contents of his myriad pouches, and taking stock of their now very limited supplies. He’d quaffed the last healing potion and the wound on his leg was already a faint scar. When Sabira returned from her latest circuit up and down the lake shore, she saw him paging through what was left of the Draconic dictionary.
He looked up as she approached.
“Ruined,” he said regretfully, showing her the ink-smeared pages. She could make out a few individual words here and there that hadn’t been destroyed by the water, but by themselves, they meant nothing. “I can’t believe they didn’t ward it against water damage.”
“I doubt they were expecting any rain in the Catacombs,” Sabira answered, but the sarcasm was perfunctory. Her mind was still out on the lake. Under it.
“Though it does look like a few entries survived here where the pages stuck together… hmm…,” the dwarf trailed off as he set the book back in his lap and began gently prying the leaves apart.
“How long do you intend to wait here, Marshal?”
Sabira looked over at Xujil, who’d returned from his own reconnaissance of the lakeshore, though he hadn’t been looking for Jester. He’d already written the warforged off.
“As long as it takes.”
“I should think that is highly inadvisable. The Spinner’s followers do patrol this lake, however irregularly. And there is still the matter of the sorceress, and your rescue miss-?”
“Don’t you dare try to tell me my duty,” Sabira snarled, interrupting him. “Nobody knows that call better than a Deneith, and no one answers it faster.”
She clenched her fist at her side to keep from punching him in the face. Mainly because he was right.
Xujil blinked at her.
“And stop doing that! What are you, some Hostdamned bird?”
The guide was spared from trying to formulate a response that wouldn’t get him hit by Greddark.
“Ha! I was right!”
Shooting Xujil one last furious look, Sabira turned back to the dwarf, attempting to rein in her temper.
“Right about what?”
“The translation. It was ‘the Warder dreams,’ right? If it had really been referring to Vult, the Warding Moon, going dark, it would have used this phrase here.” He pointed to an entry still legible through the wash of indigo ink. “That’s the phrase used about Rhaan, the Scribing Moon, in the first part of the couplet-‘the Book is closed.’ So that bit really is talking about the dark phase, but the dreaming part, that’s wrong. The word used is actually this one.” He flipped the page. “Dormant.”
“Dormant, dreams, what’s the difference? Maybe it just didn’t fit the rhyme scheme.” She didn’t want to talk poetry with the dwarf. It reminded her too much of Jester.
“The word is the same one used for a dragonmark that hasn’t yet manifested.”
That brought Sabira up short. Each of the twelve moons of Eberron was associated with one of the dragonmarked Houses. Olarune, the Sentinel, was the moon tied to her own House’s Mark of Sentinel. Vult was linked to the Mark of Warding.
To House Kundarak.
“So you’re saying the actual translation is talking about an unmarked member of your House?”
“I am.”
“And are you? Unmarked, I mean?” She hadn’t seen a dragonmark on him anywhere, or noticed him using any powers she would associate with one, but that was hardly conclusive. The mark could easily be hidden beneath his clothing, and they hadn’t really needed any warding.
“I am,” he said again.
So the snippet of Prophecy that she refused to believe in mentioned both a “daughter of stone and Sentinel” and an unmarked member of House Kundarak. Both of which happened to be here, now, five days before Rhaan was set to go dark again. Wonderful.
“What about the silent Anvil part?” she asked, dreading the answer.
“I don’t know,” Greddark admitted, shaking his head. “That part of the dictionary is completely ruined. I don’t know what it’s referring to-only that it’s not referring to Eyre going dark.”
Eyre was the Making Moon, associated with House Cannith. Sabira couldn’t help but wonder if Jester would have been able to help them figure it out.
Then another thought struck her.
“But Tilde didn’t have any dwarves with her. So if that’s really what the Prophecy is talking about, she couldn’t have fulfilled it, or opened any locks.”
Greddark shrugged helplessly.
“But I — we — can.”
“Maybe.”
Sabira frowned in disgust.
“Do you ever feel like a piece on the world’s biggest Conqueror board?”
The corner of Greddark’s mouth twitched.
“Well, that is sort of the point of a prophecy, isn’t it?”
And it was exactly why she hated it. Bad enough being manipulated by other people. Throw in the Sovereign Host or the Silver Flame or the dragons or something greater than them all, and it was like saying nothing you did mattered. No choice you made was truly yours; it had been preordained millennia before your race was even born. You were nothing but a performer in some cosmic play, acting out a script you could never see but were doomed to follow, regardless.
To give credence to prophecy was to admit that life was meaningless, and that was a worldview she simply would not- could not-ascribe to.
“Well, to Dolurrh with that,” she spat. “We’re not here to fulfill any Hostforsaken prophecy. We’re here to get Tilde, get that artifact, and get out. Nothing more.”
Greddark’s grin widened above his short, straggly beard.
“You really don’t like being told what to do, do you?”
Sabira couldn’t help but grin back.
“I guess it’s the dwarf in me.”
Then the smile faltered and she became serious again.
“We’ll wait till morning. Or what passes for morning in this pit, anyway. If Jester hasn’t made his way back to us by then, we’re moving on.”
“I do not understand your reluctance,” Xujil said. Sabira was ready to punch him after all, but when she turned to him, his face was creased with perplexity rather than challenge. “You must know the warforged has perished.”
“I’ll tell you what I know. Of all the people under my command, Jester was the only one who wanted to turn back, and I convinced him to stay. Wherever he is right now, he wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for me. So we’re staying put, to give him as much of a chance to find us as we possibly can. I owe him that much.”
Xujil started to blink and stopped himself. Instead, he inclined his head to her.
“As you will, Marshal.”
He walked off, and Sabira returned to the shoreline, to watch, to wait, and above all, to hope.
Sul, Rhaan 1, 998 YK
Tarath Marad, Xen’drik.
Sabira awoke from a vision of Elix drowning in the darkness of the sunless sea, Jester holding one ankle and Guisarme holding the other as he struggled to make it back up to the surface. To her.
Greddark’s hand was on her shoulder, and he looked wary, like she might have tried to hit him in her sleep. Given the nature of her dreams, she probably had.
“It’s morning, Saba, and there’s still no sign. What do you want to do?”
It was the same question she’d asked the warforged bard, and her answer was the same as his had been.
“We move on,” she decided, climbing to her feet. Though, in truth, it wasn’t much of a choice. They couldn’t go back. The leviathan had eaten their boat, and there were no mushrooms on this side of the lake with which to replace it.
