James Wyatt - Dragon forge

“I have to look for him, at least,” she said.

Lissa seemed to read the resolve in her face. She shook her head, breathing a hiss from the corners of her mouth, then stepped back toward the shrine’s arched entrance. The dragonborn said a word of farewell-or perhaps it was a blessing or a warning-and then she was gone.

It was worse than Rienne had imagined. She was accustomed to the gawks and rude comments of the lowest classes in the streets of Khorvaire’s cities, even used to fighting off attackers in the most dangerous neighborhoods, when business took her there. But she also expected polite treatment from her social equals and the middle class, and in Rav Magar she found none of that. Everyone stared at her, nearly everyone pointed, and many gave threatening hisses in her direction. Several dragonborn accosted her, puffing out their chests and shouting, sometimes roaring, until she guessed their meaning and made her best attempt at a display of submission.

She wandered through the city, searching for roads to take her to the higher parts of the city, toward the dragon-king’s lofty palace. Few roads connected the city’s different levels, but each time she did find her way to a higher tier, the size of the buildings, the ornateness of the decoration, the sheer displays of wealth grew more impressive. The layout of the city enforced the division among the different castes of its people, she realized. Silver inlays and then gold, marble, and alabaster taking the place of wood and granite; silks and jewelry adorning the people she passed-they all spoke of the greater status of the residents of the higher tiers. More elaborate displays also marked the distinctions between these dragonborn and the lower-tier citizens who did business in the higher levels.

When the sun had not yet reached its zenith and she had climbed only as high as the fourth tier, four armed dragonborn challenged her. They wore metal armor like what Lissa had worn in the forest, and sashes of rich black silk draped across their chests seemed to indicate some official status. As a reflex, her hand started for Maelstrom’s hilt, but she pulled it back-four dead soldiers would not help her any. She held her hands out in front of her.

What if I let them take me? she wondered. Will they bring me to Gaven? Then I might not be able to help him, but at least we’ll be together. But what if they don’t?

The guards inched forward around her with wide eyes. Rienne dropped her hands and ran.

The streets of this tier were wide, and no narrower alleys ran between buildings. Unencumbered by armor, she had a speed advantage over the dragonborn, but she kept slowing to avoid colliding with bystanders who stepped into her path and reached their clawed hands to grab at her. For a moment she imagined she felt the wind hurrying her along, as it had when she and Gaven ran through Stormhome, and tears sprang to her eyes again.

She reached a branch where another wide road wound up to the fifth tier, and she sped around the corner, praying to the Sovereigns that she’d find someplace to hide. Instead, less than a hundred paces up the street, she found her path blocked by another group of guards, pointing heavy-bladed polearms at her. She glanced over her shoulder and confirmed that the other soldiers were still behind her. Trapped.

Rienne struggled to quell her panic and quiet her mind, reaching for the still point of energy within. It eluded her. She stopped running, mindful of the positions of both groups of soldiers, closed her eyes, and drew a deep breath. Letting it slowly out through pursed lips, she found her focus, and the still point rippled out through her body. With a sharp burst of breath, she resumed her run. One foot landed on a carved stone dragon by a doorway and she leaped.

She turned once in the air, then landed on her feet on a peaked roof, looking down at the astonished soldiers. Another slow breath, then she turned and ran. She dropped from her perch to another roof, crowning a building on the street where she’d first met the guards. Turning then, she ran up the sloping roofs and down the other side, leaping from building to building without breaking her stride. When she neared the far end of that street, she was confident that she had eluded the guards, and she dropped down into an enclosed garden behind what might have been a temple or another shrine of the Prophecy.

Her hand on Maelstrom’s hilt, she stood silent in the garden, listening for any sign of approaching movement. An emerald green dragonet screeched at her and flew away, and then all was still.

As her pulse slowly calmed to normal, she sat with her back against the smooth stone wall and wept.

For three days, she huddled in the shadows of Rav Magar. She ate from the magic journeybread that had sustained her and Gaven since they made land and wondered what Gaven was eating. She wrapped herself in her silk, trying to cloak her appearance, perhaps pass as a withered and elderly dragonborn shielding her skin from the sun. By day, she slept fitfully in gardens or courtyards, starting awake at every sound. At night, she skulked in the darkness, avoiding any contact with the dragonborn and working her way slowly up to the highest tiers of the city.

Rav Magar was quiet and mysterious at night. In contrast to a busy city like Stormhome or Fairhaven, where any hour of night saw some people about on business, whether legitimate or not, the streets of Rav Magar were all but deserted by a few bells after sundown. The dragonborn marked the onset of night much as they did the dawn, with strange songs and what seemed to be simple household rituals conducted at window-side shrines. Dragonets crowded the air, jostling for the scraps of meat offered to them in these rituals. As the dragonets flew off, satiated, lamps winked out and the city drifted into silence.

In the silent night streets, Rienne drifted as well, thinking of Gaven and staring up at the ten full moons that began to wane as the two others waxed to prominence. Slowly, she navigated the maze of streets to the highest tiers of the city. Only once in three nights of wandering did she encounter another patrol of soldiers. She crouched beside a large dragon statue and watched them pass, drowsy-eyed and completely unaware of her presence.

On the third night, she reached the pinnacle of the city, where the dragon-king’s palace raised its single tower to the sky. Every entrance was a great archway large enough, she realized, for a dragon to pass through. Four entrances opened onto the street, and three more yawned in the walls up the entire tower’s height. She saw dragonborn guards, clad in armor made of blackened bone, posted at all seven arches. Staying to the shadows, she watched the palace for the rest of the day and through the night, noting when the guards switched shifts, observing the few dragon-born who entered and left the palace.

Sneaking in seemed impossible. When the guards changed, there was no lapse in the watch-the guards didn’t leave until their relief was settled in place. The guards searched all who sought to enter the palace, confiscated their weapons, and questioned them extensively. There was no entrance that had fewer than four guards, and the ones she could get to without sprouting wings all had at least six.

She could fight her way through six or eight guards with little difficulty, but then what? The alarm would be raised, wave upon wave of guards would arrive to block her way. Gaven would get extra guards-they would know she was there to find him. Assuming he was actually in the palace and not in some prison elsewhere in the city.

Three more days passed in watching, waiting for something to change, some opportunity to arise, some sign to appear. On the morning of her sixth day of watching, something like a sign appeared. A dragon flew overhead, its scales gleaming copper in the sunlight. Its wings rippled rather than flapped as it swooped down and landed in one of the high arches of the palace. It perched there like an enormous bird for fully half an hour before jumping down into a chamber below.