A second tentacle touched his head. The pain was fading, along with Gaven’s desire to resist. Why should he not feed the Soul Reaver? He should be glad to nourish his master in the last moments before his ascension-
The thought filled Gaven with alarm. Where had that idea come from? The Soul Reaver planned to seize godhood from the Crystal Spire? Gaven tried to make sense of that notion, and he felt the creature’s tentacles recoil slightly at that surge of mental activity.
A third tentacle touched, but Gaven swept a hand up to knock it away before it could affix itself. He tried to throw his body backward, away from the creature that fed on his thoughts, but two clawlike hands embraced him and pulled him back. He tried to lift his sword, but he could no longer bring it between the Soul Reaver’s body and his own. Gaven could see the palest glimmer of golden light within the churning darkness in the Soul Reaver’s chest.
The Eye of Siberys pulsed there like the Soul Reaver’s heart, throbbing in a steady rhythm that beat in Gaven’s head as well. Shadows twisted around it, like veins carrying its power throughout the creature’s body. “The Soul Reaver’s heart…” he murmured, and then he knew.
His spear had not touched the Soul Reaver’s heart. The monster had goaded him into using his spear against its fleshly body, rather than striking its real heart-the Heart of Khyber. Gaven let his sword fall to the ground, and with his last ounce of will, he wrapped both hands around the haft of the ash spear. He gave it one mighty tug, but it would not come free.
Where had the nightshard fallen? Gaven wrenched his head around to scan the ground, even as the Soul Reaver’s third tentacle attached itself to his scalp. His thoughts were a jumble of memories and nightmares brought up at the Soul Reaver’s call, but he clung to an image of the Heart of Khyber. At last he saw it on the ground behind the creature, where he had staggered backward before.
He had no will left. He feebly tried to pull his head away from the grasping tentacles while keeping his grip on the spear, but he could not move his head beyond their reach. He tried to speak, but the words came out slurred beyond recognition. Still, they formed themselves in his mind. “There the Storm Dragon drives a spear through the bones of Khyber through the Soul Reaver’s heart.”
Layers of meaning. He stood, barely, among the bones of Khyber, deep beneath the earth. But if the Heart of Khyber was the Soul Reaver’s heart, then the Soul Reaver’s bones were Khyber’s bones. He could drive the spear through the Soul Reaver’s bones and into the Soul Reaver’s heart, if he could just-
“I am player and playwright!” he cried, and he heaved himself forward into the Soul Reaver’s chest. The spear sank deeper into the creature’s flesh, and waves of pain rippled through Gaven’s mind. He forced his foe backward one step, two, then with one great push knocked it to the ground. Two tentacles tore free of his head, trailing blood from their sickly white tips. Gaven clutched the spear, pulling it downward with all his strength, praying to the Sovereign Host that its tip would find the nightshard.
He felt the spear break bone, and then heard it grate against stone below. He had missed the shard. The Soul Reaver heaved him away, its third tentacle tearing free from Gaven’s head, and rolled away from him onto its hands and knees. The Eye of Siberys protruded from its back, shedding pale golden light around the dark cavern. Gaven spotted the nightshard on the ground between him and the bloodied Soul Reaver. As the creature stood and turned to face him again, Gaven could tell that it saw the shard as well. They froze.
The idiot mammal is more clever than I imagined. It made a sound like a gurgling cough, and Gaven saw black blood spill down from its mouth. A fresh wave of pain washed through his head-he began to feel where the tentacles had been boring through his skin and scraping at his skull.
“I am the Storm Dragon,” Gaven said. He stretched his hands forward, and a blast of air like thunder shot through the Soul Reaver, sending it staggering backward a few steps. “And I will still be your doom!” He dove forward and clutched the Heart of Khyber in both hands, landing hard on his belly. He tried to roll back onto his feet as he caught his breath, but the Soul Reaver landed on top of him, two tentacles grasping at the nightshard while the other two slashed at his eyes.
Gaven swung his legs to one side and used their leverage to roll the Soul Reaver onto its back. Still clutching the Heart of Khyber in both hands, he put as much weight as he could above it, forcing it down toward the Soul Reaver’s chest. It put up both hands to push back, using all four tentacles to attack Gaven’s face. One forced its way into his mouth, tasting of blood and slime, working its way back toward his throat.
Grimacing with disgust, Gaven bit down on the tentacle in his mouth, adding a new taste of bilious ichor. He didn’t bite clean through, but it was enough: the Soul Reaver’s grip on the Heart of Khyber weakened, and Gaven managed to force the nightshard down to the stone floor. Spitting slime and bile, Gaven drove a knee as hard as he could into the creature’s midsection. Holding the nightshard against the floor with one hand, he grabbed again at the spear with the other, raising it and the Soul Reaver’s struggling body with it. Guiding the spear toward the hand that clutched the Heart of Khyber, he brought the spear’s point, still protruding from the creature’s back, down hard.
The spear pierced his hand, and he cried out in pain. But the Soul Reaver stopped struggling as the Eye of Siberys went on to pierce the nightshard, the Soul Reaver’s heart. Its withered body, a moment ago writhing with preternatural strength, dissolved into wisps of smoke, snakes of oily darkness slithering away and seeping into the ground. A foul-smelling cloud of gray-black mist arose from the body and then dissipated, leaving Gaven alone, holding the spear he had made from the Eye of Siberys, impaling his own hand against the ground.
A tremendous sob wracked his body, and he dropped his head to the floor. He started to scream even before he pulled the spear free, but then it was done, and the pain was not as bad. He thrust his injured hand under his other arm and squeezed it there as he tried to find his feet. Reeling, he leaned against the wall for support while he waited for his head to clear.
His mind swam with echoes of the Soul Reaver’s psychic assaults. The torrents of memory and feelings slowed, leaving him drained and trembling. It was done, or the worst of it was. Perhaps he had saved the world, or at least a corner of it. He wanted to take pride in that-he supposed he would when he was less exhausted.
As the storm of his thoughts stilled, he realized a strange emptiness in his mind. He cast his mind over his memories of the past months. The dragon of the nightshard, a presence in his thoughts for so long, was gone. He still remembered the dragon’s memories-but he remembered his memory of them, he remembered experiencing them as Gaven. They were still vivid in his mind, some of them all too vivid, but a little more distant, farther removed from his own experience.
The dragon had vanished, taking its memories with it, when the Heart of Khyber was destroyed.
His only light had also gone out, so he spoke a quick spell and cradled an orb of light in his palm.
“Look, father!” he cried.
Arnoth stood in the doorway, leaning against the jamb, smiling with pride. “Well done, Gaven,” he said.