Dragon War: The Draconic Prophecies - Book Three (19 page)

“Of course.” Harkin’s smile did little to reassure Gaven. “I had hoped to discuss that family matter with you in more detail, but it can wait for your convenience.”

“Tomorrow would be better,” Ashara said. “Perhaps luncheon? Here? I’m told this place offers private meeting rooms, if you know the right person to ask.”

“I would enjoy a private meeting with you,” Harkin said.

Ashara dropped his arm and stepped back, putting Cart between her and Harkin and resting a hand on the warforged’s shoulder. “The three of us will have a great deal to discuss, I’m sure,” she said.

“Oh, you’ll be joining us then, Keven?”

“No. I think Ashara was referring to Cart.”

Harkin’s eyes fell on Ashara’s hand. “I see. Well, I’m sure that will be enlightening.” He turned and extended a hand to Gaven again. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Keven, and I hope to see you again. Ashara, it’s always lovely to see you, and I look forward to our meeting tomorrow. Good-bye.”

He turned and strode away, weaving through the tables, stumbling once as he tripped over a cloak trailing off someone’s chair. He did not look back.

“I’m sorry to say this, Ashara,” Cart said, “but I don’t like him very much.”

Ashara sighed and sat back down beside Cart. “Neither do I. But he could be very useful to us and to Aunn.”

Gaven dropped back in his chair as Harkin finally stormed out the door. “But where in the Ten Seas is Aunn?”

R
ienne stood near the front of the lines of Eldeen defenders as the Blasphemer’s horde drew near. The Reachers were mostly farmers and herders drafted into the militia, handed spears and told to defend their lands, with only a few professional soldiers, officers scattered among the lines to enact a modicum of strategy. The front lines were reinforced with great Eldeen bears, giant animals wearing spiked plates of leather armor to reinforce their thick hides. Stretching to the tips of her toes, Rienne couldn’t have reached a hand to the top of a bear’s back. She found a position among the farmers and bears and waited in the darkness of night for the attack the Reachers were sure would come at dawn.

The dragons were the first to attack, and they didn’t wait for dawn. They were dark shapes set against the bright Ring of Siberys, outlined by the light of twelve moons—most of them about the size of the bears, with great wings blotting out the light behind them. Rienne gripped Maelstrom’s hilt as three of them winged toward her position, painfully reminded of sailing into Argonnessen with Gaven. A terrible roar from the bears greeted the dragons’ approach, then screams joined the chorus as the dragons unleashed great gouts of fire and lightning, flashing in the darkness.

Rienne spun into motion, launching herself at the nearest dragon. Its scales gleamed gold in the light of the fiery wisps that surrounded it, exuded from its scales to sear the flesh of the two enormous bears that tried to hold it in their claws. Rienne reached it just as it sank its teeth into one bear’s throat. She felt tiny beside the dragon and the great bear, all the more so when the dragon heaved the bear’s corpse over her head to crash into the quivering soldiers behind her. The remaining bear stood on its hind legs to grapple the dragon, and she barely reached the bear’s waist. Bony spurs jutted from its skull, spine, and shoulders, and its teeth were swords scrabbling against the dragon’s plated scales.

But they were not Maelstrom, the legendary sword of Lhazaar. Rienne came in beneath the dragon’s notice and sliced a long gash across its belly. Fire erupted from its mouth like a cry of pain, casting pale golden light around the dark battlefield. Maelstrom whirled around her and deflected the full force of the blast, spinning it into a cyclone of fire that surrounded her without burning her. Without Maelstrom’s protection, the second bear slumped to the ground, smoke wafting up from its scorched fur and skin.

Lunging like a snake, the dragon snapped at her before the last of its fiery breath had dissipated. She couldn’t bring Maelstrom around in time to block it, and the dragon’s teeth slashed her shoulder. Rienne cried out in a reflex of pain, but she felt nothing. She brought Maelstrom up in an arc beneath the dragon’s throat, but it pulled its head back just in time. Her blade cut through a scaled tendril that hung beneath its jaw, and the dragon hissed in irritation, shuffling back to open the distance between them.

The dragon’s hiss became words—words she could understand, spoken in the Common tongue. “I know that blade,” the dragon said.

“You won’t be the first dragon Maelstrom has killed,” Rienne said.

“Maelstrom,” the dragon repeated. Rienne thought she saw fear in its eyes.
“Barak Radaam
, the Whirlwind Sword.”

“That’s right.” Rienne swung Maelstrom around herself, then let herself spin behind it, whirling back into motion toward the dragon. She planted a foot on the fallen bear’s shoulder, then launched herself up to drive her blade into the dragon’s eye. Too late, the dragon lunged at her, snapping its teeth inches from her face, but its lunge drove Maelstrom deeper into its brain. It fell onto the smoldering corpse of the bear and lay still.

Dragons fly before the Blasphemer’s legions
—the Prophecy whispered in her mind, stilling the chaos of battle around her—
scouring the earth of his righteous foes
. Well, she thought, that’s one less dragon to do any scouring.

Her shoulder stung with a distant echo of the pain she should have felt, easy enough to ignore. She looked for another dragon and spotted an eruption of lightning piercing the darkness nearby. A dragon stood facing another Eldeen bear, lightning cascading from its mouth as the bear swiped at it. A squad of soldiers stood in a clump that bristled with spears, like a hedgehog rolled into a ball and hoping the predator wouldn’t bite. As Rienne ran toward them, a few of the soldiers, caught in the blast of lightning, fell to the ground, screaming out their last breaths.

The blue-scaled dragon lowered its snout, tipped with a jagged horn, and used the horn to toss the bear toward Rienne, but she vaulted over the mangled carcass without slowing her charge. Maelstrom seemed alive in her hand, her body just an extension of its will as it propelled her forward.

Why had the gold dragon known and feared Maelstrom?
Barak Radaam
—what part did the Whirlwind Sword have to play in the Prophecy? If her destiny was bound to her blade, what part would she play as the Prophecy unfolded?

She felt as though she were watching from some other place as Maelstrom launched her body into a whirlwind of death. Each cut and block happened without any act of conscious will on her part, perfectly timed and flawlessly executed. Could she so expertly carry out her destiny, whatever it was?

Lightning burst from the dragon’s mouth again as Maelstrom cut a deep gash in its shoulder. She staggered backward, every nerve in her body screaming its agony. She drew a deep breath and felt the pain and all the energy of the lightning pool together, low in her chest. Maelstrom crackled and sparked as it cleaved through the dragon’s skull, cutting it neatly in half.

Three dragons had flown toward her position—where was the third? She scanned the battlefield but didn’t see it. To one side of her, the Reachers were arrayed in a ragged line, clutching spears and peering anxiously into the darkness. Opposite them, she heard a low roar, slowly growing in volume. As her pounding pulse quieted in her ears, the sound became clearer: hundreds of voices shouting, howling as the barbarians rushed into battle. The darkness of the forest cloaked them, but she felt the same fear that gripped the Reachers bite at the back of her mind. An unseen foe was far more fearsome. Perhaps that was why the Blasphemer had chosen to attack at night.

She settled into a waiting stance and glanced to her sides. A sergeant had placed one of the great bears to her left and another to her right, widely spaced but clearly intended as a first line of defense against the onrushing barbarians. Soldiers clutched their spears and clustered around the bears and around her, as if they were seeking shelter from an onrushing storm. She smiled to herself—in the Reachers’ minds, apparently, she was equivalent to one of their bears.

She thought of Gaven, imagined telling him about the three dragons she had slain and how the Reachers made her into a bear. For a moment she saw him as she had in her dream, the strange vulture-Gaven hopping on the
airship deck. She lifted her eyes to look for Jordhan’s airship, but instead she found the third dragon, just as it joined a circle of wyrms winging around the sky above the barbarian forces. She tried to count them, but they ducked and weaved around each other, and the moonlight gleaming on their scales wasn’t enough for her to distinguish them from each other. She guessed at seven.

As she watched, one by one, the dragons dove from the sky. She braced herself for a renewed assault, but the dragons weren’t diving at the Eldeen defenders. They disappeared into the dark forest. A moment later, flames erupted in the darkness. The barbarians’ yell grew into a howl, a primal scream that made even the Eldeen bears shift backward nervously, and then Rienne saw them, silhouetted against a curtain of fire behind them.

The dragons had ignited the forest behind the Blasphemer’s horde, cutting off any possibility of retreat.

*  *  *  *  *

The earth groaned in protest and pain as the dragonfire coursed over it. Kathrik Mel crouched down and placed his palm on the ground. The grass died at his touch, and the earth’s outcry grew louder in his ears. He lifted his hand, looked at his fingers, and rubbed away flecks of gray ash from the tips. He drew a slow breath, and the mingled aromas of autumn and smoke turned to rot in his nostrils. He stood, stretched his arms wide, and shouted.

“Forward! Trample their bones into the ground! For Kathrik Mel!”

His warriors took up the cry: “Kathrik Mel! Kathrik Mel!”

He felt the heat of the dragonfire at his back and smiled. The warriors before him were too slow. He spoke a word, and fire leaped around him to lash at their backs, impelling them forward. For a moment he was bathed in fire, and he cackled.

As he strode behind his onrushing horde, he listened to the cries of the earth, searching for the painful harmonies of the Gatekeepers’ seal and the stifled chorus behind it. Softly, he began to hum his part of that entropic chorus, a song of madness that would unmake the seal—the song that would soon unmake the world.

*  *  *  *  *

Lit by the fire behind them and roaring what she guessed was the proper name of their leader, the barbarians charged into Rienne’s whirling storm. They were tall, even the women, towering head and broad shoulders above
her—which made it easier for her to move them around, crashing them into each other or throwing them sprawling to the ground where Maelstrom could finish them easily. Black hair fell in matted tangles over their shoulders. The men wore old scars instead of beards, and the women too were disfigured by scars that gave them an almost demonic appearance. Their armor was leather or hide, and most of them used heavy, two-handed maces or axes that left them off-balance after a clumsy but powerful swing.

She could have closed her eyes—she was not seeing, but feeling the rhythm of their approach and their attacks. She dodged and ducked almost effortlessly, and Maelstrom was a blur of steel and blood in the air around her. The barbarian wave crashed upon her and broke against solid rock, unable to move her.

But it could flow around her. She glanced to one side as a great bear roared in pain, and she saw it go down under the press of warriors. Other barbarians were already sweeping over the lines of militia behind her, pushing them back toward the ancient druids’ seal. Rienne could hold her ground, perhaps indefinitely, but she would soon be a lone island in a stormy sea, and her defiance would mean nothing. She began a slow retreat, letting the tide carry her closer to the other defenders even as she continued her deadly dance.

She began to see some variety among the onrushing barbarians. She had heard that the Blasphemer united many disparate tribes to form his horde, and she started noticing differences that might be tribal. Some wore the black feathers of carrion birds and proudly bore the sores and scars of plague on their skin. Others wore patches of scaled black hide on their shoulders and thighs, and bone needles pierced through the skin of their cheeks and bare chests. A few had taken the scarification of their faces to an extreme, actually stripping away skin and muscle to expose their teeth in a hideous grin. She even saw a small pack of shifters, presumably traitors from the Eldeen Reaches, since she had never heard of shifters among the Carrion Tribes before.

No matter how many she killed, more kept rushing at her, around her, past her. If they recognized her as a serious threat, they didn’t show it—wave after wave of barbarians crashed around her, undaunted by the corpses around her and the dead she left in her wake. They never spoke, except to chant their leader’s name with their last living breaths. As more and more of them came at her and died at her feet, a weight descended on her heart. These barbarians—these people were weapons in the warlord’s hands, their wills utterly subsumed to his. Could they have stopped fighting if they
wanted to? Could they have avoided an obviously superior foe? Were they capable of giving a thought to self-preservation, or were they just animals herded to the slaughter? Rienne was the instrument of their slaughter, and she did not relish the role.

She also, with some shock, realized that she was getting tired. How long had she been fighting? The first dragon, the gold one, had come in the darkness of night, what seemed like hours ago. A hint of morning tinged the sky—had she been fighting all night? Her shoulder burned where the gold dragon’s teeth had torn her flesh, and a hundred other cuts and bruises gnawed at the distant ends of her nerves. The barbarians rarely landed a blow on her, but fatigue alone was wearing her down.

Just as that realization settled upon her, two dragons fell from the sky. Barbarians scattered away from her as the dragons—one scaled in blood red, one plated in iron—settled to the ground on either side of her.