hurling him back and killing him before he hit the ground.
'Rienne!' he shouted, but thunder drowned out his voice.
With a growl that shook the sky, he swung his sword in an arc that cut through three men and sent their bodies flying away from him. He whirled the sword over his head, and a funnel of wind swirled around him, expanding until it caught the nearest barbarians and tossed them off their feet. Lightning shot through the walls of swirling wind, coursing through the barbarians caught in the maelstrom.
'The maelstrom swirls around me,' Gaven said in a voice of thunder. He spun in a circle, holding his sword at arm's length, and killed five more barbarians. 'I am the storm and the eye of the storm.' Forking branches of lightning shot out from the dragonshard to engulf another half-dozen. 'A storm such as the world has never seen,' he added, echoing Shakravar's words.
A blast of fire erupted around Gaven, pouring down from the mouth of a red dragon hovering above him. Gaven's whirlwind caught the flames and drew them away from him, but the infernal heat seared his skin and burned his eyes. He blindly pointed the dragonshard at where he'd seen the dragon and sent more lightning hurtling in that direction. When his vision cleared, he saw the dragon on the ground, striding toward him through a mass of barbarians that parted like water before it. It was almost as large as Shakravar, and the scales on its belly were like polished rubies.
'I know you,' the dragon rumbled in Draconic. 'Storm Dragon. You destroyed the Dragon Forge.'
Gaven remembered the three dragons flying up from the wreckage of the Dragon Forge. The first and smallest breathed its fire at him, but his lightning impaled it and his wind would not let it fly, and it crashed into the wreckage of the forge and lay still. The other two escaped, and the third was the largest, its belly gleaming brilliant red in the light of the storm as it flew off to the west.
He answered the dragon with a blast of lightning that danced over its scales and teeth but didn't slow its advance.
'Now the Blasphemer has come,' the dragon continued, 'to scour the earth.'
'The Blasphemer has come to meet his doom,' Gaven said in the Common tongue. 'Just as you have met yours.'
'My fate is immaterial. But the Blasphemer's time has not yet come. Yours are the words he unspeaks, yours the song he unsings.'
'Enough of this. Have you come to fight me or taunt me with the Prophecy?'
'Both,' the dragon said.
'Don't you want to let the Blasphemer unspeak my words before you kill me?'
'I am under no illusion that I will be the one to kill you, Storm Dragon.' The dragon leaped at him, spewing fire from its mouth as it came-fire that bathed Gaven in searing agony. 'But I do intend to hurt you,' it added.
The tide of the battle seemed to conspire against Rienne. She tried to make her way to where she had seen Gaven's dragon alight on the ground, but Maelstrom's dance of death seemed to lead her in any direction but that one. She grew convinced that the blade was seeking the Blasphemer again and would tolerate no distraction.
Dragons flew overhead, raining fire and lightning down on the Aundairians as the full force of the army crashed against the barbarian horde. She saw one of the dragons-the largest she'd ever seen, except the one Gaven had ridden-loose a mighty blast of flame in the general area where she thought Gaven was, and her suspicion was confirmed by a tremendous blast of lightning erupting up from the ground. The red dragon landed, and Cressa shouted encouragement to Lady Dragonslayer as she started in that direction.
Rienne smiled to herself, glad that Cressa was beside her-against all likelihood. Somehow the girl had survived the battle at her side, enduring one barbarian attack after another, shouting encouragement until Rienne grew convinced that real magic flowed in Cressa's voice, healing and strengthening her for the battle. Rienne held little hope for the outcome of the battle, even after seeing Gaven, but she breathed a prayer to the nine Sovereigns, asking them to keep Cressa safe from harm.
Fire and thunder, lightning and howling wind testified to the battle raging out of Rienne's sight, behind apparently impenetrable walls of her barbarian foes. Maelstrom cut and killed in Gaven's direction, pulled her sideways to parry an attack and cut again, and the dance drew her in a new direction.
She saw a bone-white banner, whipped by the wind of Gaven's storm, marked by a twisted rune painted in blood. Maelstrom was drawing her toward that point, so at last she succumbed. Her blade wanted her to fight the Blasphemer, and her dream suggested that she was destined to slay him. So slay him she would.
Gaven spoke a hasty spell that bathed his body in cool flames, offering him some protection from the heat of the dragon's fire. Then the dragon was upon him, its claws slashing through the air toward him. He jabbed his sword between two claws, drawing a spurt of sizzling, steaming blood, but the blow still connected, cutting across Gaven's chest and sending him flying backward.
Gaven's pain erupted in a blast of thunder that threw the dragon back as well. His eyes flashed and lightning speared down through the roaring dragon. The winds around him picked up speed, howling as they tore at the dragon's wings.
Shakravar rode the whirlwind down and slammed into the other dragon, teeth and all four claws digging into its red-scaled hide. Gaven engulfed both dragons in a mighty burst of lightning streaming out from his hands and his mouth, and taking shape from the blood that welled in the wounds across his chest. Even Shakravar, whose breath was lightning and whose wings were thunder and wind, staggered back under the force of the assault, and the red dragon wailed in agony as wave after wave of lightning coursed over its body.
'Find the Blasphemer, Gaven!' Shakravar growled.
The red dragon folded its wings and rolled onto its back, bringing its claws around to scrabble against Shakravar's armored belly. Shakravar caught the red's mouth with one claw and wrenched its head back, then bit into its exposed neck and tore out its throat. Gaven stepped back, deciding to take the dragon's advice and continue looking for the Blasphemer-and Rienne.
The bulk of the Aundairian forces had closed the gap while Gaven faced the dragon, and bodies in Aundairian blue lay alongside those in the leather and fur of the Carrion Tribes, their blood flowing together on the gore-slick ground. As the wind whipped around him, he was a still point in the center of a raging tempest, the noise of battle swept away in the whirlwind. He was seized with the sudden sense that he'd been there before-witnessed this exact scene before. A crash of thunder shook the earth, and the wind fell.
An alien, incomprehensible sound replaced all the noise of battle and the howl of the wind-a string of syllables with no meaning, sounds that signified the unmaking of the world. They tore at his ears and ripped at his mind, defying him to form sense or reason.
All around him, soldiers and barbarians fell to the earth, hands pressed to their ears, mouths wide in silent howls of agony. They parted like a subsiding flood, leaving only two figures standing in their wake.
One was Rienne-so close, no more than ten yards away-her face wrenched in pain, both hands clutching Maelstrom's hilt. Her mouth moved, forming words Gaven couldn't understand, as though their structure and meaning were her only defense against the sound of the Blasphemy.
The other figure was a tall man in bloodstained plate armor, twisting ivory horns rising from the brick-red skin of his brow. Blasphemy streamed from his mouth as he raised a flaming sword to the sky. His burning eyes fell on Rienne and anger twisted his face, and he strode toward her to cut her down.
Rienne fought her way toward the banner as Gaven's blue dragon swept out of the sky to attack the gargantuan red dragon. Maelstrom spun around her like a steel whirlwind, cutting through armor and flesh, weapons and bones. Barbarians parted before her.
An eerie quiet fell over the battlefield and time seemed to slow. The only sound that reached her ears was the inhuman babbling of the Blasphemer she'd heard at the Mosswood-his unearthly chant, words defying language.
Aundairians, Reachers, and Carrion Tribe barbarians fell to the ground as one, agony written on their faces as the Blasphemer's chant tore through their minds.
Rienne clutched Maelstrom tightly and screamed words of the Prophecy again, the only remedy she had found for the pain. 'The Blasphemer's end lies in the void, in the maelstrom that pulls him down to darkness!'
