“Why did you leave?”
“Haldren discovered me spying on him.”
Gaven arched an eyebrow. “I’m surprised you got out.”
“That’s because you know more about Haldren’s capabilities than about mine. Haldren makes a show of his power. I do not.”
“Fair enough. I’ve always known there was more to you than you let on.”
Gaven remembered Cart interrupting their conversation in Whitecliff, insisting that he, too, was “quite complex.” He chuckled, and noticed Darraun doing the same. Their eyes met, and at the same time, they said, “Many-layered.” Then both men burst into laughter.
“Clearly, I missed something,” Rienne said, folding her arms and smiling.
“I’ll explain later,” Gaven said. “What can you tell me about Haldren’s movements since he left Paluur Draal?”
“He was quite distressed at your disappearance-or at Senya’s, really. He was convinced you had pulled her out of the circle to use as a hostage. From that point on, your knowledge of the Prophecy meant nothing to him. He would have tracked you down and killed you, or tried to, to get Senya back.”
“How touching,” Gaven said. “If only Senya shared his devotion.”
Darraun raised both eyebrows. “If only. So we met with Vaskar on the shore of Lake Brey, and Haldren gave him the Eye of Siberys.”
“Vaskar has it?”
“As far as I know he still does, yes.” Darraun paused. “From there we went to Lathleer, in Aundair, and laid low for a few days. When we were in Whitecliff, Haldren sent word of his escape to a few of his closest friends in the army, and that blossomed into a meeting with seven of them in Bluevine. He swayed them to his cause, promised them a flight of dragons to assure their victory and sent them off to gather troops.”
“A flight of dragons?”
A clash of dragons…
A sense of doom gripped Gaven’s heart.
“That was Vaskar’s end of the bargain, in exchange for Haldren’s help in getting the Eye of Siberys and extracting whatever other information he could get out of you. Vaskar persuaded a fairly large number of dragons to come and form the vanguard of Haldren’s army.”
“And by the rumors of war I heard today, I assume that Haldren has amassed his army, gathered his dragons, and begun his march toward Thrane.”
“That’s right.”
Gaven thought over what the changeling had told him. Darraun’s manner had seemed perfectly straightforward-he could read no trace of deception. The story all made sense, and fit with what little he already knew about Haldren’s movements. He couldn’t help himself-he liked Darraun, he always had, and knowing that he was a changeling and a spy did nothing to diminish that.
I’ve got no choice but to trust him, he thought.
He glanced at Darraun and broke his silence. “Do you know where they’re camped?”
“No. The original plan was to strike down the coast into Thaliost, but Haldren changed the plan after he discovered me.”
“How do you know?” Gaven asked.
“Before I escaped the camp, he gave orders to march, a week ahead of schedule. After I got away, I spent some time in Flame-keep, where I learned that Thrane is concentrating its defense on an old battlefield called the Starcrag Plain.”
“The plain that lies in the sunset shadow of the mountains of stars,” Gaven said. Again the dread gripped him, and he took a deep breath.
“What?” Darraun said, but then he nodded. “Yes, it’s to the east of the Starpeaks.”
“They’re attacking there in order to fulfil the Prophecy. Sovereigns,” Gaven said, “it’s going to be a bloodbath.”
CHAPTER 44
While Darraun and Rienne slept, Gaven was left alone on the deck. The Ring of Siberys shone bright overhead, and the approaching dawn stained clouds in the eastern sky red. To his mind, they whispered warnings of doom: the shining ring of dragonshards that lit the night foretold the consummation of a prophetic cycle, the emergence of the Soul Reaver and the revelation of the Storm Dragon, while the bloody signs of dawn spoke plainly of the cost that would be paid in human lives.
He turned the airship inland, and absently guided her between the darkness of the Whisper Wood on his right and the shadows of the Gray Wood on his left, following a narrow strip of grassy land between the two forests. He was grateful that the navigation didn’t require more attention-his vision seemed to keep slipping between the reality that presented itself to his senses and something deeper, the language of creation.
The Prophecy was written everywhere. Everything he saw spoke of its past and its potential. As he piloted the Eye of the Storm between Aundair’s primeval forest and its younger offspring, making his way to the jutting Starpeaks, he saw the words that had made them and heard distant echoes of the language they strained to speak. And images of his nightmares flashed through his mind, tastes of the horrors those lands would see.
Vultures wheeling over fields strewn with corpses. The howling hordes of the Soul Reaver boiling up from Khyber and spreading out across the land. Legions of soldiers beneath the banner of the Blasphemer. Dragons in the sky.
The visions blended and blurred together, weaving themselves into a tapestry of horror in which he could no longer discern individual threads. Haldren’s march to war would not be the end of the nightmare.
Rienne emerged from below decks at dawn, and Gaven watched with a tired half smile as she stretched and practiced with Maelstrom at the keel. Darraun came up a little later, rubbing his stomach.
“Do you think Thordren had any supplies stashed away?” he asked no one in particular.
“You’re welcome to look below,” Rienne said, “but don’t get your hopes up.”
Darraun disappeared back down the forward hatch, and Rienne hopped up onto the bulwarks’ railings, keeping perfect balance as she practiced complex sequences of lunges, parries, and ripostes. Gaven watched carefully, and chose a moment when her balance seemed most tenuous to jerk hard on the wheel, making the ship lurch to port.
Rienne didn’t miss a step in her exercise, but Darraun let out a cry of pain from the cargo hold. A moment later his head appeared in the hatch.
“Everything all right?” he called to Gaven.
“Fine, sorry,” Gaven said. “Did you hurt yourself?”
“Just cracked my head on a beam.” He rubbed his scalp, then checked his fingers for blood.
“Maybe you should go back to being a dwarf,” Rienne suggested.
Darraun scowled and dropped below again.
“Do you think I hurt his feelings?” Rienne asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Aha!” Darraun yelled from below. “We’ve got breakfast!”
Rienne stepped lightly from the railing to peer down the hatch. “What did you find?”
Darraun emerged with an armload of small boxes and a strip of dried beef dangling from his mouth. “Lady Alastra,” he mumbled around the meat. He left his sentence unfinished as he began setting out the foodstuffs he had gathered-pickled vegetables, dried fruits, nuts, and salted beef. When he had swallowed, he addressed Rienne again. “Lady Alastra, I hope that we have the pleasure of traveling in each other’s company under better circumstances so that I can cook you a proper meal. But for the present, please enjoy these… erm, trail rations, with my compliments.”
Rienne and Gaven laughed. “He really is quite a cook,” Gaven added. “I’ll vouch for him.”
“There are many men to whom I would entrust my dinner,” Rienne said, bowing slightly to Darraun. “There are precious few to whom I would entrust my life. I don’t know if I can bring myself to entrust both to the same man, but it would be an illustrious honor indeed.”
Darraun smiled awkwardly, then busied himself with the food.
With the help of a box of spices he unearthed from his pack, Darraun managed to make even the preserved food palatable, which earned him a new measure of respect in Rienne’s eyes. As the day wore on, Gaven found himself dozing at the wheel, while Rienne and Darraun took turns pacing along the prow. They left the Gray Wood behind and followed the curve of the Whisper Wood’s edge along to the south, then left it as well, making straight for the eastern edge of the Starpeaks. Any movement on the rocky plain below brought a moment of intense scrutiny and heightened tension, then a return to the interminable waiting once the lookout realized it was just an animal or a farmer or a gust of wind below.