“The translation. It was ‘the Warder dreams,’ right? If it had really been referring to Vult, the Warding Moon, going dark, it would have used this phrase here.” He pointed to an entry still legible through the wash of indigo ink. “That’s the phrase used about Rhaan, the Scribing Moon, in the first part of the couplet-‘the Book is closed.’ So that bit really is talking about the dark phase, but the dreaming part, that’s wrong. The word used is actually this one.” He flipped the page. “Dormant.”
“Dormant, dreams, what’s the difference? Maybe it just didn’t fit the rhyme scheme.” She didn’t want to talk poetry with the dwarf. It reminded her too much of Jester.
“The word is the same one used for a dragonmark that hasn’t yet manifested.”
That brought Sabira up short. Each of the twelve moons of Eberron was associated with one of the dragonmarked Houses. Olarune, the Sentinel, was the moon tied to her own House’s Mark of Sentinel. Vult was linked to the Mark of Warding.
To House Kundarak.
“So you’re saying the actual translation is talking about an unmarked member of your House?”
“I am.”
“And are you? Unmarked, I mean?” She hadn’t seen a dragonmark on him anywhere, or noticed him using any powers she would associate with one, but that was hardly conclusive. The mark could easily be hidden beneath his clothing, and they hadn’t really needed any warding.
“I am,” he said again.
So the snippet of Prophecy that she refused to believe in mentioned both a “daughter of stone and Sentinel” and an unmarked member of House Kundarak. Both of which happened to be here, now, five days before Rhaan was set to go dark again. Wonderful.
“What about the silent Anvil part?” she asked, dreading the answer.
“I don’t know,” Greddark admitted, shaking his head. “That part of the dictionary is completely ruined. I don’t know what it’s referring to-only that it’s not referring to Eyre going dark.”
Eyre was the Making Moon, associated with House Cannith. Sabira couldn’t help but wonder if Jester would have been able to help them figure it out.
Then another thought struck her.
“But Tilde didn’t have any dwarves with her. So if that’s really what the Prophecy is talking about, she couldn’t have fulfilled it, or opened any locks.”
Greddark shrugged helplessly.
“But I — we — can.”
“Maybe.”
Sabira frowned in disgust.
“Do you ever feel like a piece on the world’s biggest Conqueror board?”
The corner of Greddark’s mouth twitched.
“Well, that is sort of the point of a prophecy, isn’t it?”
And it was exactly why she hated it. Bad enough being manipulated by other people. Throw in the Sovereign Host or the Silver Flame or the dragons or something greater than them all, and it was like saying nothing you did mattered. No choice you made was truly yours; it had been preordained millennia before your race was even born. You were nothing but a performer in some cosmic play, acting out a script you could never see but were doomed to follow, regardless.
To give credence to prophecy was to admit that life was meaningless, and that was a worldview she simply would not- could not-ascribe to.
“Well, to Dolurrh with that,” she spat. “We’re not here to fulfill any Hostforsaken prophecy. We’re here to get Tilde, get that artifact, and get out. Nothing more.”
Greddark’s grin widened above his short, straggly beard.
“You really don’t like being told what to do, do you?”
Sabira couldn’t help but grin back.
“I guess it’s the dwarf in me.”
Then the smile faltered and she became serious again.
“We’ll wait till morning. Or what passes for morning in this pit, anyway. If Jester hasn’t made his way back to us by then, we’re moving on.”
“I do not understand your reluctance,” Xujil said. Sabira was ready to punch him after all, but when she turned to him, his face was creased with perplexity rather than challenge. “You must know the warforged has perished.”
“I’ll tell you what I know. Of all the people under my command, Jester was the only one who wanted to turn back, and I convinced him to stay. Wherever he is right now, he wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for me. So we’re staying put, to give him as much of a chance to find us as we possibly can. I owe him that much.”
Xujil started to blink and stopped himself. Instead, he inclined his head to her.
“As you will, Marshal.”
He walked off, and Sabira returned to the shoreline, to watch, to wait, and above all, to hope.
Sul, Rhaan 1, 998 YK
Tarath Marad, Xen’drik.
Sabira awoke from a vision of Elix drowning in the darkness of the sunless sea, Jester holding one ankle and Guisarme holding the other as he struggled to make it back up to the surface. To her.
Greddark’s hand was on her shoulder, and he looked wary, like she might have tried to hit him in her sleep. Given the nature of her dreams, she probably had.
“It’s morning, Saba, and there’s still no sign. What do you want to do?”
It was the same question she’d asked the warforged bard, and her answer was the same as his had been.
“We move on,” she decided, climbing to her feet. Though, in truth, it wasn’t much of a choice. They couldn’t go back. The leviathan had eaten their boat, and there were no mushrooms on this side of the lake with which to replace it.
They pulled on their cloaks and gathered what few things they had left, doing their best to erase all sign of their passing. It wasn’t hard; the land here was rocky and barren, resisting tracks, and they’d done without a fire for the past two nights.
Xujil led them through the twisted landscape, staying closer than was his wont as he guided them over the broken ground. To Sabira, it looked as if some petulant giant had lifted the cavern floor here and thrown it back down again in a fit of temper, then stomped off without bothering to clean it up.
“I thought you said the molten rivers hadn’t flowed here since the giants first clapped your people in chains,” Greddark commented as they climbed over a jutting rock and then had to leap across a narrow but deep fissure. Sabira was pretty sure that’s not actually what the drow had said, but she was interested in his answer. The terrain was starting to remind her of the area beneath Frostmantle, which was most definitely still active-or had been, until the rising magma had been funneled off through a planar gateway into Risia, the Plain of Ice, thanks to Aggar and a persistent scholar named Goldglove.
“They have not,” the guide replied. “There are greater and more dangerous forces in Tarath Marad than mere elements.”
Greater forces than those that caused mountains to rise and laid entire cities to waste in a single night? Sabira would lay odds that they were unfriendly, and probably xenophobic too. Lovely.
“And how likely are we to encounter these… forces?”
Xujil blinked at her. He seemed unable to help himself.
“You plan to steal an item of power from the Spinner, Marshal,” he said at last, as if a more direct answer to her question would be too obvious to voice.
“You know, sometimes being direct really is best. ‘Very.’ That’s all you had to say. ‘Very.’ ”
The drow apparently took her literally, for he did not speak again for some time. Though that could have been because clambering up and down the jagged chunks of stone took all the breath out of him. It certainly did her.
What seemed like an eternity later-but probably was really only the entire day, and maybe part of the night-they finally reached the far wall of the huge cavern. Sabira was sure they’d traveled so far they must be halfway back to Zawabi’s Refuge by now, or else out underneath the Thunder Sea. She was completely turned around and had no sense of what direction they were traveling in. She considered asking Greddark, then decided against it. The idea of millions of gallons of water or even tons of sand sitting somewhere above her head, with nothing separating them but the cavern ceiling, which might or might not be all that thick, made the hair on the back of her neck stand at attention.