a forward roll across the grass, found his feet at the end of the roll, and kept running. Gaven scowled, and another bolt struck right in the man’s path. That made him falter. The man leaped to the side and came down hard, one of his swords skittering away across the grass. Gaven looked back at the airship and frowned.
Destruction was so easy. He had acquired the power of the Storm Dragon, and it would be so simple to take up that mantle and become a god of devastation, a rival to the Devourer. Simple and so tempting. He looked back at the man. He was still advancing-so determined to meet his doom.
“Curse you,” Gaven muttered. “Don’t make me kill you.”
With a breath, Gaven sent a gale to blow the pest away. The man faltered in the face of the wind, turning his head to draw breath, but he strained, still pushing his way forward. Gaven waved his hand, and the wind whipped into a cyclone. Gaven sent it for the man, hoping to lift him off his feet and carry him away.
But the idiot dropped to his knees, sank his fingers into the earth, and held on tight to wait out the wind. Gaven roared his frustration, and the wind howled in answer before blowing itself out.
Gaven tried to swallow his rage, and he forced the wind around him to set him down. He was tired, and he clutched the ash-black staff in both hands, leaning on it as his feet settled to the ground. The man looked up, grabbed both swords, and got to his feet.
“What’s your name?” Gaven called.
The man gave a small salute with his twin swords. He stood a head shorter than Gaven. He was not strongly built, but his movements were quick and precise. His hair and his neatly trimmed beard were dark brown, but his temples were gray. His armor was well-worn leather, and the shoulders of his cloak had been bleached almost white by the sun.
“Bordan d’Velderan, heir of House Tharashk,” he said. “I assume the formalities of declaring your arrest and demanding your surrender are pointless.”
Gaven sighed. Surrender-the idea held some appeal. To stop running, stop fighting for his freedom and whatever feeble hold on sanity he still had. Surrender and let fate run its course.
No. He shifted the staff to his left hand and drew his greatsword.
“You’re all alike, you know,” Bordan said, stepping a few paces closer. “You criminals and fugitives. You all think you’re better than the law, more important. You think you’ve done nothing wrong, you’re just misunderstood, you’ve been treated unjustly. You think the law should make an exception for you. Every petty thief and small-time thug thinks the same way you do.”
“Don’t be so sure you can see into my mind,” Gaven said. At the same time, he wondered-should he not return to Dreadhold and pay for his crimes?
Bordan stepped closer. “See? That’s exactly what I mean. You all think you’re different than the others. Sure, Gaven, you’re unique-just as every dragonshard that falls from the sky is unique. But they’re all the shattered parts of the same dragon.”
Gaven saw the sky above the City of the Dead, the Ring of Siberys shining bright as dragonshards rained down, clattering on rooftops and cobblestones. Then the bright streak that was the Eye of Siberys. A shattered part of the same dragon? Perhaps, but one with a part to play.
Bordan leaped for him, his swords moving in a deadly, whirling dance. Gaven swung his greatsword reflexively, cutting a low arc toward the other man’s legs. Bordan adjusted the pattern of his blades to deflect the blow, their clashing blades sparking, and the momentum of his charge carried him past Gaven.
No, Gaven decided. He would not surrender. He had a part to play. He jammed the staff into the sheath on his back, then stepped forward, his greatsword whirling toward Bordan’s head. Bordan crossed his blades to stop Gaven’s sword and hold it, trembling against the bigger man’s tremendous strength.
“You think you’re better than all the others,” he said, “but you’re not.”
Gaven wrenched his sword free and swung it in another low arc. Bordan stumbled back out of his reach, unable to parry in time. Gaven pressed his advantage, trying to keep him off balance by driving him farther backward. Unable to recover his footing, Bordan threw himself backward into a roll. As he came up, he batted Gaven’s greatsword aside and found a balanced stance again.
“I don’t want to kill you,” Gaven said.
“Why not?” Bordan’s swords blurred as they parried Gaven’s swings and exploited every opening, putting Gaven on the defensive. “Would that violate your criminal’s code? You’ve murdered before, Gaven. Why not kill me too?”
“I didn’t say I won’t. Just that I don’t want to.” Gaven stomped one foot on the ground, unleashing a thunderous blast of air that knocked Bordan backward, battering him off his feet. He raised his greatsword and advanced. Destruction was so easy.
Bordan lolled on the ground, still reeling from Gaven’s concussive blast. Thunder rolled overhead, and Gaven growled his fury.
An axe clanged against his sword as he swung it down, then the dwarf holding it barreled into him and knocked him to the side. He recognized the scarlet-shirted, long-braided leader of the dwarves from Vathirond. He staggered under her weight, and wrestled to free his body and his sword from the tangle.
Bordan had found his feet and his swords, and was circling around him for a clear swing. With a heave, Gaven swung the dwarf around, planting her between Bordan and himself.
“Bastard,” Bordan growled. He lunged and cut a long line in Gaven’s arm, the only exposed skin he could reach.
With a growl of pain, Gaven pushed the dwarf to the ground and sent her axe flying, bringing his sword up to block Bordan’s flurry of steel.
He was floating, disconnected from the blur of steel, the sweat, the straining muscles. He saw it all-saw it so clearly. The flurry of Bordan’s swords resolved itself into weaving patterns, just as the tunnels of the Sky Caves had revealed their patterns to him. Seeing the paths of the whirling blades, he had no trouble blocking the strikes, cutting through the defenses. The dwarf found her feet and joined Bordan’s assault, but his sword was fast enough to block them both.
“Velderan,” he mused. “Part of House Tharashk. Do you carry its mark, the Mark of Finding? Is that how you found me?”
Bordan’s eyes narrowed, and he paused before answering.
“Rienne led us right to you,” he said.
Rienne. A fresh surge of rage welled up in Gaven’s chest. A blast of lightning exploded around Bordan, lifting him off his feet and hurling him away. The dwarf staggered back as well, though she kept her feet this time.
Rienne led them to him. Rienne summoned the dwarves to Krathas’s office in Vathirond. Rienne sent for the Sentinel Marshals who arrested him twenty-six years ago. Why?
“Rienne is here?” Gaven said. He pushed past the dwarf-she and Bordan no longer mattered-and strode toward the fallen airship.
Apparently Bordan didn’t realize that he’d become irrelevant. Gaven heard him charge up behind him, and swept his sword behind him in a half-hearted, one-handed swing. He half turned around, thrust a palm toward Bordan, and drove him back in a blast of wind. Then he broke into a run, carried by the wind.
Rienne hunched down in the saddle and urged the magebred mare to greater speed. The cloudy sky ahead of her grew blacker by the minute, and lightning flashed among the clouds. That probably meant that her pursuers had found Gaven.
She had first spotted the airship shortly after leaving Vathirond, and she kept telling herself that it was unreasonable to assume the ship was following her. Even so, she had tried to choose paths that blocked her from the sky. She didn’t suppose it mattered-if they were trying to follow her to Gaven, they would have a better chance of finding him than she did.
And she suspected that was exactly what had happened. When she reached the edge of the Mournland, she turned to the south mostly on a hunch, and she saw the airship do the same. Not long after, though, she lost sight of the ship. When storm clouds had started to form over the sky ahead of her, fear clenched her heart.
What am I afraid of? she thought. That they’ll catch Gaven? Or that he’ll kill more innocent people?
She reached the crest of a hill and almost fell out of the saddle in surprise. The land sloped gently down the other side of the hill to a wide, bowl-shaped valley, then rose up into steeper hills, the foothills of the Seawalls. On the far side of the valley, she saw the airship lying askew on the ground, an inferno of leaping flames and splintering
