Dragon War: The Draconic Prophecies - Book Three (33 page)

Instead, it erupted. Huge boulders streamed up from the ground and hurtled into the sky. Rienne watched in horror as a jagged shard flew skyward and crashed into Jordhan’s airship. Wood splinters flew out from the ship in every direction, then the fiery elemental ring burst loose, turning the ship into a tiny sun, a blinding flash of light. Then the light and the ship were gone.

Rienne went numb. Maelstrom was a dead weight in her hand, and she couldn’t feel the ground beneath her feet. If her heart still beat, she couldn’t feel it—just the vise grip of dread clutching her chest. Jordhan was gone.

The rock had erupted near the center of the seal, and the largest boulders were falling back down in that area. Rienne thought of the healer who had tended her, the faithful elders and children who, unable to fight, had sought to sustain the seal with their devoted prayers. They were certainly lost, caught in either the erupting stone or its return.

A hail of smaller stones, shattered from the great boulders, fell around her even as the ground kept roiling under her feet. She lost her balance, crashing into a barbarian. The collision sent the man’s club flying, but he clutched at her, pinning her sword arm against her side.

“I have her!” the barbarian shouted. “Hit her!”

An axe swept toward her face, but she planted her feet on the ground, shifted her weight low, and swung the man holding her into the weapon’s path. He lost his grip on her as the axe cut his spine, and Rienne shrugged him off before whirling to kill the axe wielder.

She found her balance and looked for the Blasphemer. With the eruption of the ground, chaos had seized the battlefield—any hint of formation or lines of engagement had vanished. She couldn’t see the Blasphemer, and Elestrissa’s towering form was nowhere in sight. Barbarians and Eldeen defenders alike scattered, running with their arms thrown over their heads to shield themselves from the falling stones. She heard no horns sounding a retreat, saw no banners marking a rallying point for either side. The only sounds were the rumble of the earth and the clatter of stones falling against shields and helmets and bodies. Soldiers and farmers, the barbarians of the Carrion Tribes and the wild folk of the western Reaches all ran headlong in every direction, barely bothering to swing their weapons at each other.

“Reachers!” she shouted over the tumult. “To me! For the Wood!”

Too much noise, too much confusion—

She held Maelstrom high and repeated her call. More boulders, smaller fragments of the shattering earth, flew into the air and crashed to the ground, more gravel pounded from the sky.

She searched the ground—someone in Elestrissa’s charge had carried a standard, the emerald oak symbol of the Reaches. She couldn’t see it. She started running back the way they had come, against the tide of people fleeing from the erupting stone.

She spotted a flash of green, all but trampled into the dirt, and made for it. A shifter swung a clumsy blow toward her head, but she ducked it and gutted her foe, and then pulled the standard from the sod and gore. She hoisted it over her head and cried out once more, “For the Reaches! For the Wood!”

Holding the standard high, she started back away from the center of the seal—not in the direction of Elestrissa’s charge, but off to the side, away from where she’d seen the Blasphemer, away from the wall of dragonfire. “For the Wood!” she cried again, and a few of the fleeing Eldeen defenders veered toward her.

Jordhan is dead, she thought. Elestrissa is fallen and her charge failed. The Gatekeepers’ seal is broken and Sovereigns know what’s emerging through it. But I can’t let these people scatter like sheep before wolves.

A ragged band formed around her, mostly farmers drafted to the militia who had managed to survive the onslaught of barbarians and dragons—most likely by running away. A few battle-worn soldiers fell in alongside her, and some rangers and hunters. Some shifters joined the band who might have been part of the Blasphemer’s forces for all she knew, but they took up the cry—“For the Reaches! For the Wood!”—and walked as comrades with the other Reachers, so she let them come.

One of the first to join the group was a human girl—Rienne couldn’t help but think of her as a girl, since she couldn’t have been older than twenty—armored in a suit of worked leather far too large for her slight frame. Her spear and armor both looked fresh from the artisan’s hands. She didn’t say a word, just drifted closer and closer to Rienne as more and more of the remnants of the Eldeen forces gathered around the standard.

“For the Reaches!” Rienne shouted for the hundredth time, lifting the banner as high as her arms could manage. The weight was too much for her fatigued body, and she stumbled off balance. The farmer girl caught her by the arm and took the standard from her hands.

“For the Wood!” the girl screamed.

Rienne smiled, and the girl smiled bashfully back.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’m Rienne.”

“Oh, I know who you are!” the girl said, beaming. “Everyone’s been talking about the Dragonslayer.”

“Have they?” The thought saddened her.

“I’m Cressa,” the girl offered.

“Where are you from, Cressa?”

“I grew up near Riverweep. It’s a little village on the river.”

Rienne smiled at the suggestion that Cressa—this girl one-third her age—was done growing up. “But now?”

Cressa’s smile faded and her eyes grew weary, and she suddenly looked older than Rienne had first thought. “I had just moved to Varna when the storm came.”

The storm. Rienne remembered watching it from the deck of Jordhan’s ship, as it formed in the Blackcaps and then swept across Lake Galifar to wash over Varna. She wondered again what part Gaven had played in that devastating tempest, but she no longer questioned whether she had made a mistake by not turning south to look for him.

“Lady?” Cressa said.

Rienne put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “I’m glad you escaped the city,” she said. “Did you fight the Aundairians there?”

Cressa snorted. “I fled the storm. I didn’t join the militia until after, thinking I’d get back at them.”

“But instead you faced the Blasphemer’s horde.”

“And fled again.” Cressa’s shoulders slumped. “I’m no warrior.”

“There are other parts to be played.”

Cressa brightened. “Do you think so?”

“Of course.” She thought of Jordhan, bravely but ineffectually clutching an axe and running to her side as she fought the black dragon. He’d been a pilot, never a warrior, and he met his end as a pilot.

The ground bucked beneath them again, sending farmers and rangers tumbling into each other all around her. Rienne kept her feet, and she noticed with approval that Cressa did as well—keeping her feet planted wide, her weight low, and her arms out for balance.

More shards of stone flew into the air, followed by columns of strange yellow fire roaring into the sky. Several people in Rienne’s little band cried out in fear. Cressa’s knuckles were white as she clutched the standard, but she shouted, “For the Reaches!” with such conviction that even Rienne felt stirred by her passion.

“For the Wood!” Rienne yelled with the rest of the survivors. “And for the world,” she added under her breath.

I
t was an accident,” Gaven said. An icy dagger of pain stabbed through his chest as Senya’s body turned to face him and her eyes burned into him. “She opened the door while I was fighting Phaine, and the lightning leaped to her. I tried to stop it!”

“But you could not,” the cold, clear voice of the ancestor said. Senya’s chest didn’t move with breath, though her lips moved to form the words. She extended a stiff hand to point a finger at Gaven. “And that failure is at the heart of the choice you must make.”

Gaven dropped his chin to his chest. “Yes.” He saw again the lines of his dragonmark twisting around him, like pathways traced in blood. He put a hand to his pouch, just to feel the weight of the dragonshard—

“Where is the shard?” he said, looking up at Senya again. “It was in your—in Senya’s room, in my hand. Where is it?”

“It is still there,” the ancestor said.

He leaped to his feet and started for the door, Aunn right behind him, but the kneeling elves stood to block their path. One drew a scimitar from his belt. Gaven looked back at Senya.

“Let the changeling go,” the ancestor said.

The elf with the scimitar made a show of letting Aunn past, with a slight bow, but he resumed his position, frowning at Gaven, as soon as Aunn had gone by. Gaven watched the rest of the assembled elves make way for the changeling and then close ranks behind him. Panic surged in his chest—he was trapped, held captive by these elves, and without the power of his dragonmark to call upon.

He took a deep breath, trying to steady his nerves. The ancestor had said the shard was right where he left it, and Aunn had told him that Phaine was dead. In a moment, Aunn would return with the dragonshard, and Gaven would have his mark back. He might still be captive, but at least he would be whole.

*  *  *  *  *

As he passed through the ranks of elves, Aunn tried not to watch their stony faces or meet the eyes that followed his passage. He fought the urge to blend in, to mimic their high cheekbones and pointed ears, their bright, colorful eyes, and their long, straight hair. He hated their attention and wanted to hide, to lose himself in their midst, but he could not.

As he drew near the door, he saw where the elves had laid Phaine’s body. The elf was severely burned, far worse than Senya or Gaven had been, but Aunn could still see the tracings of the Mark of Shadow on his cheek and the side of his neck. He still clutched a dagger with a strange black blade, as if it were made of solidified shadow. His eyes were open wide, but they were gleaming black pools, like a dark reflection of the opalescent eyes of the eladrins he’d met in the Towering Wood. Pupilless as they were, Aunn couldn’t help the feeling that they were watching him as he walked by. He hurried his pace and left the temple sanctuary.

The entryway and staircase were deserted. Aunn ran up the stairs, Phaine’s dead gaze haunting his thoughts. He reached the top floor and looked around. A hallway stretched away to either side, lined with small doors. One door stood open, a half-dozen yards to his left, and he had to assume that was his destination. Suddenly cautious, he moved slowly and as quietly as he could manage, sliding his mace from his belt as he crept toward the doorway.

He reached the door and peered around the corner. His trepidation had been for nothing, it appeared—no enemy crouched in the room waiting to attack him, and he spotted the blood-red dragonshard on the floor by the bed. He let out his breath and stepped into the room.

A cloud of shadows began to billow and pool in one corner of the room, fighting back the sunlight that streamed from a high window over the door. Aunn stopped and stared into the shadows, which deepened as he looked. A long steel blade caught the light as it emerged from the shadows, then the darkness melted away from a black-clad woman. The black eyes staring out from the cowl of her cloak suggested that this was another Thuranni, come to finish what Phaine had started, perhaps, or to find out why he hadn’t returned.

She turned her head with quick, small movements that made Aunn think of an insect looking for prey. Although it was hard to tell exactly where she was looking, Aunn was fairly sure her gaze lingered longest at the dragonshard on the floor across the room from her before she turned her full attention to him.

“Phaine is dead,” she said flatly. There was no doubt in her voice or on her face, as if Phaine’s death were the only possible explanation for his failure to return. Perhaps it was—Aunn had certainly been on more than one mission where he had been expected to take his own life if threatened with capture.

“Yes.” Aunn’s eyes darted to the shard and back to the elf woman. He saw her tense, ready to spring if he made a move for it. He decided not to make a move for it just yet.

“And Gaven?” This time it was a question.

Aunn chose his words carefully. “Phaine’s poison did its work.” Let them think he’s dead, he thought.

Her smile sickened him. His answer apparently gave her all the information she needed about the situation, because she stepped forward and swung her blade in a shining arc at his neck. He ducked the gleaming steel and dived for the dragonshard on the floor. He watched her feet as she reacted, spun, and lunged at him again, and he twisted away from where he thought her blade must be. One hand brushed against the dragonshard, then it skittered out of his grip, spitting a trail of sparks across the floor. He heard the woman’s blade scrape against the bed as she swung at him again.

Reaching for the shard again, he swung his mace in a backhanded arc with his left hand, trying only to give himself a bit of distance from her relentless attacks. She rewarded his desperate swing by taking a couple of quick steps back, even as the tip of her blade cut across the back of his hand. The mace slipped out of his grip and crashed into the wall, but he got his hand around the dragonshard.

The explosion threw him against the wall, stole his sight, and set his ears ringing so loudly he couldn’t hear any other sound. He fell onto the bed, tried to lift himself and found he couldn’t move at all. With the taste of Senya’s bedclothes in his mouth, he lay there and waited for the Thuranni’s blade to fall.

As his vision began to clear, he saw the elf’s shadowy shape heaving herself up off the floor. The thunder and lightning must have knocked her back as well, which explained why he was still alive. She staggered next to the bed, and Aunn still couldn’t move. Instead of swinging her scimitar at him, she yanked a pouch off her belt, then bent down and used the blade to nudge the dragonshard into it. She cast a glance over her shoulder, took a slow breath that seemed to draw shadows in to gather around her, and vanished in the gloom.

The shadows dissolved into wisps of dark mist as Aunn’s nerves prickled with the return of sensation and the echoes of pain. With a mighty effort, he worked his splayed arms beneath his body and heaved himself up off the bed, sending jolts of agony through his limbs and his head. The pain made his head swim again, and darkness close in around the edges of his vision, but he forced himself to stand. He had to find her, follow her somehow—or at least tell Gaven that the dragonshard was gone, stolen by House Thuranni.