Haldren stared through the spyglass at the dragon’s crumpled body. Vaskar did not stir. He had watched Vaskar’s defeat with satisfaction diluted by growing rage. Vaskar had brought his plans to ruin, so it pleased him to see the dragon’s ambitions quashed as well. At the same time, Vaskar’s defeat left room for Gaven to seize what Vaskar had sought. Gaven-the pathetic madman that had started all this, without having the slightest idea what he was doing. Gaven was supposed to be a tool, a pawn Haldren could use to manipulate Vaskar and to facilitate his own rise to power. Instead, the bastard had stolen Senya, thwarted Vaskar, and appeared out of nowhere to take part in the ruin of Haldren’s plans.
“If I achieve nothing else in this lifetime,” he whispered, “I will destroy him.”
“You aim to destroy a god?” Senya said.
“He’s not a god.”
“Not yet. But his power is already greater than yours.”
“What did he do to you, Senya? How did he bend you so completely to him?”
“He didn’t bend me to his will. That’s how you work with your magic and your oratory. You taught me to work that way as well, using my body. And oh, you taught me well-well enough that the disciple became the master. I had you wrapped around my finger. But Gaven-he didn’t bend me. He straightened me out.”
Senya’s words stabbed Haldren’s heart and poured ice into his gut. “You… used me?” he whispered, quivering with rage.
“Of course.” Her voice was not cruel or bitter, just… dismissive. Utterly calm and cold. How could he have been such a fool?
He turned away from her and urged his horse forward a few steps. “Do you see the warforged?” he asked, trying to keep his voice as calm as hers.
“I saw him last on the east side of the field, riding hard.”
“Has he gone mad? What is he doing?”
“Cart was never good at standing by and watching a battle unfold. He was made for war, as he said, built by Cannith to be a soldier.”
“No,” Haldren breathed. He had put the spyglass back to his eye, and finally found Cart near the middle of the field. “He was evidently made for treachery. He’s talking to Gaven.”
“Don’t be absurd, Haldren. No one is more loyal to you than Cart.”
“If he treats with my enemy, he is my enemy.”
“I wonder if you have any friends left.”
Haldren surveyed the battlefield again. Ir’Fann’s infantry was gone, wiped from the field, leaving a strange calm on the eastern side. No wonder Cart had ridden that way. Kadra’s knights had fallen as well, which meant that if she hadn’t been dead when he saw her before, she certainly was now. The knight phantoms he’d seen earlier had actually rallied ir’Cashan’s troops on the west side, but there was no sign of ir’Cashan herself. Her death had probably caused her soldiers’ initial rout. He hadn’t seen Rennic Arak or his troops since the crevice opened-they had been at the vanguard, and were probably the first to fall. General Yeven, at least, was still alive: he had taken his command staff and retreated back up Bramblescar Gorge at about the same time as Cart had ridden off.
Haldren returned his gaze to Senya. “No,” he said, “none are left.”
As he spoke, something in the air caught his eye. A bright flash-lightning, perhaps? He almost dismissed it as yet another effect of the storm, but then he saw it again. An airship, a small one, and she was soaring closer to them through the storm.
“That’s Gaven’s ship,” Senya said.
“He’s not aboard, though.”
“You just saw him talking to Cart.”
“Well, if I can’t destroy him, perhaps I can at least destroy someone he loves.”
Rienne kept her eyes on the battlefield as Darraun piloted them around the storm. The skirmishes thinned on the south side, the Thrane side, and gave way to random clumps of monsters spreading over the plain to the east and shambling toward the Silver Woods. As the airship rounded the Crystal Spire and the raging storm, she saw more signs of battle-Haldren’s remaining troops struggling to hold the monsters off.
“I give better odds to the Thranes,” she said.
Darraun nodded. “Without the dragons, Haldren wouldn’t have had a chance.”
“So he had lost the battle even before the Crystal Spire appeared. His fate was sealed when the other dragons appeared to fight for Thrane.”
“Exactly.”
“What will he do?”
“Lick his wounds,” Darraun said. “He doesn’t take well to defeat.”
“Do you think he’ll try again someday?”
“If he gets out of this alive and manages to stay out of Dread-hold, yes.”
“Then I need to make sure he doesn’t.”
“Yes, we do,” Darraun said with a smile. The airship lurched, and his smile disappeared. Shaking his head, he renewed his concentration.
“I’m sorry. I’m distracting you.” Rienne turned back to the railing.
The Aundairian side of the field had boiled down to a single pitched battle on the western side. Haldren’s troops fought bravely, but they were completely encircled by the gibbering hordes. She watched sadly as the nightmarish host whittled away at the Aundairian formation, every fallen monster quickly replaced by another drawn to the battle from elsewhere on the field.
She pointed to the mouth of the small valley at the north end of the plain, the opening between the rocky wall of the Starpeaks and the Silver Woods where they had emerged into the Starcrag Plain. “There,” she said over her shoulder. “That’s the way we came, and I expect that’s where we’ll find Haldren.”
Darraun adjusted his course slightly, and they soared past the Aundairians’ last stand.
Rienne’s first indication that they had indeed found Haldren was a blast of fire exploding around the airship’s prow. Rienne tumbled away from the edge of the flames, unhurt, but she heard Darraun let loose a string of vehement and evocative curses. Flames danced along the arcane tracery in the hull, fire answering fire, and she knew that the ship’s bound elemental would rebel against Darraun’s control as it had when they fought the young red dragon.
“Bring us down!” she shouted, but there was no need. Darraun was already urging the airship downward, though Rienne couldn’t tell whether he exerted such enormous effort to force the airship down or to keep her from falling too fast. Beads of sweat trickled down his face, and he squeezed one eye shut to clear sweat or smoke from it-he didn’t dare release even one hand from the wheel.
Rienne leaned over a railing on the port side and looked below them to help guide Darraun to a relatively safe landing spot. She was so intent on getting the airship safely down that she almost forgot about Haldren’s imminent threat, until another burst of fire engulfed her. She cried out in pain and fell back away from the bulwarks. Darraun must have lost concentration, either because he was injured as well or out of concern for her, because the airship suddenly jerked to starboard and then plunged downward. Rienne scrambled for a grip on something, and finally managed to clutch at a web of rope netting that secured a few small crates to the deck. As soon as she was sure of her hold, she looked at Darraun.
His eyes were squeezed shut, and his knuckles were white on the wheel. The muscles in his neck stood out like cords pulled tight beneath his skin, and sweat glued short tendrils of blond hair to his forehead. She didn’t see any sign of serious injury, but if he didn’t regain control of the airship quickly they would both be dead. She felt powerless, and she didn’t like that feeling.
Keeping a hand on the ropes, she half climbed, half crawled to the helm. She had tried to help Darraun fly the Eye of the Storm when they first left Stormhome in search of Gaven, but he had said that if two minds tried to control the elemental at once it was less likely to respond, not more. Darraun had been the obvious one of them to try steering the vessel, both because of his expertise with magic and because his changeling nature might allow him to trick the elemental into believing that he was an heir of House Lyrandar. But at that moment, Darraun was failing, and it was about to cost them both their lives.
She seized the wheel, grabbing two spokes between the two that Darraun gripped. She felt the elemental’s
