Dragon War: The Draconic Prophecies - Book Three (24 page)

His first impression, looking in the mirror, was that the black cloak he’d chosen wouldn’t do. He needed color—something bright and vibrant, to make up for the pale gray of his skin, the white hair and colorless eyes, the blank face that seemed to be waiting for features and color and life.

Who are you? he thought, searching the eyes of his reflection for some answer.

“I am Aunn,” he murmured. Behind him, Jazen glanced up from where he was busying himself with the hem of the cloak, then quickly looked away.

He let Jazen continue straightening and brushing the cloak so he could look at himself more closely. It was like seeing a stranger—a face he didn’t recognize as his own. At first he thought of it as expressionless, blank, but then he noticed a crinkle of distaste at his brow, which quickly melted into a smile. The sight of his smile made him laugh out loud, which made his blank white eyes come alive.

“The cloak pleases you?” Jazen asked, looking up at the laughter. Even his perpetual scowl softened a little when he saw Aunn’s smile.

“It’s a fine cloak, but the color is wrong. I need something more vibrant.” He watched his face as he spoke, the way his lipless mouth formed sounds. It was growing on him.

“Absolutely, I agree.” Jazen stood and reached around Aunn’s shoulders to unfasten the clasp. Aunn tensed—he always did. Then the cloak was off his shoulders, and Aunn felt suddenly cold. “What color did you have in mind?”

“What would you recommend?”

He watched as Jazen brought a selection of colors and draped them over his shoulder, noticed how his own complexion changed ever so slightly without any conscious effort, laughed at the horrible effect of a daffodil yellow, and finally settled on a purple that was far too expensive.

As he counted out the coins for Jazen, the clothier looked at him thoughtfully.

“I beg your pardon,” Jazen said, “but have you been in my shop before?”

No more lies, Aunn thought. “I have. Several times.”

“I thought as much.” Jazen put the coins away in a pouch at his belt. “Well, you are always welcome.”

“Thank you.” Aunn knew he would not always be welcomed elsewhere, wearing his true face for all to see. But his visit to Jazen’s was an auspicious start to his new life.

*  *  *  *  *

Aunn stood on the street and stared up at the abandoned cathedral like a dumbfounded tourist from the farmland. He had probably walked past the cathedral hundreds or thousands of times before, but it didn’t seem to matter—he felt as though he were seeing it for the first time.

“Keep moving,” Kelas barked
.

Laurann quickened her steps to keep up with him, while trying to steal glances at the magnificent building. Questions churned in her mind, but she knew better than to ask Kelas
.

“Come along,” Kelas said again. This time, though, he looked at her, and noticed her wide eyes staring at the building. He stopped
.

“You like that?” he said. “Then you like failure. That’s the greatest monument to delusion and weakness in all of Aundair. That’s why no one goes there any more—Aundair has outgrown its time of weakness.”

But to Laurann’s eyes, nothing about the place spoke of weakness
.

And to Aunn’s new eyes, it seemed the opposite—a testimony to the highest ideals anyone could aspire to, a monument to the sacrifice of Dania ir’Vran, Vor Helden, Farren Dorashka, and the noble warriors of Maruk Dar. And it was a monument that still stood proudly in a city that had turned its back on it eighty-five years ago, driving the priests and worshipers of the Silver Flame out of the city or into more secretive places of worship.

Even from the street, the building itself lifted his spirit. Though its stained-glass windows were shattered and its mosaics defaced, its buttresses carried the eye upward, to the silver dome it wore as a shining crown. Its pillars carved in the likeness of the saints of the faith moved him with the serenity of their faces, the quiet confidence of their faith—and their eyes, too, drew his eyes upward. The dome itself was engraved with a ring of dancing flames, gleaming in the morning sun.

Kalok Shash burns brighter
.

The main entrance to the cathedral was boarded over and bound with chains. From the look of it, Aunn guessed that some of that work was recent—the city watch’s one gesture toward keeping criminals from using the cathedral as a base. He chose the alley on the left side of the building and walked over heaps of trash, scanning for windows or doorways. Several high windows probably once helped light the vaulted sanctuary inside, before the neighboring building had been built so close to the cathedral. He suspected they were covered with boards, and he couldn’t imagine Kelas climbing so high on the wall to get inside. A little farther on, though, with the noise of the street fading behind him, he found a smaller doorway. Boards were carefully placed over the door to give the appearance that it was sealed closed without actually preventing it from opening. With a glance up and down the alley, he pushed the door open and stepped through, into the darkness.

He pulled the glowstone from his pouch, letting its dim light surround him and sketch the lines of floor, walls, and ceiling. He was in a hallway, probably where the bishop and priests had lived when the cathedral was open. He could just make out a doorway on either side of the hall.

Aunn cursed under his breath. Ashara had told him that Kelas used the cathedral as a meeting place, but the cathedral was huge, and at least some of its space was also claimed by one of Fairhaven’s criminal gangs—not a problem the Royal Eyes had ever been too concerned about. He didn’t even know what he was looking for, precisely, let alone where he should look. Where would Kelas establish himself? In the bishop’s quarters? That might suit his sense of irony. Aunn crept forward and pressed an ear to the door on his left.

Something was moving in the room beyond—probably rats scuttling among the old furniture. The presence of rats would suggest that the room had seen use more recently than the priests’ departure, that someone had left behind something the rats considered edible. He lifted the latch and pushed the door open, cringing as the hinges let out a piercing squeak. He cast a glance up and down the hall, then gritted his teeth and pushed the door all the way open in one quick movement, ignoring its loud protest.

He stopped in the doorway, letting the dim light from his glowstone filter into the room as he listened for any sign that the noisy hinges had attracted attention. He didn’t see any rats—not a surprise, since they had probably taken cover at the first squeak of the hinges. The room
had been a sort of a parlor, he guessed, with a moldering sofa and two equally decrepit chairs where the priests could meet with guests and visitors. It was certainly not what he was looking for. Kelas would have cleaned the rooms where he worked, or rather, ordered someone else to clean them. Leaving the door open and dispensing with caution, Aunn strode to the door he could just make out at the far end of the hall, which presumably led deeper into the cathedral’s heart.

He opened the latch and pulled, but the door wouldn’t budge—either stuck or sealed shut. He looked around for another likely route out of the priests’ quarters but didn’t see one, so he gave the door another, harder, pull. This time it flew open—it was merely stuck in its frame after all. The sound of it pulling free echoed in the great cathedral’s sanctuary beyond.

Sunlight shone into the broken windows and filtered through the shards of stained glass at the top of the lofty dome, casting a fractured rainbow of color across the dusty mosaic floor. Sculpted saints and dancing flame captured in solid stone supported the dome, and through either a trick of the sunlight or some lingering magic, they all seemed to shine with the faintest of light, filling the dome with silvery radiance.

Aunn’s feet carried him into the sanctuary as his eyes drank it in. Tattered tapestries hung on the walls, their colors surprisingly vivid despite the passage of years and the depredations of rats and moths. Strands of silver thread still gleamed in some of them, though in places he saw the work of knives where thieves had cut the precious metal out of the fabric. The tapestries showed more saints of the Silver Flame, he imagined, engaged in the acts that had made them objects of the church’s veneration. None were familiar to him, but he saw mostly crusading warriors in gleaming armor, locked in mortal struggle with dragons, demons, undead horrors, and werewolves.

“I’m no saint,” he said aloud. His throat closed as tears sprang to his eyes. One of the tapestries showed a knight locked in battle with a giant, and for a moment he thought it was Vor, roaring to Kalok Shash as he confronted the demon-giant of the Wastes, his sword blazing with silver fire. The weight of all Aunn’s deeds and failures came down on his shoulders, too much to bear. He fell to his knees, then put his face to the cold stone floor.

Kelas had trained him practically since his birth to be a Royal Eye—a spy, an infiltrator, an assassin. He’d been taught to kill without pity or remorse, to lie with every breath, to betray those who considered him a
friend, and he’d done it all very well. He probably could have risen to Kelas’s position, perhaps even Thuel’s, with time.

Instead, he was kneeling on the floor of Fairhaven’s grand cathedral. He was an utter failure as a spy—twice in as many days, his disguise had failed and he’d been discovered, nearly costing him his life. But his failure had begun long before, when he allowed grief and remorse to gnaw at his heart, when he allowed the stirrings of conscience to blossom into actual morality. After he caused the deaths of Sevren Thorn and Zandar Thuul, he tried to make a new life for himself, a new identity that would live according to his new principles.

And even that had failed. Donning Kelas’s face had turned him into a spy again. He had let innocents die in order to protect his disguise, and he had let his life become a web of lies again.

He lifted his head and wiped his eyes, his spine tingling faintly. He looked at the floor, where his hands had disturbed the dust and revealed the mosaic beneath—the image of a foot armored in silver plate. Looking around, he could make out some of the image, except where it was covered by a large round table—an armored figure enfolded by a leaping tongue of silver flame. He crawled toward the figure’s head, sweeping the dust aside so he could see her face.

“It doesn’t look anything like her,” he said aloud, but hearing the words aloud made him realize the absurdity of the thought—he’d expected to see Dania’s face enshrined in a mosaic on the floor of a temple that had been abandoned at least forty years before she was born. No, he realized—this was probably Tira Miron, the paladin who had joined herself with a pillar of supernatural fire to become the Voice of the Flame, the founder of the faith.

She floated in the midst of the fire, holding a sword aloft in one hand. Her face was exquisite, even from a merely artistic perspective—a look of rapture in her uplifted eyes and full lips. There was something at once erotic and unspeakably holy about her face. The tingling at the back of his neck turned into a chill washing through his whole body, a cool fire that coursed through his veins.

Why do you resist me?

He wasn’t sure whether he heard the voice or remembered it from all his fevered dreams, but it seemed suddenly as though Tira’s eyes gazed directly into his.

“Because I’m not worthy of you,” he said aloud. He closed his eyes, trying to hold back a fresh flow of tears.

Then he felt a soft hand on his cheek, and without thinking, he pressed his lips to hers. They were warm and moist, and her breath filled his lungs like searing fire.

You are worthy
, she breathed into his mouth,
and you are mine
.

W
ind and thunder followed Gaven through the streets of the city. If soldiers were still chasing him, they had only to follow the beacons of lightning that flashed over him. It didn’t matter—he couldn’t have stopped the storm if he had wanted to, and if his plan somehow worked, he would soon have sanctuary of a sort.

He had never known Fairhaven especially well, and he hadn’t been in the city in more than a quarter century. But the elves of Aerenal preserved traditions stretching back ten thousand years—he doubted that their descendants in this city had moved their little enclave since the last time he’d seen it. The trick would be finding his way there, once he left the old, straight streets that defined the basic pattern of the city.

Those streets, like the spokes of a wheel with the palace at its hub, brought him quickly to the southwestern part of town, then he lost himself in a maze of smaller streets and alleys. The storm’s fury died as he tried to navigate through the neighborhood, as the panic of his flight faded into perplexity. If pursuers still followed him, they had lost their lightning beacon.

So many new buildings filled the area that he began to question whether he could be in the right place, unless the Aereni had abandoned their enclave. Then he decided to turn down an alley he had already walked past twice, and suddenly he was there. One moment, the buildings crowding close on either side were freshly plastered white apartment homes, smooth, window-less walls rising high overhead, but a few steps later the alley widened into a little courtyard paved with ancient flagstones, and the buildings on its three sides might have been transplanted directly from Aerenal. Built of exotic woods, the buildings rose in tiers topped with sculpted spires and magical flames that washed the square below in dancing green and purple light.

Apparently unwilling or unable to trust Fairhaven’s city watch to protect their little enclave, the elves had their own soldiers, gaunt warriors
in ornate armor, carrying poleaxes with elaborately carved, probably impractical heads. The elves stood at attention as Gaven blundered out of the alleyway, shifting their grips on their weapons. The one on the left, Gaven noticed, bore a tattooed skull design that obscured his true face, making him look like one of the deathless. He fixed a wary gaze on Gaven and scowled. The one on the right, though, was already dead—his withered flesh clung to his bones and dim green flame flickered in his eye sockets.