“You have proven nuisance enough, meat,” Malathar whispered.
Gaven checked his headlong rush and clutched his sword, circling more carefully around the enormous dragon’s side. He spoke an arcane word and his body erupted in protective cold fire. “Let me show you what a nuisance I can be,” he growled as he lunged forward.
His sword clattered against a bone, then Malathar’s violet eyes appeared in front of him, blazing into his own. A deathly chill started behind his eyes and spread down his spine, numbing his limbs and freezing him in place. With a whispering hiss, the dragon-king’s head snaked up on his long neck, then shot forward, jaws wide. Gaven was powerless to dodge-he could only watch the swordlike teeth coming at him.
Aunn’s body slammed into his, knocking him aside, and the changeling’s mace smashed up into Malathar’s jaw. The weapon burst in a flash of white light and knocked the dragon’s head backward. Aunn landed on top of Gaven, shouting in pain from the icy cold of Gaven’s protective fire. He rolled quickly aside, dodging a blind rake of Malathar’s claw. The chill was slow to ebb from Gaven’s limbs, but he managed to scramble to his feet and stagger a few steps away.
“Go!” Aunn shouted.
Gaven stumbled into a run, then he was beside Cart. He swung his sword wildly, beating back the soldiers who tried to defend the Dragon Forge. The soldiers fell back in the face of their combined fury and he saw the dragonshard in its setting. Another sprint and he would be there.
For just an instant his heart sang-he thought he felt the wind at his back lifting him and speeding his run. But then a rush of fire followed the gust of air, engulfing him again in Malathar’s flaming breath. The cold fire melted off him, his armor drew the flames away, but there was still heat to spare, searing his flesh. Even as fire licked at him, the cold essence of death sank into his bones, sapping his strength. He bent double, stumbling in his run.
It had been a deadly blast, and Gaven feared for his friends. Cart stood firm against the dragon-king, his axe flashing white against the violet shimmer that limned Malathar’s rune-scribed bones. Ashara stood behind him, a hand on his back, reinforcing his defenses and healing his wounds. Aunn-where was Aunn?
There! Crumpled in a heap on the iron floor, as though the dragon-king had hurled him against the Dragon Forge and left him where he fell. Forgetting the dragonshard, Gaven started toward the changeling’s side.
Aunn lifted his head and saw Gaven approaching. “No,” he called. “I’m all right. Just get the damned dragonshard!”
Aunn didn’t look all right. His arm was pinned beneath his body at what must have been a painful angle, and his other arm clutched his belly. But he was right-he could do more to help himself than Gaven could. Gaven turned again and ran to the dragonshard.
Malathar snaked in after him, ignoring Cart’s furious blows at his side. “That no longer belongs to you,” he said. “It won’t help you.”
Gaven knew better. Despite his words, the dragon-king was proving himself desperate to keep Gaven from his goal. Three more steps and Gaven’s hand clutched the smooth stone.
It was still his, there could be no question. The dragonshard sprang to life at his touch. A crash of thunder shook the walls and the ground. Gaven felt a tingling surge starting in the shard, then building in his feet, then pulsing throughout his body. The skin of his neck and shoulder burned. With a snarl of rage and effort, he lifted his free hand to point at Malathar. Arcs of lightning danced between his arm and the metal floor, then a tremendous discharge linked him to the dragon-king. He roared with the thunder and saw Malathar’s mouth open wide in voiceless pain. He threw his head back with the lightning and saw Malathar’s head twisting back on his long neck. Suspended in that instant, they were united in the lightning flowing between them.
Joy flowed through Gaven’s body with the lightning. I am the Gaven’s hand slipped from the shard and the lightning died with a final snap that threw Gaven backward. He collapsed on the iron floor, and a dead silence fell around him. He looked around in a daze. Aunn was on his feet, smashing his mace over and over against the bones of Malathar’s shoulders and ribs, sometimes his jaw. Cart was on the dragon-king’s other side, his axe a blur of motion. Malathar was clearly on the defensive, but he was still a terror of gnashing teeth and raking claws. Even his tail swept around him, slashing at his foes. It was all happening in utter silence.
Gaven rose to his feet and took a step toward the dragon-shard. He had the strangest sense that he was dead, a spirit, and if he looked behind him he would see his body on the ground. He walked in a ghost world shrouded in silence, and he couldn’t feel his feet on the ground. Shaking his head, he took another step. He wouldn’t look back-if he was dead, he didn’t want to know it.
He cupped both hands below the dragonshard, drew a deep breath, and raised them to lift the stone from its setting. He couldn’t feel it, and for a moment he feared that his hands passed through the stone. No, it rose with his hands, and an instant later he felt it surge again in his grasp. The sounds of the forge and the battle burst into his ears again. His nerves sprang back to life, and there was no longer any question that he was in his body-he had never felt more alive.
Thunder crashed outside the forge, overhead, and a rush of wind swept through the building, eddying around Gaven’s feet. His heart was racing. Another gust blew in, building at his back as he stepped toward the dragon-king. Soon a gale blew through the forge, seizing Ashara’s cloak and Aunn’s hair. Malathar opened his mouth and purple-black fire danced inside, but the wind tore it out and the dragon-king staggered back a step. Gaven’s friends scattered for cover.
“Thunder is his harbinger and lightning his spear,” Malathar said, his dry whisper undiminished in the gale. “Wind is his steed and rain his cloak.”
“The words of creation are in his ears and on his tongue!” Gaven shouted over the howling storm. He didn’t know where the words came from. “The secrets of the first of sixteen are his.” More of the Prophecy-had he always known this?
“The Storm Dragon flies before the traitor’s army to deliver vengeance. The storm breaks upon the forces of the Blasphemer.”
Now Gaven remembered. He looked into the dragonshard in his hands and saw it, his destiny written in the lines of his dragonmark. “The maelstrom swirls around him,” he whispered, and his words were lost in the wind. “He is the storm and the eye of the storm.”
Malathar spouted another blast of black fire, but a whirlwind sprang to life around him and carried the flames away. Gaven’s feet left the ground and he clutched the dragonshard to his chest. Lightning danced around him, joining him to the whirlwind. He spoke a word, a single syllable in the language of creation, and Malathar erupted in purple fire. Lightning sprang from the whirlwind to course along the dragon’s bones. Thunder buffeted him, snapping his wings and beating him to the ground.
The dragonshard burned with red light as it had in the Dragon Forge, casting the lines of Gaven’s dragonmark around the walls and floor once more. It shone right through Gaven’s chest-he was wind and storm, not flesh-and traced lines of white fire across Malathar’s body. The wind carried streams of ash and grave dust from his bones. A scream arose in the howl of the wind, issuing not from Malathar’s body but from a black shadow that now streamed away from him in tattered ribbons. Malathar’s damned soul, bound too long to his ancient body, was lost in the wind.
CHAPTER 45
Just before Dania died, Aunn remembered, she had kneeled at the pinnacle of a ziggurat in Xen’drik and let herself be swallowed in silver fire. When she stood and brushed her hair back from her face, Aunn-Auftane, at the time-had seen a silver torc around her neck-the same torc that was now part of the Dragon Forge, funneling the Secret Keeper’s power into the apparatus. Then he had seen Dania’s eyes, transformed into pools of quicksilver. When her gaze had lingered on him, he felt sure that she saw him as he really was. She moved with purpose, leading her companions to the heart of the temple where she met her end.