. A pair of tall doors were carved with Elven invocations to the Undying Court and adorned with images of skulls and swords, honoring the warrior ancestors of Aerenal. Braziers outside the doors smoldered with coal and incense, waiting for morning when their flames would be stoked to life again for the next sacrifices. In the night, the whole building was as quiet as a tomb.

Senya released his arm and led the way up the narrow stairs. They climbed three flights in silence, then down a short hall, and she led him into a small chamber. A curved couch, made for reclining, stood against one wall, a table and a single chair opposite it. Between them was a tiny altar on the floor, with a straw mat set before it. In an icon above the altar, Gaven recognized the deathless ancestor he had met in Aerenal.

Senya closed the door behind him and sat on the couch. He was suddenly uncomfortable again, alone with her in her bedchamber. His discomfort must have shown. “Sit,” she said with a laugh, gesturing at the chair across the room. “And don’t worry. I’m done with all that.”

Gaven felt his face flush and turned away, taking longer than he needed to pull the chair out from the table and turn it to face her. When he sat down and looked at her again, she was grinning.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

Her grin became a full-throated laugh. “You are,” she said. “I’m sorry. I must have been truly awful.”

He was struck, suddenly, by the brilliant blue of her eyes, which he
hadn’t noticed in the darkness outside. “Awful? No. You were quite persistent, though.”

“I’m sorry.” The smile faded from her face.

“It’s all right.”

“It’s not—not for me, anyway. I had the opportunity to learn from you, to study the Prophecy of the dragons at your side, and I squandered it. I think I knew what I really wanted, but I translated that into the only desire I really understood at the time.”

“What did you really want?”

“The same thing my mother and all my ancestors wanted for me—what all the universe wanted for me.” She extended an arm, vaguely encompassing the room and the temple beyond. “This.”

“Your destiny?”

“Exactly.”

T
he iron dragon loosed its breath first, cascading waves of lightning pouring from its mouth. Maelstrom spun to life around Rienne, gathering the lightning into a whirlwind that crackled and sparked around her but didn’t harm her. Drawing a deep breath at the eye of that storm, Rienne planted a foot firmly on the ground and directed a focused blast at the red dragon, just as it was inhaling in preparation for loosing its own gout of fire. The lightning struck it in the face and filled its mouth, turning its exhalation into a roar of pain.

“Barak Radaam,”
the iron dragon rumbled. “I didn’t believe it.”

“We will deliver it to the Blasphemer,” the red one said, wisps of smoke trailing from its mouth. “With the body of this one.”

Rienne was too tired to repeat her boast that the Blasphemer would have to take her himself. She crouched, waiting for the dragons’ next attack, trying to keep them both in view as they circled her warily.

The red dragon lunged first, springing at her with surprising speed, half running and half flying. She ducked and sprang aside so the dragon’s mouth snapped at empty air, but the iron dragon—smarter than it had first appeared—had anticipated the direction of her dodge, and it was ready. Its heavy claw lashed out and raked across her back as she tried to arch away from it, pushing her back, stumbling, toward the red.

Maelstrom swung around and bit into the red dragon’s snout as it snapped at her again, and trailing a line of steaming blood, it cut into the other dragon’s claw. Rienne followed its momentum, whirling dangerously close to the iron dragon’s claws until it stumbled over her. For one terrifying moment, the dragon’s feet were stamping the ground all around her. She swung Maelstrom up to cut a wide gash across the dragon’s belly, showering blood around her, then it staggered past her and crashed into the red, landing on its side.

Rienne wiped the acrid blood from her face as the iron dragon scrambled
to its feet and the red circled her again. The barbarian tide had parted to give her and the dragons a wide berth, and at a glance Rienne couldn’t see any of the Eldeen defenders behind her—the barbarians must have pushed the line back. She was alone, then.

The prospect of dying on this battlefield had not occurred to her until that moment. Her dream in Argonnessen had convinced her that she was fated to confront the Blasphemer at the Wynarn—alone and perhaps in failure, but at least not yet, not until the barbarians had advanced that far. But now she stood alone in the midst of the horde, flanked by dragons as her every muscle screamed in exhaustion, cut off from any aid. She shook her head ruefully.

Then a shriek like an eagle’s cry pierced the air overhead, and she glanced up to see three hippogriffs circling in the brightening sky. Both dragons chose that instant to lunge at her, coming in from opposite sides. The iron one was slower, perhaps because of the wound in its belly, so she leaped toward it to avoid the red’s bite. As the iron dragon opened its jaws to snap at her, she threw herself at its mouth. She planted one foot just behind its front teeth, and before it could close its jaws on her leg she flipped up and over its head, landing solidly between its shoulders. The dragon reared up to throw her off, but she grabbed a wing to steady herself, and drove Maelstrom down behind its shoulder. With a roar that made lightning crackle in its mouth, the iron dragon collapsed.

Now the red was distracted, looking up at the sky. Rienne followed its gaze. Two of the hippogriffs were still high above her, but the third was swooping low, and she saw Sky Warden Kyaphar on its back. Did he hope to extract her from a losing battle? As she and the dragon both watched, Kyaphar stood up in his stirrups and lifted one leg over the hippogriff’s back, then jumped off. Rienne gasped—he was still a long way from the ground. But Kyaphar spread his arms wide and they became wings, and the rest of his body transformed until he was a great eagle, diving rather than falling down to her side as his hippogriff flapped upward.

The red dragon roared a tremendous blast of fire. Rienne pulled the dead dragon’s wing up as a shield to block the brunt of it, and she saw Kyaphar pull up from his dive in time to avoid most of the flames. Emboldened by the Sky Warden’s unexpected appearance, Rienne charged.

The dragon reared up to meet her charge, exposing its belly to Maelstrom’s arc. But in order to reach it, she would have to put herself in easy reach of the dragon’s claws. She didn’t look up, but she could hear the beat of Kyaphar’s wings, so she took the bait, leaping the last few yards with
Maelstrom drawn back over her shoulder, ready for a mighty swing. As she reached the dragon, she saw its head and claws start down, but when Maelstrom cut through the scales of its belly, Kyaphar swooped past the dragon’s head and slashed his talons across the dragon’s eyes. It pulled back away from the eagle and fell wildly off balance. Rienne drove Maelstrom into its heart.