Dragon Forge: The Draconic Prophecies - Book Two (15 page)

“They’ve seen us,” Gaven said.

“I wonder if we’re as strange to them as they are to us.”

The one that had seen them was rousing the others, and the dragon-people sprang into action. One took off at a run in the direction of the city, and the rest hustled to a corner of the field.

“I’m not sure I want to find out,” Gaven said. “Let’s get some cover.”

Rienne led the way into the shelter of the forest. Only when the last trace of sunlight was draped in the shadow of the canopy and the stillness of the ancient trees had closed around them did she pause. Gaven turned then and peered back through the brush. The laborers were spreading across the field again, but in a line parallel to the forest edge. They carried spears and halberds with huge, jagged blades.

“They’re prepared for intruders,” Rienne said. “They think we’re scouts from their enemies, perhaps.”

“What will they do when they see we’re not?”

“I doubt we’ll be any less threatening to them.”

“Let’s get out of here.” Gaven strode into the shadows of the trees.

“What?” Rienne said, hurrying after him. “Don’t you want to learn more about these people?”

“Not if that means witnessing their combat techniques, or learning how they treat prisoners of war. Hurry!” Gaven cast one last look over his shoulder to make sure the well-armed farmers had not caught up to them. Still a few steps behind him, Rienne glided across the forest floor, her eyes darting to catch every movement in the forest around them. Satisfied that they had a significant lead on their pursuers—if indeed the dragon-headed people were still pursuing them—he charged onward.

“Gaven.”

Rienne’s voice had the quiet urgency she reserved for truly dire circumstances, and Gaven halted his headlong rush, scanning the trees. He heard the quiet song of Maelstrom sliding from its scabbard, so he pulled the greatsword from his back, though he still couldn’t see what had alarmed Rienne.

The first things he saw emerging from the undergrowth and around the thick trunks of trees were arrowheads—obsidian, he guessed, rough-hewn but viciously sharp. Then strong hands clutching the horn handles of curved bows drawn back. Then the dragon-folk stepped into view.

I’d be dead where I stand, Gaven thought, if Rienne hadn’t seen them. She is watching my back.

“Easy, Gaven,” Rienne said, and Maelstrom slid into its sheath again with a whisper. “If they’d wanted to, they would have loosed their arrows already. See if they speak Draconic.”

Gaven dropped his greatsword to the ground and spread his empty arms wide, palms out. “We mean no harm,” he said in Draconic.

He saw their eyes widen, and he was suddenly struck by how human they seemed. Their faces were wide, and accentuated by small frills extending back from their mouths. Despite his earlier impression, they did have distinct brows—ridges of scales arching up from their snouts over their eyes and meeting those cheek frills. Behind their brows, they had crests resembling thick, ropy hair, formed of horn or scales. Some of them also had protruding scales that extended down from their chins, and Gaven realized suddenly
that those were the males—the bodies of the men and the women were quite different in familiar and quite un-reptilian ways. There could be no question about it in Gaven’s mind. The strange creatures that surrounded him in this alien forest were people.

People he shared a common language with.

“What kind of creature are you?” one of the women said in Draconic. Her voice was low but melodious. She wore metal armor, unlike most of the others whose garb was stitched of scaly hide. She held no bow, but carried a shield in her right hand and an axe in the other. Armor, shield, and weapon shared a similar style unlike anything he’d ever seen—graceful curves meeting in points, suggesting tongues of flame. Like the breath of a red or gold dragon.

Gaven opened his mouth to explain what he and Rienne were but found himself at a loss for words. The first word that came to his mind to describe them was “meat”—not how he wanted to identify himself to these people. He turned to Rienne.

“What are we?” he asked. “How do I explain Khoravar to these people?”

“The dragons of Argonnessen certainly know of the elves of Aerenal,” Rienne said. “Try it.”

“We are travelers-on-the-sea,” Gaven said in Draconic. “We have journeyed a great distance to arrive at this land. Some of our ancestors were Aereni.” He paused to judge their reaction to this news.

Their wide mouths curved in unmistakable smiles. At the tips of their snouts, the scales formed a beaklike protrusion, but leathery skin behind it parted to reveal knife-blade teeth. Some of them laughed out loud, deep and throaty. Gaven cast his mind back over what he’d said—had he made some gaffe of manners or grammar?

“You talk like a dragon,” the armored woman said through her smile.

“Or a character in a bad romance,” another one added, letting his bow straighten slightly as he laughed.

Gaven was relieved but confused. He did speak like a dragon—probably because he learned to speak Draconic by holding the memories of an ancient dragon in his mind for twenty-seven years.

He didn’t know any other way to speak Draconic, though he had already puzzled out some idioms and colloquialisms he’d never heard before. “Bad romance” was his best guess, and he could only assume that the dragon-man had meant a play or a work of fiction.

He decided to take advantage of the moment of levity. “And you?” he asked the woman, indicating the whole group of dragon-people. “What manner of creature are you?”

“We are
drakatha
, of course,” the woman answered. A compound construction—dragon-bred? he wondered. Dragon-spawn? Dragonborn, he decided.

“We know the Aereni from our histories,” the woman continued, her face serious again, her fist tight around the haft of her axe. She stepped closer to Gaven. “They are the ancient enemies of the
drakamakki
. Are you their spies?”

Drakamakki
. Dragon-kings? Did dragons rule over these people like kings?

“Spies? No,” Gaven said. “Our ancestors were Aereni, we are not. We are simply travelers.”

“Travelers have an origin and a destination. You have given us neither.” Her tone was threatening, and the smiles had vanished from the faces of her entire party. Bowstrings were taut again.

What am I saying wrong? Gaven thought, cursing himself. “We come from beyond the land of the Aereni, far to the northwest.” Gaven wished Draconic had a better name for Khorvaire—as far as the dragons were concerned, “beyond Aerenal” was the best description of the location and significance of Gaven’s home continent.

“And where are you bound?” The woman stood close now, stooping so her eyes gazed directly into his.

Rienne’s touch on his shoulder calmed him in the face of the belligerent dragonborn, but then it tightened in warning. He glanced back at her, just in time to see their original pursuers erupt from the forest and stop in bewilderment.

Shouts rose up from both groups of dragonborn, and a dozen arrows that had been pointing at Gaven and Rienne flew at the newcomers.

T
he ground rose slowly toward the mountains as Kauth and his allies hurried to put miles between them and the serpent’s lair. At first they slogged up long hills that weren’t too steep, then circled the edges of dells or made their way down into shallow valleys. After a few days they climbed paths that wound back and forth up hills too steep to take directly. One morning their path led them along the edge of a sheer cliff, still rising, and when they cleared the tops of the trees below them the whole forest was spread out before them.

Kauth paused to lean against a tree whose roots emerged from the cliff into empty air before winding their way back down to fertile soil. He fought to catch his breath, pretending that he was simply taking in the view. That was the problem with taking a form like Kauth’s—he looked both stronger and hardier than he actually was. Most of the time it wasn’t an issue, but days of hard climbing were taking their toll on his endurance. And Sovereigns prevent some tavern thug from challenging him to a contest of strength!

On the other hand, as Sevren had observed, he was smarter than he looked, which almost made up for his physical shortcomings.

The others stood beside him to admire the view. Zandar was visibly winded—that was acceptable, though, since he was slighter than the others. Vor and Sevren seemed unaffected by the exertion of their climb. And the view was impressive. An emerald mantle covered the hills below them and the gentler land beyond, as far as Kauth could see. The summer sky was a perfect blue, unbroken by clouds, and Kauth realized how accustomed he’d grown to overcast skies while he traveled with Gaven. The man carried the threat of storms with him like a weapon at his belt.

Sevren startled him by leaping up the trunk of another tree and climbing the branches as if they were a ladder until they grew too thin to support his weight. He leaned over the edge of the cliff and looked up.

Zandar called up to the shifter. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to get a sense of the land ahead—or above. We’re nearly at the tree line.”

“Can you see the pass?” asked Vor.

“Do you think I’ve led you astray?” Sevren pointed to his right. “It’s a little to the north, but I think our course will take us right to the gates of the mountain.”

“Then down into the Labyrinth,” Vor muttered.

Sevren scampered down the tree even more easily than he’d climbed it. “Come,” he said, and he continued up the path.

Kauth pushed himself to keep up with Vor, just a few paces behind the shifter, while Zandar trailed behind. “And you’re leading us through the Labyrinth?” he asked the orc.

“I told you I would.”

“Yes, you did. And I’m grateful.”

Vor grunted his acknowledgment.

“If we encounter the Ghaash’kala …” Kauth wasn’t sure how to ask what he wanted to ask.

“We will,” Vor said. “They are vigilant, and no one enters the Labyrinth without their knowledge.”

“Are you … welcome among your former people?”

“No one who seeks to cross the Labyrinth is welcome among the Ghaash’kala.”

“Ah.” So Vor would be no help in that regard. He had hoped the orc would be able to negotiate their passage in more than just a geographical sense.

Finally, the question he’d been burning to ask the orc since they first met in Varna spilled from his mouth. “Why did you leave?”

Vor looked at him, his face a mask of righteous indignation. Then his shoulders slumped, and he looked away, down at the ground. “It’s only right that you should know,” he said. “My life is in your hands no less than it is in Zandar’s and Sevren’s, so you should know what you’re holding.”

Kauth suddenly wished he hadn’t asked. He didn’t want to hold the noble orc’s life in his hands, didn’t want to know anything about the life he was willing to sacrifice for his own purposes. For Kelas’s purposes.

If Vor noticed his sudden discomfort, the orc gave no sign of it. “You know about the Ghaash’kala. They come from the same stock as the orcs of the Shadow Marches to the south, and once probably followed the same druidic traditions. Some wanderlust or calling led them to the Labyrinth. One legend claims that they were an army pushing back an invasion of the Carrion Tribes, so zealous in their cause that they chased their quarry back through the Labyrinth to the threshold of the Wastes. The more pious among them claim that the leaders were following the call of Kalok Shash, the Binding Flame, which drew them to the Labyrinth to continue the sacred work of warriors long since vanished from the land.”

“The Binding Flame,” Kauth said flatly.

“I know what you’re going to say—it sounds just like the Silver Flame. Everyone who’s not a Thrane or a Ghaash’kala says it. And maybe they’re right, for all I know. Certainly since I left the Labyrinth I’ve come to understand the Silver Flame better.”

Kauth could understand the confusion. Two religious traditions known for producing paladins, both of which revered an impersonal force identified as a flame. It was an image with strong religious resonance, he reasoned—fire could represent fervor and devotion, crusading zeal, a purifying furnace, or a punishing force of destruction. Paladins might cling to any of those images, or all of them. Even Dol Arrah, the one god of the Sovereign Host most identified with the virtues of the paladin, was also a sun god, depicted as a knight shining with brilliant light—or as a red dragon, mouth aflame.

Vor was beginning to stray from the original question, and Kauth thought perhaps he could divert the conversation entirely. “What does the Binding Flame bind?” he asked.

“It binds the souls of noble warriors together, the living and the dead, and thus holds back the darkness. In the most literal sense, it binds the evils of the Demon Wastes within its bounds,
preventing them from spilling out across Khorvaire. And that is why I am no longer privileged to call myself Ghaash’kala.”

Kauth blinked. Had he missed the connection?

“I failed in the most basic commandment of Kalok Shash,” Vor continued. “I willingly and knowingly allowed a demon to escape the Wastes. For that crime, I was exiled from my people. I would have been hunted and killed in the Labyrinth, but my knowledge of its ways exceeded that of most of my—most of the Ghaash’kala. I escaped, and now I keep the company of the likes of Zandar Thuul, friend of darkness.”

Kauth glanced over his shoulder and was surprised to see the warlock close behind, clearly listening to the orc’s words. Zandar grinned, as though he’d just been waiting for a chance to interject another barb at Vor’s expense.

“Think of me as a shade protecting the world from the blinding radiance of your soul,” the warlock said.

“The world doesn’t need protection from me,” Vor snapped, “but from the likes of you.”

“That’s ridiculous. I’m not as bad as the fiends in the Wastes.”

“A lesser evil, certainly. But still evil.”

“I’m not evil,” Zandar protested. “Just … practical.”

Vor snorted and cast a sidelong glance at Kauth.