“These dragons and their Prophecy,” she muttered. “What do they think of our march here below, I wonder? Are they serving our needs, or are we cards in their hands? Are we playing the dragons, or are they playing us?”
“This is not some tavern game of chance, Senya,” Haldren scoffed. “This is war.”
He raised his voice so the other commanders around him would hear, and lifted a fist into the air. “The dragons lead us to victory, swift and certain!”
A chorus of cheers from behind him washed away the shadow cast by Senya’s doubts, and Cart signaled the other commanders to begin the march. Haldren smiled, satisfied that his plan was unfolding perfectly. An army larger than he had ever commanded during the war marched before him, and its vanguard was an invincible flight of dragons. Before the sun reached its zenith, this great legion would spill out of Bramblescar Gorge onto the Starcrag Plain, and according to Cart’s reports, they would meet Thrane forces at the border before nightfall. His conquest of Khorvaire was about to begin!
And fate had given him a token of his coming victory by returning his Senya to his side. Though she was clearly troubled by her ordeal, he was confident that she would return to him fully before long. Everything he desired was within his reach.
They rode in silence at a slow walk behind the marching legions. As the narrow gorge widened he was able to survey the full strength of his forces. His banners fluttered in the wind of a brewing storm, the formations of his soldiers bristled with spears, and the earth thundered in concert with the sky under the boots of tens of thousands of marching feet. Haldren’s thoughts were full of glory-victory on the battlefield, the conquest of all Khorvaire, his coronation as emperor of a new Galifar, Senya at his side. What could stop him?
Bursting with pride, he watched the columns of troops begin their advance across the Starcrag Plain as he had ordered, each rank perfectly aligned behind the one before, exactly in place. These were the best troops that Aundair had to offer, and they served only him, not a soft and foolish queen in far-off Fairhaven. The other commanders-Lord Major ir’Fann, Lord Colonel ir’Cashan, Rennic Arak, Kadra, even General Yeven-had all acknowledged the brilliance of his strategy. They had all agreed that victory was sure, and praised him as the greatest general Aundair-no, Khorvaire-had ever known. The Thranes would be the first to fall, but only the first in his long campaign of conquest. After this initial victory, he knew he could count on the support of Arcanix and even House Cannith. The wheel was in motion, and nothing now would stop its inexorable turning.
“Lord General?” Cart’s voice was quiet, but something in his tone told him that there was a problem. How could there be a problem?
“What is it, Cart?”
“Look to the sky, Lord General.” Cart pointed up into the distance, in the direction the dragons had flown.
Haldren squinted in the direction Cart had pointed, then cursed his aging eyes and called for a spyglass. Peering through the lenses, he could clearly see the tight clumps of dragons-his dragons-advancing toward the Thrane forces arrayed against them, far across the plain. “What? I don’t see-”
But then he did. More dragons lifted into the air, and they were behind the advancing Thrane lines. They closed with his dragons with murderous speed, and the sky erupted with fire and lightning as the two groups of dragons met. They swooped and dove at each other, tearing with fang and claw, great bursts of deadly energy erupting from their mouths. Some fought on the ground, wings and tails buffeting each other.
Haldren’s hands trembled as they clutched the spyglass tighter, pressing it to his eye as if looking harder would reveal a different interpretation of what he saw. But there was no other explanation: the Thranes had dragons fighting for them as well. At least a score of them.
Senya’s soft voice behind him hit him like a pronouncement of doom. “A clash of dragons signals the sundering of the Soul Reaver’s gates.”
As if responding to her words, the earth began to shudder, answered by a rolling crash of thunder across the sky.
CHAPTER 47
At the beginning of time, one legend said, the great dragon Siberys danced through the void, setting the stars in their places. Khyber prowled behind, consuming stars as fast as Siberys could scatter them. Eberron sang, apart from the others, and life began to blossom in the void.
Finally Siberys turned to confront Khyber, to stop the dark dragon from consuming the stars. The two dragons fought, tearing at each other in their hatred. At last Khyber arose victorious: Siberys was torn asunder, her body broken into numberless fragments. Then, thirsty for blood, Khyber wheeled upon Eberron.
Where Khyber lunged, Eberron snaked aside, around. The bloodless battle, the fierce dance continued for eons, neither dragon gaining ascendancy over the other. At last, Khyber grew tired, and Eberron enfolded and imprisoned Khyber in her own body. The struggles of the primordial dragons had come to an end.
Both dragons slumbered after their long warring, and hardened into earth. And so the world was born, Eberron forming its surface and Khyber its dark depths. The fragments of Siberys’s broken body encircled Eberron in a great ring that shone in the night. The Dragon Above, the Dragon Below, and the Dragon Between. Always Eberron stood between the Dragon Above and the Dragon Below.
Some parts of the Prophecy suggested that one day the divisions between them might be healed, but an event of such grand proportion was little more than a distant dream. Once in a very great while, though, the gulf could be bridged.
Gaven raced the Eye of the Storm toward the Starcrag Plain, following the path of a dry gorge between the Starpeaks and the forest to the east. Rienne and Darraun rested below, recovering from the dragon’s attack. Gaven wasn’t sure what he had to do, but a burning urgency spurred him on. Could he stop Haldren’s advance, prevent the clash of dragons and save Khorvaire from another terrible war? Failing that, could he prevent Vaskar’s ascension?
He didn’t know. And yet, somehow, he was satisfied. He was acting-he had made the decision to intervene in these events, to try, at least, to make events work out for the better. He vastly preferred that to a life spent floating on the currents that carried him. He would set his own course, choose his own destiny.
Destiny is…
The highest hopes the universe has for you. Like… like my mother wanted the best for me.
The memory of Senya’s words made him think again of his father. Arnoth had wanted only the best for him, even if his idea of what was the best didn’t often match Gaven’s. Why had Gaven not realized that until his father was gone?
The valley he’d been following opened out into the wide expanse of the Starcrag Plain, and Gaven saw the battlefield for the first time-with his eyes. It was hauntingly familiar as the landscape of his nightmares. The northern lands had whispered to him of their past and their destiny, hinting at the Prophecy and the words of creation hidden in the hills and trees. The Starcrag Plain screamed centuries of anguish. This was not the first time the plain had been a battlefield-ancient cairns, piles of weathered stones, littered its edges, and the ground itself spoke to him of horrors past and horrors yet to come.
In the present moment, he saw the regimented lines of Haldren’s forces marching across the plain toward the waiting Thranes massed along a line he presumed was the border set by the Treaty of Thronehold. He saw dragons wheeling above the plain, clawing and biting at each other, blasting fire and icy frost from their gaping jaws. The battle had already begun-the clash of dragons. He was too late to prevent it.