Dragon Forge: The Draconic Prophecies - Book Two (8 page)

“What about the Great Crag?” Vor said. “Is there a tavern in the court of the three sisters?”

The capital of Droaam, a nation of monsters just to the south of the Eldeen Reaches, was little more than a collection of goblin camps and gnoll barracks. Harpies nested in the cliffs of the city, and three hags—the three sisters—governed the fractious nation from a court built among the ruins of the ancient hobgoblin empire of Dhakaan.

“Have you ever seen an ogre drink?” Zandar said. “There must be taverns there to feed those appetites.”

“House Tharashk has an outpost there,” Kauth added. “I’m sure they maintain something like civilized facilities.” House Tharashk, made up of orcs and half-orcs as well as humans, had made enormous profits during the Last War by recruiting mercenaries from among the monsters of Droaam.

“What about Ashtakala?” Zandar said, grinning wolfishly at Vor.

“The city of demons is not the capital of the Demon Wastes,” the orc growled.

“Isn’t it a legend?” Sevren said. “I’ve never heard of anyone who’s actually been there.”

“It’s real,” Vor said.

Zandar smirked. “Or as real as a million-year-old city populated with masters of illusion can be.” He was clearly trying
to nettle Vor, and it was working. “Maybe we’ll find it on our expedition.”

Vor stepped close to the warlock and stooped to look straight in his face. “You had better pray to whatever creatures you serve that we do not,” he said. “Or we’ll all be damned.”

Zandar backed down after that, and Sevren led them to a druid he said would help them stock up for their journey. But Kauth couldn’t get Vor’s words out of his mind.

Sevren proved to have useful contacts in Greenheart, and soon their packs were loaded with everything they would need for their journey—food, tents, rope, even extra clothes and weapons. Considering that none of the town’s buildings were crafted unless by druidic magic, the town was well supplied with the gear used by rangers and druids in the wild.

That evening, they set up their new tents near the edge of town, where the trees started coming closer together and the stone huts farther apart. They had agreed on two tents, each one large enough to hold two of them. Zandar and Sevren shared one, which left Kauth and Vor in the other. Kauth was relieved to see that Vor removed his plate armor to sleep—he had visions of the orc’s large shoulderplate jabbing into him as he tried to sleep. Even so, the tent was going to be crowded with the two larger members of the group together.

Kauth stayed awake outside the tent when the others retired for the night. For a while he sat and listened to the sounds of the forest—the chirping of frogs and crickets, the hoots of owls, and the soft, mournful songs of parents lulling their children to sleep. He could grow to like Greenheart, he decided—it had a peace and harmony about it that was sorely lacking in the other parts of his many lives.

With that thought, he began preparing his mind for the night ahead. He would be in close quarters with Vor, and he could not allow his identity to slip as it had on the airship with Gaven and Rienne. He began by reviewing the shape and features of his body, from his unruly hair and steel eyes down to his thick, crooked toes
with their ugly nails. Cementing every detail in his mind as he had learned so many years ago.

She was jolted out of sleep by Kelas’s voice: “Who are you?”

She sat bolt upright and shouted her answer: “I am Faura Arann.”

“Stand for inspection.”

Kelas examined every detail of her face and body, measured the length of her hair, checked that her mole had not drifted while she slept. He stood behind her and weighed her breasts with his hands
.

“Excellent. Go back to sleep.”

Kelas never paid enough attention to the eyes, she thought. It’s the eyes that will give you away
.

Kauth shook the unwelcome memory from his mind, scowling at himself. He ran a hand over his face to make sure he hadn’t slipped.

“Focus,” he told himself. He repeated the exercise, from the top of his head to the leathery soles of his feet. Fixed each detail in his memory.

Who are you? he asked himself.

Kauth Dennar, he answered. A mercenary during the war, now a drifter, a thug, an adventurer. Born and raised in Storm-reach. I’m working for the Wardens of the Wood.

And leading my friends to their deaths.

“Listen well,” Kelas said, leaning over him. “You have no friends. You love nothing, care about nothing. Nothing is permanent—everything changes, everyone will die. If you love, if you care about anything, you will suffer. You will fail!” He punctuated his last words by striking Haunderk’s face with the back of his hand
.

And what about hate, Kelas? Haunderk thought. Isn’t hate a form of caring? You can’t hate someone who’s irrelevant to you
.

“Focus,” he whispered through clenched teeth. Once more, from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. And again, reining in his wandering mind.

Nothing is permanent. Everyone will die. I will not fail.

G
aven’s assessment of the dragon seemed correct. It circled above them—“like a vulture,” Jordhan observed—until they had cleared the sentinel pillars, then flew inland until they lost sight of it. Gaven cursed, but the crew was breathing easier.

Better to deal with the dragons when I’m risking only my own life, Gaven realized. And Rienne’s.

The wide channel’s waters were still and clear. Coral reefs teemed with life far below the surface, brightly colored fish darting in and out of their aquatic castles. They spotted some larger creatures as dark shadows in the distance—an enormous eel the size of the
Sea Tiger
, and what might have been a dragon turtle that dwarfed her—but those monsters kept clear of the ship.

Jordhan hugged the western edge of the channel as close as he dared, keeping an eye on the coral so it didn’t tear a hole in the hull. He stopped the ship when the daylight became too weak for him to see into the depths, but no one aboard slept except in fits, jerking awake at every strange sound or surge of the waves.

At daybreak, Gaven looked around and saw a crew on the brink of mutiny. Lack of sleep and abject terror had begun to overcome even this crew’s fierce loyalty to Jordhan. They wanted to sail back to familiar waters—it was written plainly on their haggard faces. He pulled Jordhan into the captain’s quarters.

“We have to find a place to disembark as soon as possible,” he said as the hatch closed behind him.

“What’s the matter?” Jordhan asked.

“Your crew. I don’t think you can rely on them much longer.”

“You finally noticed? You think I don’t know my crew?”

Gaven grimaced. He hadn’t intended to start another quarrel with the captain. “What are we going to do about it?”

“They’re my crew, aren’t they?” Jordhan seemed determined to fight.

Gaven looked more closely at his old friend, and suddenly noticed what he had managed to ignore for so long—the same haggard expression, sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, he’d seen on the
Sea Tiger’s
crew.

Thunder and lightning, he thought. What have I done?

“They are your crew, and this is your ship. I’m sorry I put you through this.”

Jordhan’s shoulders slumped. “I insisted. You’re my friend.”

“That means the world to me.” He clapped Jordhan on the shoulder. “We’ll get through this.”

Jordhan straightened, managed a weak smile, and followed Gaven back onto the deck.

That afternoon, one of the sailors charged with watching for dangers to the hull spotted the wreck of another ship, encrusted with barnacles and coral. Her mast rose dangerously close to the surface, so Jordhan steered clear. But as they sailed past, a number of sailors clumped at the bulwark, watching the wreck as they passed, muttering darkly to each other.

Gaven shook his head. He couldn’t blame them for their mood. It had been a long journey, they had already spotted one dragon as well as other dangers lurking in the water, and the shipwreck seemed like a premonition of their own future. Standing beside Rienne, he stared blankly at the wall of mountains rising up to starboard, wondering whether he had made a terrible mistake in bringing them into this danger.

After a moment, his eyes took in the landscape before him. His mind seemed to shift into a different way of thinking and perceiving, and the mountains were no longer just mountains.

“What is it, love?” Rienne was looking up at him, concern etched on her brow.

“Eternity,” he whispered.

She tried to follow his gaze, searching the mountains to see whatever it was that he saw.

“The words of creation, Ree. They’re written on the land here—the Prophecy is inscribed in the shape of the mountains and the path of the coast.” Before the battle at Starcrag Plain, the rolling hills and fields of Aundair had spoken to him of their past and future, of centuries of turmoil and bloodshed. This land was different, powerfully different.

“Tell me what you see.”

“Eternity,” he repeated. “The land of the dragons has been since the beginning, and it will be at the end of the world. Change is alien to this land. The Prophecy unfolds around it, not within it.”

It was not quite unchanging, he realized. But the pace of its history was slower than in Khorvaire. The echoes of incredibly ancient events still resounded dimly within the mountains. He saw a trace of the battle that had wrecked the ship, a fleeting blur of movement where the destiny and activity of Khorvaire intruded upon the stately majesty of eternal Argonnessen.

“What about us?” Rienne asked. “Surely our arrival here speaks of change, however small.”

“A tiny quaver in the voice of the Prophecy. We will leave no lasting mark on this land.”

“Which is greater? To leave a great mark on the volatile history of Khorvaire, or to add your voice to the symphony of eternity?”

Gaven furrowed his brow and looked down at Rienne. She tore her eyes from the horizon and met his gaze. He took in her whole face, ran his fingers through her hair. He had always had a vague sense that her destiny was significant, momentous, but it had never been clear to him—or to her. He saw her, for a moment, as a part of this land. She had mastered the discipline of focusing her soul’s energy, uniting thought with action. There was a stillness even in her movement, a purity of intention. A thread of eternity woven into her mortality.

“I don’t know,” he admitted at last.

Early the next morning, Jordhan called Gaven and Rienne to the poop deck and pointed to the coast ahead of the
Sea Tiger
. Gaven scanned the coast, but he found that his eyes were still on
the Prophecy, and he had a hard time discerning what Jordhan was pointing at.

“The cove?” Rienne asked.

“I think we’ve found our harbor,” Jordhan answered.

Finally Gaven saw the cove cut into the coast ahead of them. The mountains rose up on the near side of the cove, but on the far side, a beach sloped gently up to level ground.

“The gates to Argonnessen stand open,” he said.

The words stirred something in his memory—the gates of Khyber? The Soul Reaver’s gates? That portal had figured prominently in the Prophecy surrounding the battle at Starcrag Plain and his fight against the Soul Reaver. But he felt there was something else….

He smiled at himself. A few months ago, the Prophecy had been so vivid in his mind that it leaped to mind unbidden, overwhelming him with visions and dire warnings. Now he searched his memory and caught only the hem of a fleeting thought—the gates to the land of dragons … or something like that. He didn’t miss the nightmares, the visions that seized him even when he was awake, the constant sense that he remembered events an instant before they occurred. But as he had said to Rienne, he did miss the sense of purpose.

“The gates to Argonnessen,” Rienne echoed.

While Gaven was lost in thought, Jordhan returned to the helm to steer the
Sea Tiger
into the cove. Rienne leaned over the bulwark, staring at the distant beach.