"And I'm yours," she said.
Aunn stood at the door to Kelas's study. Out of habit, he cast his mind over his body, from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, making sure every detail was in place for Kelas's inevitable scrutiny. Only this time the details were those of Kelas's own appearance, and no one would be in the study to inspect him. He glanced at Gaven, motionless at his side, then pulled a ring of keys from one of Kelas's pouches and found the right one. Taking a deep breath, he turned the key in the hole and pushed open the door.
Nothing had changed. He knew the room at least as well as his own suite, which he hadn't seen in months. The large oak desk gave the room its color and character, dark and solid. For an absurd moment, Aunn wasn't sure where to sit. A wooden chair between the desk and the door was Aunn's accustomed place; the one behind the desk, upholstered in leather, was where Kelas would sit. He shook his head to clear it, then led Gaven to the wooden chair and walked around the desk to Kelas's chair.
"Well, Gaven," he said, "perhaps you're wondering why I've brought you here."
He ran his hands over the chair's leather, worn but well cared for. He sat gingerly, then settled back against the cushions. It was a comfortable seat-it fit Kelas's body perfectly.
"Frankly, I'm wondering the same thing. This seems a bit like madness."
He spread his palms over the oak of the desk, which he had never touched before. It was smooth, immaculately clean, warm. Only a single sheaf of papers on his left side marred the dark, polished surface.
"But here we sit, until Cart and Ashara come back with whoever they think can bring you back to your right mind." He looked at Gaven, whose eyes were fixed on some point behind the wall, then pulled the sheaf of papers closer. "Let's see what Kelas was reading, shall we?"
The writing on the paper was written in thick, angular letters that made Aunn think at first they were in Dwarven, but the letters were Common: The servant seeks to free the master, seizing flesh to unbind spirit, to break the serpent's hold. Touched by flame, the champion recapitulates the serpents' sacrifice, binding the servant anew so the master cannot break free.
"What in the Traveler's ten thousand names…?" Aunn breathed. He thrust a hand into a pouch at his belt and rummaged until he found a piece of stone, a fragment of the masonry wall that he had picked up at random while he stood in Gaven's cell. On it, scratched with the metal stylus the Dreadhold guards had allowed him, Gaven had written the same words, or at least the last two lines. Part of the Prophecy.
Aunn pushed that page aside and read the next. The hand was the same, presumably one of Gaven's jailers, a dwarf of House Kundarak. Another verse of the Prophecy: Showers of light fall upon the City of the Dead, and the Storm Dragon emerges after twice thirteen years.
"How did Kelas get these?" Aunn said, looking up at Gaven as if he expected an answer. But Gaven's eyes had closed and his chin dropped to his chest.
"You're right, my friend. It has been a very long day."
CHAPTER 6
Jordhan wasn't the Storm Dragon, but he was a dragonmarked heir of House Lyrandar, with the Mark of Storm etched across the side of his head. When he needed to, he could bend the wind to his will and urge it to fill his galleon's sails. And with a dragon rising up from the Blasphemer's horde to pursue them, there was great need; he coaxed the wind to speed his little airship along.
Rienne clutched the bulwark rail at the aft of the ship, squinting into the darkness behind them for any sign of the dragon. A ring of elemental fire surrounded the airship, arching high above Rienne's head and bathing the deck in warm firelight, which hurt her ability to see far beyond the lit circle. She strained her ears for the beat of the dragon's wings. Just as she started daring to hope they might have outdistanced it, she saw the glitter of its eyes reflecting the light of the fiery ring.
"Here it comes!" she cried.
A gust of wind shot the airship like an arrow away from the onrushing dragon, and its eyes disappeared into the darkness again. Rienne heard it roar, and a liquid sound like the eruption of a geyser, then the wind brought a spray of fine mist that stung where it touched her skin.
"We'll never get away from it," she called to Jordhan. "It can see us from miles away."
"But if it can't catch us, it might give up," Jordhan said.
"Who do you think can keep this up longer? You or the dragon?"
"What's your plan?"
Rienne looked over the railing to the darkened ground below. They had flown over the barbarian horde, and its fires were a glimmer in the distance. The dragon was still shrouded in the darkness behind the ship.
"Take us down," she said. "Let's fight this thing on the ground."
"You want to fight it?"
"I don't think we have a choice. We're outrunning it now, but you're going to get tired eventually, and I'm guessing it can outlast you. But we can choose whether to fight it in the air or on the ground. In the air, it can wreck our ship and send us plummeting to the ground without ever coming within our reach. On the ground, we have a chance."
"Even without Gaven?"
Rienne's heart was a jumble of emotion-regret over the harsh words she'd said to Gaven on their last journey together, grief that he wasn't there to fight by her side, an irrational anger that he'd left her to take care of herself. She found a scrap of joy and clung to it: she imagined telling Gaven the story, when it was all over and they were together again, of the dragon she killed.
"Even without Gaven," she said. "Trust me."
Jordhan clutched the helm and the ship veered downward. "How high are we?" he asked.
Rienne leaned over the bulwarks. The airship's fiery ring lit only empty air below, as far as she could see. "I can't tell."
"Pretty high, then. You have to be my eyes, Ree. I'll try to watch for the dragon, but I need you to shout as soon as you see ground-or anything else we might hit on our way down."
Rienne nodded her understanding and took a slow breath to focus her mind. She heard the faint roar of the elemental fire, the creaking of the wooden hull, and the rush of air past the ship as she descended. The air smelled of burning wood, with a lingering hint of the acrid scent of the dragon's caustic breath. Finally the ground came into view, painted in pale orange light.
"Sovereigns help us," she breathed, before she called to Jordhan, "We're still a bowshot above the ground, but it's going to be a rough landing." The charred skeletons of the forest thrust jagged stumps and branches up toward them, as if reaching up to pull them down.
"It always is," Jordhan said. "Airships aren't meant to be landed."
"To starboard, just a bit," she called. "Fewer trees. Gently!"
The airship drifted downward at Jordhan's command, floating a few yards to starboard, then a few more when Rienne shouted a warning. Rienne marveled at the precision of its movement-unlike a seagoing galleon, which had to obey the ocean currents and winds as well as the pilot's commands, the airship went exactly where Jordhan willed it to go.
"Dragon!" Jordhan shouted.
Rienne whirled, then darkness swallowed her. The airship's burning ring, the distant glow of fire in the forest, even the dim scattering of stars that had shone through the cloud-burdened sky-all light disappeared. For an instant, Rienne thought she was floating alone in a void, then she heard Jordhan's sputtering curse, the continuing roar of the flaming ring, and the flap of the dragon's heavy wings, very close above her. The dragon must have conjured the darkness to blind its prey.
"Just take her straight down," Rienne said, "as fast as you can without crashing." She slid Maelstrom from its sheath and stepped to the center of the deck, bracing herself to meet the dragon. She heard the beat of its wings, and its slow intake of breath, and she realized her mistake.