Dragon Forge: The Draconic Prophecies - Book Two (31 page)

For a moment Gaven thought he was in Dreadhold and his taste of freedom had all been one fevered dream. He lay in a stone cell, crumpled on the floor where his captors had thrown him.

There was no bunk, no furnishing of any kind. A high window let in some feeble light, but shadows pooled in the corners of the room and closed in around him.

He ran a hand over the bumps on his head, still tender, and slowly the events of his capture came back to him. Lissa had betrayed him—but why? Why bother winning his trust at all? And Rienne—the dragonborn hadn’t seemed to have any interest in her. That suggested to him that either his facility with Draconic or his dragonmark had drawn their attention, and he strongly suspected it wasn’t his language skills.

Gaven got to his feet, aching in every joint, and stumbled to the door. It was windowless and almost perfectly joined to the wall. He sagged against it and turned to take in the whole cell. He could touch the walls on either side by stretching out his arms, and the far wall was only three paces away. A blast of lightning might knock the door open, he reasoned, so he stepped forward.

Before he reached the opposite wall, the shadows took shape. A slender man loomed in the corner where no one had been a moment before, then he emerged to face Gaven. The shadows seemed to cling to his long, dark hair and black clothing, contrasting with his pale skin. His long, pointed ears and high cheekbones marked him as an elf, but his eyes were lifeless pools of darkness. The Mark of Shadow began on his cheek, ran down his neck, and disappeared beneath his leather armor.

“Welcome to Rav Magar, Gaven,” the elf said. “I have waited a long time for the privelege of meeting you.”

Gaven didn’t move. The elf was either a Thuranni or a Phiarlan, and either way he had good reason to hate the man who had helped orchestrate the schism between the two dragonmarked Houses. He fully expected a knife to appear in the elf’s hand.

“I am Phaine d’Thuranni,” the elf continued. He watched Gaven’s face closely—did he expect Gaven to recognize his name? Or did he expect some reaction to meeting a Thuranni?

“What’s a Thuranni doing in Argonnessen?” Gaven said, still on his guard.

“One might ask the same about a Lyrandar. Or perhaps not,
when the Lyrandar is an excoriate and a fugitive. You thought you could hide here, did you? Safe from all pursuit?”

“Pursuit? Are you telling me you followed me here from Khorvaire? Just to put me back in Dreadhold?”

Phaine chuckled, and Gaven’s eyes dropped to the elf’s hands again.

“You’re going to kill me, then?” Gaven asked. “Get your revenge for what I did to your House?”

“I will kill you—eventually. But not until I’ve seen you suffer. And not until you’ve played your part in this drama.”

Gaven felt blood rush to his face in anger. “My destiny is in my own hands, Thuranni. I won’t be manipulated.”

“Tell me that again when you’ve found your way out of this cell.” As he spoke, Phaine faded into the shadows again. His mocking grin and cruel black eyes were the last to disappear.

Too late, Gaven lunged at him, but his hands hit the wall. Wheeling in frustration, he let a blast of lightning flow through his body to the door. It hit with a resounding crash, scouring the stone wall, spraying gravel in all directions, and rebounding to course harmlessly through his body. The door didn’t move. He slid down the wall to sit on the floor, his dragonmark stinging and fury burning in his chest.

In fits of rage, he blasted the door and the walls with lightning until he collapsed in exhaustion. He slammed his fists against the door until they left trails of blood along the stone. He summoned a wind to lift him up to the window, but he found it barred with adamantine that proved as resistant to his lightning as the door was. He slept only moments at a time, propped in a corner or curled on the stone floor. He stood poised, waiting for the door to open so he could blast his way out.

The door didn’t open. Out of either fear or cruelty, his captors gave him neither food nor drink, and he didn’t see another guard after Phaine’s brief appearance. Phaine had said he wasn’t interested in killing him, but after what must have been four or five days, Gaven sat in the corner—arms limp at his side, legs splayed
out in front of him, eyes half-closed. If the door had opened, he couldn’t have responded except perhaps to beg for water.

Rienne seemed to step through the door then. Lines of concern creased her lovely face, and she fell to her knees beside him.

“Oh, Gaven,” she said. “Please don’t leave.”

“I didn’t mean to, Ree.” His throat was parched, and his voice was little more than a harsh croak.

She cupped his cheek in her hand, but he couldn’t feel anything. “You need to stay alive, love.”

“Why?”

“You have to save the world, remember? That’s why we came here.”

“I could have been immortal, Ree. I could’ve stepped into the Crystal Spire and been a god. Do you know why I didn’t?”

“Tell me.”

“Because of you, Ree. I wanted to be with you.”

Tears streamed down her face, and she clutched him to her. “So don’t leave now. I love you.”

He still couldn’t feel her touch. “You’re not really here, are you?” he murmured, his eyes drooping.

“No, love. You’re all alone.”

A dragonborn stood in the open door, and Gaven waited for his latest hallucination to deliver its message. Chains rattled in her hands, and she stepped close, cautiously, to clap a manacle on Gaven’s wrist. When he didn’t move, she rolled him over and pulled his arms behind him, binding his hands together. A longer chain went on his ankles, then Lissa tried to pull him to his feet. He couldn’t stand.

She breathed a hiss or a sigh from the corners of her mouth. “Stop the river, and the city will fall,” she said. “Perhaps we let the siege go on too long, but we thought you a worthy and dangerous foe.” She lifted him over one shoulder. “We couldn’t risk your escape.”

Gaven’s head turned enough as she walked to give him a vague sense of stone halls, dimly lit with oil lamps, but mostly he saw her
back or closed his eyes, expecting at any moment to wake up in his cell.

Lissa set him down on his feet, but he slumped back to the floor—smooth, polished marble, rich black laced with veins of purest white. He saw Lissa drop down beside him, pressing her face to the floor.

“He is weak.” The voice sounded like bones rubbing together, a whisper.

Lissa raised her head only slightly, still facing the floor. “He has been denied food and water for six days,” she said. “We had to be sure he would not try to escape.”

“There certainly seems to be no risk of that.”

Gaven tried to raise his head to see the one speaking, but he couldn’t.

“Is he strong enough to endure the Dragon Forge?” the whisper asked.

Lissa brought her face lower again. “I fear he is not.”

“My lord.” Another whispery voice, this one familiar—the Thuranni. It took Gaven a moment to remember his name and his face. Phaine. “If I may be so bold, I suggest that we transport him to the Forge in his weakened state and bring him back to a semblance of health once we arrive.”

“You may not be so bold.” The whisper grated harshly. “You suggest nothing I have not already planned. You will remember your place,
randravekk.”
Giant-slave—a harsh word recalling the ancient history of the elves among the giants of Xen’drik. Phaine didn’t respond.

The voice grew closer. “Let me see his mark.”

Lissa stood and lifted Gaven to his knees, and he looked for the first time on the dragon-king of Rav Magar. No flesh covered the bones of the enormous dragon, except for tatters of leathery skin between the bones of its wings. Its bones were blackened as though by fire, but deep violet light shone in the grooves of arcane lettering carved into nearly every surface. Purple fire danced in its eye sockets, set deep between two long horns curving forward around its tooth-filled snout.

The skeletal head came close and the burning eyes peered at
his neck, his bare chest, and his arm. Gaven’s dragonmark tingled, a faint memory of his agonizing dream. He remembered Rienne’s finger tracing the lines of his mark and the glimpse of his destiny he’d seen.

“Why does the Prophecy mock us so, writing itself on the flesh of these creatures? Is it not defiled when it is written on meat?”

The dragon-king stretched out a bony claw and scratched a bloody line down Gaven’s chest. “No matter,” the dragon said. “The Dragon Forge will purify it.”

F
arren led the Ghaash’kala back to Maruk Dar, unerringly choosing a path through the twisted and branching canyons of the Labyrinth. When they neared the city, Aric was surprised to see another band approaching the city from the opposite direction and still another group already inside the walls.

Reading his face, Farren explained. “Four times a year, the Maruk Ghaash’kala return as one to Maruk Dar. We celebrate the victories of the past season, mourn the fallen, and renew our vows. You will make your formal vow at a ceremony two days hence.”

My formal vow? Aric thought. That’s right—the one where I commit my life to Kalok Shash and the calling of the Ghaash’kala. The one I’ll break as soon as I think I can find my way out of here.

He wondered if he could escape the city before two days had passed.

The mood in the city was celebratory—friends and relatives from different warbands were coming together again for the first time in three months, embracing and laughing and trading stories. Children, dressed like warriors in uniforms of leather armor, ran through the streets to find their parents. Food appeared, such as it was—ground squirrels and rabbits caught near the Shadowcrags, the scant produce of dry gardens within the city walls, all heavily spiced and salted. Aric wandered the streets and squares for a while, enjoying the vicarious experience of community and fellowship. Then fatigue crept into his legs and a dull ache gnawed at his heart, and he tried to find the barracks he had briefly called home before setting out with Farren’s band.

Just as he thought he’d spotted the right place, he found himself encircled by humans—black haired, scar-faced barbarians
like … like himself, he remembered. They wore grim expressions but spoke words of welcome, inviting him to join them at their table, half-dragging him when he tried to refuse. They pressed a wooden cup into his hand, and the evident leader of the gang, a tall and wiry man with his face so covered with scars that it was barely recognizable as human, put an arm around Aric’s shoulders.

“I’m Dakar,” he said. “I keep an eye on this lot.”

“Aric.”

“What’s your story, then?” His face was too close to Aric’s, and his breath reeked of whatever strong liquor they were drinking. “How’d you hear the call?”

Aric stared into his drink, trying to identify the viscous liquid. How did one hear the call of Kalok Shash? He decided to tell a story that was close to the truth—such lies were usually easiest to maintain.

“Pangs of conscience,” he said, shaking his head. That was all too true, and he still wasn’t sure how it had happened. “My tribe was torturing some men they captured in the Labyrinth, and it made me sick. I wandered off and into the Labyrinth.” He paused to gauge his audience’s reaction. He needed a touch more. “I must have heard the call of Kalok Shash, even if I didn’t recognize it at the time. Or why would I flee into the Labyrinth?”