CHAPTER
9
The forest to the east burned with the false promise of dawn as Rienne kept watch over Jordhan. The airship’s fiery ring held the vessel aloft just above the tops of the charred trees, but its harsh light was a small flicker in a much larger darkness, leaving Rienne to peer nervously at every hint of movement at the edge of the encroaching shadows.
No attack came, and at last the eastern sky came alive with fiery red and yellow heralding the sun’s true arrival. No bird calls greeted the dawn light, though, and as the light spilled across the ground beneath her Rienne saw the extent of the devastation left in the barbarians’ wake.
The earth was a wide field of black rock and gray ash, the charred trunks of once-mighty trees jutting up like the crumbling stone pillars of an ancient ruin, many of them half toppled, inclined almost to the ground in their grief. Bones littered the ground as far as she could see—the snarling skull of an Eldeen bear nearby, shattered ribs jutting from the blackened tatters of a chainmail coat just beyond it. Among the bones vultures hopped, flapped, and swarmed over the fresh corpse of the dragon.
Vultures wheel where dragons flew, picking the bones of the numberless dead.
The words from Rienne’s dream sprang to her mind, and brought with them images of battle—dragons flying overhead, a bone-white banner marked in blood, wave after wave of the enemy crashing down over her and Maelstrom. A demon standing before her, his sword burning with hellfire.
Rienne shook herself—had she fallen asleep?—and walked the perimeter of the deck. She and Gaven had visited the Towering Wood once, chasing a rumor of a dragonshard deposit, and she had loved the feeling of shelter she found beneath the arching branches of the ancient trees. The ground seemed like a magical twilight world where the sun never quite reached, yet it was warm and alive. Now the ruin of the forest was laid bare to the dawn, extending as far as she could see in every direction.
She turned Maelstrom over in her hands, searching the blade for the hundredth time for any pit seared into the steel by the dragon’s acidic breath or blood, any nick left behind as the blade pierced its armored plates. Maelstrom was perfect, as sharp and whole as the day she’d received it.
“Lady Alastra,” the messenger said, bowing low, “your presence is requested at the home of Master Kevyen.”
She knew instantly what had happened. Her master was dead. It was not a shock—he had been ailing for months. Still she was too numb to feel the grief, and she would later be ashamed to realize that the first thing she felt was a tiny surge of joy. Maelstrom would be hers.
The tears came as she followed the messenger through Stormhome to the master’s home, hurrying to keep up with his fast pace, wondering if it would be the last time she walked this particular path through the city’s winding streets.
The modest house had been a blur of confusion in the wake of the master’s death, and she stood in the midst of it, trying to find a still center of calm and patience. At last the steward had found her and carelessly thrust the case into her suddenly awkward hands.
She fell to her knees and the commotion around her faded. She ran her hands over the velvet that covered the case, the color of wine, and breathed in the musty smell of it. The smell awakened such memories in her! She remembered kneeling before the master at the beginning of her studies, at the age of three, and seeing the blade for the first time. Every day for nearly seventeen years she had admired it.
And now it was hers. She lifted the lid of the case at last and stretched out her fingers to touch the blade. Then she curled her fingers around the hilt and lifted it from the blade, swearing a rash oath in her heart that she would never let Maelstrom hang on display as the master had. She would wear it, carry it into battle, and let it do what it was made to do.
According to Kevyen, Maelstrom had been the sword of the great explorer Lhazaar, who carried it on her legendary expedition from Sarlona to Khorvaire, three thousand years ago. In her hand, the blade had helped to tame the wilderness of the eastern islands and fight back the remnants of the fallen Dhakaani Empire that threatened the first human settlers. There it had earned its name, for in Lhazaar’s hand it had been a whirlwind of steel that caught all her foes in its inexorable grasp and drew them in to annihilation. That was as much as her master had known or chosen to reveal, but after Maelstrom came into her possession, Rienne learned as much as she could about its history.
Two thousand years ago, a hero named Darven, native to the citystate of Fairhaven long before it became the nation of Aundair, wielded Maelstrom in battle against the armies of Karrn the Conqueror. Cathra d’Lyrandar carried the sword in the War of the Mark, five hundred years later, and used it to cut off the head of Maggroth the Warlock Prince before she herself was killed by the aberrant lord Halas Tarkanan. Less than two hundred years ago, a paladin used the blade to kill the werewolf queen Ragatha and each of her twelve sons, the leaders of twelve vicious werewolf packs across the Five Nations. The paladin, strangely, used Maelstrom’s name as his own, supposedly to convey the idea that he was merely a sword in the hand of the Church of the Silver Flame. She never learned how Maelstrom came into Master Kevyen’s possession, but she had always suspected a connection of blood or training between her master and that nameless paladin.
“The day you first touched that sword,” Gaven said, “you set a course for a much greater destiny. It’s a sword of legend, Ree. Great things have been done with it, and more greatness will yet be accomplished.”
Rienne had called Maelstrom hers for forty-two years, carrying it into the depths of Khyber, across the Five Nations, and all the way to Argonnessen in her adventures at Gaven’s side. Before Gaven’s madness, she used it to kill the monstrous prophet of a cult of the Dragon Below, a hideous, tentacled foulspawn with burning eyes. In the months since Gaven escaped from Dreadhold, Maelstrom had nearly killed the red dragon that attacked their airship on the way to Starcrag Plain, then she had cut a swath through the Soul Reaver’s hordes and killed a beholder. And she had killed the black dragon that was feeding the vultures beneath the airship. To her mind, though, all her adventures did not seem like the stuff of legends. She was no Lhazaar, and the monsters Maelstrom had slain in her hand were not villains on the scale of Ragatha or the Warlock Prince. Great things had indeed been done with the weapon, but her own greatness was yet to come. The sword of Lhazaar, Darven, Cathra d’Lyrandar, and the paladin known as Maelstrom was in her hand, the sword of champions, and her destiny was linked to that sword.
Something had impelled her westward, from the time Jordhan extricated her from the jail in Thaliost, as if a silent voice had been calling her to this place. Her destiny, she felt increasingly sure, was bound to the barbarians that had ravaged this land, that were continuing their advance eastward, toward the edge of the forest, toward the farms and villages of the Eldeen Reaches and Aundair beyond. Her dream in Rav Magar, at least, had seemed to suggest that a confrontation with the demonic chieftain of the barbarians was her fate—or perhaps Maelstrom’s, no matter what hand was wielding the blade.
She squeezed down the stairs to the little cabin where Jordhan slept and kneeled beside him. He stirred and moaned when she lifted his bandages, but he didn’t wake up. Bathed and bandaged, his wounds looked much better than they had the night before. With Olladra’s blessing, he’d be well enough to pilot the airship again by the next morning.
Rienne returned to the deck and gazed to the east, dread clutching at her heart. The sun hid behind a curtain of smoke, staining the sky red. More dragons flew in the midst of the smoke, igniting the sky with flashes of fire and lightning, clearing a path through the forest for the Blasphemer and his legions.
* * * * *
Two guards brought in the leader of the beast-men, clutching his arms and forcing his head down before pushing him to the ground, prostrate before the throne. Four more guards escorted two more beast-men, forced to their knees in the same way. Kathrik Mel clutched the skulls that capped the arms of his throne and smiled down at the three humiliated figures.
“You are in the presence of Kathrik Mel, chieftain of the Carrion Tribes,” one of the guards said.
“You may speak,” Kathrik Mel said.
The leader of the beast-men started to raise his head as if to set his eyes upon Kathrik Mel. A guard smashed it down to the ground.
“You may not lift your head, animal! Speak, if you can.” Kathrik Mel saw blood on the dirt from the beast-man’s head, and he ran his tongue over his lips.
“Great chieftain,” the beast-man said, his voice muffled—partly because he was speaking into the dirt and partly, Kathrik Mel suspected, because he had blood in his mouth. “I am Varish Blackmane, chief of the Blackmane tribe.”
“You are nothing and your tribe is nothing.”
“As you say, great chieftain. If you grant it, I will be your servant, and the Blackmane shifters will join your horde. We wish to fight the Aundairians under your banner.”
“I grant part of your request. Tell all the beast-men formerly known as Blackmanes that they have no tribe. They serve only Kathrik Mel. They will add their pitiful strength to the might of the Carrion Tribes.”
“Part of my request, great chieftain?” The beast-man started to lift his head again.
This time, the guard did not need to intervene. A word from Kathrik Mel’s mouth seized the Blackmane, wrenching a gasp from his throat. The guards fell to their knees and covered their ears, and Haccra beside his throne covered her head and wailed a wordless scream. Kathrik Mel spoke, and Varish Blackmane tried to scream. Blood gurgled in his throat as he sprawled in the dirt, clawing at the ground.
“On his lips are words of blasphemy, the words of creation unspoken.” The dragon snaked around the throne and whispered, its words a hissing undercurrent to the booming cacophony of Kathrik Mel’s speech. “In his ears are the screams of his foes, bringing delight to his heart.”
Varish Blackmane ceased to exist. To Kathrik Mel’s regret, not even a drop of blood remained. But the screams—they seemed to echo in the black pavilion, to his delight.
* * * * *
When Gaven appeared before her on the deck, draped in a black traveling cloak, Rienne knew she was dreaming. He cocked his head to look at her, and she laughed.
“What are you doing here, love?” she said.
“I wanted to see what you’re like without me.”
“I’m lost without you, Gaven. Just lost.”
“You don’t seem lost,” Gaven said. “It seems like you found your purpose.”
“I found a purpose. I don’t know if it’s mine.”
“Whose purpose is it, then?”
Rienne buried her face in her hands. “Maelstrom’s, maybe. Maybe yours. It’s your fault I’m all tangled in the Prophecy.”
“None of us is tangled in it, Ree. It’s a path we walk. A labyrinth perhaps. But you’re above it, not caught in it.”
Gaven stepped, almost hopped closer to her, cocking his head strangely again, and she laughed at him again.
“You look like a bird when you do that,” she said.
He turned his head in surprise, then spread his cloak into big black wings and flapped into the air. She heard more wings behind her, and footsteps on the deck.
“Jordhan,” she murmured, then she realized she was awake.
“I’m no help against a dragon,” Jordhan said, “but at least I can chase off the vultures.” He tried to smile, but either his wounds or his pride turned it into a grimace of pain.
Rienne jumped to her feet and rushed to Jordhan’s side. “You shouldn’t be up,” she said. “Come back to your cabin and rest some more.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “You’re the one that needs rest. You’ve been worrying over me all day. Point me the way you want me to fly and we’ll get a few hours on our way while you sleep. With no vultures this time.”
“No, no. Your wounds—”
“Aren’t serious enough to keep me from flying. It’s really not strenuous work, as long as the elemental knows who’s in charge. So where are we going?” He grasped the helm, and Rienne could feel a surge of power through the ship. Jordhan was right—the elemental did the work of flying the vessel, and it was clearly ready to answer to his command.
“East,” she said. “We have some idea of the size of the invading force and what they’re capable of. So this time we circle around them, keeping clear of the dragons, and look for a place where the Reachers are mustering their defenses. That’s where we’ll take our stand.”
“East it is,” Jordhan said, and the airship began to rise.
Rienne put a hand on his shoulder. “Jordhan?”
He lifted an eyebrow, but didn’t look at her. His attention seemed wholly focused on the ship.
“Thank you,” she said.
He half smiled, met her eyes for an instant, and looked away. She went to the cabin and curled up in Jordhan’s bunk, hoping to dream more of Gaven.