James Wyatt - Dragon forge

“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.

She glanced over her shoulder at him with a grin. “You have a way of making everything sound so momentous.”

“Don’t you think it is? How many people have even seen this land, let alone walked into its heart?”

“Perhaps I’ve grown jaded. You and I spent years venturing into caverns far below the earth where no one had ventured before. Somehow that never seemed so… weighty.”

“It turned out to be, though, didn’t it? That’s where I found that nightshard, the Heart of Khyber.”

Rienne’s face clouded. That single moment had set world-shaking events in motion-from speeding along the schism of House Thuranni, to Gaven’s sentence in Dreadhold, and ultimately his confrontation with the Soul Reaver. It had caused them both a great deal of pain.

“We were so young,” Gaven added. “Too young to appreciate the significance of what we were doing.”

“Or perhaps now we’re inclined to exaggerate the importance of our tiny quavers in the voice of the Prophecy.”

A surge of anger rose in his chest. “You think I’m being arrogant? Is that what you think this is about?”

Rienne turned and leaned back against the bulwark. Gaven expected her face to mirror his own anger. Instead he saw sadness. “I still don’t know what this is about,” she said.

Her calm demeanor did nothing to soothe his anger. “How many times do I have to explain it to you?”

“Just until you find an explanation that makes sense.”

“Saving the world doesn’t make sense to you?”

“Saving the world, Gaven? Listen to yourself.”

Gaven was completely dumbfounded. “You think that’s pride.”

“I think the world doesn’t need saving. You said it earlier-this place is eternal, and the world with it. Nations and empires will come and go, we mortals will live our lives struggling like mad to leave any kind of lasting mark on it, but the voice of the Prophecy continues. Like the drums and the drone, unchanging beneath the melody.”

“Eternity doesn’t make that struggle less important. Maybe this isn’t about saving the world. But it might very well be about saving everything we know as the world-all of Khorvaire, for example. I think that’s important enough.”