Dragon War: The Draconic Prophecies - Book Three (32 page)

“My daughter is dying.” She looked down at Gaven’s limp form in her arms, as if suddenly remembering what she was doing. “You will help me. Come.”

“Revered One,” the deathless soldier behind Aunn said, “these men are intruders into the sanctity of your temple.”

“Do you presume to bind what I have chosen to loose? You may assist us if you wish, but you will not stand in the way any longer.”

Senya strode forward and started down the stairs. Aunn followed close behind her, giving the deathless soldier a wide berth. The soldier glared at him, clutching the haft of his broken poleaxe, but he obeyed Senya and stayed out of Aunn’s way. Senya seemed to float down the stairs, still showing no sign that carrying Gaven’s heavy body was the least bit difficult. Indeed, each step she descended—each step that brought her closer to the sanctuary at the heart of the temple building—seemed to increase the sense of power or presence that emanated from her.

The entry area at the bottom of the stairs was deserted and deathly still. Aunn wondered where the dozens of elves who had been there a moment before had gone, but then he saw them all gathered in the sanctuary, kneeling on the floor in silent prayer or contemplation. Senya walked directly to the sanctuary, but Aunn hesitated.

“Stay with me,” Senya said, not looking back at him. “I need your help.”

What is going on? Aunn wondered, hurrying to catch up.

In Shae Mordai, Senya’s ancestor had been imperious, angry with her wayward descendant, and uncooperative. Now she was imploring him for help. Was Senya engaged in some elaborate hoax, pretending to be a representative of her ancestor in order to swindle her distant relatives? It didn’t seem likely—Senya was a mercenary, not a thief. She could be manipulative, but she usually preyed on men’s desire rather than their piety. And if all this was an act, it was a very convincing one.

The elves gathered in the sanctuary had left a path open from the door to a raised area at the far end of the room, flanked by smoldering braziers that breathed billowing clouds of perfumed smoke. Senya drifted between the kneeling crowds, an almost palpable aura of holy power surrounding her now that she was in her sacred place. The elves pressed their faces to the floor, and Aunn stumbled along behind her, not sure what to do but unwilling to be separated from the one person who accepted his presence in the temple.

Senya dropped to one knee and laid Gaven on the floor between the braziers. Aunn hurried to his friend’s side. He hadn’t noticed upstairs how ashen Gaven’s face was, or the cut across his upper arm. Gaven was still breathing, but slowly. Aunn pulled Gaven’s broken armor out of the way and examined the wound. Its blackened edges suggested the work of a poisoned blade.

“What happened?” he asked Senya. “Who did this?”

“I do not know,” Senya said. “There was another body on the floor.”

Aunn glanced at the door, and saw two elf soldiers carrying a body between them. Wisps of smoke still rose from the figure they carried. Elves kneeling near the door turned to look and wrinkled their noses.

An assassin? he wondered. Here? Why did Gaven come here at all, and how had an assassin found him here?

“You asked for my help, lady,” he said softly. “What would you have me do?”

“Save Gaven.”

Aunn pressed his fingers to Gaven’s neck to feel his pulse. It was an excruciating moment before he felt a single beat. “Have you no power to aid him?”

“First I must heal this body. That will require time that Gaven does not have.”

Aunn slid his healing wands from his pouch and chose the most potent of the three—the one he had once told Dania could bring her back from death’s door. Remembering Dania’s face and Tira’s holy kiss, he breathed a silent prayer that its magic could help Gaven. He felt the wand tingle in his hand, and power coursed through his other hand where it rested on Gaven’s chest. A blush of color spread at once across Gaven’s face, and he drew a deep, shuddering breath.

Aunn sighed with relief and slid the wand back into his pouch. The wound on Gaven’s arm had closed, and the blackened flesh was slowly regaining its normal color as the healing magic continued its work.

*  *  *  *  *

Gaven heard the sound of a great kettle drum, a single beat that echoed once, like distant thunder. He was walking on a stone floor between two rows of round columns. Shadows flitted behind the columns, hazy memories and indistinct visions that refused to resolve into defined shapes, sliding away from his gaze. He had a vague sense that his father was nearby, but his voice and his footsteps echoed in the great stone hall and drew no answer.

Another beat of the drum, louder, startled him. There wasn’t supposed to be another beat, he felt, though he couldn’t quite understand why he believed that. He stopped walking and looked around, behind him, and up past the towering columns to a star-filled sky, and another beat came.

The next beat was softer, as though Gaven was soaring up and away from the great drum, but now it was a steady pulse, and he could feel it in his chest even after he could no longer hear it. He opened his eyes.

He lay on his back on a cold, hard stone floor. Someone or something was kneeling beside him, leaning over to peer at his face with blank white eyes. The creature had no face, just an expanse of gray skin with the merest hint of a nose and a lipless gash for a mouth, all surrounded by wild shocks of white hair. His first thought was that this was some sort of wraith whose task was to receive him into the land of the dead, for the room he was in seemed fitting for the marble halls of Dolurrh, the shadowy realm where souls were said to pass when their mortal life had ended.

But no, he felt quite alive, his heart beating strong and steady in his chest. And the faceless thing had broken into a smile with surprising warmth, which made its white eyes sparkle. “Gaven!” it said. “Welcome back to the land of the living. How do you feel?”

The voice was familiar, but …

“Who are you?” Gaven asked.

“Oh!” The face pulled back, and it seemed to take on more definition, fleeting through vague hints of a few other familiar faces. “I’m Aunn.”

“Aunn?” The assertion made no sense at first. He knew at least three different faces that Aunn had worn—Darraun’s, the one he had called Aunn, and Kelas’s. Was this what a changeling looked like when he wasn’t … changed?

“This is my real face,” Aunn said. “I don’t want to hide it any more.”

Gaven’s mind was beginning to clear, and memories washed over him. “What happened? Where’s Senya?”

“Senya’s right here.” Aunn jerked his head behind him.

Gaven lifted his head and saw her, kneeling on the floor behind Aunn, her back turned toward him. Then he saw what she was facing—a temple full of elves!

“Thunder!” he breathed. “What are all these people doing here?”

“I think they came for the same reason I did,” Aunn said. “They heard thunder in their temple.”

“Phaine attacked me in Senya’s room.”

“Phaine?” A look of alarm transformed Aunn’s face, and he turned to look toward the temple doors. “I think you killed him, Gaven.”

“Finally.” The memory of Phaine torturing him at the Dragon Forge was still fresh.

“I wouldn’t be so dismissive if I were you,” Aunn whispered. “The death of a dragonmarked heir is going to be investigated, even if he was an assassin. That’s attention you can’t afford, and there are a lot of witnesses here.”

Gaven sat up. He still wasn’t sure why he’d been lying on the floor of the Aereni temple, but he felt healthy and strong—almost as good as he’d felt just before Phaine attacked him. “You’re right,” he said. “Time to run again. And I’m guessing you don’t have traveling papers for me.”

“I’m sorry. But even if I did, they wouldn’t do you much good after this.”

Senya still knelt with her back to him. Was she angry with him? And why were they here in front of this silent assembly of somber-looking elves?

“Senya?” he called.

Aunn shifted between them. “Uh, Gaven—”

Senya stood slowly and spread her arms to the assembled elves. Her skin had an unhealthy pallor he didn’t like, and he started to his feet behind her, but Aunn pulled him back down.

“She’s not well,” Gaven whispered.

Aunn shook his head.

“Sons and daughters of Aerenal,” Senya said—but it wasn’t Senya speaking, it was her ancestor’s voice, speaking in clear Elven. She was channeling the spirit of her ancestor again, as she had the night before. “I thank you for your concern for this temple of your ancestors and for your priestess, my daughter Senya. I am sorry to inform you that Senya Alvena Arrathinen is dead.”

Gaven bolted to his feet. “Dead?”

Aunn took his arm and pulled him back to his knees. “It appears you killed her as well.”

F
lames erupted from the Gatekeeper seal, just ahead of Elestrissa’s charge. The Mosswood Warden stumbled as though an arrow had hit her, and Rienne’s first impulse was to scan for the archer. Then the flames raced along the lines of the seal, forming a wall of terrible fire encircling the battlefield, burning in every color and no color at all, and Rienne understood. The seal was broken, the battle lost, just as victory came within their grasp.

“We are undone,” Elestrissa said, her pace faltering.

“Keep going,” Rienne said. “We might still defeat the Blasphemer, keep him from breaking the next seal.”

“It is not to be. Your dream—”

“Damn my dream! I’m writing my own destiny today.”

Elestrissa seemed to take heart, but she couldn’t match her earlier pace, and Rienne surged ahead. Maelstrom was a whirlwind of steel surrounding her, cutting a path through a fresh wall of barbarian resistance.

Then she heard the voice.

It was a high keening, like a woman mourning or the call of a falcon, and it seemed to sing in her mind as much as in her ears. Beneath it was the merest hint, beyond hearing, of a thousand unearthly voices babbling, which reminded her of the inhuman sounds of the Soul Reaver’s hordes at Starcrag Plain. The voices were drawing nearer, like a dragon eel slowly surfacing in dark water.

One challenge at a time, she told herself. First the Blasphemer, and after that—if there is an after—I can deal with whatever is coming through the seal.

Barbarians fell away from her like water before the prow of a ship. Elestrissa, at least, was still behind her. If others survived, they were straggling farther behind, caught in the mire of the barbarian hordes.

She saw the Blasphemer, silhouetted against a wall of dragonfire, and
her dream sprang to life around her. He was a towering figure in blood-spattered plate armor, twisting horns rising above his fiendish visage. A long tail snaked out behind him as he strode toward her, behind the last remnants of his personal defenders.

He spoke, and his voice rang in her ears above the din of battle. “So here is the one they are calling Dragonslayer, the bearer of
Barak Radaam.”
He pointed his own curved sword at her, and she felt a twinge of fear. “Destroy her!” he shouted, and the barbarians around him roared in fury as they surged ahead.

Maelstrom sprang back into motion, parrying every blow that came at her, killing in a ruthless rhythm. Maelstrom whirled and Rienne danced, her body and the steel blade in perfect coordination—a step, a parry, a jab, a jump. Then the Blasphemer began a strange chant, words she didn’t recognize, words that couldn’t possibly be words in any mortal tongue, and pain stabbed through her ears. Her feet faltered, nearly sending her onto the point of a barbarian’s sword, but Maelstrom accommodated, dashing the other sword aside and whirling around to take off its wielder’s head.

Maelstrom wanted to get to the Blasphemer.

It was a strange realization. Rienne had never been inclined to personify her blade, as strongly attached to it as she was. It was precious to her, but it was steel, a weapon—not a person. It was an extension of her body and her will—she had never imagined it had a will of its own.

Perhaps it was merely that she had never before been this close to what Maelstrom apparently wanted. Or perhaps it had concealed its desire from her, all the while impelling her to follow the course that had brought her here. Had Maelstrom planted the idea in her head, when Jordhan rescued her from the Thaliost jail, to fly westward into the Reaches? Had it convinced her not to pursue Gaven when she saw his storms in the south? Was she the tool in Maelstrom’s hand, the extension of its will, rather than the other way around?

Whether its influence had been absent or merely subtle in the past, there was no denying it now. When one barbarian fell, the blade led her into the open space left behind, drawing her closer to the Blasphemer. Every step away from him felt heavy, every step toward him easy and light. He was a force of gravity, drawing her in through her sword.

Why? she wondered.

As Maelstrom brought her closer to the Blasphemer, his maddening chant grew louder and her pain intensified with it. The words assaulted her, and blood began to trickle from her ringing ears. Suddenly, she understood
the title he bore in the Prophecy—his words were a blasphemy, an utter denial of existence and meaning.

But the Blasphemer’s end lies in the void, in the maelstrom that pulls him down to darkness
.

The words of her dream renewed her courage. They also seemed to give her respite from the pain, so she tried speaking them aloud. “Dragons fly before the Blasphemer’s legions, scouring the earth of his righteous foes.” She could barely hear her own voice, but the pain in her ears faded—and she realized she couldn’t hear the Blasphemer while she spoke, as though the words of the Prophecy negated his blasphemous chant. “Carnage rises in the wake of his passing, purging all life from those who oppose him.”

He grinned as if he’d heard her, sharp white teeth gleaming in his red devil’s face. She was almost to him now, close enough to see the sweat on his brow and feel the searing heat of the wall of flames behind him.

“Vultures wheel where dragons flew, picking the bones—”

The earth beneath her interrupted, rumbling, then shaking so violently that the barbarians surrounding her staggered into each other or fell on the ground. She rode the bucking earth, hopping lightly as she felled more of her enemies, drawing ever closer to the Blasphemer. But she expected to see the ground split open at any moment and release its brood of chaos, as it had at Starcrag Plain.