Dragon Forge: The Draconic Prophecies - Book Two (40 page)

The center of history—Gaven had described it to Rienne as a point that history revolves around. He’d been right, then. To Malathar’s mind, the Time Between was the pivotal moment in history, with the Time of the Dragon Above merely its prelude, and the Time of the Dragon Below its aftershock.

“At the birth of time,” the dragon-king continued, “the three dragons were united, but they broke apart. In the Time Between they are united again. At the end of the ages, they will be united a third time. What you have accomplished here speeds the world on its course to completion.”

Kelas shifted impatiently, and Malathar dropped his head to stare right into his face. Kelas stumbled backward. “Do my words bore you, meat?”

“Of course not,” Kelas said. “Only look at the sky.”

The dragon-king swung his neck to look upward, to see the clouds gathering there in answer to Gaven’s distress. “No matter,” he said. “The storm will not answer him much longer.”

The dragon-king raised his skeletal wings and took to the air, their tattered flesh lifting him without a breath of wind. He swooped at Gaven and snatched him up in one great claw, tearing him from the grasp of the guards who held his chains. Gaven watched below as he fell with the dragon-king into the canyon. The ground and the metal wings of the Dragon Forge rushed up at him as it had in his dream among billowing clouds of hot smoke.

Malathar swept into the wide gap between the crystal prison and the walls of the Dragon Forge and set Gaven down inside. Waves of heat assaulted him, rising from the furnaces below. The iron dragon’s wings formed a dome that arched high above Gaven’s head, leaving the dragon-king just enough room to rear up to his
full height. The bizarre apparatus Gaven had glimpsed during the forge’s construction towered over him like a massive pillar, silver tracing forming twisting symbols across its surface. Tubes and rods, gemstones and glass clustered around its lower portions like barnacles encrusting a stately galleon. Its bottom disappeared into the smoke and fire below.

Metal grates formed the floor around the apparatus, covering a trench dug like a moat protecting it. On scaffolding below, a few people moved around, wielding strange tools to adjust a pipeline here or a cylinder there. Jets of flame burst in erratic rhythm from spouts shaped like dragon heads beneath them, the crimson light of the fire turning them into sinister shadows, like devils tending the flames of Fernia. A dragon snaked into his view, crouching low to the scaffold, wings folded so they didn’t brush the grating above. It looked up and met his gaze, then hissed angrily, loosing plumes of smoke from its nostrils. A wave of vertigo washed over him as he stared down into the raging furnace.

A heavy hand on his shoulder steadied him, and he grabbed at it. The metal of Cart’s hand was warm against his skin. He tore his gaze from the fire and turned to look at the warforged, but the sight of the crystal prison behind Cart stopped him. The dark figure inside was clearer than Gaven had ever seen it, pressing its hands against the inside surface, an impression of a snarling feline face above them. A silver serpent writhed around it, clearly trying to pull it back, to hold it fast. Palpable waves of fury emanated from the blue stone, and silver fire sparked from the slender filigree connecting the torc to the receptacles on either side.

“Gaven,” Cart said beside him.

“Two spirits share one prison beneath the wastes, secrets kept and revelation granted.” Gaven spoke as if in a dream. “They bind and are bound, but their unbound whispers rise to the Dragon Between, calling to those who would hear.”

“Gaven, you were right.”

Flame burst up from the furnace below, great spouts of it erupting around him, searing his skin. He heard the clank of metal as Cart’s adamantine axe cut through the chains that bound his legs.

“Now, Gaven!”

Cart had his axe in hand, and with his shield he pushed Gaven forward. Gaven stumbled toward the fire, then realized that Cart was hurrying him toward the narrow entrance at the far side of the Dragon Forge. Cart was trying to help him escape.

Gaven’s dragonmark tingled cool in his hot skin, and he felt power prick his scalp and his arms. Soldiers running to intercept him were blasted aside with thunderous explosions of air. But then Kelas and Phaine blocked his path, and Haldren behind them, and they stood their ground as the wind whipped at them ahead of Gaven’s charge.

Gaven saw Haldren raise his hands, and waves of freezing air crashed over him. His legs went numb and he stumbled. Every muscle, already weak from hunger, felt too stiff to move. Another spurt of flame warmed him, but it also brought back memories of his dreams. His fate was inevitable, it seemed—was it not bound to take place as he had seen? The agony—

A jolt of pain ran up his leg as Kelas kicked at his knee, which buckled under him. Chains still weighing down his wrists, Gaven felt like a captured beast, harried by goads and unable to fight back. He roared in pain and fury, and the air shook with thunder. A blast of lightning shot from him—from his arms, his chest, his whole body—and shot through Kelas first, then Haldren. Then Cart was pushing him forward again, toward the tiny doorway that seemed to whisper freedom.

“What in the Realm of Madness do you think you’re doing?” Haldren, looking scorched from the lightning blast but keeping his feet, barred their way now, giving voice to Gaven’s thoughts. But he was addressing Cart. “Do your duty, soldier!”

“I am,” Cart growled. He ran at the Lord General, his metal-plated feet clanking against the steel floor, lifting his axe above his head. The fibers and cords in his joints creaked and stretched with his effort as he buried the axe head deep in Haldren’s shoulder, shattering bone and cleaving flesh.

Gaven watched entranced as blood flecked the cracked lips he had seen through their prison doors so many times. Cart, too, seemed momentarily fascinated, or perhaps appalled by what he
had done. Then they were running again, and Gaven leaped over Haldren’s body as the life spilled out of it, ran ahead as soldiers scattered out of his path.

A shadow passed over him, and then the dragon-king blocked his path. Black fire burned in the dragon’s mouth, and his bony wings spread as wide and high as the walls of the forge would allow.

Gaven would not back down. He heard Cart behind him, ready to fight—a hero in his own right, finally seizing his destiny. Together, they could escape, against all odds. Gaven raised his hands to the sky, and lightning crackled down from the metal ceiling to flow into him. He glowed like a shining white beacon in the red light of the Dragon Forge. Then he lowered his arms to point at the dragon-king.

The roar of thunder was deafening and the lightning burned its path into his eyes. Malathar reared up with the force of the blast, writhing as lightning danced along the edges of every bone, sparked in the runes carved into his ribs, and doused the black fire in his mouth. His forelimbs fell back to the ground, and for a moment Gaven thought they would collapse under him, but the dragon-king fell into a crouch instead, ready to pounce.

“I am Malathar the Damned,” he said. “Even you cannot stand before me, Storm Dragon.”

Storm Dragon! The dragon-king recognized him as the figure of Prophecy, and still thought to face him in battle? Wind whipped around Gaven as he drew breath for another lightning blast.

Malathar breathed first, crackling black flame engulfing Gaven, searing his skin and sapping his strength still more. It was the excruciating pain of his dream, wracking his body and bringing him to his knees. Suddenly Gaven saw the dragon-king for what he was—one of the most ancient creatures in the world, preserved beyond even the tremendous natural lifespan of a dragon for what might have been hundreds or even thousands of years. Inconceivable power was bound to his blackened bones.

The pain ebbed, and Gaven somehow found strength to regain his feet. He glanced back at Cart—

Just in time to see Phaine d’Thuranni slide his blade out of Cart’s back. Cart dropped to his knees, his eyes on Gaven, but the
spark had already gone out of him. He fell forward, onto his face, and was still.

In Gaven’s moment of shock, a bony claw coiled around him again, pinning his arms to his sides and lifting him off the floor. The dragon’s touch was icy cold, and Gaven’s strength and will drained out of him as Malathar carried him back to the far side of the forge.

Thunder is his harbinger and lightning his spear.
Wind is his steed and rain his cloak.
The words of creation are in his ears and on his tongue.
The secrets of the first of sixteen are his
.

At the dawn of the Dragon Above he rises, and lays claim to what belongs to him.
The blood of the evening sky is his, joining day to night, what is above to what is below
.

In twilight he becomes a pilgrim, seeking what he has lost, what lies beyond his grasp.
His storm flies wild, unbound and pure in devastation, going before the traitor’s army to break upon the city by the lake of kings
.

In the darkest night of the Dragon Below, storm and dragon are reunited, and they break together upon the legions of the Blasphemer.
The maelstrom swirls around him.
He is the storm and the eye of the storm.
His is the new dawn.
In him the storm cannot die
.

A
unn. He decided to use his real name, even if he wasn’t prepared to show his true face or admit his nature. It felt strange—like his name alone was a secret and revealing it would make him vulnerable. But he was willing to expose that one weakness, at least, as a sign of the new life he intended to begin.

He emerged from the tunnel and felt a strange air in the Labyrinth. There was … an expectancy about it, a sense that the Labyrinth itself was waiting for the hordes of Kathrik Mel to pass through it. It did not feel malevolent but eager, welcoming. It took Aunn hungrily in and wanted more. He couldn’t help hurrying along, stumbling as though the ground were pushing him onward.

Left at every branch
.

Farren’s instructions were easy enough. Still, as Aunn wound his way through the canyons, he felt like he was going around in circles, though it might have been an ever-widening spiral. Always left. Farren had not said how far he would have to travel—the vague word “soon” might have meant a few hours, but as he spiraled always to the left he suspected it might have meant a day, maybe two. There could be no sense of progress, no idea that the mountains might be nearby or that he was getting at all closer.

He rounded a bend, chose another left branch, and came up short. Rubble blocked his way, the result of a landslide—a recent one, it seemed, for smaller rocks still tumbled down the pile. Panic seized him. If he couldn’t follow Farren’s directions, he wasn’t sure he could find his way out of the Labyrinth. Perhaps he could scramble over the rubble and continue on the other side? He
hurried forward, but the ground seemed to buckle beneath him, sending him sprawling on his face.

When he looked up, he saw a pair of booted feet before him. There had been no warning sound of crunching gravel—the figure must have just appeared. Half-expecting another visitation of the Traveler, he scrambled back and looked up at the man’s face.

The man was tall, and he held himself proud and strong like a nobleman. His dark hair was cut short and sprinkled with gray at the temples. His warm brown eyes looked at Aunn, and Aunn realized that he was looking at his own new face. He had never seen it in a mirror, but the eyes—

The eyes were wrong, or at least they were not as Aunn had envisioned them when he sketched them in. Had he done them wrong? There was a hardness to them, an edge of cruelty. No, that would have to change.

“Who are you?” the vision asked—the Traveler’s eternal question of him.

This time he had an answer, one he would stand by. “I am Aunn.”

The man’s warmth vanished into anger as he took in Aunn’s face. “You’ve stolen my face! You’re a fiend of the Wastes!”

This was no vision of the Traveler. Was it possible Aunn had given himself a copy of this man’s face without ever having seen him? Or had he seen this man before? His thoughts felt muddy. He couldn’t remember. Even the strange man’s clothes and armor were identical to his—it didn’t make sense.

The strange man roared in fury and ran at Aunn, his hands raised like claws before him. A vision flashed into Aunn’s mind—a monster like a horned bear, fire in its eyes, a gaze that was fixed on him as it rushed toward him. He felt again the freezing cold of Frostburn Cut, the icy grip of fear he’d felt when he saw this monster before.

“We are in the Demon Wastes now,” Vor said. “Do not trust your senses.”

The man had become the bear-thing, massive claws raised to tear Aunn to shreds. An instant before those claws reached his throat, he brought his mace up and smashed it into the monster’s
face, knocking it aside. It sprawled against the canyon wall, changing back into a human form as it fell and rolled. Aunn followed it, raising his weapon.

The man chuckled and turned his face to Aunn. It was Vor’s face now. “Well done, Kauth,” he said. “You penetrated my disguises.”

Aunn stopped short and nearly dropped his mace. It couldn’t be Vor, but how did it know Kauth’s name? How did it recognize him as Kauth? Was this the Traveler after all?

“You tried to lead me to my death,” Vor said, his chuckle turning into a snarl. “If you had but known the extent of my power …”

“No,” Aunn said. “I saw you dead. You’re not Vor.”

“You’re right,” Vor said, and his face melted away. Dania stood before him.

It was a nightmare, just like the fevered dreams of his illness, but Aunn was sure he was not sleeping. “What are you? Kalok Shash—the Silver Flame? Incarnate in the paladins—”

Dania roared, and the beast’s massive paw slashed across Aunn’s face, knocking him to the ground. “Paladins? Me and Vor? Not at all, Auftane, not at all.”