"Wait-"
"Good fortune, Lady Alastra, Captain d'Lyrandar." The Mosswood Warden and her retainers walked away, leaving Rienne and Jordhan alone with Kyaphar.
"Well, that was strange," Jordhan said.
"Ten Seas! There's so much more I wanted to ask."
"Ask me," Kyaphar said. "You seem to have been placed under my command." He smiled, and Rienne couldn't help but return the warmth of it. "Let's go back to your airship, and you can ask me anything you need to know."
"The most important thing is, what are we defending? Why make our stand here?"
"I suspected that might be your first question. And it's a question best answered from the air."
CHAPTER 13
Gaven stared up at a storm-wracked sky where dragons wheeled like vultures. Darkness slowly poured into the sky until it was a whirling cloud of shadow, and Gaven saw the souls of the fallen drifting into that new storm. He is the storm, and the eye of the storm, he thought. In him the storm cannot die.
The harsh chant of the Blasphemer was gone, but no sound dared to take its place. He felt but did not hear heavy footsteps drumming the floor beside him, and then Cart crouched over him. Cart's mouth opened, but no words emerged. Gaven tried to focus on Cart's face, but his eyes kept drifting past the warforged to the storm of souls. Cart turned away for a moment, then leaned close, putting a steadying hand on Gaven's shoulder.
Ashara came then and leaned over him, and Cart shifted away to give her room. A slender wand was in her hand, and she moved it slowly over his body, as if it were a tool knitting his wounds closed. Her touch was cold on his skin, but it woke his nerves, first to a cacophony of pain, then as the wand worked its magic, to the hard floor and sharp glass beneath him.
"What happened?" Kelas's voice, somewhere behind him, was the first clear sound he heard. "Damn! Is she hurt?"
"The servant?" Ashara said, glancing up. "She'll be fine. Don't move her! I have more work to do yet. But we almost lost this one."
"Gaven?" Kelas's face appeared in his vision. Gaven felt a surge of rage and fear before he noticed the lines of worry and the genuine concern in the man's eyes and remembered it was Aunn looming over him, not Kelas. Aunn looked him over, then surveyed the room. Something caught his attention, and his eyes shot wide. "Fire!"
Cart sprang to his feet, following Aunn's eyes. Gaven managed to turn his head enough to see the warforged snatch a blanket from the bed and beat it against the floor, sending smoke in eddies toward the open door. After a moment the warforged stopped and stood back.
Aunn barked orders. "Ashara, see to the servant. Cart, as soon as Ashara says you can move her, carry the girl into a bed and find out what she saw." He turned to address someone Gaven couldn't see. "You, put that wine on the table, then go and bring me a fresh bottle." He crouched beside Gaven and sighed. "I think I'm going to need it."
Ashara stood and strode toward the door, leaving Gaven in Aunn's care.
"Can you hear me, Gaven?" he said.
Gaven opened his mouth and found that he had no voice. He managed a slight nod.
"Can you tell me what happened?"
Gaven turned his head to the side. Even if he could speak, he wasn't sure he knew what had happened.
"Well," Aunn said, "it looks to me like we had a lightning storm in here. If I had to guess, I'd say that a bolt of lightning connected that dragonshard to the sky, with you and the window caught in between. Which resulted in a burning rug, a shattered window, a wounded servant, and you…" His brow furrowed. "On the brink of death. Which seems odd."
Gaven closed his eyes, trying to remember the lightning.
"I've seen lightning go through you quite a number of times," Aunn continued. "But I've never seen you burned like this." With a glance at the door, Aunn slid a wand out of a pouch, hiding it halfway in his sleeve. Warmth flowed into Gaven's body where the wand and Aunn's hands touched him, and he felt a surge of renewed strength.
"The Blasphemer," Gaven said. He could manage a rasping croak, no more.
"You were dreaming," Aunn said. "By the window?"
"A vision. Rienne."
"I see." Aunn looked around, lifted a sheet of paper from the floor beside him, and read it aloud. "'In the darkest night of the Dragon Below, storm and dragon are reunited, and they break together upon the legions of the Blasphemer.' That's pleasant bedtime reading. No wonder he was haunting your dreams." He turned and started collecting the other pages strewn across the floor.
"Wait," Gaven said. "Read that again."
Aunn did, and Gaven felt his pulse quicken. Storm and dragon reunited…
That could just mean Gaven holding the dragonshard that contained his mark. Or it could point to his mark being somehow restored to his skin-or, he supposed, to the involvement of some dragon. "Is there anything else on that page?" he asked.
"Just the date, 22 Dravago 988. Why?"
"I've forgotten so much."
When he had first left Dreadhold, the Prophecy swam in Gaven's mind. He remembered every dream that had haunted his sleep, every scrap of writing he'd collected and deciphered in his expeditions through the depths of Khyber, and even verses he'd never read-fragments held in the dragon's memories trapped in his mind. Haldren and Vaskar had questioned him about the Time of the Dragon Above, the Eye of Siberys, the Soul Reaver-and those memories had flooded over him and spilled out of his mouth. Flashes of memory still surprised him occasionally, but the Prophecy no longer felt like a part of him.
"Just set it down and leave us alone," Aunn said, looking toward the door again.
With an effort, Gaven sat up and looked around the room. A young man stood in the door, eyes wide, clutching a bottle of wine. The floor around him was covered with shards of glass, and only a few jagged pieces remained in the frame. A faint smell of smoke lingered in the air, but Gaven couldn't see the damage his dragonmark had caused. Cart and Ashara had vanished.
The servant placed the bottle on the small table beside the bed, knocking it into a glass that was already there, sending a splash of red wine over the lip. Flustered, he looked around in vain for something to clean up with, but Aunn barked at him and he scurried away.
"Let's get you into bed," Aunn said, extending a hand to Gaven.
"I'm fine." Gaven managed to stand, glass crunching against the wood under his feet. Now he could see the rosy dragonshard on the other side of the bed, resting in a blackened crater in the woven Talentan rug. Between the window and the rug, Gaven's outburst had probably caused a thousand gold galifars of damage. He stepped carefully out of the glass and bent to retrieve the shard.
Its heat surprised him, and a sharp surge of anger shot through him. For an instant, the man before him was really Kelas, who had stripped his mark from his skin. A prickle ran over his chest and shoulder, where his mark had been, and he heard thunder crack outside. He dropped the shard back on the bed.
Aunn's hand shot to the hilt of his sword, as if the thunder heralded an imminent attack. "What was that?" he said.
"His storm flies wild," Gaven muttered, "unbound and pure in devastation."
"Nara said that," Aunn said. "Is that the Prophecy?"
Gaven nodded.
"What's the rest of it? You were saying it with her."
"Pure in devastation, going before the traitor's army to break upon the city by the lake of kings."
"The city of Varna, on Lake Galifar."
"Going before the traitor's army," Gaven said. "Kelas? Did he send the army marching to Varna?"
"Or Nara. Is there anything else about the traitor's army, or the traitor herself?"
"I don't know." Gaven slumped onto the bed. "I don't remember. Why don't you look in there?" He gestured vaguely toward the papers still strewn on the floor.