Elestrissa turned and let her eyes range over the men and women gathered around her. Rienne watched emotions flit across her face as she met the gaze of each individual-it was clear that Elestrissa knew all of these people personally and held them in the highest respect. Rienne felt sadly out of place.
"Sky Warden Kyaphar," Elestrissa said as her eyes fell on him, "your place is not at my side this day. I want you with the Lyrandar airship."
Jordhan! Rienne couldn't believe that she had all but forgotten him in the press of the battle. She searched the sky, and saw the airship drifting over the glade behind her, as if it had followed her from the healer's clearing. Elestrissa must have held it in reserve for this moment, knowing that revealing it too soon would make it a target for the dragons.
Elestrissa was still addressing Kyaphar. "You may choose a few others to join you, and your task will be to rain the fury of wind and storm down upon our foes. If we succeed in destroying the Blasphemer, the survivors will need help getting back through his forces. Clear them a path."
Kyaphar bowed. "As you command," he said. He sounded pained, as though he wanted to be part of the ground assault-or else he was already grieving those who would surely fall.
Then Elestrissa stood before Rienne and looked solemnly down at her. "And you, Lady Dragonslayer. Do you still wish to stand with us in our foolhardy defense of this place?"
"But the Blasphemer's end lies in the void, in the maelstrom that pulls him down to darkness." Rienne's dream flashed through her mind, and briefly she wondered whether she should flee-fall back to the river, join the Aundairian defenders there, and seek to bring about the Blasphemer's end the way her dream suggested.
"What is the Prophecy?" she asked.
Elestrissa looked confused.
"Is the vision in my dream an immutable image of what will be, regardless of what I choose? If it is, then what I do now doesn't matter-one way or another. I'm fated to end up facing the Blasphemer at the river. I can join your charge knowing that somehow I'll survive, even if no one else does, because my destiny is to face the Blasphemer in two weeks, when he reaches the Wyr."
"But we and the Eldeen Reaches are doomed," Elestrissa said, scowling.
"Or perhaps my vision was just a glimpse of what could be, a foretaste of what might come to pass if I make the choices that lead me to that point. In that case, I'm free to choose a different path and perhaps arrive at a different destination. That would mean I could die in this foolhardy defense, or I could defeat the Blasphemer two weeks early."
I wish Gaven were here, she added silently.
Elestrissa frowned. "Such questions are best discussed in the groves of the druids in times of peace," she said. "Now is a time for action." She took a deep breath, and seemed to swell with it, growing taller and broader. "Perhaps we all die here today, but perhaps our charge is necessary to weaken the Blasphemer so he can fall at the river." Her skin, where her hide armor left it exposed, was transforming into thick bark, and leafy twigs appeared in her hair. "Perhaps you will live to see the Blasphemer fall, Lady Alastra." Her voice rumbled and resounded like thunder over the noise of the battle, and her limbs became the mighty trunks and branches of an oak. "Then you can tell the tale of this day, and ensure that the story of the defenders of the Mosswood is told until the end of days!"
A cheer went up from the battle-worn heroes, and Rienne smiled. She would fight beside Elestrissa, and if fate allowed, she would destroy the Blasphemer before his fated day. Perhaps she would die without having seen Gaven again, but after all the times she had told Gaven that he was the author of his own destiny, she couldn't do otherwise.
Elestrissa raised her war club over her head and roared, drawing another cheer from the heroes around her. She turned and began a lumbering stride in the direction of the barbarians.
Thoughts of Gaven filling her mind, Rienne drew Maelstrom from its sheath and looked down at the blade.
Gaven faced her in Jordhan's cabin, Maelstrom's gleaming blade between them. "The day you first touched that sword," he said, "you set a course for a much greater destiny. It's a sword of legend, Ree. Great things have been done with it, and more greatness will yet be accomplished. Can't you feel that?"
She still felt it, and she had come to believe-to hope, at least, or maybe to fear-that the rest of Gaven's words might be true, that she was the one fated to accomplish so much with it.
"You and Maelstrom are linked in destiny," Gaven said, "as surely as you and I are."
Tears streaming down her face, she lifted the blade above her head, gave a wordless shout, and joined the last charge of the defenders of the Mosswood.
The song of unmaking boomed from his throat, each note throbbing in dissonance with the protesting chords of the Gatekeepers' seal. Slowly his song bent the druids' harmonies, twisted their chords into terribly cacophony, and snapped the lines of the binding. The chorus of madness rose from deep below and echoed in his ears, giving strength to his voice. This was why the Blasphemer had come-the beginning of the unmaking of the world.
He crouched and cocked his head, listening. The mad chorus had been clear to his ears for hours now as the battle raged, but he was beginning to hear the high keening notes of a single voice raised above the others. Its song was at once a chant of war and a summons, drawing its kindred from across the depth and breadth of Khyber to come to the opening of the doorway.
I am here, Kathrik Mel sang in his wordless, tuneless song, and the door will soon be open.
The distant voice answered with a banshee's wail, portending the death of the world.
The defenders of the Mosswood advanced in grim silence. Elestrissa strode forward like a walking oak imbued with the primal power of her woodland home. The goliath kept pace beside her, resting a greataxe on one broad shoulder. Rienne had never seen a goliath in person before, but she knew of them-the wild mountain-folk of the western Reaches, more at home on snow-capped peaks than in city streets.
Both dwarves had shaggy boars by their sides, but one was a hazy spirit like the healer's bear while the other was real flesh and bone. Some of the shifters walked upright, but others switched between a crouching run and scampering leaps, pausing frequently to sniff the air or just let the group catch up. Rienne saw humans and elves armed with bows and clad in leather, and others covered from head to toe in plates of metal armor, holding finely crafted swords and heavy metal shields. It was as motley a collection of warriors as she'd ever seen, all united under the Mosswood Warden's banner to make a final stand against the Blasphemer.
Much like the Blasphemer's forces themselves, she reminded herself. According to Kyaphar, the Blasphemer had united members of many different Carrion Tribes under his bone-white banners, leading them in a common cause to conquer the lands east of the Shadowcrag and Icehorn Mountains.
Elestrissa's charge reached the bottom of the slope, and the sounds of the battle engulfed them-the clash of steel against steel or swords splintering wooden shields, the shouts of enraged warriors as they hacked into their foes, the roars of dragons and the great Eldeen bears, and the pitiful screams of the dying.