Dragon War: The Draconic Prophecies - Book Three (42 page)

Ashara seemed confident, but beyond a hastily whispered assurance that it would be all right, she hadn’t had a chance to explain why they were marching willingly into the stronghold of their worst enemy. They had been in the forgehold once already, and it had been all Aunn could do to get them out without turning Ashara over into the baron’s custody. Cart was not eager to return, but he trusted that Ashara knew what she was doing.

They reached the forgehold, spewing its black smoke into the sky. The leader of the warforged pounded a metal fist on the door, and Cart heard the whir of locks and sliding bolts before the door creaked open. Fear surged in his chest, but Ashara quelled it with a smile. The warforged leader looked back at them for the first time, Ashara nodded, and they all strode into the forgehold together.

A murmur traveled through the forgehold as they entered, and even the din of machinery and working hammers seemed to fade as magewrights and warforged ceased their work to stare down at the excoriate who so boldly entered the enclave of her angry baron. Cart stared around at the angry faces of the Cannith heirs throughout the large room—and the blank expressions of the warforged.

“What god watches over my people, Gaven?” Cart asked as he stared down into the gaping maw of the stone dragon, the bridge to Siberys. “Which Sovereign has our interests at heart?”

“Are there gods for each race and people?” Gaven said. “Doesn’t the whole Host keep watch over us all?”

“Perhaps. But the gods made all the other races. We were made by artificers and magewrights. Does Onatar then care for us, the god of the forge? Or perhaps the warlord Dol Dorn, since we were made for war? Or do they see us as many mortals do—simply as tools for war? There is no god of swords or siege engines. Perhaps there is no god for us.”

“You want to be one, then?” Gaven asked. “What would you do as god of the warforged? Would you urge them into war?”

No, Cart thought as he looked around at the blank faces of the Cannith warforged, I would urge them to love.

“Ashara!” Jorlanna emerged from a workshop somewhere above and leaned over the rail of a balcony that encircled the great room.

Cart found the sight amusing. The only other time he’d seen Jorlanna, she had sat at Kelas’s table like a dignitary, clothed in finery, her hair carefully sculpted to rise from her head in an elegant design. Now she wore comfortable, practical clothes beneath a thick leather apron and boots. She pulled heavy gloves from her hand as she looked down, and pushed wayward strands of hair from her soot-blackened face. The Mark of Making on her cheek said it all—for all her aspirations to nobility, even royalty, she was born to the forge, destined to
make
.

“Good morning, Jorlanna,” Ashara said, pointedly ignoring the proper way to address the head of a dragonmarked House. “Cart and I were delighted to receive your invitation. It’s nice to be here again. I do hope you’re serving breakfast.”

“Oh, Ashara.” The baron seemed genuinely distraught, making Cart wonder what the real purpose of this audience was. “Let me come down and see you.”

Jorlanna disappeared from the balcony. Ashara glanced at Cart, looking as perplexed as Cart felt. He shrugged, then the baron reappeared at an archway to their left.

“What a terrible mess this has become,” Jorlanna said as she strode toward them. “I would so much rather be working with you than against you in all this.”

“Perhaps you should have considered that before declaring her excoriate,” Cart said.

Jorlanna shot Cart an irritated glance, then looked back at Ashara. “So this is the warforged I hear so much about. It should know its place, Ashara.”

Cart drew himself up and stepped closer to the baron, interposing himself between her and Ashara. “I do know my place, Baron. According to the Treaty of Thronehold I am a free citizen of Aundair, an honored veteran of the Last War, and worthy of the same rights and privileges afforded to every other sentient and civilized race.”

“Perhaps it escaped your notice, warforged, but the Treaty of Thronehold is no longer upheld in Aundair, and the provisions you mention will be among the first things to change in the new Aundair.”

“The new Aundair is a pitiful delusion, Baron.”

“Ashara.” Jorlanna stepped around Cart and took Ashara’s hands, a strangely intimate gesture. “That Sentinel Marshal has arrested Harkin.”

Cart watched Ashara’s reaction carefully, and he was pleased to see not a hint of concern for her former lover. “What of it?” she said. “I expect you’ll be next.”

“Me? Ashara, I’m concerned for you.”

“You’re concerned.” Ashara’s disbelief dripped from her voice.

“Yes.” Jorlanna’s voice revealed just a hint of steel. “Harkin knows just enough about the Dragon Forge to get you in serious trouble.”

“Is that a threat?” Cart said, putting a heavy hand on the baron’s shoulder.

Jorlanna turned and fixed him with an icy glare. “Unhand me.”

“Funny, that’s just what Harkin said to me. And here’s what I told him.” Cart raised his voice, enough to ensure that every warforged in the room could hear him. “I have this House to thank for my existence, it’s true. I was birthed in the womb of your forges. Are you then my mother? If so, you sold your offspring into servitude, to Aundair’s army, where I learned to be a soldier, to do my duty. I owe you nothing—you have already been paid for the work you did to bring me into the world. The debts I owe are debts of true gratitude—to the people who have gradually driven the idea through my very hard head that I am a person worthy of respect, of friendship, and even of love.”

Ashara took his hand, and Cart heard gasps of outrage from some of the onlookers.

“I am not an automaton,” he continued, ignoring Jorlanna’s furious glare. “I was made for war, just as you were made for making. But that is not all I am. Like you, I am capable of courage, of hope and dreaming, of loyalty, of fear and hatred, and of love. And until you realize that you
are lording it over a forge full of people like me, you rule a very precarious domain.”

He let go of Jorlanna’s shoulder, and the baron whirled around in a fury, fixing every magewright and warforged in the room with her glare. “Listen and heed me,” she said. “I will not tolerate insubordination, not from marked heirs of House Cannith, not from anyone associated with the House, and not from the warforged we made.”

Ashara squeezed Cart’s hand. “Let’s go,” she said, smiling up at him.

“Goodbye, Baron,” Cart said with a hint of a bow.

“Ashara,” Jorlanna said, anger seething in her voice, “I have not finished with you yet.”

Ashara half-turned as they walked toward the door. “You are finished, Jorlanna. All your building has come to ruin.”

Nearing the door, Cart kept an eye on the three warforged who’d been sent to bring them here. They were still unarmed, but for a moment he thought they might try to block their exit.

Instead, they parted—the leader to one side, the other two to the other. Beyond them, Cart saw Mauren and Ossa striding toward the forgehold, coming at last to make their arrest. Cart nodded his thanks to the war-forged, and as he and Ashara passed between them, the leader put a hand on Cart’s shoulder.

It was enough.

*  *  *  *  *

Four soldiers formed a ragged line blocking access to the bridge across the Wyr that linked Varna to the trade roads of Aundair. Gaven considered storming past them, not wanting to slow his horse to deal with them, but they gripped their halberds as he galloped toward them, and he decided to stop.

“The bridge is closed,” one of the soldiers shouted. Her insignia, a set of linked gold rings at her shoulder, marked her as a sergeant.

Another soldier snickered. “So’s the city.”

The sergeant shot him a rebuking glance.

Gaven walked his horse forward and stopped in front of the sergeant. “Who’s in command here?”

“I am in command of this bridge, and I’m telling you to find another route. The west bank will be a battlefield in an hour.”

Gaven scratched at his shoulder, growing impatient, and glanced at the sun. “Who’s in command of the forces here?”

“Who’s asking?”

Gaven pulled the Sentinel Marshal’s letter from the pouch at his belt and handed it to the sergeant. Her eyes scanned the page, widening as she read, and she handed it back to Gaven.

“My apologies, master. You’ll find Lord Major Parak ir’Velen in a pavilion just inside the remnants of the city wall.” She gestured vaguely behind her, across the bridge. “Just follow the road, you can’t miss it.”

She moved aside for Gaven to pass, bowing as he walked his horse through the gap she left. “Thank you, sergeant.”

His horse’s hooves clattered on the cobblestones of the bridge and scattered broken pieces of rubble left behind by the fury of his storm. The city came into clearer view as he neared the end of the bridge, its once-proud walls now a shattered ruin. North of the ruins, he saw line upon line of soldiers arrayed on the riverbank, Aundair’s blue banners whipping in the wind above them.

A strange pall of shadow fell over him, and he glanced up at the sun again.

It has begun, he thought.

In the Time of the Dragon Below, the moon of the Endless Night turns day into night, and so begins the darkest night
.

He wasn’t sure where he learned those words, whether he had read them in his explorations of Khyber or the other, Shakravar, had learned them and shared that knowledge with him through the nightshard. Certainly he had forgotten them for a long time, but now they were as clear in his mind as if someone had just spoken them.

A single figure stood at the other end of the bridge, waiting for him. Draped in what looked like ceremonial robes, with ornate crests at the shoulders, the figure wore a featureless white mask.

In the darkest night of the Dragon Below, storm and dragon are reunited, and they break together upon the legions of the Blasphemer
.

His horse’s hooves impelled him forward, toward the shrouded figure. The skin of Gaven’s chest and neck burned, and the darkening sun hid behind churning clouds that formed from nowhere. Gaven reined in his horse, bringing it it to a stop some ten paces from the end of the bridge, and dismounted.

“The darkest night of the Dragon Below is upon us,” the figure said. The voice, a rich alto, was familiar, but she was too far away for him to place it. He started walking toward her, sliding his sword from its sheath on his back.

“Storm and dragon are reunited at last!” the masked woman cried.

“Who are you?” Gaven called.

“You don’t know me?” She withdrew her hands from her sleeves, and Gaven saw a gleaming red stone in one hand—the dragonshard that held his mark. “I certainly know you, Storm Dragon.”

He recognized the voice, finally—the same voice he’d heard from the crystal globe in Kelas’s study.

“Nara,” he said. “You have my dragonmark.”

She chuckled. “Yes, I am Nara ir’Galanatyr.” She removed the mask, revealing a severe face with dark eyes. She tossed the mask aside, then opened her robe and shrugged it off. Standing naked before him, she changed.

Blue scales covered her skin as her body grew to enormous proportions. Her hands fell to the ground as they grew into claws, and wings spread from her back. Her face lengthened into a snout with a jagged horn at the end, above a mouth filled with teeth like swords.

“And I am also Shakravar,” the dragon said.

*  *  *  *  *

Aunn leaned against the trunk of a bare maple tree and looked up at the Tower of Eyes across the street. Ossa’s first report from House Sivis had confirmed his gut feeling—a battle near the ruins of Varna was imminent, and this morning word had come that the remnants of the Reacher army had joined up with the Aundairian forces outside the city and were awaiting the barbarians’ attack. He’d taken up his position outside the tower shortly after dawn.

The alabaster tower, with its decoration of blankly staring eyes subtly blending in among leaves and branches, had been his home for his entire life. Kelas had raised him there, taught him the life of a spy, instilled in him a loyalty to Aundair and the queen that still guided his actions when everything else was gone. Until just a few years ago, the tower had been Nara’s domain, and from time to time she had taken a passing interest in his tutelage. If Kelas had been his surrogate father, Nara was something like a distant grandmother, stern and unloving.

Aunn frowned, pulled his cloak closer for warmth, and for the hundredth time checked his gear—a pouch of wands on one side of his belt, mace on the other, and a light crossbow with a quiver of bolts slung on his back. He had killed his father, as it were, and was trying to unravel Nara’s plot. He felt a bit like a disobedient, ungrateful child, but then he
remembered Tira Miron, remembered why he had done what he did.
Kalok Shash burns brighter
.

A strange shadow fell over the street, as if echoing the darkness of Aunn’s thoughts. He glanced up, and saw a dark shadow biting into the edge of the sun, one of the larger moons moving to block the sun’s light. As he looked, he heard cries of alarm from behind him, where soldiers of the palace guard poured out of the garrison building on the other side of the street, presumably rushing to meet the threat of soldiers moving toward the palace. He turned his gaze back to the Tower of Eyes, just in time to see a man stride out the front doors, dressed in black and gray and wearing a perfect killer’s face.

The killer paused in the doorway, looking up the street after the rushing palace guard. Aunn stepped behind the trunk of the old maple, hoping to avoid his gaze. The killer’s eyes swept across him as he turned to look toward the palace, and then came back to linger on the line of bare trees that divided the wide street. Aunn couldn’t tell if he’d been seen or not, but the killer stepped onto the street and walked briskly in the direction of the palace.

Aunn waited a moment and stepped out after him. Between the Tower of Eyes and the great Crown’s Hall at the heart of the palace grounds was only a wide courtyard cobbled in faded blue stone. The courtyard was not thickly crowded, but the eclipse and the shouts of soldiers added significant elements of chaos to the crowd as people stopped dead and pointed to the sky or looked frantically about them. Aunn couldn’t find the killer at first, and he quickened his pace as he scanned the crowd for the man he’d seen.