To them, she was Lady Dragonslayer-a symbol, she suspected, of resistance to the Blasphemer. His dragons scoured the earth, but she was the slayer of dragons. Perhaps she could be more than that.
Darkness settled over the camp, and Rienne moved among the cookfires and makeshift shelters, offering what expressions of comfort she could muster. The mere fact of her presence seemed to be a help to many of the people she saw, whose faces brightened when she drew near, who stood and pressed food into her hands, or who leaped to their feet and embraced her, shaking with sobs as they clutched her to their hearts. It was humbling, strangely-it seemed that there was something greater than her at work in her, using her body and her voice as a tool to reach and comfort these people. It made her think of the shaman who had tended her in the grove, with the spirit bear beside her, a conduit between the world and the realm of the spirits of the land. Had those primal spirits chosen her as a vessel?
A cry of alarm arose at the western edge of the camp, and Rienne tore herself from a cookfire to investigate. She expected to find the other group of survivors she had spotted, and at first that's all she saw. Then her eyes distinguished a cloud like roiling smoke behind them-a swarm of flying insects pursuing the Reachers as they ran in a panic toward the fires on the hill. Even at such a distance, she could hear the angry droning of the swarm beneath the screams of its victims.
CHAPTER 36
Cart stood in the bakery's doorway and watched Harkin slink off. Harkin shot one bitter glare over his shoulder, then defiantly kept his back to Cart until he rounded a corner and disappeared. Cart stepped aside to let a mother and small child enter the bakery around him, glancing fearfully at him as they passed, but he kept his eyes fixed on the last place he'd seen Harkin until he was satisfied the human wasn't coming back.
He turned to go back into the bakery and found Ashara standing behind him, her cloak wrapped tightly around her.
"Are you finished?" he asked.
"Isn't it obvious? Cart, that really wasn't wise."
Cart turned back in the direction Harkin had gone. "I don't care," he said. "He deserved it."
Ashara started walking, quickly, in the opposite direction. "What does that have to do with it?"
Cart caught up quickly. "Everything. He was being awful. He interrupted me every time I spoke. He was trying to provoke me."
"He does that. But it doesn't mean you have to rise to it."
"And you just let him do it. You were ignoring me, too."
"I wasn't ignoring you."
"You were. Every time I tried to speak, he cut me off and you listened to him. You could have stopped him. You could have asked me what I was going to say. But you let him cut me off, pretend I wasn't there."
"So you threw a tantrum and threw him out the door."
"Yes I did. Why are you defending him?"
"Don't you see? He's going to find that Sentinel Marshal and tell her everything."
"How much does he know?" Cart said. "He sounded like he had no idea what the Dragon Forge was about."
"He probably knows more than he let on, and we told him enough to get us all in trouble."
"So why didn't you tell the Sentinel Marshal the truth in the first place?"
Ashara stopped in her tracks. "Are you crazy?"
Cart stopped as well and faced her. They were drawing stares, though, so he grabbed her arm and walked her farther down the street, whispering as they walked. "She was looking for something she could arrest Jorlanna for. Why not give it to her?"
"I'm not about to tell a Sentinel Marshal and a marked heir of House Kundarak that I helped build an eldritch machine that stripped the dragon-mark off Gaven. They wanted an excuse to arrest Jorlanna, not an excuse to launch a crusade against all of Cannith West."
"A crusade?"
"Punishing Jorlanna wouldn't have been nearly enough. They'd want to lock up everyone involved in that disaster. Including you and me." She shook her head. "Especially me. I'd end up taking the fall and being executed or thrown in Dreadhold, while Jorlanna got a slap on the wrist."
"Executed?" The possibility hadn't occurred to Cart. He slowed his pace.
"Yes!" Ashara stopped and spun to face him again. "Cart, Gaven might say he forgives me, but if he really does, I don't know how he managed it. And all the Houses aren't going to be so quick to forgive a crime like the Dragon Forge. What we did there… can't you grasp the magnitude of it?"
Cart looked into her eyes and saw her fear-the same wild panic that sometimes gripped soldiers on the battlefield when they knew they were trapped. He saw echoes of the nightmares he'd glimpsed, the terror that swept over the sleeping city as the troubled age drew to a close. His eyes fell to trace the lines of the dragonmark on her shoulder. Was her terror at the thought of losing her mark?
"No," he said. "I suppose I can't." He put his hand to her chin and cradled her cheek. "What is it that frightens you so?"
She closed her eyes and nuzzled against his hand, clasping it in both of hers. "Do you love me, Cart?"
The change of topic surprised him, and he wasn't sure how to answer. Her eyes opened, and they were wet with tears.
"Never mind," she said, her face flushed red. She let go of his hand, but he didn't pull it away.
"Ashara," he said. "If I had ever before in my life admitted to loving something or someone, I would have been laughed from the army, mocked by anyone around me. You're the first person who has ever accepted the possibility. If that were all, that would be enough. But there are so many more reasons why I do love you."
She seized his hand again and pressed her lips to his palm. Tears ran down her cheeks, but she smiled between each kiss. "Hold me," she whispered, and he gathered her into his arms.
Her voice came out muffled against his chest. "That canyon was a place of evil, Cart. We should never have gone there, we shouldn't have tried to tap into the power in the crystal there. The forge was evil in its making, evil in its purpose, evil in its use." She sobbed. "We let it out, Cart-I let it out. I'm filthy with the taint of it."
Cart heard again the voice of the Secret Keeper in his mind, a harsh whisper that sapped his will as he walked through the narrow passage to the Dragon Forge.
"You walk boldly to your doom," the presence in shadows whispered. "You think to stand before a power that was already great when Karrn the Conqueror took his first infant steps. Malathar the Damned will consume your body and annihilate your soul."
"It lies," Gaven protested. "Truth would burn its tongue. It's the Keeper of Secrets."
"You think she cares for you? You think she could ever dream of loving you?"
"It's trying to sow despair," Cart said, feeling the despair clutch his chest and squeeze the energy from his body.
"We stopped it," he whispered, stroking her hair with his clumsy metal-bound hand. For a moment he dreamed that he was flesh, like the vision the quori had planted in his mind, and her body was soft and warm against his. In that moment he saw the taint in her, smelled and tasted it on her skin and her soul, and he started to recoil-until he realized that it was in him as well. The revulsion faded, replaced by a new understanding, and he held her closer.
Havrakhad had spoken of the spirit of the age-the unfathomable being at the heart of Dal Quor, the Region of Dreams. The present age had a spirit of malice and darkness, and so many things he saw now as expressions of that spirit: the influence of the Secret Keeper escaping through the Dragon Forge, the barbarians attacking the Eldeen Reaches, the nightmares of the city, Haldren and Kelas's plot against the queen. The turning of the age, Havrakhad said, draws near-and the hope of the kalashtar was that the spirit of that new age would be one of light, il-Yannah, "the Great Light." The darkness could be fought, yes, but even more important were the ways they sought to express the Great Light.