CHAPTER
3
Rienne stood looking down over the airship’s railing as the sun descended toward the green and gold expanse of the Towering Wood. The Aundairian army kept growing as more squads and companies trickled in from the ruins of Varna and the surrounding forest. They stood at attention, waiting for the command to march, but in their stillness she sensed an energy, a drive that would carry them forward to overwhelm the Eldeen Reaches.
The Reaches had been part of Aundair once, and the loss of their fertile farmlands and vast forests during the war was a hard blow. But with Thrane to the east and Breland to the south, Aundair couldn’t mount a concentrated effort to take them back while the Last War still raged. Haldren ir’Brassek, the former general who had helped Gaven escape from Dreadhold, had earned his place in that prison by refusing to let the war end, continuing his campaign in the Reaches in violation of the Treaty of Thronehold—that, and his brutal treatment of prisoners and civilians, in defiance of every convention of war.
With the war over and after a few years passed to rebuild its military strength, Aundair could manage a more concentrated effort to retake the Reaches—at least until the other nations became involved and threatened its other borders again. Then Khorvaire would be back in the full heat of war, and what would Aundair have gained? Already, in their travels across Aundair, Rienne and Jordhan had heard rumors that Brelish troops were massing in the south, prepared to help defend the Reaches from Aundair’s aggression.
The difference, Rienne supposed, was the barbarian horde sweeping into the Reaches from the west. It was Aundair’s pretense for the invasion—Aundair couldn’t rely on Reacher forces to fight back the barbarians, so it had to protect its borders with its own army, before the barbarians started pillaging Aundairian lands. It was a thin excuse to begin with, and the ruins of Varna proved that Aundair took the business of retaking the Reaches far more seriously than it did the barbarian threat.
And that, Rienne feared, was Aundair’s deadly mistake.
Heavy footfalls on the deck stirred her from her thoughts. For a moment she dreamed that it was Gaven stepping up behind her, ready to enfold her in his arms. But it was Jordhan’s voice that asked, “What’s our course from here, Lady Alastra?”
She turned around and tried to smile at him. “I’m not sure,” she said.
“Something tells me Gaven is somewhere south of here, if those storms were any indication.” Jordhan’s smile seemed forced as well. “Shall we head that way and look for him?”
Rienne sighed and turned back to the railing, gazing across Lake Galifar to the hazy silhouettes of the distant Blackcap Mountains. Jordhan’s question had said a great deal, and his face had told her more. They had sighted two great storms in the last days of their journey west, both forming somewhere on the Aundairian side of the lake, near those mountains. The storms appeared in clear skies and flashed with lightning. The second one, though, had swept across the lake and crashed into the city, leaving it in ruins. Rienne didn’t want to believe that Gaven was responsible for demolishing the city, for Aundair or any other cause. Perhaps the storm was some new weapon of Aundair, nothing to do with Gaven at all.
More than three weeks had passed since she last saw Gaven, and not an hour had gone by without some thought of him surfacing in her mind and pricking at her heart. But she had chosen to pursue her own destiny, whether that course brought her back with Gaven or not. She wouldn’t veer from that path now.
“No,” she said. “We’ll continue west. Gaven will have to find us.”
* * * * *
Evening found Rienne back at the railing, looking down at the farmland drifting along beneath them. She heard Jordhan’s footsteps on the deck behind her and her grip tightened on the rail.
“We need to talk,” Jordhan said, coming to stand behind her. Rienne took a breath and tried to brace herself for what was coming next.
Things with Jordhan were different than they had been before, when Gaven was in Dreadhold. Gaven had said, when they met Jordhan again in Sharavacion, that he always expected Jordhan to start courting Rienne as soon as Gaven was out of the way. He might have, if the circumstances of Gaven’s arrest had been different. As it was, spending time together was a painful reminder of what had happened, and Gaven was always there, a haunting presence that squelched any feelings that might otherwise have blossomed between them.
On their journey to Argonnessen together, Gaven was a physical presence with them, and Jordhan kept his distance. But Gaven was gone again—dead, for all they knew. Rienne had chosen not to look for him, and that seemed to give Jordhan permission to show his feelings a little more openly. He held her gaze just a moment too long, stood half a step too close, touched her elbow or her shoulder as they spoke.
Jordhan was the best of friends, the only person—other than Gaven—she had ever been able to share her deepest thoughts and dreams with. She loved him. She would have been devastated to lose his friendship, but there was no passion in her feelings for him. But she didn’t want to have to tell him that, to see the hurt in his eyes and watch him slowly drift away. She turned slowly to face him, to hear what he wanted to say.
Jordhan’s face was serious, and he put both hands on her shoulders. “Rienne,” he said, “you know how much I care about you.”
“Of course.” She couldn’t meet his intense gaze.
“I’m worried about you,” he said.
She looked into his eyes then, surprised. “Worried? Why?”
“You spend half of every day staring over this railing. You’re wearing a rut in the deck from your pacing. I’m not sure this ship can support the weight on your shoulders much longer.” A hint of his warm smile danced at the corner of his mouth, but his eyes remained serious.
Jordhan’s hands fell from her shoulders as he turned away. “You’re mocking me.”
“No, I’m not. I know you have a lot on your mind. I’d like to help you, if I can. If you’ll let me.”
“Help me how?”
“What do you need? What can I do for you? There’s no one else who can help you, not until we find Gaven, or he finds us. Please let me help.”
Rienne stared down at the Eldeen fields passing beneath them like a patchwork of greens. What did she need? She wasn’t sure she knew. And she wasn’t sure she wanted help. “My whole life, I’ve depended on everyone—on my family and my noble name, on Gaven, on Maelstrom, on you. I need to figure out who I am.”
Jordhan touched her elbow. “I’ve never known anyone more sure of herself.”
“No, that’s not it. My training is all about emptying myself, seeing myself and everyone around me as a part of a network, a web of being and motion. Without that web, at rest, I don’t know …” She shook her head. “I don’t know what I mean, I can’t expect you to.”
“It’ll be all right, Ree.” Jordhan’s arms encircled her and his warmth surrounded her.
She closed her eyes and for a moment imagined it was Gaven calling her Ree, and his strong arms around her. But Jordhan was far leaner, and he smelled wrong—like the sea, like the citrus fruit he’d just eaten, like her friend. She pulled away from his embrace. “Jordhan—”
“I know,” he said. “I’ll leave you alone.”
Rienne watched him slouch back to the helm, and she felt the weight on her shoulders grow heavier.
* * * * *
A day’s journey past Varna, the airship approached the edge of the Towering Wood. The ordered lines of tended fields came to an abrupt end, and the forest rose like a wall dividing the agricultural east from the lands of the druids and rangers. But it was a wall that would give the eastern farms no shelter from the barbarians, whose approach was heralded by a smear of gray smoke on the western horizon.
Jordhan pointed the airship’s prow at the smoke, and they floated over miles of forest green, autumn red and gold scattered among the branches. The smoke grew into a cloud like a raging storm, the fires beneath it painting splashes of scarlet across the darkened sky. As the sun’s light drained away, the conflagration came into view. Flames leaped into the sky, pouring smoke into the air. Trees burned like torches as the fire consumed them and moved on, leaving them broken, blackened skeletons. The fires formed a long, curving line like a ripple spreading out from the Shadowcrags beyond. And thousands of campfires burned among the smoldering bones of the trees, glittering on the dark ground below like distant stars.
“Sovereigns help us,” Rienne breathed. Images from her dream in Rav Magar stormed into her mind again—the tumult of the field of battle, barbarian soldiers falling before the fury of Maelstrom, the bone-white banners of the Blasphemer. And the words of the Prophecy: Dragons fly before the Blasphemer’s legions …
“Jordhan, get us out of here!” she cried. They were high out of bowshot, but if there were dragons—if the dragons spotted them they’d be vulnerable to attack, all too easy to bring to ground.
The airship jerked as Jordhan urged the elemental bound within her to greater speed.
Rienne leaned over the bulwarks to peer down at the shadowed ground. The campfires illuminated clumps of people, but she didn’t see any of the dragons mentioned in the Prophecy.
“What is it?” Jordhan called. “What do you see?”
Rienne turned back from the bulwarks to see Jordhan, eyes wide and knuckles white as he clenched the tiller. “We’re flying over the horde now,” she said. “And there are supposed to be dragons with them.”
“More dragons.” The constant threat of dragon attack had driven Jordhan and his crew half mad on their journey to Argonnessen.
“I don’t see any, though …” As she spoke, Rienne turned back to look over the bulwarks—just in time to see a winged shadow pass before the fires that raged in the forest. “Oh no.”
“How many?” Jordhan asked.
“I think I saw one. Hard to be sure—it’s dark down there.”
“Well, I’ve always wondered whether a little airship like this could outpace a dragon. Shall we find out?”
Rienne saw it clearly for just a moment, leathery wings spread wide as it rode the updraft over the flames. “Fly like the wind!” she cried. “It’s coming!”