The dragon-king shifted from his recumbent posture to put his feet on the ground. “Then the Time Between has begun,” he said, his eyes fixed on the stars that shone through the open dome of his chamber. He deigned to grant Lissa one more glance. “You have done well.”
She scrambled to her feet and fled the chamber before the dragon-king’s pleasure turned to wrath.
The visitor appeared human, but Kelas knew she was not. He greeted her in the ruined sanctuary of the cathedral, which was unsettling once he realized that the large room gave her space to assume her natural form, if she desired.
She was tall and slender, almost willowy-beautiful, even sultry. Her shining silver hair and eyes hinted at her true nature, and she wore a shimmering gown of the same silver color. Her movements were smooth and graceful, and they gave him the mental image of a dragon soaring on a mountain updraft. Could she be planting such visions in his mind? A subtle method of intimidation-reminding him of what he was dealing with?
“Greetings from Malathar,” she said, “dragon-king of Rav Magar.” Her voice was clear as a tuning fork, melodious and stately. She gave the slightest bow.
Kelas bowed a little more deeply. “Malathar honors us with his greetings and his messenger,” he said, his Draconic perfect and smooth. He smiled warmly-a smile that had begun many successful seductions, though in this case he hoped only for a successful negotiation. She was the first envoy from the dragons, the first response to his widespread inquiries, and she had come all the way from Argonnessen. He had hoped against hope for a response from some lone dragon in Khorvaire. But a dragon-king of Argonnessen?
“Malathar has heard of your efforts and would like to help you bring them to completion.”
A surge of excitement rose in Kelas’s chest, and he struggled not to let it show on his face. “I am most honored,” he said.
“Malathar will send you three dragons to fuel the furnace of your forge.”
“And in exchange?”
“In his beneficence, all Malathar asks in exchange is the privilege of providing its first subject.”
“Its first-?” Kelas’s mind raced. It was impossible-he was building the Dragon Forge to have only one subject.
“The city of Rav Magar has a most unexpected visitor,” the messenger said. “He bears the touch of Siberys’s hand in the Mark of Storm.”
The Siberys Mark of Storm? Kelas couldn’t keep his face impassive any longer. Could Gaven possibly have traveled to Argonnessen? Or did two Siberys heirs of House Lyrandar walk the earth? It didn’t matter.
“Please convey to Malathar my grateful acceptance of his generous offer.”
Sleep eluded Gaven for the rest of the night. From where he lay on the floor, Rienne still slumbering against his chest, Gaven could read a few of the snippets of text on the walls, but he realized that the importance of the shrine had nothing to do with the words or pictures it contained. Sleeping in the shrine-sleeping in the holy presence of the Prophecy-induced prophetic dreams. That explained Lissa’s matter-of-fact assumption that Gaven and Rienne would sleep in the shrine.
He looked down at Rienne’s head, at the hair flowing behind her across the floor. Was she dreaming as well? What visions was she seeing?
The memory of his own dream made him shudder, and Rienne shifted slightly, pressing closer to him. His nerves tingled with the lingering echoes of the pain that had jolted him from sleep, but her soft warmth soothed him. With her at his side, he felt he could face whatever the Time Between held in store for him and whatever horrors would come after. His eyes welled with tears, and he touched his lips to her forehead.
He heard footsteps outside the arch, and then a sound-something between a series of clicks and a throaty growl. He recognized the sound as part of the dragonborn vocabulary of social interactions, though he had no inkling of its specific meaning. A dragonborn figure appeared in the doorway, silhouetted against the moonlit sky. Gaven tensed, stretching a hand toward his sword where it lay nearby.
Lissa’s quiet voice put Gaven at ease. “Gaven,” she said, “can you step outside, please?”
Gaven glanced down at Rienne, sound asleep. Smoothly and gently, he lifted her arm and set it on her own side. Then he lifted her head, laid it on the floor, and got quietly to his feet. Lissa stepped back outside the tiny shrine as he padded out the door.
“What is it?” he said, and then he saw the soldiers. Eight of them stood in an arc around him, wearing plate armor and carrying heavy swords. He wheeled around to the door-he needed his sword, and Rienne-but his path was already blocked by two more soldiers. Total silence, obviously magical in origin, fell around him just as he started to shout.
No matter, he thought. He felt lightning start to surge in his blood, and shadow draped the city as a stormcloud appeared across the moonlit sky. The entire city of Rav Magar would know the fury of the Storm Dragon.
Just as he started to turn, a heavy pommel slammed into his head, bizarre in its silence. He fell against the shrine’s wall but forced his eyes to stay clear. He spun to face his foes and staggered forward a few steps, struggling to focus enough to channel the lightning out from his body. A dragon had joined the soldiers, azure- scaled, with an enormous horn at the end of its snout.
The lightning burst out from his arms and engulfed the dragon, dancing across its hide and sparking at its horn and in its mouth. It stretched its mouth wide in what might have been a mocking smile, and its own lightning danced over its tongue and teeth. Instead of sending a return strike at him, the dragon leaped into the air and clapped its wings, and a concussive blast of air buffeted Gaven-like thunder without the crash. He fell to his knees, motes of light dancing across his vision. Two more hard blows smashed into the back of his head, one after the other, and the blackness swallowed him.
CHAPTER 23
Cart couldn’t tear his eyes from Caylen’s tome where it lay on the ground. When a worg growled to his right, he reacted too slowly-it came in low and bit at his leg before he wrenched his gaze away from the slender book. He swung his axe down, but the creature sprang back out of his reach and howled.
Two voices joined in the howl, and a renewed surge of fear rose in Cart’s mind.
I am steel and stone, he thought. My fear just fuels my fury.
Roaring his answer to the beasts’ howl, he advanced on the worg and slashed his axe low across its chest. The howl died in its throat.
The two remaining worgs had Tesh caught between them, but he was holding his own. Just as Cart rushed forward, Tesh felled one of the two, and Cart intercepted the last one just before it pounced on Tesh’s back. Caylen’s spell had weakened them, clearly, and it was just a matter of finishing them off. Cart wiped the gore from his axe on the rough coat of the last worg.
Cart turned slowly to face Caylen. He saw the tome first, one page flipping over in a soft breeze. Then his gaze fell on the wizard’s body, and he walked slowly to stand beside it.
“I’ll take care of it, Captain,” Tesh said.
Cart waved him off. Caylen had been in his care, and he would extend that care to the dead man’s body. He kneeled on the blood-soaked ground, closed Caylen’s eyes, and lifted him over his shoulder.
“Get his tome.” Cart pointed at the book.
“You-” Tesh hesitated. “You’re not going to leave him here?”
Cart stared at the soldier. He sometimes wished he could achieve one of those glares that Haldren used to make soldiers quail, but that required muscles in the forehead and around the eyes that Cart simply lacked. Even so, the simplicity of his unwavering gaze, set in his expressionless face and accompanied by a pointed silence, often had the same effect.
Tesh lifted the book-a little gingerly, Cart thought-and led Cart back to the camp.
Haldren berated Cart, as Tesh had done, for burdening himself with Caylen’s body when there was still a risk of attack, then went on to reproach him for sending Verren off alone-although the scout had returned safely-and for returning with only a sketchy estimate of the number of worgs they faced and any defenses that might lie between the camp and the mouth of the canyon.
