presence immediately. It pulled away from the touch of her mind like an unbroken horse shying or bucking from a trainer’s hand. She pulled her hands away from the wheel as she imagined a bucking stallion’s hooves lashing out at her-the elemental’s resistance was so violent it felt physical. The ground was dangerously close, though, so she tried again.
This time she did not pull away when the elemental reacted. She felt Darraun’s mental presence there as well, and she understood what he had meant in Stormhome. It would have been easy for the two of them to pull in two different directions, to give the elemental two competing voices to listen to. Too many warriors did exactly that-they let their minds give one command to their swords and their bodies another. Rienne’s training had taught her the alternative. Rather than throwing another rope around the wild elemental’s neck, she focused her attention on strengthening Darraun’s grip, just as the mind could heighten and enhance the body’s reflexes. One hand at a time, she shifted her grip on the wheel so that she held the same spokes Darraun did, and their hands touched even as they both grasped smooth wood.
The airship pulled out of her fall so suddenly that the lurch almost threw them overboard, but they held the wheel and managed to keep their feet. Rienne opened her eyes and saw Darraun smiling at her across the wheel, still tense but seeming far less panicked. She returned his smile just as another of Haldren’s fireballs burst between them.
It stung her eyes with heat and brilliant light, scorched her face, and even seared her lungs as she gasped in surprise. Pain overwhelmed her, and she slumped to the deck.
CHAPTER 50
Gaven fell.
The cold radiance of the Crystal Spire failed to light the sides of the chasm, so he fell blind, just as he had fallen when he found the nightshard. Time vanished, and his sense of motion failed as well, so he felt as though he hung suspended in the column of light. He might have fallen for a matter of seconds, but it seemed like hours.
Strangely calm, he kept his feet below him and stretched his arms to the side, one hand clenching the spear he had made from the Eye of Siberys. The Heart of Khyber continued its orbit around his body, but the lightning trailing behind it had vanished in the overwhelming light that bathed him. Air rushing past his ears was the only sound, and it faded into a dull roar.
Slowly a shape took form below him-the only feature he could make out in the light. A mouth gaped wide to receive him, like the jaws of Khyber waiting to engulf him when he reached the end of his fall. The Crystal Spire seemed to pour out of that mouth like lightning from Vaskar’s maw. The shape grew larger, though he couldn’t tell whether he fell toward it or it surged up to meet him.
Then it was upon him: the face of a great dragon carved into ancient stone. Though the storm raged far above him now, he called a gust of wind to stop his fall and planted his feet gently to one side of the dragon’s mouth. He barely remembered in time to make sure that Cart landed safely on the other side. To his credit, the warforged made no sound that indicated he’d been worried about the fall. His face, of course, was unreadable.
The First of Sixteen descended to this gate. The Soul Reaver spoke to his mind, bypassing both ears and language, but carrying the same grumbling roar he had sensed when he first saw the Soul Reaver high above the battlefield. Any who would follow in his paths must be prepared for what lies beyond.
Gaven peered into the darkness for a sign of the Soul Reaver, cursing the brilliance of the Crystal Spire that blinded his eyes without illuminating the shadows around it. Only the Heart of Khyber in its steady rotation cast a faint strobe of light around the chamber. Gaven had a vague sense of a dome arching overhead and smooth, round tunnels leading off into darkness. “And what if I don’t want to follow his paths?” he called into the nothingness.
Cart looked at him strangely-the Soul Reaver evidently hadn’t spoken in his mind.
Then I will kill you.
A wail filled Gaven’s mind, different from the torrent of thoughts with which the Soul Reaver had assaulted him in the air. That attack had called his own mind up against him, but this was an intrusion, a blast of psychic force so great that his vision began to cloud over. He clamped his hands to his ears but couldn’t block the sound, and squeezed his eyes shut to no avail. He dropped to one knee, searching for the still point he had found in his mind before, the focus that would enable him to shrug off the psychic attack again.
“The Bronze Dragon… no, the Bronze Serpent…”
His mind reeled, and though he rose once more to his feet and opened his eyes to search for the source of the assault, he could do nothing more than stumble half blind along the nearest tunnel, careening off the smooth stone walls.
Rienne opened her eyes and cried out-she was falling. Then she realized that an arm was firmly wrapped around her waist, holding her over a shoulder-Gaven? Her fall stopped abruptly, and Darraun crumpled to the ground beneath her. She rolled free and scrambled back to him, trying to get her bearings at the same time.
The Eye of the Storm loomed over them, grounded again, and Darraun had evidently just jumped off the deck, carrying her over his shoulder. It was not a great fall, and he was back on his feet in a moment. “Come on!” he said, “We have to get to Haldren before he hits us with another fireball.”
His words reminded her what had happened, and she felt her face as she ran after him. The pain was gone- Darraun must have used some healing magic on her. “Thank you,” she called to him, hustling to catch up. He shot a smile over his shoulder at her.
“Thank you for landing the airship,” he said. “I was sure we were doomed.”
“We may yet be,” she said, looking ahead. A white-haired man she could only assume was Haldren was perched on a warhorse not ten paces in front of Darraun. The horse was barded with metal plates engraved with protective runes, and the old man’s hands were raised in the gestures of another spell. In front of the horse, holding a slim elven longsword in a ready stance, was Senya. She met Rienne’s eyes and her lips curled into a cruel smile.
“Gaven.” Cart’s voice was calm and gentle, nuanced with his years of studying human tone and cadence. “Shake it off. You can do this.”
Smooth stone walls. A thought like lightning flashed through his mind, and he saw-not with his eyes, but clearer-the paths of the winding tunnels, the shapes they formed. The words of the Prophecy.
“The Storm Dragon walks through the gates of Khyber and crosses the bridge to the sky.” He muttered the words to himself, sensing the layers of meaning contained in the tunnels around him. Words formed in his mind and bubbled from his mouth, slowly driving back the psychic scream of the Soul Reaver. “The Dragon of thunder and lightning and wind and rain and hail, the Storm Dragon-enters, walks, passes through, bursts through, shatters the Khyber gates, the dragon-gates below the chasm-gate.” A vision started to form in his mind, and he laughed.
“Gaven?” Cart had a hand firmly clamped on his shoulder.
“Crosses the bridge, traverses it, spans it, thwarts it.” Gaven spoke louder now.
And the Soul Reaver’s mental assault broke on this new barrier of words-I will destroy you!
The Soul Reaver appeared, looming out of the dark. Shriveled limbs on a slender body, wrapped in a wind- tattered robe and with stoles and sashes bearing twisting runes. Hands like great claws, curling in anticipation of rending either body or soul. And a head like a nightmare from the deep sea-blank white orbs for eyes, surrounded by bony ridges, and four long, twitching tentacles where its mouth should have been. Its skin was living shadow, dusky gray, and its coating of slime glistened in the pulsing light of the Heart of Khyber as it circled Gaven.
Cart charged the monster, but it flicked two tentacles in his direction, revealing a hint of a suckerlike maw beneath them. The warforged staggered sideways into the tunnel wall and slumped to the ground.
“Thunder and lightning,” Gaven said, reading the characters inscribed in the wall where Cart had collided, and he sent a bolt of roaring lightning to engulf the Soul Reaver. Gaven felt a psychic echo of its pain in his mind, but it did not flinch or back away. Instead, its four tentacles extended toward Gaven, reaching for his head even as the Soul Reaver’s mind reached out…
